Dispatch from Chad
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Listen to Bill Sinkford's
recording of his experiences in Abeche, Chad, recorded November 10,
2005 (.wav file). |
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| Photos by Danielle Sinkford |
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| Bill Sinkford and Charlie Clements with refugees at Goz Beida. |
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| Woman receiving diploma at Goz Beida |
Reflections on visits with Sudanese Exiles
By UUA President William G. Sinkford with additional commentary by Danielle Sinkford
"We are in Abache, Chad; we flew in yesterday early in the morning and spent the day meeting with 6 or 7 representatives of the NGO's providing humanitarian assistance to the camps... We will be prefacing our conversations [with the refugees] by letting them know who we are and what our goal is, which is to bring back stories and information that will help us to shift the policies of the US government in the hopes that having them know that will allow them to speak more freely."
"I must confess that I feel like a real neophyte. Each day I learn something more and see another thread in this tapestry. And so, simple, easy analysis is something that I have given up, coming to understand the complexity of this situation in so many ways."
Introduction:
Earlier this month, UUA President William G. Sinkford traveled to Chad to visit Sudanese refugees living in exile. Accompanied by his daughter Danielle acting as photographer-reporter, UU Service Committee President and CEO Charlie Clements, and UUSC Program Director Atema Eclai, Sinkford embarked on a mission to learn about life for a people in exile. Sinkford has witnessed against the genocide being carried out in Sudan and was arrested during demonstrations at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, DC in late August, 2004.
The dispatches below were recorded by Sinkford during his travels and illustrate the experience of entering a country where life is challenging, uncertain and often, dangerous.
November 6:
The country is clearly poor...many of the streets are unpaved. At the hotel our rooms had been given away, probably to employees of the oil company which is pumping oil out of the country and providing it with some revenue. We came in on an airbus which was packed...the hotel has no hot water, no towels, basic things that we take for granted. But we have arrived, and the journey has started.
November 7:
The taxi that took us from the airport after clearing customs and getting our bags was one of the oldest vehicles I think I have ever ridden in. While we were coming over, Charlie Clements was sitting in the front seat and the front door came open. Charlie nearly fell out but did not. Clearing customs was a hoot...we of course stood in long, long lines, but those who had special friends – and I assume that a number of those were people in the oil business, and those highly placed in the government – were whisked through without showing passports.
We tried to go for a walk this afternoon, Charlie, Danielle and I – and made it out the front door which has an attendant and then past the vehicle entrance which has two guards. As we started walking down the street toward the center of town, the attendant from the front door ran after us and stopped us and told us that it was not safe to walk alone in the city, it was all right to take a taxi, but not to walk. Since we had not yet had our in-country briefing we decided to follow his advice. It's hard to know [but] if you read the briefing papers from some of the other embassies, you simply wouldn't come to this country.
November 10:
We are in Abache, Chad; we flew in yesterday early in the morning and spent the day meeting with 6 or 7 representatives of the NGO's providing humanitarian assistance to the camps. It was a very full and rich day. Most of the NGOs believe that the primary role of coordination is being provided by the UN high commissioner for refugees. We met with two representatives of that person's staff yesterday morning. It is clear at his point that the coordinator of the groups is an issue: it seems more informal than formal, although the collegial relationships among the leaders of the NGOs makes it quite possible.
Abache is the regional capital and the second largest city in Chad. There are as far as we can see no paved streets in the city, electricity is sporadic, at best, water service the same, the level of poverty is extreme, and the level of service is very modest – the services we consider normal. The primary focus of the NGOs that we met with is providing humanitarian assistance to the relatively stable number of 200,000 refugees from the Sudan who have moved across the border. That is really an extraordinary feat that they are attempting to perform.
There are 8 or 9 camps...they just created a new camp for overflow – it is like creating an infrastructure for 8 or 9 small cities that were already at the maximum in terms of use of resources. So resource acquisition and allocation is a critical issue, and has led to tensions with existing populations in Eastern Chad, called the host population by the leaders of the NGOs. So for example it is the role of the women from the refugee camps to go out and find fire wood for cooking. And their presence has provided the opportunity for host populations to strike back. So the report is that between 75 and 80 percent of the women who have gone out to search for wood and have to go further and further afield, have been attacked by local Chadians, the women have been harassed and very frequently, raped. The sexualized violence in this population is at extreme levels and highlights some of the dynamics that the NGOs here are trying to deal with.
