Muslim killing Muslim in Sudan

Salt Lake Tribune/Knight Ridder News Service ^ | Sudarsan Raghavan

[risk]

A refugee from the village of Kailek tends a camp fire in Kas, Sudan. (Sudarsan Raghavan/Knight Ridder)

Muslim killing Muslim in Sudan

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Knight Ridder News Service

    KAILEK, Sudan -- The white-robed men on horseback shot two of Hamid Rahman's boys that scorching afternoon. They were 3 and 6. But they weren't the youngest or the weakest to die. The Arab marauders targeted the blind, the disabled, the women carrying children -- anyone who couldn't run fast enough.
    "They killed even babies," recalled Rahman, 40, a survivor with sad, glassy eyes.
    Here, in the furnace of the Sudan, an ethnic and political war is burning through the barren province of Darfur, mostly killing the helpless. It ignores cease-fires and international condemnation while tossing its survivors into a humanitarian abyss.
    Its roots lie in a long-standing rivalry between nomadic Arab herdsmen and sedentary black African farmers amid a government policy of "Arabization" in a province where many inhabitants are black. At least 10,000 have died and perhaps 1 million have been chased from their huts to neighboring Chad. Andrew Natsios, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, warned Thursday in Geneva that as many as a million may die if aid does not reach them soon.
    Government officials blame the violence on a rebel movement that took up arms 15 months ago seeking economic development for Darfur and a share of political power. They deny reports of atrocities.
    But U.N. officials and human rights groups are using terms such as "ethnic cleansing," "genocide" and "war crimes" to describe what is unfolding.
    Kailek isn't the only place to have suffered in Darfur. But the story, told to a Knight Ridder reporter by its former residents during a rare government-sanctioned trip to the region last week, is one of a murderous rampage and two months of torture, starvation and systematic rape by government-sponsored Arab militias.
    At the heart of the tale is the role of the militias, called janjaweed -- "the men on horses." Across Darfur, they have unleashed their fury on black African tribes linked with rebels.
    According to survivors, hundreds of janjaweed arrived in the Kailek in February. They galloped from village to village, slaughtering hundreds of black Africans, all Muslims like themselves. Truckloads of government soldiers helped them.
    They razed houses, crushed mosques and tore up hundreds of copies of the Quran, Islam's holy book. They whipped women and children, surrounded Kailek and took everyone hostage.
    "It was a concentration camp," said a U.N. official who visited the area in late April. "They were eating, sleeping and dying in their own feces because they weren't allowed to go out."
    There was a method to the violence. Arabs were left alone, survivors said. Some joined the janjaweed to prey on their neighbors.
    Sumia Rahman, 16, and her brother Anwar, 10, fled toward the mountains after they saw their younger brothers die. But their stepmother, Fatima, 30, was caught. She was taken, with dozens of others, to the woods and beaten. Then she was raped.
    "If I was an Arab, they would not have raped me," said Fatima.
    Meanwhile, her husband, Hamid, and several hundred men had fled into the mountains. As he climbed, he heard explosions in the distance. Planes, he realized, were dropping bombs.
    Ten days later, the janjaweed sent representatives to urge them to return to Kailek. They brought along an elder to vouch for their sincerity.
    Without food or medicines, they had no other option. Soldiers, he said, escorted them down the mountain. But in Kailek, they were placed under house arrest, along with an estimated 1,700 other villagers.
    The janjaweed began to execute one or two of the strongest men every day, said survivors. Children died of hunger and thirst, while scores of women endured a living death.
    "In the night, the janjaweed would go into houses and select ladies and take them away to be raped," village elder Adam Muhammed Adam recounted as villagers around him nodded their heads solemnly.
    In early April, aid workers from the Atlanta-based agency CARE received authorization to visit Kailek. They found the plight of the villagers so terrifying that they issued a report and passed it to other relief agencies.
    U.N. officials pressed the government to allow it to visit Kailek, but it refused. The government insisted villagers were free to leave Kailek.
    On April 25, a team of U.N. officials and Western aid workers were finally allowed to visit. They, too, issued a report, only more scathing.
    The U.N. report concluded that the janjaweed were indistinguishable from the police and had imprisoned the villagers. It found that eight to nine children under the age of 5 were dying every day from malnutrition.
    The United Nations also alleged that local security forces were ordered "to prohibit, by any means necessary, any civilian movement out of Kailek." In interviews, survivors made similar allegations.
    Zayat Ahmed Zayat, the regional security chief who oversees Kailek, denied the allegations. The government denied any janjaweed were involved or that it controls them.
    A few days after the report was issued, trucks came to transfer the villagers from Kailek to a refugee camp in Kas, about 40 miles north.
    No one lives in Kailek today. Mud huts, their straw roofs gone, are empty. The red earth is scattered with clothing, broken pots and pans, slippers. The village has fallen silent.
    All the black Africans are gone, except for a handful who collect burned wood to sell in Kas. There, the survivors of Kailek still stare at death each day. The janjaweed are still around. In the past month, men have been murdered when they left the camp. Women have been raped while they fetch firewood, say aid workers.
    "I don't feel safe here," said Sumia Rahman, her face scratched with worry.
    But she is too scared to return home, as the government is urging. "Arabs killed our people. We don't want to go back," she said.

