KALMA CAMP, SUDAN — This overcrowded Darfur displacement camp is preparing for battle.
Men have dug trenches and dragged tree trunks across dirt roads. Young lookouts, some armed with sticks and axes, scan the horizon for invaders. Even aid workers and United Nations peacekeepers are increasingly wary of Kalma's besieged and, at times, belligerent population.
Since a deadly standoff a month ago in which Sudanese government troops killed 31 people here, including 17 women and children, the sprawling camp has been on the brink of eruption.
"We are like people living inside a fire," said Ali Abdel Khaman Tahir, the camp's head sheik. "Our anger is stronger than ever."
His second in command, Sheik Issa Adam Ahmed, added, "If the government comes to try to kill us again, we will kill them back."
Kalma and dozens of similar camps are intended to be havens for the hundreds of thousands of victims of Darfur's violence. Nearly 90,000 people can find food, shelter and other assistance here, having fled their villages over the last five years.
Since Darfur rebels began fighting the government, more than 200,000 people in Darfur are believed to have died, mostly of disease and hunger but also in attacks by pro-government militias. More than 2 million have been left homeless.
Now the Aug. 25 attack, the most deadly clash in a camp since the early days of the conflict, is raising fear that the front lines of the rebellion are shifting from mountaintop rebel strongholds and remote desert villages to the displacement camps to which victims have fled to stay out of harm's way.
"We've got a ticking time bomb in the camps," said Sudan analyst Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College. "The anger is overwhelming. The camps are awash with weapons. And if the fighting moves there, the civilian casualties could be higher than anything we have seen."
Displaced Darfurians, some armed and loyal to anti-government rebels, are grappling with reductions in food and humanitarian aid because of thievery, and many have lost hope in the ability of peacekeepers to restore calm to the western Sudan region. The World Food Program, which temporarily halved food rations in Darfur because of carjackings plaguing its convoys, recently threatened to stop deliveries altogether.