This is compounded by the fact that perhaps 75% of the persons in the refugee camps, we are told, are women and children...this results from the fact that many of the men were killed in the genocide in the Sudan, but also many have crossed back over the border to try and provide some protection for their assets in Sudan...for the cattle they left behind or their fields. So it's a very complicated situation.
Politics in this part of the world  are equally complicated. The president of Chad is ill...he is from the Zaghawa tribe...and the Zaghawa tribe extends from Chad over into Sudan, so that the tensions and the fighting that are developing are intertribal or internecine conflicts in the middle section of the border...His leadership is being challenged. He has sent, we are told, three detachments of Chadian troops to this border area to try and quell violence, and all three of those contingents deserted to Sudanese Zaghawa brigades across the border. So his political situation is very uncertain in addition to his physical situation. His home is actually just 100 yards or so from where we're staying in the guest house of the Christian Children's Fund , which is our host NGO while we're here. They have been just terrific, and they arranged the meetings for us with the various NGO's yesterday. They are so welcoming and looking for partnership in the future.
This afternoon we leave for the airport and we will fly to the first camp we're visiting, and we'll spend the night there. We'll return back here tomorrow and drive six hours to the second and the third camps we'll see. At this point we have received about as much briefing as one can cram into a 24-hour period, and it has indeed been very helpful, but now will be the time when the actual contact with the populations we came to speak with will begin. I am very much looking forward to that. It's likely to be very complicated.
We have prepared ourselves recognizing some of the dynamics in the population. Charlie and I will talk with groups of men, and Atema and Danielle will talk with groups of women. The gender roles in this society are very rigid, and the reality is that when groups of men and women are together, the women simply will not participate in the conversation. At least, so we are told. So we have gotten that far in our thinking and have done some thinking about how to present the conversations to them...to the refugees we hope to speak with.
It is simply not possible, or likely to be productive, to approach things head-on. So we will be prefacing our conversations by letting them know who we are and what our goal is, which is to bring back stories and information that will help us to shift the policies of the US government in the hopes that having them know that will allow them to speak more freely. It is likely to be very challenging, and it is the work that we came here to do.
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Listen to Bill Sinkford's
recording of his experiences in Abeche, Chad, recorded November 10,
2005 (.wav file). |
|
| Photos by Danielle Sinkford |
 |
| Bill Sinkford with refugee woman in Goz Beida |
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| Bill Sinkford and his daughter Danielle |
November 15:
We are now back in N'Djamena, the capital of Chad, after having spent the last three-and-a-half days visiting the refugee camps based out of Abéché, which is an eastern regional center in Chad. The experience of visiting the camps was extraordinary in many respects, perhaps first, because the camps themselves really are functioning communities, with 15,000 to 17,000 persons in each. There is housing for all of the refugees – some in tents, most in traditional African style, with adobe structures with thatched roofs, and small family compounds with individual latrines. Food and water are provided to the refugees, as well as clothing and a whole variety of social services.
Our primary host was the Christian Children's Fund, which is both providing safe psycho-social play spaces for the children of the camps, and also doing what appears to be a very successful job of addressing the issues of gender-based violence and gender roles in these Muslim communities.
In addition to the camps being functioning communities, there was not the level of distress that I anticipated, perhaps because so many things are being provided to the refugees – schools for the children, at least in the elementary grades; and social services; as well as the basic necessities. There simply is not the level of distress and desperation that I, frankly, anticipated.
Charlie Clements and I had a chance to interview a whole variety of men. The way we approached the camps was to divide, with Charlie and me talking to the men, and Danielle [Sinkford] and Atema [Eclai, UU Service Committee Program Director] talking to the women, on the theory that this would maximize the chance that we would actually hear the female voice in all of this. The gender roles are quite distinct, despite the progress that seems to be made by organizations like the Christian Children's Fund.
