Mariam Khamis Adam is huddled on the floor, using giant marker pens to draw a picture of her childhood memories.
”These are flowers,” she says, ”and this is the Janjaweed killing my older brother. This is my other brother, he ran from the house and survived. Later he died of illness.”
Like many children in the psychological treatment centre in the Djabal refugee camp in eastern Chad, Mariam was orphaned by the atrocities in the neighbouring Sudanese region of Darfur, where at least 200 000 people have died since 2003.
Most refugees have horrific accounts of rape and murder by the Janjaweed, an Arab militia armed by Khartoum to help crush a non-Arab uprising seeking greater autonomy for Darfur.
The youngsters here may be quick to smile, but a glance through their drawings hints at their inner turmoil.
Alongside the occasional flower, there are repeated images of war: planes bombing villages, huts on fire, men with guns shooting women, attackers on horseback.
Asked how they felt drawing the pictures, every child gives an identical answer: ”I felt angry.”
Hollywood actress and rights activist Mia Farrow, a goodwill ambassador for United Nations Children’s Fund Unicef, was visibly moved during her four-day visit to eastern Chad’s refugee camps last week.
”I have drawers full of children’s paintings — I have 14 children,” said Farrow. ”They are full of suns and stars and stick people smiling. These are very different drawings.
”I’m looking at a head being shot off, I’m looking at attack helicopters, I’m looking at homes on fire.
”I think these pictures should be seen by everyone, lest with the passage of time anyone deny this happened, or how it happened. This is the purest documentation.”
Want Western peacekeepers
It has been more than three years since the 230 000 Sudanese refugees who are living along Chad’s eastern border with Darfur fled their homes, and their pain shows little sign of abating.
But many are optimistic that a new hybrid UN-African Union force, authorised by the UN Security Council last month, could be on its way to Darfur before the end of the year.
”If UN troops enter Darfur, we would like to move the same day and pitch our tents in Darfur,” said Osman Iman Osman, a refugee leader in Oure Cassoni camp, a few kilometres from the border.
”Our country is very valuable to us, it’s better than here.”
While refugees were united in their support for a UN mission, all were adamant they wanted only Western troops.
”We don’t want African troops, we only want UN soldiers,” said Amna Adam Khamis, a 70-year-old refugee. ”We can’t trust AU troops as they are the same as the government of Sudan. I am optimistic, but if they are African I am pessimistic.”
Pointing at a Western TV reporter, Amna added: ”We want people the same design, the same colour, as you.”
Most refugees appear to be under the impression that a UN force would be composed of Western troops, not the more likely scenario of African soldiers under foreign command.
”We were educated in Arabic and imagined we were Arab people. But when we had problems, no one from the Arab world came to help us,” Izelden Khater, a young refugee told Reuters.
”When we came here in 2004 we found white people with tents and medicines and blankets. They said they were humanitarians, that is why we believe them, that they have come to make peace for us.”
Deep scars
The refugees are united in their desire to return home, but are still deeply traumatised by their experiences. Touma, a young refugee woman held against her will in a Janjaweed camp, broke down in tears as, three years on, she told her story.
”I had my child on my back and was running. The Janjaweed hit me and I fell. They took the baby off my back and killed the baby,” she said.
”They took me to their camp, I spent three months there. I did their cooking and washing and took care of their animals. Every night 10 or 11 men would come to rape me — I would cry but nobody would come.”
As the violence in Darfur has slowly spread across the border, the United Nations is now considering troops sending into Chad as well.
Seid Ibrahim Mustafa, the former sultan of Dar Sila, an area which has been plagued by inter-ethnic violence similar to that in Darfur, said troops should have come sooner.
”We’ve been asking for an international force for a long time,” he said. ”How long are we going to wait? There’s too much bureaucracy. We doubt this force will come quickly, but our wish is that it comes soon, so at least we can think of peace.” — Reuters