Escaping Darfur: Mothers face starvation under trees in Chad

Escaping Darfur: Mothers face starvation under trees in Chad Fleeing scorched earth, Darfur’s mothers share harrowing tales of starvation and survival in Chad. Darfur, Sudan – Under a lone tree in the Iridimi refugee camp in eastern Chad, 45-year-old Thuraya Mukhtar sits quietly, trying to piece together the remnants of a life that was safe before war tore it from its roots. Just a week ago, the deafening roar of explosions and relentless gunfire forced her to abandon her home in the Orchi area of western Sudan. She left behind her life’s work and dreams, carrying across the border only the inescapable, haunting identity of a refugee. “I left without realising that I would never return. I carried my children and ran, with fire behind us and bullets over our heads,” Thuraya told Al Jazeera, her voice steady but laced with exhaustion. “We haven’t eaten for two days, and my children are crying from hunger. I don’t know how I will feed them tomorrow, or where I will sleep tonight.” Thuraya is but one of thousands of women now bearing the crushing weight of forced displacement. In their eyes lies an endless narrative of fear, hunger and wandering. In silence, they search for a single drop of water for children who ask them every day: When are we going home? A trail of ashes The devastation that drove Thuraya into the Chadian desert began on June 15 , when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched a sweeping offensive on the Orchi area in the Um Baru locality of North Darfur. Riding horses and camels and backed by heavily armed mechanised vehicles, the fighters left a trail of absolute ruin. The assault resulted in the complete incineration of ten villages. The local market was looted and burned to the ground, and vast numbers of livestock and civilian property were swept away. A week after the skies over Orchi turned black with smoke, thousands of displaced families are still living in the open. With no shelter, food, or medicine, they sleep on the harsh, unforgiving dirt. They huddle under trees that offer no real shield from the scorching daytime sun or the biting desert nights. Some try to cover their shivering children with dry branches; others cannot even find that. Eating leaves to survive While political leaders discuss military tactics, the reality for the civilians hiding in the valleys paints a visceral picture of survival. Water is the most urgent crisis; following the deliberate destruction of the Orchi reservoir, the water supply to the burning villages was entirely severed. “We walked long distances before reaching the Chadian town of Tine. Along the way, we ate tree leaves and drank contaminated water we found in puddles,” Hawa Adam, a 35-year-old mother from Orchi, told Al Jazeera. “Food is almost nonexistent. Whatever supplies we had were either looted by the RSF or burned in our homes.” For 40-year-old Um Ibrahim, the trauma is compounded by the helplessness of watching her family starve. “We left our homes with no food or medicine. The night is the hardest part, and the children cry from hunger and fear,” she said. “My kids haven’t eaten in two days. My husband was a farmer, but our livelihood burned along with our house.” Nowhere to hide The terror does not end once the ground forces move on. According to fleeing residents, the skies remain deadly. Adam Abakar, a recently displaced civilian, told Al Jazeera that drones continue to heavily patrol the airspace over their region, methodically targeting remaining water sources, livestock and civilian homes. “We cannot return to our villages. The planes fly over our heads every day and target any movement, as if they want to expel us from the last place we seek refuge in,” Abakar said, describing the feeling of being caught between the anvil of ground assaults and the hammer of aerial surveillance. The catastrophic influx of refugees is now overwhelming local humanitarian networks. Mustafa Barah, head of the Darfur Genocide Victims Commission, noted that camps in eastern Chad are receiving up to 80 fleeing families every day. “They arrive exhausted, without food or water, some carrying their sick children on their shoulders,” he said. Mohammed Safi, the media official for the Tine Emergency Room, told Al Jazeera that resources are virtually depleted. “Over the past two days, we have received more than 7,000 displaced families,” Safi said. “All of them are in desperate need of tents, blankets, food and safe drinking water. The situation requires urgent intervention.” ‘Systematic demographic change’ Sudanese officials argue that the horrors witnessed in Orchi are not random acts of war, but a calculated geopolitical strategy. Salah Rassas Adam Tour, a member of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, told Al Jazeera that the ongoing military operations by the national army aim to “break the bones” of the RSF. “The targeting and displacement of civilians is not a tactical error; it is a systematic policy followed by the Rapid Support Forces to change the demographic makeup of the region,” Tour said, warning that calls for the country’s partition are illusions aimed at destabilising Sudan. Tour called on the international community to intervene and halt the “forced displacement.” Al Jazeera reached out to the RSF for comment regarding the accusations of torching villages and engineering forced displacement in Orchi, but the group had not responded by the time of publication. A famine ignored The horrific accounts from the Chad-Sudan border coincide with a dire warning from the international community. On June 17 , a joint report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) declared that Sudan is facing the world’s worst hunger crisis, with 19.5 million people enduring acute food insecurity and famine threatening 14 areas across Darfur. Yet, for mothers such as Thuraya and Hawa, official statements regarding “systematic displacement” translate into a grim daily reality. As the geography of displacement expands from Tine to Karnoi, and from Um Baru to Orchi, thousands of families are left fighting for survival under the sparse shade of trees. Amid UN warnings of an impending famine, these uprooted civilians are left waiting to see if international intervention will materialise before more villages are burned to the ground.