Darfur rebel commander wants investment, democracy
By Opheera McDoom
REBEL-HELD DARFUR, Sudan, Sept 18 (Reuters) – Development, investment and democracy are the goals of the rebels in western Sudan’s vast Darfur region, according to their commander Salah Bob, his headwrap blowing in the desert wind as he speaks.
“We are fighting for our rights, for democracy,” said Bob, who drives a rusted, roofless old jeep which jolts over the stretches of red sand dotted with seasonal green shrubs in North Darfur state.
A devout Muslim, his arms are covered with string bracelets attached to leather pouches filled with verses from the Koran, Islam’s holy book. He was given the name Bob after the Jamaican singer Bob Marley because he used to wear similar dreadlocks.
Once a farmer but now commander of Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) forces in this swathe of rebel-controlled territory, Bob told visiting reporters on Saturday that armed resistance to the government began in August 2001, long before the rebellion was formally announced in February last year.
After years of skirmishes over Darfur’s scarce resources between Arab nomads and African farming communities, two rebel groups took up arms accusing Khartoum of arming Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to drive the Africans off their land.
“We are trying to stop genocide, the genocide of the African people,” he said.
Khartoum admits having armed some militias to fight the rebels but denies any link to the Janjaweed, calling them outlaws.
Bob says he was a founder member of the SLA, junior only to two leaders who have been holding peace talks with the government in the Nigerian capital Abuja. The talks ended on Friday with no agreement, but African Union (AU) mediators said more negotiations would be held in a month.
BOYS WITH WEAPONS
In one village of about two dozen mudbrick, straw-topped houses, boys as young as 10 or 11 years old carried arms. Munir Difa’allah is 11, weighed down by an automatic rifle almost as tall as his already wizened body.
He did not speak except to say his name, but others told how his father and mother were killed as the Janjaweed looted and burned his village. He has no family.
Tiny 17-year-old Abakr Ishat, riding in a truck with other weapons-laden youngsters, said he volunteered to join the rebels at the age of 14 when the revolt began. His parents had been displaced by the fighting.
Salah Bob, wearing a ragged Sudanese army uniform, said the SLA’s aims were to get development, investment and democracy to Darfur because the mostly Arab Khartoum government had marginalised the African villagers of the poor west.
He said the last attack on the rebels by the government and the Janjaweed was in a village called Madu, about 120 km (80 miles) away, where nine people had died.
“This was an attack on the village and the SLA forces because we were in the village at the time,” he said.
AU observers of an uneasy truce, reached in April between the two sides, had visited Madu and taken pictures of the bodies and destruction, he said.
The head of the AU mission monitoring the crisis in Darfur has said his team has documented 20 violations of the ceasefire by all sides since they began work a few months ago.
“The government … kills, harasses and enslaves … it is our government chasing us, the Africans, off our land,” Bob said.
He denied that rebels had kidnapped any aid workers or stolen any vehicles, other than those of the government. Aid agencies have said rebels have kidnapped their workers and stolen trucks filled with food and other supplies.