Sudanese refugees in a camp in Ethiopia share how they were forced to take up arms for government forces or paramilitaries, writes Augustine Passilly, a French journalist based in Addis Ababa.
Her eyes became moist, her voice started to crack. “It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” says Asmahan Mohamed. In front of her, young boys were chasing the ball. On the opposite side of the road, tents stretched as far as the eye could see. Since the start of the war in Sudan on April 15, 2023, over 6,000 refugees have arrived at the Kumer camp in western Ethiopia, which is now grossly over capacity. A new site was inaugurated in February as the influx doesn’t cease at the border with Sudan, some 60 kilometers away. Some refugees manage to escape the ranks of the rival Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the so-called Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries. Both belligerents forcibly enlist civilians to fight or assist them.
“Two RSF members pointed their guns at us, ordering us to cook. says Asmahan Mohamed, who was trapped for a week in the psychiatric hospital where she had been working as a cook. They asked what ethnic group I belonged to, I told them I belonged to the Misseriyas. Many of them were from the same ethnic groups and so they didn’t harm me. But they frequently took my colleague, who was Nuba to the first floor. It was evident they were raping her.” Asmahan escaped during a bombing.
Under the scorching shelter of a tent, flies twirl around, and stories unfold one after another. “The SAF parked two cars in front of my shop, which contained stolen phones, says IT technician Luka. “I was instructed to extract the data without looking at the content. I had no choice; the soldiers could have shot me. As a reward, they handed me stolen bags of dollars and gold.” The merry-go-round came to an end after a month when a neighbor, a simple taxi driver dressed in an RSF captain’s uniform, warned him that an attack was being planned on his shop. “I fled, leaving an assistant behind. The RSF tortured him by asking him where I had gone,” the technician continues.
Abdelazeem Ahmed’s fingernails are blackened from bruising. “The intelligence officers hit my fingers with a hammer and squeezed them with pliers. Then they struck me in the spine with the butt of their guns. They wanted the names of politicians who work for the RSF,” the pro-democracy activist said on his turn.
He refused to cooperate with government forces in exchange for his release. Treated in the hospital after repeated beatings and torture sessions, he chose to run away. But even after escaping the warring parties, the young men are not safe. Some were detained at the border by regular troops who demanded they take up arms. Refusal meant facing death upon their return to Sudan.
In Kumer camp, gunfire is a routine part of the refugees’ daily lives, due to the conflict in the Amhara region between rebel militias and Ethiopian federal forces. “I feel like I haven’t escaped the war,” Yousef laments. The student fled after being forced at gunpoint to dig a grave for the RSF personnel, even though he did not know for whom it was intended. “I refuse to kill. I participated in the revolution of December 2018 to demand that the military relinquish its hold on the government and return to their barracks,” he insists. The popular uprising that toppled dictator Omar al-Bashir seems like a distant memory, but since then, fighting has displaced 8.1 million citizens.
(All names changed for their safety.)
