Sudanese soldiers have no interest in Darfur fighting

By Lydia Polgreen

Oct 17, 2006 (IRIBA, Chad) — Ibrahim Atoum Rahal said he joined the Sudanese Army out of necessity. He had no job and no prospect of getting one, and the military offered a regular paycheck.

But when he was shipped to the front along the Chadian border with Sudan to fight the rebels in Darfur a month ago, he said his heart was not in the fight.

When the rebels attacked on Oct. 7, catching the soldiers as they lolled in the afternoon heat in the middle of the Ramadan fasting season, Rahal, a 26- year-old private, threw down his Kalashnikov rifle and ran.

“I have no interest in fighting this war,” Rahal said in an interview from his hospital bed in this provincial town, his right leg shattered by a rebel bullet. “I just want to go home.”

Rahal is one of about 130 Sudanese soldiers who, through an unusual series of events after a battle between non- Arab rebels resisting the Arab-led government, have ended up being both helped and held in this Chadian town a few dozen kilometers from the Sudanese border.

Interviews with these soldiers provided a rare glimpse into the hidden world of Sudan’s secretive military, revealing a corps of men who are poorly armed, unenthusiastic about their mission and more than willing to surrender rather than stand and fight.

“We don’t have the courage to defeat them,” said John Yotoma, a 38-year-old Sudanese corporal who lay shivering in a hospital tent here, bullet wounds in his arm and groin. “We didn’t have enough ammunition. We just ran away.”

For months Sudan has been building up troops in Darfur, adding thousands of men in key garrison towns, preparing for an assault on the non-Arab rebel groups that refused to sign a peace agreement to end the war in May.

One rebel faction signed, but others have vowed to continue fighting the government and its allied tribal militias, whose brutal counterinsurgency has been called genocide by the Bush administration and many others.

The Sudanese government has vowed to crush the remaining rebel factions, and has forcefully rejected a Security Council resolution authorizing a UN peacekeeping force of more than 20,000 troops and police officers in Darfur to replace an overmatched and under- equipped African Union force.

In August, Sudan made a counterproposal, saying it would use its own troops to quell the uprising. That position was quickly rejected by much of the world, and raised fears that the government was prepared to unleash a brutal assault that could rival or surpass the bloody battles that have killed at least 250,000 people, many from war-related hunger and disease, and pushed 2.5 million from their homes.

But so far, the Sudanese Army seems to have faced mostly humiliating defeat, as it did in the attack near Kariari, a village on the border, on Oct. 7. The International Crisis Group, an independent conflict prevention organization, also says that the government has been taking major losses in the recent fighting.

It is virtually impossible for journalists to speak to soldiers inside Sudan. They are not allowed to give interviews, and foreign journalists who photograph or film them are subject to arrest on serious charges, including espionage.

Yet the Sudanese soldiers here in Iriba, safely across the Chad border, seemed eager to tell their stories and gripe about the tough life they faced on the front, their doubts about the legitimacy of their government’s fight against the rebels in Darfur and their low morale.

They described a rebel assault that caught them totally by surprise.

The attack began on Oct. 7 at around 3 p.m. Listless from fasting for Ramadan, most soldiers were napping or busy preparing the meal that would break the ritual fast at sundown. Rahal said he was cooking soup when he heard the first gunfire, and saw more than 100 pickup trucks with heavy weapons barreling toward the camp.

He grabbed his rifle, taking a position in a nearby trench. He fought for about 20 minutes, he said, until he had emptied his magazine. The soldiers had been running low on ammunition for some time, Rahal and other soldiers said, and they had asked their commanding officer to request more munitions. But during their monthlong stint at the front, the bullets never arrived.

When Rahal found himself facing fire with an empty gun, and decided to flee. “I just dropped it and ran away,” he said.

But he did not get far before he felt a stab in his right calf, then a searing bolt of pain up his thigh. He dropped to the ground and laid still, hoping no one would come to finish him off. When it seemed the coast was clear, he tried to stand up but could not. “I had so much pain in my leg I could not walk,” he said.

So he crawled. Using his forearms, he pulled himself west, toward the Chadian border. Just before dark he was picked up by some Chadian soldiers, he said, who brought him to the border town of Bahai, then shipped him to the hospital in Iriba.

About 40 soldiers were taken to the hospital for treatment and 90 others were taken to the local jail, where they were placed in a guarded courtyard. Their status is unclear. They have been visited by Red Cross officials, but are not prisoners of war or illegal migrants. Unsure of their fate, they wile away their days playing cards and talking.

In the battle, the Sudanese army took heavy casualties, the soldiers here said. No one had time to count the bodies, but of the 750 Sudanese troops that were attacked, as many as half were killed, the soldiers said.

The attitudes and general despondency of the Sudanese troops held here underscore why Sudan, despite its large military, well supplied by arms bought from China with Sudan’s growing oil wealth, has relied primarily on brutal Arab militias to carry out its grim counterinsurgency campaign against the rebels in Darfur.

It was a strategy Sudan perfected in its 20-year civil war in the south, where it used Arab tribal militias as a paramilitary force. The militias terrorized Southern Sudan, razing villages, raping women and kidnapping children. The militias in Darfur, known as the janjaweed, have carried out a similar campaign.

Many of the Sudanese soldiers hoped for a UN force in Darfur soon, contradicting their government’s position.

“We wish the UN would come and take over,” said Waleed Mugammed, a 23-year-old private from the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. “I don’t want to go back to Darfur.”

