W. Sudan rebels ask U.S. for assistance
By DINA TEMPLE, The New York Sun
NORTH DARFUR, Sudan, May 12, 2004 — Racing across the desert in a Toyota Land Cruiser, the Justice and Equality Movement rebel corps looks much like any other rag-tag African militia: all dark glasses, antique-looking guns, and bravado.
But meet with their leaders under the trees of their base camp and a whole different picture emerges: The leadership is a group of thoughtful members of western Sudan’s intellectual community – professors, engineers, and other professionals who have become full-time soldiers to protect their people from genocide.
They laid out their agenda yesterday, inviting a reporter and a photographer from The New York Sun to their headquarters in the desert plains of Al Faisir, in north Darfur, the first journalists to visit the camp or meet with nearly all of its top leadership.
“We need to get our message out,” JEM’s vice secretary-general, Mohammed Saleh Hamid, said. “We need help from the United States to stop Khartoum from killing our people and help us create democracy in Sudan. If they provide the ammunition, we’ll change the government in Khartoum.”
It would be a tempting offer.
The president, Omar el-Bashir, was an early and enthusiastic sponsor of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terror network, and the Bush administration has been working hard to ensure that the relationship between Sudan and terrorists doesn’t grow.
JEM officials said their focus on bringing democracy would end terrorist networks working through Sudan and make the country a stable part of the region.
Rebels in Sudan don’t want to divide Sudan, or make Darfur autonomous or independent.
Instead, they said, they advocate unity within Sudan. They want free elections, the right to practice religion freely, and to “widen the pool of those who rule the country.”
For years, the Arab-led government in the capital had marginalized black Africans in the hinterlands of Sudan.
In spite of Sudan’s newly discovered oil reserves, money flowing into the national treasury never seemed to make it to the western province of Darfur or to other regions outside the nation’s central and northern provinces.
Schools outside Mr. el-Bashir’s power base suffered. Few areas had electricity and running water, and while Darfur was home to over 6 million people, its representation in the nation’s rubberstamp Parliament was inconsequential.
When rebel groups like the Sudan Liberation Army, the nation’s largest group with 13,000 members, and JEM – which has about 8,000 in its ranks – began attacking government targets to show they were serious about change, the president provided a brutal reply.
Sudan air force planes bombed villages in Darfur. The government made an alliance with an Arab nomadic tribe known as the Janjaweed and had them drive Darfur’s black Africans out of the region.
While the government of Sudan has said it is just responding to rebel attacks, when pressed they have also admitted that they have ties to the Janjaweed and have been aiding them as they fight rebels who are attacking the government.
The JEM leadership said it has a government list that chronicles the el-Bashir administration’s munitions shipments to the Janjaweed.
The list was in Arabic and was shown to a reporter of the Sun, who could not confirm its authenticity. The JEM said it would release the list to human rights groups.
Regardless of the list’s authenticity, there is little question that Mr. el-Bashir has been working hand-in-glove with the Janjaweed.
The nomadic tribe would not have air force planes at its disposal if the government did not back it. Witnesses have also said the army and Janjaweed “arrive and leave together” when they raze Darfur villages.
Their effort to ethnically cleanse Darfur of its black Africans has been effective. A floating population numbering more than a million is drifting back and forth across the border between Sudan and Chad. Human rights officials say that more than 1,000 black Africans are dying a day in the violence.
American officials estimate that between 10,000 and 30,000 people have been killed over the last 12 months. JEM officials said the number is closer to 1 million.
“That is just a numbers game,” one of the JEM leaders, Bahar Nour, told the Sun. “By the time the rains come and malaria and disease sets in, this won’t just be ethnic cleansing, this will be genocide.”
The men who make up JEM have been largely hidden from view. Few details about JEM’s leadership or what it hopes to achieve in fighting the Khartoum government have been released.
The group has been linked, for example, to Hassan el-Turabi, a backer of Mr. bin Laden’s. They claim that is misinformation from the Khartoum government. Mr. el-Tarabi fired one of the organization’s key leaders in the 1990s, and they equate Mr. el-Tarabi with everything that is wrong with Sudan’s government.
“He was part of the government that was marginalizing the outskirts of Sudan,” said the vice secretary general, Mr. Mohammed. “Sudan became a terrorist state at a time when el-Tarabi was in power. We deny his thinking. We want to establish a new Sudan. That was the old Sudan.”
All the leaders applauded President Bush’s efforts to bring peace to Sudan. He has been instrumental in forging a cease-fire between Darfur and Khartoum, which began on April 8.
The Khartoum government has been widely accused of breaking the agreement and the Janjaweed have been making daily incursions into Chad, according to local mayors. They have been stealing cattle and killing refugees, the mayors said.
The JEM leaders want America and the European Union to intervene and to set up a commission to oversee the cease-fire. They have about two weeks to do so, before the accord expires. If they don’t, the JEM leaders said, the fighting will resume.