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Two Months in Darfur

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Disappearing Act

By Jennifer Abrahamson
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2004, at 3:29 PM ET

Why and when was the author in Darfur?

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A boy from Fireash, a village raided by Janjaweed militias in late AugustFIREASH, North Darfur—The U.N. Land Cruiser carried us south out of town in search of the 3,000 missing people of Bi Sharia. We ended up finding eight or nine of them and considered ourselves lucky.

Soon after leaving El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur where the first major Sudanese Liberation Army assault was launched against the military in April 2003, we approached an empty expanse of rust-colored earth. Small lumps of ashen charcoal were the only sign that thousands of civilians had lived there in a makeshift camp after fleeing violence in their home villages. They hadn't lived there long.

Beginning in late August, an explosion of attacks carried out by the government-supported Arab Janjaweed militias—and in at least one case, by the military itself—surged through several African Muslim villages southeast of El Fasher. This, despite a highly publicized mission in Darfur that week, in which the government tried to prove to the United Nations and ultimately, the Security Council in New York, that it was reining in the murderous militias and improving civilian protection.

Meant to quash the nascent rebellion, the Janjaweed carried out a vicious campaign, leading to today's humanitarian crisis, labeled the worst on the planet by the United Nations. Most of the damage had already been done by August, since the violence began in the spring of 2003, with nearly 2 million people left homeless and living in camps in bordering Chad and within Darfur itself. But while the cameras captured images of smiling dignitaries in El Fasher, just down the road, all hell was starting to break loose again.

Fearing for their lives, the entire population of five villages located some 10 to 15 miles away grabbed a few possessions, mounted their donkeys, and headed for more stable ground. They set up a makeshift camp in a clearing next to Bi Sharia, barely 1 mile south of the El Fasher town limits.

The U.N. humanitarian office in El Fasher was told of their arrival by local authorities. On Sept. 15, a team of aid workers immediately conducted an initial "needs assessment" for the bereft and traumatized families. They had little food, water, or other crucial supplies required for survival. When the aid workers returned on Sept. 23, a week before our visit, nearly all the 3,000 or so "internally displaced persons," or IDPs, had vanished. The only people left were 300 brave souls from Abu Delieg village, some 45 miles away, who refused to leave. They had joined the others in Bi Sharia in September after escaping brutal military and Janjaweed attacks. Despite promises from the government that IDPs would not be forcibly returned to their villages, armed police had appeared with four giant trucks, herded most of the Bi Sharia IDPs into the back, and drove them the short distance home.

After passing Bi Sharia, we found ourselves off-roading in dense African bush. Soon, a brittle village appeared on the horizon. This was Fireash, one of the five villages that Janjaweed militia had attacked a month before. It was a virtual ghost town. We parked in the shade of a giant thorn tree, and my driver, who doubled as my translator, approached a large thatched-roof hut or rakuba. He emerged with a man who was dressed in a tattered white djellibiyah robe and a skullcap. Slowly, a few other men, a tall and beautiful pre-adolescent boy, and one woman materialized from nowhere, and we all gathered on an old woven mat under the shade of the tree.

The tall man, Sheik Ahmed Marajan, was a member of the ethnically African Zaghawa tribe, from which the SLA drew its support. This Zaghawa was a millet farmer not a rebel, however. The leader of Fireash, he began to recount his people's story.

About one month earlier, he told me, the Janjaweed came to their village just after dusk. There were four of them, their faces hidden behind thick turbans. Arriving on foot from the direction of neighboring Umm Gamina village, they carried guns and wore military khakis and boots. In Umm Gamina, about 10 Janjaweed had violently raped a woman and shot a boy.

"When they came, they said to me, 'We are the government, and we've come to tell you something, please collect your people in the center of the village.' I did what they told me to. At first, they said they needed money, but we didn't have any," Marajan explained, the leather-sheathed knife strapped to his arm peeking out from beneath his wide sleeve. "Then they started beating me and many of the men with sticks. After, they went into the houses and began stealing radios, money, clothes, food, and anything they could find. Finally, they loaded up some of our donkeys with the loot and left."

Marajan went to El Fasher for help, but the police said they didn't have enough forces to send anyone to Fireash to protect them. This was the first time Marajan had seen the Janjaweed in their area, though the community knew of their brutal reputation. Not wishing to take any chances, they left the following day for Bi Sharia and slept under the trees next to the police station.

Since they were forced to return to their village, they have been living in limbo. When the police deposited them back in Fireash, they gave them a small amount of food and said they'd come and protect them, but they never showed up. Rather than risk being attacked—or worse—again, they now sleep in the bush or in El Fasher at night, returning to tend their fields, their only source of income, during the day. The six-hour daily commute by donkey is better than the alternative.

After we talked, Marajan and two friends gave me a quick tour of the village. We entered several huts that contained no more than a few broken ceramic pots and remnants of their former lives. Here, they told me, a radio was stolen. From this one, they took 10,000 Sudanese dinars (roughly $40). A dog growled furiously from a thatched cage. I braced myself, ready to run, as the men set him free. But there was little reason for concern. He emerged injured, hopping like a kangaroo. The Janjaweed had shot the animal as they fled Fireash.

The attack on Fireash is consistent with a wider trend of escalated violence, fighting, and insecurity that has seized Darfur. In September, tens of thousands of new IDPs were driven from their homes, either attacked by Janjaweed or caught in the crossfire of the fighting between SLA rebels and government forces, bolstered by their paramilitaries. The farmers of Fireash were not the first—or the last—group of villagers to experience similar attacks.

The forced removal of the Bi Sharia villagers was not an isolated incident. The Washington, D.C., rights group Refugees International, whose researchers I met while in Darfur, last week warned that the government is continuing to forcibly relocate thousands of IDPs, despite the agreement it signed in late August assuring the "voluntary, safe, dignified, and sustainable" return of the homeless to their villages in Darfur. Khartoum is systematically flying in the face of international law.

The 300 villagers from Abu Delieg who remained in Bi Sharia soon moved to Abu Shouk, one of Darfur's largest camps, famous for attracting high-level visitors such as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Visiting the camp a few days later with a Human Rights Watch researcher who'd finally received a government visa and travel permit after months of waiting, the sheik told me that more than 100 soldiers and Janjaweed, backed up by two helicopter gun ships, had destroyed much of Abu Delieg village, which had fallen under the control of the SLA. The villagers refused to return home, telling the police, "We have no village to go back to."

Tensions run high in Zam Zam CampThe day before I visited Fireash, I had met a group of sheiks in the sprawling Zam Zam camp near El Fasher whose story echoed that of Marajan's. Camps such as Zam Zam, which has been designated a police-protected "safe area," are anything but. A few hours after I visited Zam Zam, a group of women traveling back to the camp from the El Fasher market were detained at a military checkpoint for no apparent reason. After nightfall, they were released and subsequently abducted and brutally raped, apparently by Janjaweed. The next day, riots erupted in the camp when traumatized, angry inhabitants attacked the police. Because of the volatility, humanitarian agencies could not enter the camp to provide vital supplies and services.

Marajan had a few parting words for me as we prepared to leave Fireash and return to El Fasher.

"We have a long history here, since the days of Ali Dinar, the leader of El Fasher, our sultan. We don't want to leave the land of our grandfathers, but for our safety, we are left with no other choice. If we go to Abu Shouk Camp or Zam Zam, it's too far for us to come during the day and work our fields, and we will lose everything our ancestors have worked for."