A Cry for Respect in a Sudan Camp

More than 60 percent of the displaced Darfurians are children. They are dependent on food aid, stripped of their culture, mostly uneducated and unskilled. According to the United Nations, such displaced children are especially susceptible to forced labor, sexual exploitation and recruitment by armed groups. Isolated and frustrated, they can become desperate.

"These kids are like animals in a cage," said Bob Kitchen of the International Rescue Committee, who helped negotiate the release of the hostages and now plans to open five centers in Kalma to teach children skills such as mechanics and sewing.

"The children of Darfur were living normally. Then they had guns stuck in their faces and were driven into camps," he said. "Something has to be done. Otherwise, there could be a lot more instances of hostage-taking or worse."

Respect by the Gun

Before Issa's family came to Kalma, they were prosperous farmers with four thatched huts, a wide patch of fertile land to grow groundnuts, pumpkins and yams, and fields to graze hundreds of cattle, goats and horses.

Issa was a student, and his father had saved enough cash under his mattress to send his eldest son to university one day. "He told me he wanted me to become modern," Issa remembered. "He didn't want me to be tied to the land."

But in March 2003, they were driven from their village, Safia. Rebel forces attacked government checkpoints about 100 miles away. Then government helicopter gunships and planes bombed the surrounding region. Soon, the Janjaweed galloped in on camelback, set the village on fire and shot at local men who tried to fight back. Issa's father and an uncle were killed.

"My father's body was in pieces," Issa recounted, his voice shaking. "We could not even bury him. We couldn't get the savings under the bed, because there were brush fires everywhere. We had to run or be killed."

The family followed thousands of others, eventually reaching Kalma, where they built a shelter and registered for food aid.

At first, Issa said, his mother, Halima Hussein Ali, was hysterical with grief and spent her days weeping in their dark shelter. But she slowly accepted her husband's death and said she hoped Issa would come to accept it, too.

Instead, the events of Oct. 23 turned the studious youth in a radical new direction. As he was riding his rickety bicycle past the International Rescue Committee's medical clinic, where Taha worked, he saw Taha facedown in the sand. Government security officers were hitting his head with gun butts.

"Something in me collapsed," Issa recalled in a whisper. "I saw my father's image and was thinking of all the pain he was in when he was killed."

Later that day, Issa joined the crowd that had formed to take the hostages. Many were friends. The boys slept in plastic chairs in the sun; the girls hunched over charcoal fires, frying balls of wheat. The mood seemed oddly jovial, Issa said. That night, for the first time ever, he did something he knew would make his mother ashamed.