A refugee researching refugee lives

Abdelmageed Yahya has spent his academic career teaching and researching migration patterns and the everyday life of refugees. Now he has had to flee war himself. Has this led him to see he see his work in a new light?

On April 15, Abdelmageed Yahya was on his way to Khartoum after attending a workshop with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on migration research in Nairobi. Had the plane been scheduled to arrive just a few hours later, he would not have made it home. The plane he was on was the last to arrive at the airport in Khartoum before war broke out.

Now, six months after the war made it too dangerous to stay in Khartoum, he is continuing his work from Cairo. The migration researcher has himself been forced to leave his home, for the second time.

Sharing the experience of displacement
Abdelmageed Yahya has been part of the Bergen-Sudan academic collaboration for many years, first through the Assisting regional universities in Sudan (ARUS) programme, now as one of the team members in the research cluster on migration in the Sudan-Norway Academic Cooperation (SNAC) project.

Being twice displaced, first because of unrest in South Kordofan where he held a position at Dilling University, then from Khartoum because of the war, he is in a unique position to relate to the topic of his research; to the people behind the numbers.

He is not too comfortable talking about his own situation though. After all, he is safe for now. But the fate of the ones who are caught in the crossfire, and especially the ones who now don’t even have shelter are always on his mind. In a Sudanese context, he is far from the only one who has had to flee for the second time. The people of Darfur have lived in precarious conditions ever since 2003 when conflict and violent clashes between SLM and government forces triggered the outbreak of a civil war. Civilians were exposed to gross human rights violations and millions were internally displaced. The April 15 war has forced many of Sudan’s IDPs to flee yet again.  Among those who are now on the run from war for a second time are also a group that may come as a surprise to many; Syrians in Sudan.

When war first broke out in Syria, Sudan did not require a visa from Syrian refugees, leading many to travel there seeking refuge from the violence that was wreaking havoc in their country. Leaving in a hurry, and not being dependent on a visa, many arrived and stayed in Khartoum without sufficient identification papers. Now war has forced them to flee for a second time, and they are effectively trapped in Sudan.

-Many have made their way to Port Sudan but they cannot get any further. They are very traumatized and stuck in a hot and humid climate with no shelter. Rent has become too high for them to be able to afford housing, so they have gathered in empty school yards, with poor sanitation and little to no food, says Yahya. 

Vulnerable to exploitation
With several NGOs pulling out of Sudan after the war broke out and with a continued difficult situation for coordinating international humanitarian assistance, local emergency committees have come together and are distributing food and water. The war has led to an impressive mobilization in local communities.

But the war has also brought out actors who are not there to help, and refugees are extremely vulnerable to exploitation. The plight of the Syrians is only one of the refugee experiences that represent that sometimes deeply uncomfortable mix of research interest and lived lives that weigh heavily on Yahya and others who work within the field of migration studies. Many women have been forced to flee with their children, unaccompanied by male partners, relatives or friends, and especially vulnerable to different types of exploitation, mainly sexual violence and rape.

-I recently talked to a woman who had managed to escape to Aswan. Originally from Darfur, she was based in Omdurman when the war broke out in April. Being terrified that the soldiers from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that started knocking on her door would loot and rape her and her daughters, she pretended to be an RSF supporter. She eventually managed to flee with her two daughters and made her way to the border where she made a deal with a smuggler to take her and her daughters across. But the smuggler managed to cross to the Egyptian side, he took her money and left her and her daughters to fend for themselves in a totally unknown area. By pure luck they were discovered by people who were willing to help, says Yahya.

Her story is sadly quite typical of what many refugees experience. They are in an extremely vulnerable position where they are aware that they may be an easy target of exploitation, but they are left with no choice than to seize the opportunities they get even though it involves great risk, Yahya points out.

New migration patterns
Migration studies are clearly about people and their everyday experiences. But it is also about patterns in migration flows, and about emerging and changing routes of migration. Such migration flows, especially in Eastern and West Sudan, has been on top of Yahya’s research agenda for years.

Sudan, and especially Eastern Sudan with its proximity to Ethiopia and Eritrea, has been a migration hub for decades. Before the war Sudan was hosting more than 1 million migrants from its neighboring countries. Almost 2.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), especially from Darfur, were also part of the migration statistics. But the war has now created new migration patterns, trends, and dynamics.

When war broke out on April 15, the brutal violence and heavy artillery and bombardment, especially in Khartoum, soon led to an unprecedented wave of IDPs that came on top of the already large group of IDPs from earlier conflicts. Around 70 % of the new IDPs are from the capital city. They are now spread across several states in the areas of Sudan that are relatively safer compared to regions like Khartoum and Darfur.

The war has also affected the migration patterns to and from the neighbouring countries. Many Sudanese have now fled to neighbouring countries like Chad, South Sudan and Egypt. Estimates show that more than 400.000 have fled to Chad. Unofficial estimates reveal that the number of Sudanese in Cairo is now around five million. More than 300.000 of them have arrived after the war broke out in Sudan.

The difficult circumstances in some of the countries that Sudanese are now fleeing to and many migrants are now going back home to speaks volumes about the grave situation in Sudan. The large number of people now returning to their countries of origin also demonstrates just how many migrants of different nationalities Sudan has been hosting for a long time.  

-Ethiopian refugees, many whom lived in Khartoum, have now started to return to Ethiopia. Also Eritreans have started to go back to Eritrea, especially from Kassala where many of them had settled down, says Yahya.

The same goes for refugees from countries like South Sudan and Chad who for many years have sought refuge in Sudan.

The war has also affected the larger picture when it comes to migration routes. Libya, which used to be the main port for refugees with Europe as their final destination, is now a less common alternative. With unrest in Libya and Sudan a non-option on the travel route, Morocco is emerging as a new destination for migration flows, according to Yahya.

He points out that the war has also created a whole new set of migration dynamics.

-What to a certain extent was voluntary migration is now forced. The fragmentation of families is also a new feature in migration dynamics. Due to for example visa restrictions that have made it easier for women and children to enter some of the neighbouring countries whereas men have not been allowed in has led to women and children felling alone. Many families are now split, while women shoulder the responsibility of their household matters, says Yahya.

First-hand practice as a migrant
Yahya now has a fellowship at the Center for Economic, Legal, and Social Studies and Documentation (CEDEJ) in Cairo.  The fellowship at CEDEJ keeps him in the academic loop. With universities in Sudan closed because of the war, a connection to an institution like CEDEJ and keeping in touch with colleagues in the SNAC project is invaluable. But his mobility as a researcher and academic is very restricted. For now, he has to stay put in Egypt despite invitations to participate at academic conferences and seminars in other African countries.

He is planning to stay in Cairo for at least six months, or even a year. For him and his family, as for the other one million Sudanese who are now based in Egypt, the war has made the future uncertain.

Managing to escape from war was a narrow call. When he and his family fled from Khartoum, they were stopped by RSF soldiers who accused Yahya of being an officer from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). By a stroke of luck one of the soldiers knew one of his university colleagues and let them go. Had he not known that person, the accusation that Yahya ‘looked like someone who could be an officer’ would have been sufficient for the soldiers to respond in a completely different manner.

So Yahya knows first-hand how your entire future can be determined by a stroke of luck - his own experience illustrating how random the twists and turns of fate can be. What he has been through puts things in a different perspective for the researcher who has always done research on people with whom he now shares not only experiences but a way of life that they have not been free to choose themselves.

-I have been forced to test it myself. However, this experience also gives me a chance to compare theory and practice, he says.