Standing on the Border: A Chad Diary
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DAY 3
Seeing Chad for What it Is: Sunday March 11, 2007 9:00 pm
GOZ BEIDA — It is time for another comment about the heat. Have I driven it home yet that this heat is ever present and it is hard to breathe indoors?
Anyway, today we spent the morning talking about what the situation actually is and the pieces that make this drama so hard to define. Talking to staff from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) as well as the World Food Program (WFP) and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) we heard many different opinions on the problems here in Chad and the possible solutions.
They all say it is “complicated” and they all are right. The present situation in Chad is not simply about the spillover refugees from Darfur. Instead it needs to be recognized that this is about Chadians. This is about inter-ethnic conflict, rebels, the Chadian government, and the intentional breakdown of tradition conflict resolutions methods. Although the inter-ethnic conflict isn’t new here, the IDP situation is and no one seems to know exactly what spurred this. Why now? What has changed that has made Chadians leave their homes? What mechanism broke down?
What is clear to me is that the area is insecure and will remain so for the near future without some sort of external intervention. What is also clear is that internally displaced Chadians will not return to their homes until the area is more secure, although they desperately want to.
The scene now seems like the start of some movie but this isn’t on screen. This is reality; this is the reality of hundreds of thousands of people who fled their homes and can’t go back because it is not safe. They want to return and plant their crops but for now they sit and wait, in the hot hot sun.
