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Darfur, Sudan Under a tree in the Iridimi refugee camp in eastern Chad, 45-year-old Thuraya Mukhtar lives quietly, trying to piece together the remnants of a life that was safe before the war toppled it.
A week ago, deafening explosions and gunfire forced him to leave his home in the Orchi region of western Sudan. He gave up his job and his lifelong dream, crossing the inescapable, unknown border of refugees.
“I left without knowing that I would never come back.” I picked up my children and ran, with fire behind us and bullets on our heads,” Thuraya told Al Jazeera, her voice steady but weak from exhaustion. “It’s been two days without food, and my children are crying from hunger, I don’t know how I’ll feed them tomorrow, or where I’ll sleep tonight.
Thuraya is one of the thousands of women who are now facing forced displacement. In their eyes there is a never-ending story of fear, hunger and wandering. In silence, he searches for a small drop of water for the children who ask him every day: When will we go home?
Ash method
The destruction that drove Thuraya into the Chadian desert began on June 15, when the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched a massive attack on the Orchi region in the Um Baru region of North Darfur.
Mounted on horses and camels and supported by armored vehicles, the soldiers suffered heavy casualties. The plot resulted in the burning of ten villages. The local market was looted and burned, and many livestock and belongings of the villagers were washed away.
A week after Orchi’s skies darkened with smoke, thousands of displaced families are still living outside. Without shelter, food, or medicine, they sleep on the harsh, unforgiving soil. They huddle under trees that have no real shield from the hot midday sun or the crippling desert night. Some try to cover their trembling children with dry branches; some don’t even get that.
Eating vegetables to survive
While political leaders discuss military tactics, the reality of civilians hiding in the valleys provides a clear picture of survival. Water is the biggest problem; following the deliberate destruction of the Orchi dam, the water supply to the burning villages was cut off.
“We traveled long distances before reaching the town of Tine in Chad. On the way, we ate leaves from trees and drank the dirty water we found in the ruins,” Hawa Adam, a 35-year-old woman from Orchi, told Al Jazeera. Food is almost non-existent. Everything we had was stolen by the RSF or burned from our homes.
For Um Ibrahim, 40, the pain is compounded by helplessness as she watches her family starve to death.
She said: “We left our homes without food or medicine. “My children did not eat for two days, because my husband was a farmer, but our lives burned with our house.”
There is no hiding place
The threat doesn’t stop when the bottom teams move. According to those fleeing, the sky is still deadly.
Adam Abakar, a local who recently fled his home, told Al Jazeera that drones continue to monitor the air in his area, targeting the remaining water sources, livestock and civilian homes.
“We can’t go back to our villages. Airplanes fly over our heads every day and watch every movement, as if they want to drive us to the last place where we take refuge,” said Abakar, describing the feeling of being caught between the ruins of the land and the hammer of the air traffic control.
The alarming influx of refugees has now led to many people helping people in the community. Mustafa Barah, head of the Darfur Genocide Victims Commission, said that camps in eastern Chad are receiving 80 refugee families every day. “They arrive tired, without food or water, some carrying their sick children on their shoulders,” he said.
Mohammed Safi, head of press at the Tine Emergency Room, told Al Jazeera that the economy has run out. “In the last two days, we have received more than 7,000 families who have fled their homes,” said Safi. They all need tents, blankets, food and safe drinking water.
‘Demographic change’
Sudanese officials say the horrors seen in Orchi are not random acts of war, but a calculated political strategy.
Salah Rassas Adam Tour, a member of the Sovereign Council of Sudan, told Al Jazeera that what is happening is that the army wants to “break the bones” of the RSF.
“The search and expulsion of civilians is not a logical mistake; it is a plan followed by the Rapid Support Forces to change the situation in the region,” said Tour, warning that the country wants to be divided by fraud aimed at destabilizing Sudan.
The visit called on countries to intervene and stop “forced migration.” Al Jazeera contacted RSF for comment on allegations of burning villages and engineering forced relocations in Orchi, but the group did not respond by press time.
Hunger ignored it
Terrible news from the Chad-Sudan border coincides with a dire warning from the international community. On June 17, a joint report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP) announced that Sudan is facing the worst hunger crisis in the world, with 19.5 million people suffering from malnutrition and famine threatening 14 regions across Darfur.
However, for women like Thuraya and Hawa, what the authorities said about “random displacement” is shattered every day. As refugee camps expand from Tine to Karnoi, and from Um Baru to Orchi, thousands of families are fighting to survive under the meager shade of trees. Amid UN warnings of impending famine, these displaced civilians are left to wait to see if international intervention will happen before more villages are burned.
