Context (Eric, June 13, 2025)
The two months following the deadly and brutally destructive assault on Zamzam camp for internally displaced persons by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), many thousands have died from RSF weapons, as well as the starvation, and dehydration that ensued as hundreds of thousands of people fled in desperate fear. We can’t know how many have died because the footprint of humanitarian organizations in North Darfur—and especially the Zamzam area—is so limited. But the camp had a population of more than 500,000 when the attack occurred, and many were in poor health, badly nourished, elderly, or disabled. The only question is how many thousands died in their flight from violence.
The one international organization operating in Zamzam—Relief International—saw eleven of its medical workers murdered by the RSF in the early stages of the assault:
Statement by Relief International, April 13, 2025
Profound tragedy within the Relief International family.
On Friday, April 11, Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters entered Zamzam Camp in Sudan, launching a violent attack on civilians and humanitarian workers – including our own staff. Heavily armed militants stormed a Relief International clinic and brutally killed nine of our brave and dedicated colleagues. Over recent days we have received the news that two more colleagues have also died from injuries sustained in the attack.
Among those fleeing were the counselors of Team Zamzam. Gaffar has done a superb job of remaining in touch with them, and while one counselor remains missing, nine members of the Team have reached Tina Jagraba (multiple spellings) on the Chadian side of the border with North Darfur. Two more, who reached Tawila, are now making their way to Tina, as are two members who fled to El Fasher. The salaries that have continued to be paid to all Team members have enabled them to purchase safe (if expensive) transportation to Tina (frequently Tiné).
We plan to reorganize the Team’s humanitarian efforts here and have secured the use of a communal dwelling outside but near the large Iriba refugee camp (the counselors themselves are no longer displaced persons but refugees—see below the map of Chadian refugee camps from the UN High Commission for Refugees). Gaffar has wisely counseled that the Team begin work slowly and avoid the notice of the Chadian authorities, who are deeply ambivalent about the more than 1 million Sudanese refugees in the dozen camps along the Chad/Darfur border.
Our hope is that we can partner with one of the several international INGOs working in the area—an area all too well described in a recent lengthy photographic essay in The Atlantic, which begins:
In Tiné, a barren desert town in eastern Chad, the first humanitarian crisis of the post-American world is now unfolding. Thousands of people fleeing the civil war in Sudan’s Darfur region have recently arrived there after enduring long journeys in relentless, 100-degree heat. Many have nothing—they report being beaten, robbed, or raped along the way—and almost nothing awaits them in Tiné. Due in part to the Trump administration’s devastating cuts to foreign aid, only a skeleton staff of international humanitarian workers are on hand to receive them. There are shortages of food, water, medicine, and shelter in Tiné, and few resources to move people anywhere else…
According to aid workers on the ground, more than 30,000 people have arrived there since regional fighting intensified in mid-April, and more than 3,500 are now arriving every day.
The photos in the article “capture the desperation of people with nowhere to go, the absence of infrastructure to help them, the desolation of the empty desert.”
It is here that the displaced Team Zamzam hopes, again, to make a difference. Providing psychosocial counseling will be the first task, thus returning to the original aims of the project (begun exactly five years ago). As The Atlantic article stresses, many girls and women have been raped in their often desperate efforts to find safe haven. Team Zamzam knows all too well how prevalent sexual violence is on the part of the RSF and their allied Arab militias; but the Team’s successes in Zamzam show just how capable they are (see “Victims of Sexual Violence in Darfur: In Their Own Words”).
The challenges are many, and there are immediate expenses besides the monthly salaries to the members of Team Zamzam, many of whom have fled with their families using those salaries ($250/month).
I hope the generous contributions that have sustained Team Zamzam for five years will follow them into their new working circumstances—challenging, but nothing if not replete with humanitarian opportunities:
It is now possible to make a tax-deductible contribution to our project, using a portal on the website of a 501/c/3 organization operating in Sudan. Operation Broken Silence, working primarily on health and education issues in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, has created a special site for tax-deductible contributions to our project, and we hope this makes contributing to the health and well-being of the people served by Team Zamzam easier for donors.
Those wishing to assist in funding the work of Team Zamzam may also send a check directly to Eric (Eric Reeves, 31 Franklin St., Northampton, MA 01060).
OR
Purchase one of his woodturnings: https://www.ericreeves-woodturner.com/collections/all
All proceeds from all woodturning sales go directly to sustaining the work of Team Zamzam
Additional photographs from eastern Chad, where life is in too many ways as difficult as life in Darfur:
