Caves and trees provide the only respite for Darfur's hidden refugees

In a seemingly deserted and destroyed village in Darfur, Bahid Ali Hamed, 91, steps out of the shadows and salutes. An Englishman, he explains, once told him always to salute when he saw foreigners and he is determined to observe protocol, even when barefoot and wearing a ragged, frayed tunic.

As he speaks, three or four women, who looked as if they were also born before the British annexed Darfur in 1916, appear and sit behind him, like actors walking onto an set.

"The troops came and the janjaweed came so all the people ran away," Mr Hamed says. "All my relatives ran away. I was looking for them and could not find them so I stayed behind a tree for six days then some of my family found me and we went by a river, but we were always hungry."

These people are the hidden crisis inside Darfur - civilians who fled their homes after janjaweed attacks destroyed their villages but did not make it to one of the camps run by international aid agencies.


Caves and trees provide the only respite for Darfur's hidden refugees....

SHIGEKARO, Sudan - The United Nations has issued the Arab-led government of Sudan a stark ultimatum: show evidence of improved security for the black African tribes of the vast western region called Darfur, or face the consequences - among them, possibly economic sanctions.

Yet that warning, issued July 30, has provided scant comfort to those who still live in this unforgiving landscape of endless yellow sand cut by jagged stone hills. The desert is littered with camel corpses and the skulls of dead donkeys. Here and there lie singed villages, or deep craters left by bombs. The people, if one can find them, continue to tell harrowing tales of government planes swooping overhead before the rampage of the pro-government Arab militias, the Janjaweed.

Sudan's government has been reluctant to permit free access to journalists, and so it is impossible to assess the scope of the attacks or the exact extent of the government's involvement. As the Security Council prepared to take up the matter on Sept. 2, it was also not clear from local accounts whether the latest violence occurred in the month it gave Sudan to comply.

What is certain is that the threat of violence remains so intense, and the government's promises to secure the region so mistrusted, that no one here feels safe enough to return home. Darfurians are still on the run.

In Western Sudan, Fear Is the Ever-Growing Enemy....