Survivors describe massacres committed by Sudanese Army, militiamen in Darfur
By Julie Flint , the Daily Star
DARFUR, Sudan, April 27, 2004 — It was past midnight when the farmer finally reached his home village of Deleig in the Wadi Saleh region of central Darfur, having crawled for hours under cover of darkness. Covered in blood from head to foot and near fatally wounded from a bullet in the neck, he related how he was the sole survivor of 72 unarmed African men who had been trucked away for summary execution by a joint force of government soldiers and Arab militiamen.
“They drove us in army trucks and cars to a valley 2 kilometers south of Deleig,” he told a neighbor. “Then they lined us up, made us kneel down and bend our heads – and shot us from behind. I was left for dead.”
On that same day, March 5, another 65 men belonging to the Fur tribe were massacred by a similar government-militia force in the Mugjir area east of Deleig. Nine Fur chiefs who had been arrested a week earlier were shot dead in prisons in Mugjir and Garsila, near Deleig. Word of their deaths came from relatives who collected their bodies for burial.
“People woke up that day – it was a Friday – to find the whole area surrounded by government soldiers and Janjaweed,” the mounted Arab militia that is now conducting joint operations with the regular army in Darfur, said Abdel-Aziz, neighbor of the massacre survivor.
“Dozens of villages around Deleig have been burned by the government and many people had fled to Wadi Saleh. The government and Janjaweed came and asked men aged between 20 and 60 where they came from. If they were displaced they took them to the police station.
“South of Wadi Saleh there is a hill and near that hill a valley. They killed 71 men there that evening … It happened in Mugjur just like it happened in Deleig. They took them to the hills and killed them there.”
Darfur, Sudan’s western-most region, bordering Chad, is one of the country’s most neglected and inaccessible areas, closed to all but a few relief agencies and almost always out of bounds to journalists.
But access has never been so difficult – nor so critical – as in the 15 months since the settled African tribes who form a majority in Darfur took up arms, under the banner of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), to protest the region’s marginalization and the government’s failure to protect African farmers from punitive raids by Arab nomads forced south by drought and desertification.
The government’s swift and bloody crackdown – first against the SLA and then, in the face of unexpectedly strong opposition, against civilians from the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes – reflects the unique importance of the SLA rebellion within Sudan. For Darfur, unlike southern Sudan, is overwhelmingly Muslim – dramatic proof of Muslim opposition to the country’s Islamist rulers and a possible example for other marginalized groups within the all-important Muslim north.
The reasons for the mass executions in Wadi Saleh, one of the gateways to the SLA’s headquarters in the Jebel Marra Mountains, can only be guessed at since there was no judicial process and the Janjaweed enjoy complete impunity in Darfur.
An attack on government troops in the Mugjir area on Feb. 1 suggests that the massacre there may have been collective punishment for an attack that the SLA says killed more than 100 soldiers. Taken as a whole, however, the 145 killings appear to acknowledge the fact that the backbone of the SLA’s fighting force is composed not of “thieves and robbers,” as the government claims, but of displaced farmers driven off their land by a scorched-earth campaign that threatens to create an Arab Darfur.
The village of Tullus west of Wadi Saleh is one of many burned villages that is already occupied by Janjaweed Arabs. After attacking the village in February, soldiers and Janjaweed chased women and children into a valley and shot them in cold blood as they attempted to hide behind rocks and trees.
“They said: ‘You are dogs! We will drive you off this land!'” said Salma Zakariah Hassan, 19, who escaped unscathed.
“They told me: ‘You are a rebel and the son of rebels!'” said Hussein Daafallah, 12, who was shot three times – in the face, arm and leg. The child saw three friends aged between 7 and 11 fall wounded beside him, but does not know whether they lived or died. That, he explains, is why he is crying; not because of his disfigured face, shattered elbow and swollen, infected leg.
In the absence of monitors, a 45-day “humanitarian” cease-fire agreed in the Chadian capital, Ndjamena, on April 11 is a cease-fire in name only. The UN estimates that more than 1 million Darfurians – roughly a fifth of the total population – are already displaced, many of them in camps and settlements in which the Janjaweed maraud with impunity. More than 100,000 others have fled into Chad, where most survive only by begging.
UN human rights investigators have accused the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed of unleashing a “reign of terror” in Darfur, using the same tactics used in the war in the South – ethnic militias, scorched earth and refusal of humanitarian access.
The US Agency for International Development warned recently that 350,000 war-affected Darfurians could die within the next 12 months unless the Sudanese government breaks with past practice and grants full and immediate humanitarian access.
Given the lack of access to Darfur, the number of dead can only be guessed at. But 25 days’ research in Darfur and among refugees indicates that massacres of up to 80 civilians are not uncommon -and are almost always the result of coordinated government-militia action.
“They come together, fight together and leave together,” said Abdullah Mohammed Hussein, headman of Terbeba village where 31 people died on Feb 15.
“The Janjaweed wear the same uniforms as the army and carry the same weapons. The government trusts the (all-Arab) Janjaweed more than it trusts the army.”
Despite the enormity of human tragedy unfolding unseen in Darfur, the UN Commission on Human Rights failed to adopt a robust condemnation of the atrocities there on the last day of its 60th session on Friday.
“The role of the European Union … was very disappointing,” says Jemera Rone, Sudan researcher of Human Rights Watch. “They voted for the watered-down resolution which did not condemn the crimes against humanity going on in Darfur. They also voted to adjourn before a vote was taken on a much tougher resolution. Honduras – a very small, thinly populated country in Central America – did much more for human rights in Sudan than the entire European Union when it voted not to adjourn before the issue was given the serious attention it deserves.”
Recalling the words of the 18th century Whig politician Edmund Burke: “It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph” – the head of the US delegation to the Commission called for a special session to “hold accountable those responsible for the deplorable acts in Darfur.”
“After World War II, the world said ‘never again,'” US Alternate Representative to the UN for Special Political Affairs Richard Williamson said. “Then came Cambodia where the ‘killing fields’ were awash in blood. Ten years ago in Rwanda, evil reigned … Then came ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo.
“We cannot fail as we have before. ‘Never Again’ must be more than mere words or an idle promise.”
Julie Flint is the author of a forthcoming Human Rights Watch report on Darfur