The man who escaped genocide, twice

In a sweltering shack in a refugee camp in eastern Chad, Abdelaziz listened calmly as people told him about the horrors they had witnessed. Cold-blooded killings at roadblocks, beheadings, swollen bodies lying on the road. They had fled from Darfur, a region of western Sudan, where Arab militias were intent on slaughtering anyone who belonged to the Masalit, a black African ethnic group.

Occasionally Abdelaziz would interject, offering words of comfort to a woman who wiped her tears on her hijab, or a more precise translation for the medical staff at the camp. But unlike the other humanitarian workers, Abdelaziz, 34, hadn’t flown in from another crisis. He had fled from Darfur himself – the second time in his life he had escaped genocide.

More than 450,000 Sudanese refugees have arrived in Chad since April, when fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the regular army, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the SAF, and Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, head of the RSF, had been running the country since late 2021, when they ousted the civilian prime minister in a coup.

All three men had been part of a transitional government, formed after the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s long-standing dictator, in 2019. They were meant to guide Sudan towards democratic elections. But neither al-Burhan or Hemedti ever had the slightest intention of surrendering power. Instead they are fighting over it, and destroying the country in the process.

The heaviest fighting this year has been in the capital, Khartoum. In West Darfur, one of the region’s five states, the RSF appears to have the upper hand. Eagerly abetted by Arab militias, it has been killing Masalit civilians, firing rockets into homes and mowing people down at roadblocks. The UN is investigating credible reports of 13 mass graves, while satellite images show huge increases in the number of burials in city cemeteries.

The first time someone tried to kill Abdelaziz because of the colour of his skin was 20 years ago. In 2003 armed groups from some black African tribes in Darfur rebelled against the Arab-dominated government. Al-Bashir responded by sending Arab militias to attack not only the rebels, but also countless villages where black Africans lived. By 2005, when the fighting had subsided, about 170,000 people had died, most from hunger and disease. America declared what happened in Darfur a genocide.

Abdelaziz was 14 at the time. He spent his days working in the fields with his sister, Halima, who was two years younger than him. The pair were inseparable. One morning Abdelaziz heard gunshots. He ran to the outskirts of the village to find armed men on camels and horseback riding towards him. They were part of the Janjaweed (local slang for evil men on horses), an Arab militia which formed the basis of the RSF. “That day I saw 27 men killed,” said Abdelaziz.

He and his family, along with other villagers, hid in the scrub but the militia hunted them down. They seized Abdelaziz and one of his friends. He said the militiamen used him as a “slave”, making him fetch endless jerry cans of water for them. After 15 days Abdelaziz managed to escape, leaving his friend behind, and eventually found his family. They were alive, but his mother had been shot in the back and Halima had been raped. He never saw his friend again.

The family trekked for days towards eastern Chad, where they ended up in a refugee camp. They were safe, but life was grindingly difficult. There was no way of earning a living. His mother was still in pain, and Halima, who had been severely injured during the rape, was very ill. “When she went to urinate, the urine was blood,” said Abdelaziz.

Over three years Halima underwent several operations in the refugee camp and in local hospitals. Nothing made her feel better. Desperate, Abdelaziz managed to find a UN officer in charge of resettling refugees and told them how ill his sister was. A month later the UN asked if his family wanted to emigrate. “They asked me where,” said Abdelaziz. “I can go anywhere,” he told them excitedly.

Because of his sister’s condition, the family was considered a high priority for resettlement. The UN told them they would be moving to America. Abdelaziz was giddy with happiness. “We were going to be in a safe place,” he said.

The family’s elation was short-lived. As they were preparing to emigrate, Halima died. Abdelaziz lost both his sister and his hopes for a new life: he said the UN told him that Halima’s death meant he and his family would no longer be going to America.

By 2011, after some partial peace deals and the deployment of UN and African Union troops, the situation in Darfur had stabilised, though it was still tense. By then a grown man, Abdelaziz hoped finally to go to secondary school. He dreamed of getting a job defending his people’s rights, and of growing crops on his family’s farm back in Darfur so he could one day send money back to his relatives.

Abdelaziz returned to his village, but had a nasty shock. The same militias who had burnt the place down in 2003, he said, were now occupying the farms. Abdelaziz said they told him, “You can choose: you can go away or we can kill you.”

He fled to el-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, where he started to rebuild his life. It was a hopeful time for Sudan. The protests that preceded the fall of al-Bashir prompted more refugees to trickle back home. Ali Yagoub Idris returned in 2019. “We believed that the regime that targeted us was falling down,” he said. “I was very optimistic.”

