For a decade and a half, Jan Grarup has documented the lives of people caught up in conflicts from Bosnia to Darfur. His photographic portfolio includes the nightmare of Rwanda in 1994, when Hutus found ever more creative and hideous ways of slaughtering Tutsis. Given that CV, you could be forgiven for imagining a hardened individual, a thick-skinned photojournalist. But when he talks of the current crisis in Chad, the 38-year-old Dane expresses unmitigated shock. "The conflict in Sudan has spread over the border into Chad," he says, "and what's happening is basically the same as in Darfur: the Janjaweed, the Arab militias, are forcing the villagers out of the area; they attack villages and burn them to the ground. What I've experienced in Darfur and Chad is like Rwanda all over again, only in slow motion. Women are gang-raped, men have their eyes taken out by bayonets or they're thrown onto big fires... After the Rwandan genocide we all looked at each other and said, 'Hey, listen, we cannot let this happen ever again.' And voilà! This is happening right now." According to a United Nations estimate, more than 100,000 people have been made homeless in Chad in the past year. These 'IDPs' (internally displaced persons) combine with Sudanese refugees to create a growing challenge for aid workers. It is the displaced that are the main protagonists in the photographs of Chad seen here.

The displaced are pawns in a bitter conflict between the presidents of Sudan and Chad — Omar al-Beshir and Idriss Deby, respectively — says Grarup. "Al-Beshir has an interest in eastern Chad because it has been used as a base for rebels against the Sudanese government. And now Deby has lost control over this area, because he is now under pressure from Chadian rebel groups. So al-Beshir has seen it as a way of destabilising Chad and getting rid of the rebel bases there." Grarup's compassionate photography has won him many awards and the attention of none other than the Dalai Lama, who has written that "Jan Grarup's personal concern for the plight of these people comes through clearly in his photographs, because over and over again I think people will look at them and feel, 'This could happen to me.'" Today, Grarup is due to leave for his fourth trip to Chad, to see how things are progressing. His prognosis is not a hopeful one: "One could argue that we, the international community, still have a chance of stopping this from spreading even more — if we do something now. But it's only a matter of months before there will be anarchy."

Shadowland, a book of photographs by Jan Grarup, published by Politikens Forlag, price £30, is available from www.foto8.com

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