At a Camp In Chad, Hope Wanes

Food Aid for Displaced Is Imperiled By Surge in Violence and Banditry

DOGDORE, Chad The sun beat down on 18-month-old Izzedine Adam, who sat naked and crying on the floor of his roofless straw hut. His mother cannot afford a sturdier home or even clothes to protect him from the cold desert nights. For now, she is just trying to find enough food to keep him alive.

"I don't know whether he'll live or die," said Ashta Adam, 24. "We have nothing to eat, nothing for him to eat. The most important thing is food."

The Adam family fled to Dogdore, in eastern Chad, in October when Arab fighters burned their village to the ground, raided their food stocks and stole their animals. The attack was one of several during the last few months of 2006 that mirrored ethnic violence in the Darfur region of neighboring Sudan.

Some of the 110,000 Chadians displaced by the mayhem traveled by foot to Dogdore, 20 miles from Sudan's border, many with only the possessions they could carry. About 230,000 Darfur refugees who have streamed across the border also live in the area in 12 U.N.-administered camps.

Most of the displaced Chadians and Darfur refugees regularly receive food from several international organizations. But a surge of violence in recent months has forced groups to scale back their assistance, leaving the Adam family and 30,000 other people in the most volatile areas along the border largely cut off from aid.

"We are waiting for the European people to give us something, but they didn't give us anything," Adam said, reaching for a cooking pot, one of the few possessions she brought with her. She scooped up some millet flour and prepared to cook for the first time in two days. The millet was of poor quality, typically used as animal feed, she said, but it was the only food her family had.

"We've never eaten this kind of food, but now we are here and we have nothing except this," Adam said. She tried to feed Izzedine the millet mush, but after a few bites, he started to cry again. "Usually he eats so much, but this food is no good, so he stops eating."

Food was distributed in Dogdore once in February, the first time in seven months, but aid workers say that if assistance is not delivered more steadily, the humanitarian crisis will worsen here and in similar settlements along the border.

"If there is no food distribution, people will just be hungry. They'll start selling their belongings to get food," said Claudine Maari of Doctors Without Borders, a French aid group that runs a small field hospital in the town. "They'll work right and left to try to get some little work, and then most likely, we'll see the admission rate of children with malnutrition increase."

When Maari arrived in Dogdore, most of her patients had injuries such as bullet and knife wounds, but an increasing number are malnourished children, a signal that food stocks are running low, she said.

Most of the victims of violence on both sides of the border are black Africans, and they usually blame the attacks on the Janjaweed, an Arab militia backed by the Sudanese government. Observers here say the perpetrators are often members of Chadian Arab tribes aligned with the Janjaweed militia.

At the same time, anti-government rebel groups, made up of both Arabs and Africans, have stepped up their efforts to overthrow the Chadian president, Idriss Deby. The government says the rebels receive support from Sudan and launch attacks from Sudanese territory. In return, Sudan's government accuses Chad of supporting Sudanese rebels fighting in Darfur.