[risk]

ABUSES BY THE GOVERNMENT-JANJAWEED IN WEST DARFUR

Since the SLA attack on Fasher in April 2003, and particularly since the escalation of the conflict in mid-2003, the government of Sudan has pursued a military strategy that has deliberately targeted civilians from the same ethnic groups as the rebels.

Together the government and Arab Janjaweed militias targeted the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa through a combination of indiscriminate and deliberate aerial bombardment, denial of access to humanitarian assistance, and scorched-earth tactics that displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians.10 Government forces also regularly arbitrarily detained and sometimes tortured Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit students, political activists, and other individuals in Darfur and Khartoum suspected of having any allegiance to the rebel movements.

Mass Killings By the Government and Janjaweed

Human Rights Watch’s March-April investigations uncovered large-scale killings in fourteen incidents in Dar Masalit alone in which more than 770 civilians perished between September 2003 and late-February 2004. These are not the only incidents that occurred in Dar Masalit during those six months, but rather those which Human Rights Watch was able to corroborate with testimony from witnesses and other credible sources. Human Rights Watch obtained further information from witnesses to mass executions in the Fur areas of Wadi Salih province in the period from November 2003 through April 2004. Although this information is also far from complete given the difficulty of access to victims living in government-controlled towns and camps for the displaced, it indicates that the attacks on Masalit and Fur villages often follow a similar pattern.

DARFUR DESTROYED - Ethnic Cleansing by Government and Militia Forces in Western Sudan, based on field research by Julie Flint, independent consultant. The report was written by Julie Flint, Jemera Rone and Leslie Lefkow, both researchers in the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch; the latter two provided additional research. It was edited by Jemera Rone and Georgette Gagnon, Deputy Director of the Africa Division. It was also reviewed by James Ross, senior legal advisor, and Iain Levine, program director. Web research, production and coordination assistance was provided by Colin Relihan, associate in the Africa Division.

[HRW Leadership according to ngowatch.org: Kenneth Roth, Executive Director Bruce Rabb, Secretary Jonathon Fanton, Chairman.]

[tkathy]

The question: are all Muslims insane? or are they just made insane by an insane religion?

[risk]

Darfur/Sudan/Janjaweed ping - just saw a watered-down report on this on NPR's "communisim NOW" program. They interviewed Flint, and were careful to avoid the words Islam, Muslim, Islamist, and terrorist. Also, they downplayed the Christian and animist aspects of the killing. There are two wars involved, one involving the north and the south, and the other involving this "extra-judicial" action, according to Flint.

Flint describes the killing as ethnic and not religious in the second action. The Economist reports that two million have died in the north/south conflict.

The north and south of Sudan have made peace after a civil war spanning almost half a century, in which 2m have died and twice as many have been displaced. But a separate conflict in the western region of Darfur still rages—and may destabilise neighbouring countries

[risk]

TK, this is definitely a case of savagry; as to its religious motivations, I don't know that much about it yet. One can see that the Americans are among the few who care. The Arab world is closer, yet they apparently have done little (that I can find) to stop the mass killings.

One interesting aspect of this is the 4GW (4th generation warfare) component. The Arab Janjaweeds ride well-fed horses and camels, and they tote full-auto weapons. It's amazing that this can be happening in the 21st century.

It's a savage world. As archy says, "The darkness will come. It will find you,and it will scare you like you've never been scared before." Will it come? Only if we let it. It's up to us. These people are human beings just like you and me. They don't deserve to die for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think we should do what we can to help.

[Turbo Pig]

I think we should do what we can to help.

There is no political will, or sense of morals, within the US to generate the activity it would take to finish this problem. Also, short of sending in troops, or arming one side or the other, what can be done? Personally, I do not think it is safe to arm either one of the muslim factions, and if we only am the non-muslim side...well you can see to the head-aches that would cause, overseas and home alike.

This is going to sound overly pessimistic. Due to the nature of islam, there will come a day when will will have to face the fact that we will have to choose a side; non-muslim or muslim. Today, though, people in the US, and the west in general, don't have the stomach for it.

[sgtbono2002]

The UN wrote a report, thats about all they are good for. This is the kind of Govt. Kerry wants for the US, when Kerry sees a problem he will write a report for the UN and the UN will write another report and nothing will be done.

Countries who are afraid to go to Iraq are also afraid to go to Africa. The USA is pretty busy right now thanks to our cowardly "Friends", and if the UN doesnt have the US to do their bidding they have no one. The UN is as useless as Teats on a boar hog.

[OldSmaj]

It's Bush's fault.