The stories that Charlie and I heard from the men were remarkably consistent – the stories of the attacks on their villages in Darfur. All of them went something like this. Early in the morning, the village would be attacked by either helicopters or planes of the Sudanese army. The planes – Antinof Russian-made planes – would drop what was initially translated as "hot water" on the villages. On probing, it became clear that this was a chemical cocktail, a kind of homemade napalm, which would burn whatever it touched, including human flesh. In the first group of men that we talked to – and there were about 25 there present – 16, when we asked about the chemical attacks, showed us the scars on their arms and legs, either from the "hot water" chemical stew, or from bullet wounds and shrapnel. That's an extraordinarily high percentage for a civilian population.
After the planes attacked, either the Janjaweed – the Arab nomadic community which has been blamed for the atrocities in Darfur – or a combination of the Janjaweed and units of the Sudanese army, would surround the village and begin killing the civilians. It's impossible to know how many were killed. It's clear that in some villages it was the entire population, and in some villages it was much less than that. But people were killed. All of the livestock, which is very important to these families, were taken, as well as anything of value in the homes. And then, typically, the homes were burned, including everything that was left in them. The villagers would run, often in all directions: east, west, north, and south.
Those who ran west were heading toward the Chadian border. Their stories vary considerably, but all told about hardships on the journey. They left their villages, as they say, "with only pots and cloths," meaning the clothes on their backs. Depending upon how far the village was from the Chadian border, the journey on foot could take seven to ten to 15 days, with virtually no food and very little water available to them. Those who went east typically found some shelter in towns along the way, as did those who traveled south. Those who went north soon found themselves in the beginning of the Sahara Desert, and many of them did not survive. In the words of one of the men that we talked to, they died and were buried "only with the sand." So this is a tragedy of major proportions.
Those who made it to Chad were welcomed, typically, by the Chadian villages just across the border and given hospitality. Villagers shared their admittedly very meager resources with the refugees. The border, by the way, consists simply of a wadi, a place where water runs in the rainy season. We would call it a river, except that it's dry much of the year.
Within about three months, the NGO community began showing up. Refugee camps were created and services started to be provided to the refugee communities, which is actually quite a rapid response from the world community.
That's not to say that everything went smoothly for the refugees, because the villagers spread in so many directions, and families were separated – children separated from parents, husbands from wives. This is a Muslim community, so when I say "wives," I do mean the plural. And it's still the case that many of the families whose husbands we talked to are still separated. People were left in Sudan and there's no knowledge of them. And families that traveled various routes into Chad often went to different refugee camps. And so a very typical story would be for a man to say that he's here in one of the camps that we visited, with one of his wives and two of his children, and his other two wives and multiple children are in another camp. And they had not been able to be reunited. So, there's still a great deal of stress in the family systems of these folks.
All of the refugees that we talked to say that they want to return to Darfur, even though security is better on this side of the border. In the words of one man that we spoke to, "My ancestors are buried in Darfur, and I need to be with them." So despite the uncertainty in Darfur and in Sudan in general, there is a strong wish on the part of the refugee community to return. That return is likely to be very complicated. Not only are the attacks by the Janjaweed, and presumably the Sudanese army, still taking place on the some of the villages, but there are at least two rebel groups. One, the Sudanese Liberation Army, and another, a group called GEN – in resistance to the Khartum regime – are now feuding with one another. In addition to those organized pieces of violence and disruption, the area is in such disorganization that bandits roam freely everywhere, and there is very little, if any, effort to restrain them. So Darfur, at this point, is a pretty dangerous place.
One of the NGOs with which we spoke was called INTERSOS, which is an NGO which provides humanitarian relief, founded by the Italian Labor Movement. It operates on both sides of the border, and the INTERSOS folks report that whereas before they were able to move freely in Darfur by car – actually, by jeep, which is the way everyone navigates the very bad dirt roads – now they are only allowed to travel by helicopter. It's simply too dangerous to travel the roads, even in convoy. One NGO car was ambushed and taken, just north of where we were in the northern camps, last week. It was found in Sudan just a couple of days ago. Luckily, the NGO staff folks who were in the car were not hurt. So this is a very dangerous part of the world at this point, and the possibilities of easily restoring peace and organizing a return for the refugees seem dim.
