Darfur's violence spreads across borders [View All]

GOZ BEIDA, Chad - The chief's story is dark and familiar. Attackers on horseback shattered his dawn ritual of tea brewing — shouting racial venom, killing men, raping women. The survivors fled to a makeshift camp, sheltering from the desert sun under lengths of cloth strung from thorn trees.

Chief Umar Kabayi is not one of Darfur's tens of thousands of victims. He and his fellow villagers are Chadian, and theirs is a story of western Sudan's violence and passionate hatred spreading across borders.

"This is an old, old story," Kabayi said. "We've had disputes going back 30 years, but the chiefs would settle them. We've always lived side by side, we share the same market."

Modern politics and weapons have transformed age-old disputes over land and water in this bleak corner of Africa into something potentially explosive. Conflict is spreading south as surely as the march of the Sahara Desert and becoming increasingly violent.

Chad is buffeted by violence on multiple fronts. The government is trying to quash rebels bent on toppling President Idriss Deby. Ethnic Arab Chadians are fighting ethnic African Chadians like Kabayi, mirroring the clashes in Darfur. Sudan's Arab janjaweed militias have been chasing Darfur refugees into Chad, and there are reports they have been attacking ethnic African Chadians as well.

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