Sudan War Spills Into Chad

At first glance, the hillside plateau above the Sudanese border here in eastern Chad appears to offer little more than prickly scrub brush and grazing cattle. It would be easy to drive past without noticing much at all.

But look closer and the desolate terrain begins to come to life, slowly revealing a massive encampment. Those piles of rocks dotting the mountain? Man-made reinforcements for a network of foxholes. Peek into the bushes and Sudanese rebel fighters peer back. Shade your eyes against the sun’s glare, and the silhouettes of rifle-wielding watchmen appear along the mountaintops.

The camp is the newest training ground of the Sudan Liberation Army, one of the main Darfur rebel groups that have been battling the Sudanese government since 2003. In less than two months, the camp has become home to more than 2,000 rebels, mostly recruits who spend their days learning the basics of warfare.

A world away, the United Nations and the United States are pushing a controversial peace agreement to end the bloodshed in Darfur, the vast western region of Sudan. But here this ragtag army of skinny men with plastic sandals and AK-47s is mobilizing for war.

“I’m learning to be a soldier so I can go and kill the janjaweed,” said Gamar Ahmed Aden, 18, who joined the SLA a month ago from a refugee camp near Farchana, Chad. He said his family was driven from Darfur last year when the janjaweed, as Sudan’s pro-government militias are known, attacked his family’s village.

Out here in the bush, hatred and distrust of the Sudanese government remain high, and nearly everyone rejects the proposed peace deal as providing insufficient protection and compensation for Darfur refugees. Rebel factions are divided over whether to accept the agreement, sometimes attacking one another.

It’s a reminder that despite diplomatic efforts to reach peace, the conflict is only getting worse -- and has spread beyond Darfur.

First the militias began crossing into Chad, attacking villages and driving an estimated 50,000 people from their homes. Now the Sudanese rebels are also moving over the border, establishing training camps, joining up with the Chadian military and aggressively recruiting inside Darfur refugee camps, sometimes using force.

The cross-border activities are threatening to complicate the volatile relations between Chad and Sudan, who many analysts say are already engaged in proxy war through their support of rebel groups in each other’s land.

Chadian President Idriss Deby, who comes from the same Zaghawa tribe to which many Darfurians belong, has long been accused of secretly backing the SLA in its battle against the Sudanese government in Khartoum. In recent months, Sudanese President Omar Hassan Bashir reportedly retaliated by backing Chadian rebels trying to overthrow Deby.

“It’s a dangerous situation that could spiral out of control,” said a diplomat in Chad, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the media.

The rising tensions have been a boon to the Darfur rebels, and the new training camp is one of the best examples.

“We could never have done this before,” said Abakar Tula, who heads the SLA’s growing activities in eastern Chad. “Before, there were better relations between Chad and Bashir. But now we share the same enemy.”

Officially, the Chadian military and some SLA leaders deny any cooperation.

“There are no Sudan rebels in Chad,” said Mohammed Suliman, commander of Chadian troops in Adre, a key border town about 60 miles north of here. “We don’t need their help.” But humanitarian workers say the town is now protected jointly by Chad military and SLA troops.

But in several east Chadian towns, the SLA presence is undeniable. Commanders freely roam the streets, sometimes stopping to exchange pleasantries with local police. SLA fighters routinely visit and sleep inside the dozen refugee camps in Chad, taking advantage of the food aid and other supplies.

Darfur rebels are helping defend the border, sharing intelligence, prisoners and occasionally weapons with the Chadian military, according to interviews with SLA commanders and fighters. The Chadian government recently supplied the rebels with 50 pickup trucks, according to one report by a Western aid group.

Training camps, such as the one near Ade, operate openly. Convoys of heavily armed rebels can travel between cities without interference. During one recent trip, nearly two dozen rebels piled into a camouflaged Land Cruiser with a sawed-off top. Loaded with supplies, weapons and armed fighters, the truck tore through several Chadian towns, its rocket and grenade launchers bouncing against the side.

