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Sudan Refugees Too Scared to Bury Dead
By Alexander Zavis, Associated Press
July 6, 2004
CAMP KOUNOUNGO, Chad - On a rocky wind-swept plain, four men stand with hands lifted in prayer over a freshly dug grave. There lies Djali Djabir, a Sudanese farmer who survived a militia attack and weeks of flight through the desert only to die in a refugee camp in Chad. Countless others were left where they fell, their families too frightened to stop and bury them.
Long-simmering tensions between nomadic Arab herders and their farming neighbors exploded into violence when two black African rebel groups took up arms against the government in February 2003 over what they consider unfair treatment over land and water resources in Darfur.
The rebel groups and refugees accuse the Sudanese government of backing the Janjaweed militias, pointing to coordinated attacks supported by airplanes and helicopter gunships. The government denies the accusation and has pledged to disarm the Janjaweed.
Djabir, 69, was a prosperous farmer with a large herd of cattle before the Janjaweed - which means "horsemen" in the local dialect - struck his village. One morning, the family awoke to gunfire and helicopters clattering overhead.
"We didn't have time to take anything with us, we just ran," Djabir's 30-year-old son, Mohammed, recounted Tuesday.
Gunmen on horses and camels chased them, and so did the helicopters.
Djabir's nephew, Mohammed Aziber, watched in horror as a helicopter pursued his son and gunned him down under a tree. There was no time to stop for a burial.
"Every day I see my son lying under that tree," said Aziber, 65, fighting tears.
For more than two months, the family walked from village to village, seeking sanctuary. Every time they heard another nearby village was in flames they took flight again.
For weeks, they survived on scant handfuls of millet grains soaked in water they collected from the occasional streams that cut through the vast, arid region. The adults often went hungry so the children could eat.
Many didn't survive. Along the way, the Djabir family saw the bodies of others who succumbed to hunger, thirst and disease. But they didn't dare stop.
"The Janjaweed are everywhere," explained Youssouf Omar, 34, a neighbor in the camp who also was chased from Sudan. "If we stop to bury them, they will kill us all."
Finally, despairing that the fighting would ever end, they crossed into Chad, where villagers helped them with food, water and clothing. But they slept under thorn trees for months until U.N. trucks brought them to Kounoungo, a camp about 50 miles west of the border.
Exhausted and with little will left to live, Djali Djabir fell ill and died three days later - his family could not say what killed him. They buried him Sunday.
Almost every week, someone dies at Kounoungo - most from treatable respiratory infections and diarrhea, according to health workers from the International Medical Corps.
As the rainy season begins, the risk of epidemics increases. U.N. officials say more people die now of hunger and disease than in the killings.
In the small cemetery, Aziber shoos away a grazing donkey and bends to smooth the dirt mound over his uncle's grave.
"He wanted to die in his own village," he said sadly. "He didn't want to die in a foreign land."
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