The Sudanese President [Omer] Bashir has attempted to invite some of the refugees back by creating model villages, where a school and a health center and other infrastructure facilities would be put up. The refugees are invited to come and populate such a village, but the refugees are not willing to do so because all of these model villages are surrounded by nomadic communities, like communities of the Janjaweed. And there's a perception that they simply are not safe spaces for the refugees to return to.
It was the strong feeling among the men that Charlie and I talked with that the African Union, which has been the only peacekeeping force on the ground in Darfur, has neither the capacity nor the charter to move the region toward peace and stability. Right now, the charter of the African Union is merely to protect observers. They're not empowered – even if they had the resources – to work toward stabilizing the region. And those men that we spoke with were of the opinion hat it would be only the United Nations, with a genuine peacekeeping force, that could work to stabilize Darfur and allow a return.
What we've learned is that the political situation in this whole region is enormously complex, with ethnic groups (the Zaghawa, for example) occupying both sides of the border with a lot of communication back and forth. Traditionally, we see populations leaving one country and moving to another (historically, in the circumstances of draught, as in the 1970s, or of political chaos and violence in the 1980s). So this huge movement of population from Darfur into Chad is not a new phenomenon. This is a part of a trajectory of history in this part of the world. And the fundamental causes – the lack of resources, the draught conditions, and the political in-fighting – are not new and are quite likely to continue.
I must confess that I feel like a real neophyte. Each day I learn something more and see another thread in this tapestry. And so simple, easy analysis is something that I have given up, coming to understand the complexity of this situation in so many ways. The most recent complication is the fact that oil is now being pumped from this region and sold to the Chinese and the Soviets, which will give the United States, no doubt, a different spin on what role our nation should play in all of this.
Last year the United States, as a result of protests and pressure from many groups, including Unitarian Universalists and me personally, named the tragedy in Darfur as a genocide. It may well be that. But it is also true, at least as far as I can ascertain at this point, that control of resources and the wish to control the land is also a very important dynamic in this tragedy. And it's one which is not only difficult to unravel – because of the many strands of meaning here – but also which changes rapidly. So, for example, the flow of refugees had basically stopped coming into Chad from Darfur for the last eight to 12 months or so. Given the increasing instability in Darfur with the rebel groups fighting and bandits continuing to molest folks unchecked, the flow of refugees into Chad has increased in the last two weeks. A new refugee camp, called Gaga , was opened some months ago and it has not been filled since it opened. But now the number of refugees has increased, we're told, averaging approximately 30 a day, or 1,000 a month. So it will not be long before that camp is filled to capacity. And should that flow of refugees maintain its current level or even increase in the face of the violence in Darfur, there will be need for yet more humanitarian assistance, and yet more provision of camps for these folks who are fleeing their homeland.
It's a very complicated situation, and one that I am very privileged to have learned about by this visit, if only to understand that the situation is so complicated that a simple analysis and simple solutions are unlikely to come. We'll be flying back at midnight tonight, and back in the United States late tomorrow afternoon. And I'm looking forward to a chance to reflect on this experience further, and review my copious notes from the interviews that we conducted, and to try to come to some more concrete synthesis of this whole experience.
November 16:
We have just returned from Goz Beida and our first visit to one of the refugee camps. We flew down yesterday on a single-engine 12-seat plane, so that we had a good view of the terrain which got greener and greener as we moved south toward Goz Beida, which was very pleasant to see. Goz Beida is another regional center – village, town – which was about 7,000 in population before the refugees arrived. Now, added to that is a refugee population in the camp of more than 14,000. So the resources of that community have been stretched and over-stretched.
Our host for the trip was INTERSOS, an NGO which is providing almost all of the services to the camp. INTERSOS was created and is sustained by Italian labor unions, so when they arrived a few months after the influx of the refugees, they tried to organize their services in a way which would involve the residents – with some success initially, involving them in both decision-making and participation in the creation of services. That fell apart, and right now they're in a period of reorganization where they're trying to reclaim that model for support of the refugees, and they're working hard at it. They were very gracious to us. We stayed at their facility, which is yet another compound surrounded by adobe walls, and Charlie and I had the privilege of staying in one of the relatively traditional African huts called a durdur : a thatched roof with mosquito netting strung inside. Actually, these were the most comfortable accommodations we've had on this trip.
