Reporter's Notebook: Actor Don Cheadle in Sudan

Feb. 9, 2005 -- -- According to the United Nations, nearly 2 million people have been forced from their homes by a campaign of killing and expulsion in the Darfur region of Sudan. The United Nations estimates more than 70,000 people have been killed, 400 villages have been destroyed and 200,000 villagers have fled across the border into Chad.

Watch "Nightline" on Thursday night at 11:35 p.m. ET to see an interview with Paul Rusesabagina.

I was invited to join five members of Congress on a fact-finding mission to see refugees and the way they are forced to live.

Late last month, we traveled with Paul Rusesabagina, the man I portray in the film "Hotel Rwanda," which is about the genocide of 800,000 people in Rwanda more than a decade ago. Rusesabagina used his hotel as an impromptu refugee camp and saved more than 1,000 lives.

I agreed to go to Sudan because I think it would be very disingenuous for me to have been saying all this time since we made the movie, "We can't allow this to go on," and "We have to get involved" -- and I had the opportunity to get involved and didn't.

We entered Sudan from neighboring Chad. Our first stop was a military base belonging to the 53-nation African Union, which is monitoring the activities in Sudan.

A stone's throw from the front gate of the compound was an all-but-abandoned village. An estimated 40,000 people used to live there, but fewer than 200 residents remained. They all fled across the border into Chad because the villagers did not feel safe in Sudan.

We then made a long dusty drive back to Chad to visit a transit camp on the outskirts of a town called Am Nabak. It temporarily houses 16,000 refugees -- many of whom were lined up in rows silently waiting for the delegation to arrive.

To me, it felt like they were put on display. We later learned they had assembled as a sign of respect. Just looking at their faces and looking in their eyes, I was trying to imagine what they had seen. I felt very small -- insignificant and humbled.

Some of the refugees displayed hand-drawn posters illustrating the ground and air attacks that drove them off their land and into this camp.