Refugees would rather die of cholera in Sudan's squalid camps than risk having their throats cut, writes Marie O'Halloran, in Darfur
At first glance it seems like a bright and orange sunset spreading behind the clouds. Then a fierce wind picks up and the orange clouds suddenly become a huge sand storm, advancing in seconds.
The locals call it "habup" and where the sand storm gathers the rain is right behind, torrential, ferocious and drenching in just seconds. Dry riverbeds become swirling rivers and in many of the 137 camps in western Sudan where more than 1.2 million people exist in cramped and overcrowded conditions, the pathways become mud tracks, sewage and dirt contaminate the water sources and fears rise of epidemics.
The rains that should help the crops to grow, are now an added misery to a population that has been the victim of an apocalyptic policy of "scorched earth" and mass murder.
Fears of famine, cholera and malaria are nothing compared to the terror many people feel at leaving their camps either to forage for wood or food or to go back to the villages they fled when armed men on horseback and camels murdered, plundered, raped and burned. As one international aid worker observed: "They would rather die of cholera than leave the camp and have their throats cut".
This is Darfur, in Sudan, a harsh, isolated region of three provinces with an area the size of France a population of 6.5 million. In a country with a literacy rate of 15 per cent, this part is even more deprived with precious little infrastructure.
The town of Kotum lies a three-hour drive north through scrub desert from Al Fasher, the capital of Northern Darfur. In Kabas camp, 25,000 people are now living, some in relatively organised rows of tent-like structures with tarpaulin roofs and straw matting for walls. Others merely have bits of brushwood and straw for cover.
As women from the camp wait for treatment at the Irish agency Goal's clinic, they tell their traumatic stories. Mariam Mahmoud Isa travelled for two days to get to Kasab. Wearing a bright green robe, she gently swats flies away from her two-year-old son Elfad's face. On her back and covered by her shawl her one-year-old son Adam sleeps.
Through a translator she says that her husband was murdered by the Janjaweed, the name given to nomadic Arabic militias armed by the Government, who stormed through her village on horseback and on camels.
"They had attacked the next village and the people came running to ours. Everyone began running and the janjaweed came in on horses and camels and with guns. They shot my husband, they burnt the houses, they killed the animals. We ran." The Janjaweed killed five men from her village, and everyone who survived, headed for Kotum and the camps.
Mariam tells her story displaying little emotion. She only becomes animated when asked if she would return to her village. She waves her hand emphatically in front of her and says "no". Some people went back to see what the village was like but were beaten up, she says. Asked her vision of the future, she shrugs, says "hopeless" and looks away, covering her face with her shawl.
In many of the camps there are few men. Here in Kabas, a number have gathered. Abdullah Ishak Hussein says that his four brothers aged 18 to 22 were shot by armed Janjaweed. The warning sound was the helicopter noise, he says and people running from the next village.
Then the janjaweed came in on horseback and some on camels. Abdullah says he escaped because he ran immediately but his brothers were shot.
Asked about the weapons they used he draws in the sand and says "doshka", which are anti-tank weapons.
Abdullah won't go back to his village. "We will be killed," he insists. "We have been asked to go back but there is nothing there and the camp is safer." When asked why he thinks his people are being attack he replies that "this is an ethnic segregation. They want to forbid us in this area." The women don't talk directly of attack, but aid workers say many were raped, some repeatedly, by a number of the militia and held for days. Even within the camp, there was a rape last week, and the janjaweed are still on the outskirts of Kabas camp, circling and preventing them leaving.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL HAS reported women being systematically raped but the Government says that rape is an inevitable part of war. In parts of Sudan, there is a belief that a woman cannot become pregnant if she does not consent to sex, and in a conservative Muslim society many women who have been raped and become pregnant are forced from their own communities.
The aid agencies say it is "now or never" for assistance and the World Food Programme has predicted that it will need to feed some two million people for the next 12 months because communities were displaced and did not plant this year. Concern International says this will be one of the biggest emergency operations it has undertaken.
The agency's emergency co-ordinator in Darfur, Dominic McSorley says they will need 650 tonnes of high protein mix next month, to feed 45,000 children under five and pregnant and nursing mothers in El Genaina in Western Darfur.
IN the waiting room of the Minister for Foreign Affairs' office, three perfume bottles stand in a glass case. Covered with cloth they sit beside a plaque from Al Jazeera television and a model wooden sailing boat, a gift from Indonesia.
Closer inspection of the perfume bottles reveal that they actually contain kerosene, gasoline and diesel - representing the potential vast wealth that could accrue to Sudan from its rich seam of oil, greater than Nigeria's reserves. The division of the oil wealth forms part of the settlement in the 21-year-old civil war between the north and south. And this sharing of the spoils was one of the reasons for the revolt by the marginalised rebel west of the country.
In his office, the Minister Dr Mustafa Osman Ismail claims there is no government backing for the janjaweed, despite the overwhelming evidence. They are "outlaws", he says and they are being arrested. This week 10 Arab militiamen were sentenced to amputation and six years imprisonment in the first convictions of janjaweed. But the militia are still active.
Ceasefire talks between Khartoum and the rebel groups have broken down. The African Union has sent observers to monitor the situation, but there are still calls for military intervention. Goal's chief executive John O'Shea says "we can save a few thousand people but there are millions at risk and the people need protection from their own Government".
However, Dr Ismail has already warned visiting delegations about Khartoum's options. The government could withdraw co-operation, resulting in UN Security Council sanctions and a military intervention. The UN would be viewed by Sudanese people as an occupying force and that would lead to the same outcome as in Iraq, he threatens.