Eyewitness: Darfur's nightmare

By Barnaby Phillips BBC Africa correspondent in Darfur

It is dawn, and the sun is rising over a remote and beautiful corner of Africa.

Beida is on the border between Sudan and Chad, a small town surrounded by mountains on one side, and a meandering river which marks the border on the other.

In normal times, some 5,000 people live in Beida. But these are not normal times.

The Arab militias have waged a campaign of terror in the surrounding countryside, and thousands of people have deserted their villages and fields, crowding into the town, seeking refuge from attacks.

More than a million people have fled their homes in Darfur

Away to the east we can see a tiny speck in the sky. It is an Aleutian aeroplane, chartered by the United Nations World Food Programme.

It swoops over a field on the edge of the town, and drops dozens of bags of food from its hold. They tumble through the sky, and hit the ground with loud thuds.

The aeroplane turns a big, lazy circle, and drops a second load. Then a third.

Soon, the field is littered with hundreds of 50kg bags of wheat, peas and maize, and a large crowd has assembled, waiting for the food distribution.

Air-drops are costly, and difficult to organise. But as heavy rains in Darfur continue, making many roads impassable, the UN has little alternative if it wants to carry on delivering food to remote communities.

"We began our air operations two weeks ago," says the WFP's Richard Lee. "The people we are reaching are not starving, but they are very hungry.

"They were not able to harvest this year, so they need this food now if the situation is not to deteriorate."

We spoke to one of the women queuing up for the food deliveries. Her name was Mariam, and her story was typical.

She said the Janjaweed Arab militia came to her village, Tukul-Tukul, and burnt it.

"They shot six people", she said, and started to cry. "I'm grateful for this food, but I'm not happy to be here. I want to be back in my own village, growing my own crops."

Searching for the Janjaweed

We drove out into the countryside, to try and meet the Arab militia. We saw large herds of camel and cattle, grazing through the remains of abandoned villages.

They killed our animals, they tried to drive us from our land Arab elder, Darfur

At one point, a group of Arab men on horseback rode past. Many were carrying AK-47 rifles, and they whooped with excitement when they saw us.

We tried to follow them, but our battered old Land Rover got stuck in the mud, and they were gone.

But eventually two Arab teenagers, also armed, took us to a small camp. There we met an elder, Juma Jebbah.

Sitting cross-legged on a carpet under the trees, he denied his people were Janjaweed bandits. He said they had lived peacefully, side by side with the African Masalit people for 30 years.

The trouble began, he said, when other African tribes moved in from Chad. "They killed our animals, they tried to drive us from our land."

This is a complex crisis being played out at so many levels that it is very difficult for an outsider to understand. Only the scale of human suffering is obvious.

Back in Beida, I asked a Sudanese aid worker when the displaced people would be ready to go back home.

She looked at me doubtfully and said: "They are still scared of the situation, they don't know whether this thing will re-occur again. They are not certain of the future."