Tula had little concern that his convoy of armed Sudanese would raise alarm among Chadian officials. His biggest worry was whether two journalists traveling with him had the proper Chadian travel permits.

The rebel camp, which stretches for more than a mile, is home to a mix of big and small fighters. Some recruits are as young as 16, others wrinkled and graying.

Life here isn’t easy. They eat stewed tomatoes from cans and dry strips of lamb on the branches for homemade jerky. Water is scare. Once or twice a day, fighters scramble around a truck delivering a few precious barrels of water, which they must share among hundreds.

By dawn, hundreds of recruits are already exercising before the afternoon temperatures surpass 100 degrees. They gather in giant square-shaped formations, practice frog jumps and one-legged stands, and march with exaggerated Soviet-style arm and leg raises.

For relaxation, the men kick around a soccer ball, play cards or practice karate.

After several weeks of physical training, the recruits will graduate to guns, learn how to assemble weapons and aim. Then there’s a 15-day “political” training, during which they break into small groups to learn about the history of the Darfur struggle, which pits tribes who view themselves chiefly as Arabs against those who think of themselves as black or African. It has left more than 180,000 people dead and millions displaced.

The political lessons reinforce an already deep distrust of Arabs and emphasize the suffering and marginalization of the darker-skinned people in Darfur. Though most SLA fighters have little or no formal education, those who have completed the training voiced similar-sounding rhetoric when asked why they had joined the movement.

“The Arabs see black people as slaves,” said Jamal Idriss Heroun, 27, who joined three years ago. “There is no justice for Darfur. No schools. No healthcare. They have taken our land.”

When pressed, a few fighters discussed the personal struggles that led them to join the rebels.

Hassan Abubaker Dehie, 23, was a graduate of the Koranic university in Khartoum and dreamed of becoming an attorney. But the eldest son came home from school in 2004 and discovered his hut was in ashes and his family gone. He searched for several weeks, quizzing villagers, visiting refugee camps and contacting the Red Cross for help. He never found his family, but said he believed they were still alive, perhaps in some remote village.

Now the SLA is the only family he has. “These are my brothers,” Dehie said. “I would give them my shirt.”

All of the SLA fighters interviewed said they had lost family to attacks by the militias or Sudanese government. Many said they saw brothers, sisters and parents being gunned down.

“It’s the anger that drives them to join the movement,” said Abubaker Ahmed, a camp leader and SLA recruiter at the Djabal refugee camp in Chad.

In recent months, however, SLA leaders have been criticized for infiltrating refugee camps and recruiting young men through a combination of force and patriotism.

In March, SLA fighters carrying sticks and guns, and wearing scarves around their faces, swept up nearly 1,000 men over three days at the Bredjing camp in eastern Chad.

“They told me they had a job for me to do and that I had to struggle to win back my land,” said Osman Suliman Mohammed, 27, who married last year and has a 9-month-old boy.

Mohammed said he and several hundred other camp residents were marched through the bush for three days to a camp, where they were ordered to dig a well and occasionally practice military formations. Their captors appeared unprepared to feed and shelter them, he said.

Finally, under intense criticism from aid groups and refugee camp leaders, the faction responsible for the sweep released most of the men or allowed them to escape.

An SLA leader involved in the recruitments contended that the men and boys, some as young as 14, were not forced. “They came freely,” he said.

Bertrand Bazel, who works for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees at Bredjing, said the SLA activities at the camps threatened to put the facilities at greater risk of attack by the janjaweed, who will begin to view them as SLA breeding grounds.

The sweep also infuriated and confused many Darfur refugees, who had long viewed the rebels as their freedom fighters. “But they’re not ready to let the rebels recruit their children,” Bazel said. “You don’t liberate someone by mistreating them.”

Back at the training camp, there’s little sympathy for recruits who run away.

Issak Omar joined the rebels when he was 16 after the militias killed his brother. Dressed in camouflage, the introverted teenager spends his spare time jotting down poems in Arabic. His mother lives 50 miles away in a refugee camp, but he hasn’t seen her in three years.

“First comes the struggle,” he said. “After that, I will return to my family.”