Since February 2003, two million people are estimated to have fled from their homes in Darfur, a region of West Sudan the size of France. This mass displacement has been engineered through joint attacks: by the government bombing from the air, and by the Janjaweed, a local Arab militia, who follow on horseback, burning and looting non-Arab villages throughout the region. The stories I heard from displaced people now living in camps varied little, insofar as everyone had lost almost everything.
Without a political solution to Darfur’s problems, the region’s two million displaced will be unable to return home, and Darfur’s camps will start to look less temporary.
‘I’m a farmer. I can’t get a job here,’ a displaced man called Musa Abdulaziz told me from the chaos of the camp where he stays in El Fasher. ‘I want to return home to look after my animals and begin planting. This is lost time for me.’
