Driven to Despair
By Julie Flint, The Parliamentary Brief
Julie Flint sheds light on the little-known Sudan Liberation Army
July 2004 — Two years ago, on August 9, 2002, a Sudanese lawyer called Abdel Wahid Mohamed Ahmed Nour issued an appeal from jail in Darfur that was both personal and political.
It is worth quoting in its entirety, writes Julie Flint, since it forms the basis of the charges on which Darfurian Muslims of African extraction launched a rebellion against Khartoum’s Arabist government six months later. Prefiguring the charges of the international community today, Nour – on his 29th day of detention without charge or even explanation – penned the following:
‘I am making this appeal from my cell in Zalingei Security Forces detention centre. The cell space is 16 square meters and is overcrowded: there are 12 of us in this small room without ventilation or windows?
‘Food is very scarce? I have only one lung and I am diabetic. When I was arrested I was suffering from malaria. The security forces have refused to allow me to see a doctor?
‘I would like also to highlight the suffering of my people, the Fur?The security forces act with virtual immunity, terrorising the Fur people, raiding randomly and arresting people including the elderly and children and detaining them without charge of trial.
‘Many have been subjected to torture. Many Fur men have fled to the mountains to find a safe haven and have left their lands. The Arab tribes attack their lands, looting their properties and stealing their livestock. Many Fur villages have been completely deserted?
‘I call upon the international community and human rights organisations to intervene to free us and protect the people of Darfur from the aggression of the government.’
The appeal went unheeded: with international eyes focused on the oil war in southern Sudan and the beginnings of a north-south peace process, gathering abuses by government forces and Arab militias in Darfur were ignored. As a result, six months later, in February 2003, the Darfur Liberation Army – soon renamed the Sudan Liberation Army – declared a state of armed rebellion in Darfur with Abdel Wahid as its chairman and a member of the Zaghawa tribe, Mani Arkoi Minawi, as its secretary general.
The SLA brought together members of Darfur’s three largest African tribes – the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa – to protect their communities against a 20-year campaign by government-backed militias recruited in Chad and Darfur among groups of Arab extraction. Calling for groups of ‘Arab background’ to join forces with it against a government which used ethnicity as a weapon of war, the SLA announced a platform similar in all key respects to that of the southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. It demanded an end to political and economic marginalisation and separation of religion and state within the framework of ‘a united democratic Sudan’.
A second rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement, emerged within weeks, headed by one-time supporters of former NIF strongman Hassan Turabi. Like the SLA, the JEM demanded greater autonomy for Darfur and changes in an administrative system that was re-ordered in the mid-1990s to favour Arab tribes.
Despite its Islamist links, the JEM has not taken a position on Sharia – Islamic law – and appears to suggest that it would support whatever legal system is chosen by democratic consensus.
Drawing its recruits initially from self-defence units set up in the 1990s to defend African farming communities, the SLA attacked military and government targets with surprising success.
In April 2003, a few hundred SLA fighters attacked and briefly occupied El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, destroying a number of military aircraft and capturing a number of senior air force officers.
In May, they briefly occupied Mellit, the second largest town in Northern Darfur. In July, the International Crisis Group, a respected think tank, said the popular support won by the SLA reflected the fact that ‘unlike most other military forces in Sudan, the SLA has thus far struck exclusively military and government targets and shown respect for civilians’.
Subsequent testimony, however, indicated that the El Fasher attack, although apparently directed at military objectives, resulted in the deaths of numerous civilians as well as military personnel. The exact truth of this attack, and others, will not be ascertained while the Government of Sudan continues to refuse visas for human rights researchers.
In succeeding months, as the government and its Janjaweed allies stood accused of committing crimes against humanity in Darfur, government officials and Arab groups in Darfur began accusing the SLA of targeting civilians and using them as human shields.
Amnesty International asked the Sudanese authorities for detailed information about the alleged abuses, but reported in February that it had not received a response which included specific examples.
Amnesty said it had received very little information regarding killings of civilians by the armed opposition, but cautioned that ‘after taking control of some towns and villages it (the armed opposition) seems to have failed to take basic precautions to limit the effects on civilians of attacks by the government and government-aligned forces. Such precautions include ensuring that military objectives are not located close to densely populated areas.’
Reports of looting, abductions and attacks against civilians in some parts of Darfur suggested a possible deterioration of discipline within the SLA. But most of the allegations remained unsubstantiated – in part because of a necessary focus on the egregious abuses of the government and Janjaweed; in part because of the government’s refusal of access.
In 25 days with SLA forces in the Masalit region of Darfur in March and April 2004, this writer found a marked absence of many of the abuses that have sullied the SPLA’s record and reputation in southern Sudan. There was no evidence either of the use of child soldiers – the youngest rebel I encountered was 19 – or of forced recruitment.
The Masalit commander, Khamis Abdullah Abaker, admitted that neither were needed given the number of displaced offering themselves to the SLA, but said he rejected both on principle.
The bulk of the Masalit soldiery was composed of farmers burned out of their homes, with a smattering of professionals, former government soldiers and members of the police force who joined the SLA after their villages were attacked by the very government they served.
Masalit civilians insisted that SLA positions were many miles away from their villages – one reason, they said, for the ease with which they had been displaced.
Negotiations for a humanitarian ceasefire early in 2004 highlighted the rebels’ lack of political nous at the end of a year dominated by the roller-coaster destruction of Darfur – a weakness that some analysts believe increases their vulnerability to manipulation by other, longer-established opposition movements.
Most critically, the ceasefire agreement they signed failed explicitly to require the government to disarm the Janjaweed militias, main engine of the destruction of Darfur.
A subsequent ‘political agreement’ signed by government and rebel representatives in N’djamena was repudiated by the rebel leaderships in Darfur, which said their representatives at the negotiations had not been authorised to negotiate with the government on political issues.
Julie Flint is a freelance journalist and has published widely on Sudan. She recently testified on Darfur to Congress.