That's the name of the militia that evolved to become the Rapid Support Forces who are now at war with Sudan's army.ĪKINWOTU: In the space of a few weeks, much of the town had been completely wiped out. He blames this on who he calls the Arabs or the Janjaweed. Entire homes had been burnt to the ground or looted. But then relief turned to horror at what his town had become.ĪKINWOTU: Misterei was virtually empty, he tells me. He found him hiding in their abandoned home and was relieved. He left Sudan before the conflict reached his town and fled with almost all of his family, everyone except for his 20-year-old son.ĪKINWOTU: When someone told him his son was taken by fighters, he took his donkey and rushed back to Darfur. And while a crowd of refugees gather to listen, he speaks in Masalit and tells me about the loss that led him here. Communication has been scarce with phone networks down, but the accounts of refugees I've spoken to offer a glimpse of it.ĪKINWOTU: This is Ahmad Ismael, a 55-year-old farmer from Darfur.
The speed of the refugees coming across the border gives an illustration of just how intense the fighting is in Darfur, the region to the west of Sudan.ĪKINWOTU: And the violence has been brutal. Now that number's tripled, and the numbers coming across the border are rising every day.
first arrived here a few weeks ago, there were only two to three thousand people. Goungour is just one of several camps that have sprung up along the border in Chad where ordinary life has been destroyed or put on hold for thousands of Sudanese people. People are trying to find shade, making makeshift shelters with branches, sheets of fabric and plastic or clustering under the few trees that still have enough leaves to provide shade. It includes some graphic descriptions of violence.ĮMMANUEL AKINWOTU, BYLINE: I've just arrived at Goungour, where about 10,000 refugees have spread around in clusters across a vast area in, essentially, the desert. It's an important listen, but I do want to warn you. That's where NPR's Africa correspondent Emmanuel Akinwotu brought us this report. Thousands of people have made their way over the Sudan border to neighboring Chad. While Sudan's capital, Khartoum, has been the epicenter of the recent conflict between two warring generals, those fleeing from Darfur have shared accounts of the brutal and underreported fighting there.
The Darfur region in western Sudan is a vast area that's been traumatized by decades of genocidal violence.
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