Ade, Chad — At first glance, the hillside plateau above the Sudanese border here in eastern Chad appears to offer little more than prickly scrub brush and grazing cattle. It would be easy to drive past without noticing much at all.
But look closer and the desolate terrain begins to come to life, slowly revealing a massive encampment. Those piles of rocks dotting the mountain? Man-made reinforcements for a network of foxholes. Peek into the bushes and Sudanese rebel fighters peer back. Shade your eyes against the sun's glare, and the silhouettes of rifle-wielding watchmen appear along the mountaintops.
The camp is the newest training ground of the Sudan Liberation Army, one of the main Darfur rebel groups that have been battling the Sudanese government since 2003. In less than two months, the camp has become home to more than 2,000 rebels, mostly recruits who spend their days learning the basics of warfare.
A world away, the United Nations and the United States are pushing a controversial peace agreement to end the bloodshed in Darfur, the vast western region of Sudan. But here this ragtag army of skinny men with plastic sandals and AK-47s is mobilizing for war.
"I'm learning to be a soldier so I can go and kill the \o7janjaweed\f7," said Gamar Ahmed Aden, 18, who joined the SLA a month ago from a refugee camp near Farchana, Chad. He said his family was driven from Darfur last year when the \o7janjaweed\f7, as Sudan's pro-government militias are known, attacked his family's village.
Out here in the bush, hatred and distrust of the Sudanese government remain high, and nearly everyone rejects the proposed peace deal as providing insufficient protection and compensation for Darfur refugees. Rebel factions are divided over whether to accept the agreement, sometimes attacking one another.
It's a reminder that despite diplomatic efforts to reach peace, the conflict is only getting worse -- and has spread beyond Darfur.
First the militias began crossing into Chad, attacking villages and driving an estimated 50,000 people from their homes. Now the Sudanese rebels are also moving over the border, establishing training camps, joining up with the Chadian military and aggressively recruiting inside Darfur refugee camps, sometimes using force.
The cross-border activities are threatening to complicate the volatile relations between Chad and Sudan, who many analysts say are already engaged in proxy war through their support of rebel groups in each other's land.
