Six long years have passed since the day Ahmed Mohammad last saw his family. His parents, together with his nine brothers and sisters disappeared during a devastating attack by Sudanese government forces on his village in Shoba, North Darfur, in which 272 people went missing. Despite numerous attempts by the Red Cross to trace them nothing has been heard of them since.

“Of my entire family I was the only one who made it out,” he said yesterday in the UN-run camp at Gaga, eastern Chad, where he lives with more than 18,000 other refugees who have fled Darfur. “I still get the Red Cross to send messages to the camps inside Darfur in case they may be alive. But until now there is no response.”

The panel of three judges at the International Criminal Court may have omitted the word genocide from the arrest warrant for President al-Bashir but in Ahmed’s mind there is no doubt why his village was attacked and his family annihilated.

“They are killing us just because we are black,” he said. “All the governments in the history of Sudan are Arab and they kill the blacks and take their land.”

A member of the Fur tribe, who along with the Zaghawa and Massalit, have been the principal targets of Sudanese troops and their Arab Janjawid allies since fighting began in Darfur in 2003, Ahmed nevertheless drew hope from the issue of the arrest warrant.

“If you don’t charge a criminal for killing men, women, children today, then tomorrow he will do even worse,” he said, a sentiment shared widely among Darfuri refugees. “This warrant is very important for us. Without it the killing will get worse.”

Ahmed’s village was destroyed in one of the typical attacks that have displaced more than 2.7 million black Africans from their homes in Darfur. At least 30,000 have been killed directly by Sudanese forces while an estimated 300,000 are believed to have perished of hunger and disease as they have fled. More than 230,000 have fled to eastern Chad where they exist in camps along the border.

He recalled two helicopter gunships appearing above Shoba on a Friday afternoon as the village men gathered for prayers. The gunships fired rockets and machinegunned the village, before troops and Janjawid appeared and attacked from two directions.

Ahmed, lying on the ground after being hit by rocket shrapnel in the back and leg, was beaten by Sudanese soldiers and left for dead. A relative found him later and strapped the wounded man to a donkey. It took 17 days to get him across the border to Chad.

“I was bleeding all the time and barely conscious,” he said. “I have never heard of my family since that day. At least this warrant has lifted my despair. Some people say it may upset the peace process but what peace process do they mean?

“We haven’t experienced any peace from al-Bashir despite several agreements. Each peace is worse than before. The trial and end of al-Bashir is our only hope.”

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