We arrived late. The plane was several hours late, which we're coming to understand is par for the course here in this part of Africa, and we had time only to meet with the INTERSOS staff and then take a brief tour by Jeep of the camp itself, managing to get stuck in the sand once. All of us piled out and pushed to get the Jeep going again. The camp itself was a surprise. I had an image in my mind of something and it was nothing like what we found. There was a security checkpoint, but you had to call to get the guard to come out. And there's free movement of the refugees into the town, and of townspeople into the camp; free movement of people from the camp back to their former homes, which are not that far – a little bit more than 100 kilometers from the camp itself. So it's a much freer environment.
The camp's been in existence for more than a year and a half, and as NGO folks say, is beyond the emergency stage. So they're actually trying to create a sustainable community there, and the NGOs are working on a new water facility, digging wells. We actually saw one of the wells being dug, and a distribution facility for the water to points where the women – all women – come to pick up the water for the day. It's really quite an operation. There's a couple of schools, a hospital in the camp, a market where camp residents sell goods. There's a significant portion of their food now being provided by agriculture that they're involved in. And residents of the town come into the market to sell things to the residents. So there's a lot of interchange between the town and the camp. It actually felt pretty healthy. People were very friendly. Everyone wants to have their picture taken, especially the kids. Everyone waves as you go by.
The highlight of the trip took place this morning, when we had a chance to meet with the Sultan of Goz Beida. He is comparable to a king, I suppose, a very elegant and hospitable gentleman. We sat and had a lovely conversation for almost an hour this morning, starting out talking about the problems of Africa in general, and then beginning to focus in on the issues of leadership that he has had to deal with. The reality is that the NGOs didn't appear until several months after the refugees arrived, and the Sultan was clear that he was required, in essence, to be hospitable to these people with whom the people of the village have had many linkages and ties. They are in some sense all part of one large extended family. And so, he took food from his stores to feed the refugees for those months, and acknowledged that there was a limit to what he could do, so that he was glad when the NGOs appeared and when supplies started coming in from outside. It was altogether a delightful interchange, and one that I hope we'll be able to replicate in the other camps that we visit.
Today, in about half an hour, we will get into a car for a trip north to another camp. It will get increasingly arid as we move north, and I think we'll be rising in elevation, so we'll be cooler, which will be a relief in some ways. The daytime temperature here easily reaches 100 degrees. Shade is at a premium. But I must say that the traditional African structures with their emphasis on shade and free flow of air are in many ways superior to the more "modern" structures that have been built of adobe bricks and stucco. It's really instructive to know that there is wisdom in these people, something which I think many of us far too easily forget.
The conversation with the Sultan focused on what was needed, and this wise and gracious man said that first and foremost peace was needed; that with peace, development is possible; with peace, many things are possible. And without peace, nothing is possible. And we moved our conversation from there to say that peace needed to rest on justice as a base. We found that we were in real agreement about that.
I'm looking forward to our arrival in the next camp to see the similarities and the differences, although I'm not looking forward to the six-hour car ride today over dirt roads.
November 17 – Reflections from Danielle Sinkford
I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the visit to the different camps that we saw in the north: Mile Camp and Konungu.
The men and women of the delegation were separated because it was thought that it would be easier, or we would get a more truthful answer – from the women especially, and it turns out, from the men as well – if they were sitting and speaking with people of their own gender. So Atema [Eclai] and I were able to attend a focus group in both Mile Camp and Konungu. And in Mile camp, we met with a group of younger women; I would say that the average age was about 22.
And the way that the focus group was structured was that we stood in a circle and said our name, the zone and the block – which is the way that the camps were divided – and our age, as well as something that each of us was interested in. And then, the leader of the group, Setah from the Christian Children's Fund, had them begin by drawing their community, including the things that they dealt with on a regular basis, both inside and outside the camp. And then, they presented them.