IRIBA, Chad Ibrahim Atoum Rahal said he joined the Sudanese Army out of necessity. He had no job and no prospect of getting one, and the military offered a regular paycheck.

But when he was shipped to the front along the Chadian border with Sudan to fight the rebels in Darfur a month ago, he said his heart was not in the fight.

When the rebels attacked on Oct. 7, catching the soldiers as they lolled in the afternoon heat in the middle of the Ramadan fasting season, Rahal, a 26- year-old private, threw down his Kalashnikov rifle and ran.

“I have no interest in fighting this war,” Rahal said in an interview from his hospital bed in this provincial town, his right leg shattered by a rebel bullet. “I just want to go home.”

Rahal is one of about 130 Sudanese soldiers who, through an unusual series of events after a battle between non- Arab rebels resisting the Arab-led government, have ended up being both helped and held in this Chadian town a few dozen kilometers from the Sudanese border.

Interviews with these soldiers provided a rare glimpse into the hidden world of Sudan’s secretive military, revealing a corps of men who are poorly armed, unenthusiastic about their mission and more than willing to surrender rather than stand and fight.

“We don’t have the courage to defeat them,” said John Yotoma, a 38-year-old Sudanese corporal who lay shivering in a hospital tent here, bullet wounds in his arm and groin. “We didn’t have enough ammunition. We just ran away.”

For months Sudan has been building up troops in Darfur, adding thousands of men in key garrison towns, preparing for an assault on the non-Arab rebel groups that refused to sign a peace agreement to end the war in May.

One rebel faction signed, but others have vowed to continue fighting the government and its allied tribal militias, whose brutal counterinsurgency has been called genocide by the Bush administration and many others.

The Sudanese government has vowed to crush the remaining rebel factions, and has forcefully rejected a Security Council resolution authorizing a UN peacekeeping force of more than 20,000 troops and police officers in Darfur to replace an overmatched and under- equipped African Union force.

In August, Sudan made a counterproposal, saying it would use its own troops to quell the uprising. That position was quickly rejected by much of the world, and raised fears that the government was prepared to unleash a brutal assault that could rival or surpass the bloody battles that have killed at least 250,000 people, many from war-related hunger and disease, and pushed 2.5 million from their homes.

But so far, the Sudanese Army seems to have faced mostly humiliating defeat, as it did in the attack near Kariari, a village on the border, on Oct. 7. The International Crisis Group, an independent conflict prevention organization, also says that the government has been taking major losses in the recent fighting.

It is virtually impossible for journalists to speak to soldiers inside Sudan. They are not allowed to give interviews, and foreign journalists who photograph or film them are subject to arrest on serious charges, including espionage.

Yet the Sudanese soldiers here in Iriba, safely across the Chad border, seemed eager to tell their stories and gripe about the tough life they faced on the front, their doubts about the legitimacy of their government’s fight against the rebels in Darfur and their low morale.

They described a rebel assault that caught them totally by surprise.

The attack began on Oct. 7 at around 3 p.m. Listless from fasting for Ramadan, most soldiers were napping or busy preparing the meal that would break the ritual fast at sundown. Rahal said he was cooking soup when he heard the first gunfire, and saw more than 100 pickup trucks with heavy weapons barreling toward the camp.

He grabbed his rifle, taking a position in a nearby trench. He fought for about 20 minutes, he said, until he had emptied his magazine. The soldiers had been running low on ammunition for some time, Rahal and other soldiers said, and they had asked their commanding officer to request more munitions. But during their monthlong stint at the front, the bullets never arrived.

When Rahal found himself facing fire with an empty gun, and decided to flee. “I just dropped it and ran away,” he said.

But he did not get far before he felt a stab in his right calf, then a searing bolt of pain up his thigh. He dropped to the ground and laid still, hoping no one would come to finish him off. When it seemed the coast was clear, he tried to stand up but could not. “I had so much pain in my leg I could not walk,” he said.

So he crawled. Using his forearms, he pulled himself west, toward the Chadian border. Just before dark he was picked up by some Chadian soldiers, he said, who brought him to the border town of Bahai, then shipped him to the hospital in Iriba.

About 40 soldiers were taken to the hospital for treatment and 90 others were taken to the local jail, where they were placed in a guarded courtyard. Their status is unclear. They have been visited by Red Cross officials, but are not prisoners of war or illegal migrants. Unsure of their fate, they wile away their days playing cards and talking.

In the battle, the Sudanese army took heavy casualties, the soldiers here said. No one had time to count the bodies, but of the 750 Sudanese troops that were attacked, as many as half were killed, the soldiers said.

The attitudes and general despondency of the Sudanese troops held here underscore why Sudan, despite its large military, well supplied by arms bought from China with Sudan’s growing oil wealth, has relied primarily on brutal Arab militias to carry out its grim counterinsurgency campaign against the rebels in Darfur.

It was a strategy Sudan perfected in its 20-year civil war in the south, where it used Arab tribal militias as a paramilitary force. The militias terrorized Southern Sudan, razing villages, raping women and kidnapping children. The militias in Darfur, known as the janjaweed, have carried out a similar campaign.

Many of the Sudanese soldiers hoped for a UN force in Darfur soon, contradicting their government’s position.

“We wish the UN would come and take over,” said Waleed Mugammed, a 23-year-old private from the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. “I don’t want to go back to Darfur.”

(New York Times)