I've recently returned from refugee camps in Chad roughly 28 miles from the Sudanese border, where at least 200,000 Sudanese refugees have fled mass murder in their native Darfur, western Sudan.

In talking with refugees about the events that brought them there, stories from one tent to the next revealed a horror not meant to exist in today's world, of a brutal and deliberate killing that is taking place as I write. Their stories aren't easy to shake as I walk down streets in Washington, where every white bag reminds me of a food distribution, or the site of a blue tarp on a passing pick up truck takes me under the roof of a refugee family.

In one such temporary home, Zinab Gabir Seliman, 35, described the day that she last saw two of her children. According to Zinab and several refugees like her, life as she knew it stopped within minutes --- very strategic minutes. From one village to the next, in a region roughly the size of the United Kingdom, a killing spree unfolded far from worldview:

The Arab janjaweed militia with guns and the worst of intentions came on horseback into their villages unexpectedly --- often on prayer day or market day, when people's animals would be unguarded and free to take, and the community's men would be in a central location and easy to shoot. The militia surrounded the village in what would be a death trap, shooting and killing people indiscriminately as they ran, kidnapping and raping women in the open, and looting, destroying and burning all that once defined a community and its existence. To reinforce the message, Sudanese government airplanes --- at times as many as ten --- covered the sky and destroyed the ground below with bombs and more gunfire.

Fleeing into the surrounding Sahel brush, many Sudanese headed for the Chadian border, where people like Zinab could only hope that family and friends would be waiting --- that they would have made it, too, or, at the very least, that others would know of their fate. Zinab's two sons, ages two and eight, are still unaccounted for.

Roughly one million Sudanese have yet to cross the border and, therefore, are not entitled to rights as refugees as granted by the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. Internally displaced, they remain in makeshift camps within Darfur or hiding in the brush where they are vulnerable to attacks, further isolated from humanitarian assistance.

The situation in Darfur is especially dire given the insecurity and difficulty for aid agencies to establish operations, and the impact of rainy season. This month, the need for food in Darfur warranted an announcement of imminent air drops by the UN's World Food Programme.

But reaching displaced populations in the region will be far more difficult as the rains reach their peak, restricting access to, and movement of, populations in need. The risk of cholera-infested waters, malaria and malnutrition could result in a tragic death toll come December. Even sooner, forced return of uprooted Darfuris by the Sudanese government to destroyed villages could lead them to greater vulnerability or worse, likely generating an influx of refugees across the border --- or further devastation to those who can't make the journey.

Sitting in Kounoungo refugee camp in Chad, Samha Osman Hassan, 22, expressed her longing for any sense of normalcy and justice. Samha was pregnant when her village was attacked; she fled on foot for several days to the border and gave birth to her son in a forest outside the town of Birak.

Perhaps more disturbing, she talked about having returned to her village before coming to the refugee camp. As you can imagine, theirs was a human instinct --- to see what has happened to their homes or to their loved ones who were not found at the border. Having made an arduous escape, Samha and others took the risk to go back --- a journey several days long, walking only at night while being forced to hide under a tree or in a dried riverbed, called a wadi, during the day.

When they arrived to see the remains of their village, they also found the remains of their own. In the dead of night, they grieved silently as they covered family and friends with earth in two mass graves, one meter deep.

These are stories that refugees tell with earnest, wanting the world to know. But Chad and Sudan feel very far away, and when looking out one tent to see thousands more, it was overwhelming to think how this emergency, and these people, will ever get proper attention and justice. Even nature seems against them with the onset of heavy rains.

I keep wondering: When I return to the region, will Zinab and Samha still be there? How will their stories have changed? And, what will they --- and the rest of the world --- be saying about our response today?

I fear what nature, and time, will tell.

Caroline Brennan, Catholic Relief Services communications associate, recently returned from refugee camps along the Chad and Sudan border, where CRS is providing assistance in Farchana, Kounoungo and Touloum. CRS also is providing relief assistance in South and West Darfur, and has been operating in Sudan since 1972.