Displacement for decades

One Essential Read

Recommended by Kate Turton, Newsletter Editor

They fled Darfur as boys. Now they are raising children in the same refugee camp.

Ahmad Yahya in eastern Chad's Iridimi refugee camp. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

Ahmad Yahya was just nine years old when he fled a wartime attack on his village in North Darfur, Sudan. Separated from most of his family amid the chaos, he walked for days before reaching a dusty refugee camp outside this remote town in Chad.

Ahmad’s little brother Sadam Ismail also made it to the camp, as did a young cousin, Alhadi Saleh. Many of their other relatives scattered or were killed.

That was in 2003. The brutal Darfur war that displaced the boys officially ended long ago, but conflicts continued to simmer, and a major civil war erupted in Sudan three years ago. Ahmad, Sadam and Alhadi are still living in the same houses where they grew up in the refugee camp, and Ahmad is now raising two boys of his own there.

They are among the vast numbers of Sudanese who have become perpetual refugees in one of the world’s poorest countries.

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