Abdelaziz finished secondary school, got married and started a family, and enrolled in university, where he was studying to become an English teacher. He founded a small English-language school to fund his course.

Then everything fell apart, again. Days after Abdelaziz’s second son was born, he heard gunfire. The family lived near an army base in el-Geneina. Suddenly it seemed as though there were heavily armed fighters everywhere.

Last time, Abdelaziz said, the militia used Kalashnikovs and roamed on foot or on camels and horses. Now they drove pickups, carried more powerful weapons and fired rockets. Abdelaziz and his wife were terrified. “We wanted to get out, we tried to get out, but we didn’t find a way,” he said. They finally made a break for it as a surge of people ran past their house. “We left everything,” said Abdelaziz.

As they fled, Abdelaziz was shot in the leg. He rolled up his trousers to show me the scar. They sheltered in another neighbourhood, farther away from the army base. But it wasn’t as safe as they’d hoped. “It became very very dangerous because all the time we were being attacked from different sides,” he said. “They were killing and killing. They said we don’t want to see the Masalit tribe.” Many bodies were thrown into the river that runs through el-Geneina, said Abdelaziz. Others were shot and drowned as they tried to swim across it. “The things that I saw, I cannot explain…” he said, trailing off.

In June Abdelaziz tried once again to head towards Chad. The roads were full of militiamen, roadblocks and dead bodies, he said. “When they find a black person, there is no question, they just shoot you.” In the chaos he was separated from his wife and sons. He found out later they had made it to Chad – but only just.

Arab gunmen were intent on wiping out male Masalit of any age – countless babies and children have been murdered. Desperate mothers took to dressing them as girls or hiding them under their skirts. “They wanted to take my two boys. My wife refused and shouted,” he said. They beat her badly, but she clung onto the boys and the three of them managed to cross the border.

Abdelaziz made it to a refugee camp in Chad, where he was reunited with his wife and children. He joined an NGO’s medical team as an assistant, helping to counsel other refugees. For all the refugees who have arrived from Darfur this year there are just three psychotherapists and a single psychiatrist. Abdelaziz finds meaning in the job – “I have to help my people,” he said.

Over half the refugees are children. Hana, a six-year-old in a ragged orange hijab, her thin legs dangling off a plastic seat, stared at me with enormous brown eyes. The girl’s parents, explained Hana’s relative, Amzouhour, had already fled from violence in 2003. They lived in a camp for displaced people in el-Geneina.

Soon after the fighting started in April, Hana’s mother was killed by a rocket. “[She] died in front of her,” said Amzouhour. Hana’s father fled with his two tiny, terrified children towards Chad. But he didn’t make it. A sniper shot him on the road in front of his children, Amzouhour told me, as Hana hid her face in her hijab.

After the events in June, there was a brief lull in violence in el-Geneina. Most Masalit fled to Chad, though some  took shelter near an SAF base north of the city. But in early November the RSF attacked the base. As SAF soldiers fled, Arab militiamen began attacking the Masalit. Abdelaziz sent me photos of bodies in the streets and videos of men, some still breathing, being crammed into mass graves.

Sharing my helicopter to eastern Chad earlier this autumn were three people from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is investigating the latest atrocities. But the prospect that anyone will be held accountable is vanishingly small. The men who raped Abdelaziz’s sister and killed many thousands in the early 2000s are still free. Although one case is moving slowly through the ICC, not a single person has been brought to justice for the genocide after 20 years.

The ICC’s failures are a source of dismay, disbelief and sometimes anger among Sudanese refugees. “From 2003 up until now, there is no one [convicted]…there is no accountability,” said Abdelaziz, who brought up the subject when I asked him if he hoped one day to go back to Sudan.

It is the near future that worries him more. Earlier this month, after the massacres began, he went to Adre, a nearby town, to find out the whereabouts of his brother-in-law, whom they had left behind in el-Geneina. “I found many youth from Arab militias who were my friends in secondary school and university,” he told me. “When they saw me, I was afraid.” He doesn’t feel safe in the camp. Officials have suggested he and his family move to Chad’s capital, or even to Cameroon.

Abdelaziz sent me two photos of a man he used to work with, wearing a white robe, who he said is going from town to town to find and kill him. “They tried genocide in 2003. They are going to finish us.” ■

Some of the names in this piece have been changed.

Kinley Salmon is Africa correspondent for The Economist

IMAGES: Zohra Bensemra/REUTERS, Frederic NOY/panos pictures, Alvaro Ybarra Zavala, Getty images