Before Rockets training camp, a refugee camp: Trip to Africa lands pair amid many who fled Darfur (by Tracy McGrady and John Prendegast)

A recent "Houston Chronicle" op-ed...

It all seemed so innocent at first. Last week — just a few weeks before the Rockets training camp begins — we got off a plane in a sleepy town called Goz Beida in the eastern part of Chad, a country in Central Africa that borders the Sudanese region of Darfur. It was during what they call the "rainy season" in that part of the world, so the hills surrounding the town were a deep shade of green.

The first signs that things weren't completely normal in the place [that] we visited were the makeshift huts made out of sticks, mud, and plastic sheets that we saw right outside of town — literally thousands of the flimsy structures.

But it wasn't until we started talking to the people living inside those huts that we had — without realizing it — entered the gates of hell on Earth.

Let us introduce you to Isaac, a young man whom we met sitting on a mat in a humble community center in a refugee camp for people escaping the genocide being committed in Darfur. Genocide is defined as the attempt to destroy a group of people on the basis of their race, ethnicity, or religion. Isaac happens to be from one of the non-Arab ethnic groups [that] the government of Sudan has targeted for extinction. We listened closely to his story [in order] to understand why a government would try to wipe out entire groups of its own people.

Before late 2003, Isaac was a student in a high school in West Darfur. His village wasn't wealthy, but his family lived well, growing all kinds of crops, nurturing large orchards of fruit trees, and raising goats and a few cows. He had heard about a few battles between the Sudan government and some rebel groups based in Darfur, but he was concentrating on his schooling, and hoped [that] it wouldn't disrupt that.

But on Dec. 1, 2003, everything changed.

Isaac had just left a wake at his mosque when his village came under attack. The Sudanese government and their main militia allies known as the Janjaweed, Darfur's version of the Ku Klux Klan, came into town on horseback and trucks, hunting all the males in the village, whether children, adults, or elderly. According to Isaac, at least 150 males were killed that morning, including 42 children[;] the village was looted[;] and most of the houses were burned to the ground. Isaac lost two uncles, two aunts, and two brothers.

Dazed and devastated, the survivors hid in the orchards outside the village. For the next two months, the Janjaweed scouted out their locations and warned them, "If you don't want to turn to ashes, you better leave this place." But for Isaac and the others, "this place" was their home, and they didn't want to leave.

But on Feb. 13, 2004, the Janjaweed and government forces attacked again. Many more were killed, and this time, many of the women who were trying to hide were raped.

It took Isaac and some of his neighbors three months to find their way to the safety of the refugee camp in Chad. There we found him, three years later, trying to make sense of his ordeal.

He told us that the government of Sudan had decided to destroy the communities like Isaac's from which rebels were being recruited, even though no rebels lived in his village. And he said [that] the Janjaweed want their land, so they have to get rid of the people on it. This is why there is an alliance between the government and the Janjaweed to destroy the non-Arab communities of Darfur.

We met dozens of people from both Sudan and Chad with stories like Isaac's. All of them told us that they just want to go home. They said that to get there, three things were necessary: a fair peace deal; a United Nations force to protect them; and punishment for those who drove them from their homes.

The good news is that there has been progress on all three of these recently.

Peace talks begin next month [October]; the United Nations is working to help deploy protection forces both in Darfur and eastern Chad, where we were; and the International Criminal Court, which seeks to punish those who commit genocide or other war crimes, issued its first two indictments against Sudanese-government officials.

Lots more must be done to end the genocidal policies and help people like Isaac go home. U.S. government officials have talked a lot about Darfur, but must do more to support the peace process, the international protection forces, and the prosecution of the perpetrators.

We don't have to send one American soldier — and we can save billions of dollars in future emergency aid — if we just invest now in a peaceful solution to the 21st century's first genocide.

McGrady is the Houston Rockets All-Star forward. Prendegast was director of African Affairs in the Clinton administration.