Gaga, Chad – Fatma Daoud wrapped a plastic bag as a makeshift bandage around her hand – using a corner of brightly colored robe to wipe the blood from the deep, gaping knife wound that had cut her down to the bone.
The 36-year-old woman, a refugee from Sudan’s war-torn Darfur, had left the Gaga camp in eastern Chad to gather firewood when she was attacked by young Chadian nomads.
“They were three boys, camel herders. They told me to stop collecting wood, and then they stabbed me,” Daoud said.
At least 230,000 ethnic Africans have fled Darfur to take refuge in camps in neighboring Chad – and their numbers are growing. But the refugees crowded into 12 camps are facing increased tensions with Chadians in a competition for scarce resources in the large, barren border region.
The friction comes despite the fact that both the refugees and the Chadians belong to tribes that straddle the border.
Daoud, for instance, said she recognized her assailants. They weren’t the Arab Sudanese janjaweed militiamen who attacked her home in Darfur, but herders from the ethnic African Zaghawa tribe.
On the Sudanese side of the border, the Zaghawas are among the tribes that have been targeted in Darfur and they form the backbone of some rebel groups battling the janjaweed and government troops.
But in Chad, they are affluent camel herders with close ties to power, since President Idriss Deby and most of the top military are Zaghawas.
The sudden settlement of large numbers of refugees risks exacerbating what has long been a competition among Chadians for land, grazing areas, wood and other resources in the border region.
So far, the Darfur refugees have largely been spared violence in Chad as the conflicts unfurl around them. But increasing violence in all the various conflicts raises fears the refugees could be caught in the crossfire or directly targeted.
Mbaitlham Kaban, the camp manager in Gaga, said the attack on Daoud was the first case he’d seen of African on African violence in the camp, home to 13,500 refugees.
But refugees keep flowing in. “We registered 220 people in January,” said Kaban. “But we expect much more to come. … By the end, we think there’ll be 20,000 people here.”
