A Grounds-Eye View From the Darfur-Chad Border

An aid worker discusses the humanitarian and refugee crisis

In 2003 and 2004, the world first learned about the genocide in Darfur through the stories of refugees who fled across the border to Chad. Darfur itself was inaccessible to most of the outside world, including aid workers and journalists. It was only after hearing what refugees had gone through that certain patterns of violence were identified which lead the US State Department to conclude that genocide had occurred Darfur. That was October 2004.

Today, Darfur is again mostly inaccessible to the outside — and again it is through refugees in Chad that we are starting to get a fuller picture of the violence underway.

In our ongoing effort to keep this story front and center, I spoke with an aid worker who had just returned from Adre, Chad—the main city to which ethnic Masalit people have fled from Darfur. Carissa Guild is the Medical Focal Point in the Emergency Cell at Doctors Without Borders/MSF. In our interview, she gives a grounds-eye view of the refugee and humanitarian crisis on the Darfur-Sudan border and discusses the relief operations underway. 

At one point in the interview, I reference a recent CNN report about a rampage in the city of El Geneina (or “Al Junaynah”) in Western Darfur. The city is near the border of Chad and had a pre-war population of over 500,000 — a majority of whom belong to the Masalit tribe. CNN reported that in the early morning hours of June 15th, thousands of mostly Masalit people began to flee the city en masse as it was being ransacked by the Arab-lead Rapid Support Forces. The fleeing civilians were chased by the RSF who gunned them down in a mass atrocity event.

There are now about 380,000 refugees who have fled from Darfur to Chad since April. Most of those who fled the El Geneina massacre ended up in the Chadian city of Adre. In all, some 180,000 mostly Masalit refugees came to Adre in just a few weeks.

MSF runs medical facilities in Adre, and it is here that Carissa Guild picks up the story.

Author’s Note. A systematic and organized campaign of ethnic cleansing is again underway in Darfur. We will bear witness by offering original reporting and expert analysis. To support our work purchase or upgrade your subscription. If you need access to this interview and cannot purchase a subscription, please send us an email.

Interview transcript and audio is available below the fold.