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| November 12, 2008 |
Who attacked Sam Ouandja and why.
A well informed friend told me this: "Those who attacked Sam Ouandja ( a remote Central African Republic village on the Darfur border)are part of a breakaway faction of Damane Zakaria's UFDR (the union of rebel groups). Damane has signed a peace accord with the government and that accord is still holding. The breakaway group attacked the FACA (the CAR armed forces)in Sam Ouandja in an attempt to steal arms andammunition. (There are indications of an ethnic split within the
UFDR.) The peace between the FACA and the UFDR held and they were jointly able to repel the attackers by daybreak.
The attackers ignored the refugees who remain in place.
Sadly, 3/4 of the village of Sam Ouandja are reported to have fled."
Heartbreaking to contemplate people fleeing - I can scarcely imagine the level of terror that people experience as they try to gather their children and run-run away from their their homes.
The refugees, we are told, did not flee. But they know the terror all to well. Their own village was attacked and they fled -walking for 10 days across the desert to Sam Ouandja.
They did not flee this time. Perhaps this is why; A Darfuri refugee in eastern Chad described the first attack on his village, and the long flight into Chad. And then the next attacks-i this time upon the refugee camp. He said the refugees didn't run away because they didn't know the terraine, or where there might be water. They didn't know where to run and they feared they would die if they tried. So they sat on the ground and held their children "and we were thinking, 'no hopes for us, no hopes for us'.
I posted a blog a few days ago about Sam Ouandja and the fact that EUFOR evacuated a group of aid workers.
My friend writes" There is general optimism that the government
is at last moving in good faith. The bad news is an APRD attack into a
new area of the Southwest and an attack on the FACA that left 10-14 dead between the Chadian border and the town of Kabo."