And the common thread between all of the drawings – and there were about 12 people present – were the water distribution points, the CCF child-friendly spaces, tents – care tents, their personal tents – and also the collection of firewood, which happened outside of the camp. The most striking thing about the drawings was that the women would be sent out to collect firewood for cooking, and the tensions between the local populations and the refugee populations was so severe that they were very afraid to go outside of the camps because on their way to collect firewood, they would be beaten by both men and women, local Chadians. So that was a common thread throughout all of the drawings.
The other topic that was covered in the focus group was education – and a lot of time was spent on it. Schools have been set up for the refugee children, and it turns out that both young children and adults are going to classes, both regular school and Koranic school. In the focus group, it came out that in Mile camp, girls ranging from ages 15-18 are oftentimes sent out for a period of three weeks into the local communities to try to get money because the amount of food and resources available in the refugee camps is just not enough. And this brought up the problem of security because of this tension between the local population and the refugee populations. And oftentimes, the girls that went out to work were not even paid; they were usually just given a fresh set of clothing and a little bit of food.
The value of boys versus girls became very apparent when the mother said that it was more important for the boys to go to school, even though they preferred for both their sons and daughters to go to school. Boys would stay with the families, whereas the girls, once married, would leave the family.
There was discussion among the refugees whether or not they go to the marabou , which is a traditional doctor or healer, or to the health center provided for them in the camps. The women generally said that in the Sudan, they would go to the marabou because there, they had the resources to pay, either in money or in livestock. But here, they chose to go to the health center because it's a free service. And if that treatment does not work, after a period of 5-6 days, then they usually go to the marabou.
On the issue of health, the other topic that came up was female genital mutilation, also known as FGM, and interestingly enough, because we were talking with a younger group of women, they all said that they preferred for their children – even though these women had all had FGM – to not have FGM, and that their husbands agreed. This is in a striking contrast to the group that we met with the next day in Kunungo, which was an older group – an average age of 35 or 37, I believe – who all said that FGM is just a way of life, and if you don't have FGM, then you will not get married, and you'll be ostracized. So they spoke on this even though there still is a lot of societal pressure, cultural pressure [in support of FGM]. And it was also mentioned that, as opposed to life in the United States or other cultures where the first menstruation is where you celebrate becoming a woman, [in this culture] it's after FGM where you are technically considered a woman.
The women were also asked about the problems in the camp that they would want others to hear about, and they gave us a list of some things that include a stronger sense of women's rights. They mentioned that there is not enough food for the entire family, nor soap, and that they would also like the technology or tools to be able to crochet, or use a machine for tailoring. They would like to have a women's cooperative to make soap and clothing; things like spaghetti and tools to make biscuits so that they can provide some of their own food.
In the older group of women, similar issues were raised in terms of health and how they use the health centers as opposed to the marabou, the traditional doctor. The issue of safety was also addressed in both groups, and the women said that they do feel safe within the camps because of SENAR, which is the Chadian security force that's been hired to help protect the camp. The women said that they do feel safe within the borders of the camp, but outside they don't, because of the local population that has attacked the girls going to get firewood. And in this group it was touched on that even in a group of ten they were still being attacked by the local population. An interesting quote came from one of the older women. When she was asked if she felt safe in the camp she said, "In Africa, if you are a Zaghawa " – which is one of the ethnicities – "you always have enemies, so you are never safe."
The other interesting quote came in a conversation about female genital mutilation. Again, it was from an older woman – I believe that she was about 47. She said, in a joking way, "I started female genital mutilation," and that's the only way that this culture works. So it perpetuates the thought that you have to have female genital mutilation, and that without it, you can't get married. [Women in this culture] are continuously ostracized. They are thought to be dirty and unkempt if they have not had FGM. So that was a common thread that went through both of the groups, even though the younger group was against their children having this procedure.
In the second group, the women spoke a little bit more explicitly about what happens outside of the camp when the girls would go to get firewood, and actually mentioned – which the other group didn't – the rape that was occurring. In the other group, the women would just talk about being attacked by both men and women, and this group [of older women] actually referred to not only physical abuse but also sexual abuse, and a woman was quoted saying, "This country is just not for us."
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