As refugees from Sudan's troubled Darfur region continue to spill over the border into neighbouring Chad, tension is rising between the newcomers and locals.

Breidijing Refugee Camp, Eastern Chad - For someone who has lost everything and been forced to flee her home Allawah Al Hadji Abdallah is doing a good job at putting on a brave face. She is holding a five-month old son in her arms and another – age 19 – stands next to her. “My children eat well. I take good care of them” she says proudly.

It’s a food distribution day at Breidjing refugee camp in eastern Chad and Allawah is sitting on a plastic sack on the ground nursing her baby near the distribution point.

She is one of about 200,000 Sudanese who have fled to Chad, having lost family members, homes and livelihoods to the brutal fighting in Darfur, western Sudan.

It’s a question of pride, says a WFP field staffer who works with the refugees. No matter the horror they have witnessed or their struggle adapting to life in a refugee camp they refuse to be defeated, he says.

A SMILING FACE

Indeed Allawah’s smile in the midst of such anguish is perplexing, and humbling. Most faces here reflect only loss, grief and utter misery.

As we talk, refugees walk by carrying bottles of vegetable oil or small cartons on their heads. Some are leading emaciated donkeys bearing sacks of sorghum or beans. The refugees have received their monthly rations from WFP, distributed at Breidjing camp by WFP’s implementing partner CARE.

A number of refugees gather round us. Allawah’s 19-year-old son Moustapha Yaya Mahamat stands back from the small crowd. Unlike his mother he doesn’t smile. His father was killed in the village raid that ripped them from their home in Darfur and Moustapha now has to take responsibility for his mother and her nine other children.

Attacks on civilians continue in Darfur. To date an estimated 1.45 million people, like Allawah and her fatherless children have been forced from their homes. The crisis in Darfur has spilled heavily across the border of Sudan as thousands flee their country.

The inevitable result is tension between the refugees and host communities. Over the past several weeks, a number of refugees have been killed or injured in fights over scarce resources such as water, pasture and firewood.

HAND TO MOUTH

From the start of the refugee influx in 2003, the inhabitants of this barren, remote region – themselves mostly farmers and herders living hand-to-mouth – have been remarkably willing to share their meagre means. But it has been over 18 months and those means are stretched thin.

A weak harvest and locust swarms are exacerbating the locals’ plight.

As part of its emergency operation in eastern Chad WFP to date has provided food aid to about 11,000 local residents; WFP plans reach at least 25,000 in the coming months.

Earlier this month WFP increased its appeal for the Chad operation to US$61.4 million from US$42.3 million, in part to increase its assistance to the local population. The new budget, extending the operation through June 2005, calls for assisting 250,000 people – 225,000 refugees, up from 200,000 and 25,000 local residents, up from 12,500.

TOUGH TASK

Delivering food aid to a quarter of a million people anywhere in the world is challenging enough. Chad’s poor roads, landlocked position and precarious security conditions make it all the tougher.

Thanks to an agreement signed between WFP and the government of Libya in July, WFP is now able to deliver hundreds of extra tons of food per month to eastern Chad, via Libya.

Between now and mid-November WFP is set to deliver over 7,500 metric tons of food via this new humanitarian corridor that takes truck convoys on a spectacular but gruelling trek through the Libyan Desert.

The new corridor will help WFP keep a steady supply of food at the refugee camps, helping people like Mariam Ahmat Abdallah keep her three-year-old daughter well.

SICK CHILD

Pulling a cloth over her daughter’s head to block the searing sun, Mariam says her daughter was always a healthy baby. But the child became ill and weak during the trek from the Chad-Sudan border to Breidjing camp three months ago. Mariam points to the white medical band around the girl’s tiny ankle. Bearing a mix of pride and relief, she says her daughter is doing better now.

The girl receives special WFP-provided meals at the camp. “We came with only our clothes – these clothes,” Mariam says, tugging on her yellow cotton dress.

Women and children invariably bear the brunt of crises like that in Darfur. To respond to a worrying trend of malnutrition among the most vulnerable in the refugee camps, WFP in September launched supplementary feeding for 55,000 children under five and pregnant and nursing women. About one-fifth of the targeted beneficiaries are from the local population.

SUPPLEMENTARY FEEDING

Under supplementary feeding, beneficiaries receive rations of nutrient-rich corn-soy blend, sugar and vegetable oil for 1,000 calories per day in addition to the 2,100 calories that is standard for a refugee.

Back at the distribution site, children are scrambling about, tying food sacks onto handmade push carts. One boy has stuck a yellow flower at the front of his cart.

As we walk away from Allawah and her sons, Moustapha, the 19-year-old, helps his mother load up their sacks of food. He watches after us, maintaining his stance as a sort of bodyguard next to Allawah. He nods as if to say so long, his face still locked in that stern, resolute expression.