ZEINAB ABUKAR was terrified. We found her cowering with a group of women among the thorn bushes and scrub of the bone-dry Abu Ghadim wadi. Like a rabbit caught in the headlights, her black eyes flashed quickly from side to side as she calculated whether or not to make a run for it.

“If they find us, they will kill us,” she said of the pro-government Janjawid Arab militia who still roam at will across this barren landscape near Sudan’s border with Chad.

“Who are you? What do you want?” another woman, a small child strapped tightly to her back, shouted. Waving a small plastic bottle, half full of dirty water, she imitated the sound of explosions and pointed to a vast, empty desert of swirling dust devils.

They had heard the approach of a large United Nations helicopter ferrying yet another top official on yet another fact-finding mission to Darfur and feared the worst.

When two years ago conflict began in Darfur, an area the size of France, the villages of these black Zagawa Africans, accused of supporting a local rebellion against Khartoum’s Arab Government, were bombed by Antonovs, then razed in brutal ground assaults by horse and camel-mounted Janjawid. The people were killed or put to flight, their homes burnt, their cattle and few possessions looted.

“We are living here now, but we are scared of everything. We think of running all the time. We are scared to go back to the village, everything has been destroyed there and they might kill us,” Zeinab, a 35-year-old mother of three, said.

Asked about her husband, she turned away and wiped silent tears off her cheek with a dry, bony hand. “He is dead. Most of the men are dead,” she whispered.

After fleeing to Chad, the women trekked for ten days back to Darfur because they hoped to find some surviving animals grazing near their old village. In the day, they now shelter from the furnace-hot heat in the nearby wadi (a traditional water hole), living off a foul-tasting gruel made from berries. “This is our country here. If our donkeys get lost they walk back here alone,” Zeinab said. “We want to go home but only if it is safe.”

Last September, the United States termed what was happening in Darfur a genocide. At the end of January, a special UN inquiry reported that the Government had not pursued a policy of genocide but had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity that “may be no less serious and heinous than genocide”.

Meanwhile, the Sudanese Government — past masters of exploiting divisions within the international community — went through the motions of taking action to stop the violence, sending in extra police.

Ten days ago, Sudan’s same Western critics pledged £2.38 billion towards rebuilding southern Sudan after a peace deal with southern rebels which ended 21 years of war. Though Washington and others verbally linked the pledges to progress in Darfur, few observers believe them.

“The Government is doing its best to try to maintain that the crisis is over, people can go home, and all the NGOs and UN agencies here can go too,” one diplomat said. “If the killings would just stop, I believe most Western countries could accept that too.”

Sudan has vast supplies of oil waiting to be tapped and the US is anxious to lift a trade embargo imposed for its past support of terrorism. The attacks on the villages have stopped, but an estimated 1.6 million people, who now huddle together in makeshift camps outside the main regional centres of Nyala, al-Geneina, and al-Fasher, face daily harassment. The death toll from the mixture of conflict and disease now stands at more than 300,000.

“Insecurity is still the main problem and until there is a peace process and disarmament, it will remain the main problem,” said Laurens Jolles, director of the UN refugee agency’s office in el-Geneina.

Crucially, the Government has made no effort to disarm the Janjawid, who openly flaunt their weapons in local marketplaces and often wander into the camps, threatening women and stealing what they can.

Last month, after more reports of rape of local women by Janjawid were published, government officials warned aid agencies that if more such “unsubstantiated” stories emerged their local staff would be lashed. It is virtually impossible to prove rape as the Government has ruled that a doctor’s report is not sufficient. Raped women instead are often accused of being adulterers and face charges themselves.

Ironically, the single toughest decision of the international community on Darfur — to pass on a list of 51 war crimes perpetrators to the International Criminal Court (ICC) — has added to the insecurity in the region and is blamed for an upsurge of attacks on food convoys and aid workers.

“The ICC list has increased insecurity in that people, local Janjawid and even government officials, are frightened of being picked up. They make no distinction between aid workers and UN international staff. It has increased hostility towards us all,” a senior UN official said.

Last August, under huge pressure, the African Union agreed to send about 2,200 military observers. Though popular with local people, they are too few to do much other than report ceasefire violations and protect camp women when they go out looking for firewood.

Colonel Anthony Mundubo, an African Union commander in Zalengei, southern Darfur, dismissed government promises to disarm the Janjawid as lip service. “We have no doubts, the Government of Sudan has trained and equipped the Janjawid,” he said.

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