Nomads Describe Persecution in Chad
Thousands of Arab Herders Flee to Sudan's Darfur Region Despite Fear of Backlash

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 24, 2007

NEAR ABECHE, Chad -- The Chadian government and its allied militias are indiscriminately targeting Arab nomads in eastern Chad, according to interviews with dozens of nomads, who described raids on their temporary villages, at least two aerial bombings, harassment and incidents of torture over the past year.

As a result of the insecurity, an estimated 30,000 Chadian Arabs have migrated into the Darfur region of neighboring Sudan, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

And with Chadian and Sudanese nomads broadly vilified as the so-called Janjaweed Arab militias responsible for a brutal campaign in Darfur, nomad leaders say they fear a backlash.

"The government is punishing us," said Yusuf Babad, who was among a group of nomads herding cattle north across a sweep of rocky desert here recently, their donkeys heaped with blankets, tarps, pots and other supplies. "They tell us to bring our weapons, and if you don't have weapons, they punish you. Some of us, they have been punished until they died. They put plastic over your head so you cannot breathe. They put hot glass under your knees and say, 'Talk!' They put pepper in your nose until you talk."

"The government wants to say that all Arabs are Janjaweed," he said. "As we are Arabs, the land has become narrow to us. Nobody likes us. Only God."

The nomads' allegations represent only one thread in a tangle of conflicts across eastern Chad in which some Chadian Arabs have themselves participated.

Chadian officials say they have targeted only the guilty. They call the nomad migration part of a "satanic" plot by the Arab-led Sudanese government to replenish its Janjaweed militias in Darfur and settle Arab newcomers on farmland belonging to the 2.5 million people displaced by the conflict there.

"Officially, we do not have people persecuted in Chad so that they'd need to leave and find refuge," said Abdoulaya Nour, a coordinator with Chad's humanitarian relief agency. "Whether nomads are persecuted is not something we want to dwell on."

It is the rainy season here, which means water rushes through broad channels of sand, and glossy green grass hovers over the desert like a mirage. Chadian soldiers, rebels, militias and thieves are relatively immobilized by the temporary rivers, and the prevailing mood is apprehension about what might happen when the rain stops.

An estimated 170,000 Chadians have been uprooted by fighting since June 2006, a number that surpasses 200,000 if the recently displaced nomads are included. In addition, more than 230,000 refugees from Darfur have crossed into the country.

Among a series of related conflicts is a struggle between the Chadian government of President Idriss Deby and four Chadian rebel groups, with both sides vying for alliances with various ethnic communities. There is a broader rivalry between the governments of Chad and Sudan, with each accusing the other of supporting rebels.

There are intercommunal conflicts exacerbated by a glut of weapons, and routine banditry by men in various shades of camouflage.

And then there has been the spillover from the conflict in Darfur, where as many as 450,000 people have died from disease and violence since fighting began more than four years ago. Arab militias coming from Sudan, often with help from relatives here, have attacked and burned villages across eastern Chad, which shares many of the same tribes as Sudan.

For the most part, Deby's government has emphasized the Darfur narrative above all others in his appeals for international aid and for European Union peacekeepers, who are expected to arrive in conjunction with a U.N. force headed to Darfur around December.

Chadian officials say that just as in Darfur, the vast majority of internally displaced people in Chad are farmers -- mainly from the Daju tribe -- who were driven from their homes by Sudanese Janjaweed, with some participation by Chadian Arabs.

"We asked the Daju victims why they were attacked," said Abulkadir Yassine, a Daju and roving ambassador for the Chadian government. "They say the Arabs want to drive out all the African Negroes as they have in Darfur. This is a problem of Arab ambitions in Chad."

But the stories of Chadian nomads offer a more complex explanation.

They say the Chadian government, in a divide-and-conquer political calculation aimed at quelling its internal rebellion, has fueled the conflict by arming certain Chadian farming communities -- particularly the Daju -- against Chadian nomads.

"The problem is with the government," said Yusuf al-Jhaly, a nomad leader. "They are supporting other tribes to fight the Arabs, giving them weapons, uniforms and training. This is the system of the government."

In a highly unusual move, a prominent Daju sultan was ousted earlier this year because he did not support the government's plan to arm his people, he said, and because many Dajus felt he was too sympathetic to nomads they now consider their enemies.

"The government, if you follow their politics, they will give you weapons," said the sultan, Seid Ibrahim. "In my mind, I do not want to be on one side, to take my tribe to destroy the other tribes. In this way, I do not want to be sultan, because I do not want to punish myself."

The nomads said the problems escalated during their seasonal journey south earlier this year.

They said their temporary settlements, called fariqs, were routinely attacked by Daju militias and government soldiers seeking to disarm them. The nomads said that if they did not have any weapons, they were beaten and tortured, and in some cases, their wives were raped in front of them.

They said a government helicopter attacked one settlement four times in a single day, an incident confirmed by the Chadian interior minister, Ahmat Mahamat Bachir, who cast it as a matter of self-defense against mercenary Janjaweed militias.

"We have set up mobile forces equipped with all necessary weapons, even helicopter gunships patrolling," said Bachir, who showed off a semiautomatic weapon during an interview and boasted about arms the government has purchased with an influx of oil revenue. "Whenever movement is mentioned, we go and destroy them."

The Chadian nomads did not deny that some among them took part in attacks on Daju villages in March but said the attacks in the areas of Tiero and Marena were in part retaliation for harassment by government and Daju militias.

The villages were home to two prominent Daju militia leaders who were killed along with scores of civilians.

According to displaced villagers, Chadian rebels also joined the attack as punishment for the Daju's refusal to join the rebellion.

"If the government or [militias] come and attack a fariq, what happens to the other Arabs?" asked Jama Burma, a nomad. "They come to help their people. And then the government calls them Janjaweed."

"Some Chadian rebels are Arabs," added his friend Al-Mahadi Bahar. "But the government wants to punish all the Arabs."

Bahar said the nomads no longer feel safe in the southern Dar Sila region, where much of the fighting has taken place and which is home to precious grass and water during the dry season that begins around October. As a group of cow-herding nomads headed north from there, they said, Daju militia members stood in the nomads' path and fired shots into the air as they passed.

In recent weeks, the Chadian government has deployed at least 1,000 horses to boost its military presence in Dar Sila and warned some nomad leaders to avoid their traditional migration routes south after the rains, according to a government official.

"The local population is saying that the nomads have no land in Chad," said Yusuf Hamadi, a nomad. "They say that the nomads migrated from Syria, from Jordan, from Arab land. But we have been here 700 years. We are Chadian."

Hamadi and others said they have contemplated fleeing into Sudan partly because they think the Sudanese government would be friendlier.

It is a dynamic that has troubled U.N. officials, who noted in an August report that some Chadian nomads who have fled into Sudan have been directed to occupy land that had belonged to displaced Darfurians.

"I cannot say that Sudan is better than Chad, because Chad is my country," said Unis Hussein, a nomad leader. "But people migrated to Sudan because there is no security in Chad. In Sudan, the government can give you land for herding, some area for farms. You are free."