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By FAY ABUELGASIM and NARIMAN EL-MOFTY
UMM RAKOUBA, Sudan (AP) – The baby was born fleeing the war. His first bath was in a puddle. Now he cries all night in a country that is not his.
Wrapped in borrowed clothing, the boy is one of the newest and most fragile refugees among the more than 40,000 who have fled the Ethiopian government offensive in the challenging Tigray region.
They rushed into Sudan, often under fire, sometimes so quickly that they had to leave family members behind. There is not enough to feed them in this remote area and very little shelter. Some drink from the river that separates the countries and more cross it every day.
“We walked through the desert. We sleep in the desert, ”said one refugee, Blaines Alfao Eileen, who is eight months pregnant and has befriended Lemlem Haylo Rada, the mother of the newborn. One woman is ethnic Tigrayan, the other ethnic Amhara. The conflict could have turned them against each other, but motherhood intervened.
That and tragedy. “I don’t know where my husband is and if he’s alive,” Eileen said.
His journey took four days. “I slept with this scarf in my hand,” he said, “and I would wake up and do it again.”
Almost half of the refugees are children under the age of 18. About 700 women are currently pregnant, according to the United Nations. At least nine have given birth in Sudan.
It has been three weeks since Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent federal troops to Tigray after accusing forces in the region of attacking a military base. The Abiy and regional governments consider the other illegitimate, and the Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister warned Sunday that a final assault to take the capital of Tigray is imminent.
Civilians are caught in the middle of what some experts describe as a conflict similar to an interstate war, so each side is heavily armed.
Many people hardly know why they had to flee. Now people of all classes, from bankers to subsistence farmers, spend up to two weeks in so-called transit centers, waiting in makeshift shelters in an arid, almost treeless environment, just across the border from Sudan. ; It used to be only two or three days.
Some refugees have little to protect them from the heat and sun and huddle under possessions as rare as umbrellas. Men have begun to weave dry grass in temporary homes.
COVID-19 might be cutting through the crowds, but people’s focus is elsewhere. They wear more crosses around their necks than face masks.
Local Sudanese villagers have been praised for their generosity, but they have little to give.
The more permanent camps for refugees are several hours away and sometimes there is not even enough fuel to transport them there. The threat of hostilities remains as they wait so close to the border.
Some overworked aid workers have used the bare floor of a local building as a makeshift hospital, treating wounds that refugees say were inflicted with machetes as Ethiopia’s long-standing ethnic tensions raged.
The authorities are trying to keep the Tigrayana refugees separate from those of the Amhara ethnic group, fearing possible clashes.
“We don’t know who is fighting us. We don’t know who is with us or who is not. We do not know. When the war came, we just ran, ”Aret Abraham said.
There is little comfort, even a hot meal. Refugees can wait several hours for food. Sometimes they don’t get any.
“I’ve been here 14 days and I haven’t received anything,” said one. “I have no clothes to wear.” But everyone wears a new plastic refugee bracelet, which is handed out by the UN as they register.
The UN refugee agency has provided food and care for some 300 malnourished Ethiopian children and pregnant and lactating women in Sudan, according to spokesman Babar Baloch.
People sit and wait and wait. A frustrated little girl turned the head of a plastic doll until it came loose.
A man cried into the crook of his arm while holding a small photo of his 12-year-old son. The boy was shot and killed, he said.
The more permanent camps were last used in the 1980s for Ethiopians fleeing a famine compounded by a years-long civil war.
For a long time, these images of starving people were etched on Ethiopia’s reputation. It took decades to turn the country into one of Africa’s greatest success stories, with one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. But behind the boom, political repression kept hostilities between ethnic groups in check.
“We felt like we had made it and we were happy,” recalls Menas Hgoos, who is now fleeing to Sudan for the second time. “And now Abiy Ahmed is attacking us, we left with only the clothes we had on.”
Many of the new refugees are too young to remember past miseries. Suddenly, they are too overwhelmed with their own and with the concerns of those who didn’t make it out.
“There are also many people who live there who cannot escape here,” Haftoun Berha said, pausing to think of loved ones who are now impossible to reach. “That is much sadder.”