[risk]

I agree that arming any side that appears better than the other is dangerous. (It's interesting that we have a push for disarmament going on... coincidence to genocide?) I also agree with OldSmaj that Republicans will be blamed, desipite President Bush's condemnation of the atrocities involved with the north/south issue.

The origins of the civil war in the south date back to the 1950s -- FAS

Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA)
Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM)

[Dustbunny]

The question: are all Muslims insane? or are they just made insane by an insane religion?

This is a question I have pondered for many years.

[Gorzaloon]

The question: are all Muslims insane? or are they just made insane by an insane religion?

This is a question I have pondered for many years.

I think of it as a computer virus that is specific for "wetware". Like a virus, its first objective is to propegate. It then corrupts the operating system. There is no cure short of a reformat, or destruction of the hardware.

[hershey]

Greed, power grab, squalor, ignorance, poverty, Islam, Muslim, terrorist, fanatics, stupidity, hypocrisy, racism. Same old same old. All we need is a replay of Clinton on the tarmac with Air Force One idling in the background, telling Rwandans he didn't know anything about genocide. Golly gee. Nobody told him.

[Gurn]

"Muslim killing Muslim in Sudan"

Okay. So what's the problem? It sounds like a very good start of a solution to the world's biggest problem, Islam.

Maybe it's the beginning of a trend. Personally, I hope all billion or so of the savages wipe themselves out. The world would be a much better, safer, more peaceful place.

[neutrino]

Okay. So what's the problem? It sounds like a very good start of a solution to the world's biggest problem, Islam.

I like your thinking!

[hershey]

Some days it's hard for Uncle Sam to just get out of bed in the morning...there's so much to do, and no one even offers to hold his coat. Where does it say we have to solve all the world's ills, and immediately if not sooner. If we intervene in Africa, we're called wicked, racist, imperialist colonialists. If we do nothing, we get the same brickbats. At some point, though, we will have to do something. Think of that ship that carried Jews from Germany, only to be turned away. That's a stain the US will bear to eternity. We can't let that happen again, and I'm not just talking about Jews. I mean any poor, ravaged, oppressed people. At the very least, we'll have to make things happen behind the scene. Maybe at some point, we'll have to take over Mexico, for instance, to save them from themselves. And who was it the other day who complained that we were pushing a free trade zone in the Western Hemisphere? Was it our pal, Europe?

[Dustbunny]

I think of it as a computer virus that is specific for "wetware". Like a virus, its first objective is to propagate. It then corrupts the operating system. There is no cure short of a reformat, or destruction of the hardware.

WOW, excellent, well put hitting the nail right on the head.

[risk]

There's only one problem with that. Reagan reminds us with his "tear down this wall" speech that most human beings want freedom and dignity.

The moral solution is to demonstrate a better way. That includes crushing terrorism at the source, the supply chain, and the front lines -- but doing it carefully. Kind of like the way we won the cold war. I think President Bush is going in the right direction with that. I want us to remain the Shining City on a Hill to the oppressed of the world. Next they'll be wondering if our culture had something to do with why we're doing so well.

Maybe then they'll start looking at what's wrong with theirs. They're going to have to see that their texts are part of the problem. Compare the Medina Charter to the Magna Carta.

It's all about the words.

[protest1]

"The Arab marauders..."

"Its roots lie in a long-standing rivalry between nomadic Arab herdsmen and sedentary black African farmers amid a government policy of "Arabization" in a province where many inhabitants are black.

Kailek isn't the only place to have suffered in Darfur. But the story, told to a Knight Ridder reporter by its former residents during a rare government-sanctioned trip to the region last week, is one of a murderous rampage and two months of torture, starvation and systematic rape by government-sponsored Arab militias. At the heart of the tale is the role of the militias, called janjaweed -- "the men on horses." Across Darfur, they have unleashed their fury on black African tribes linked with rebels. According to survivors, hundreds of janjaweed arrived in the Kailek in February. They galloped from village to village, slaughtering hundreds of black Africans, all Muslims like themselves. Truckloads of government soldiers helped them."

The Arab muslims have always hated and enslaved black Africans who they view as inferior. This is just muslim business as usual.

[R. Scott]

They galloped from village to village, slaughtering hundreds of black Africans, all Muslims like themselves.

Well, yes - but they weren’t slaughtering brother Arabs. I guess only Arabs are “true Muslim brothers”. Arabs have a tradition (even today) of enslaving non-Arabs -even Muslims. The Arabic World is still a tribal culture from the Dawn of Time.

[AmericanChef]

On the one hand, we need to keep the fanatics from populating the entire continent of Africa, and on the other, need to stay focused on the current tasks at hand.

When we said recently we weren't going to swat at flies, I hoped we meant it.

There's plenty of suffering in the world, and we can't take care of all of it. Some new suffering is always there to take its place. We can't spread ourselves out to the breaking point or we'll be completely useless.

[risk]

I'm angling toward shaming western Europe so deeply that they actually get off their manicured toenails and help out in the world instead of criticizing America's efforts to defend western civilization. They need to pass the Marshall Plan on now. It's well past time.