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Two Months in Darfur

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from: Jennifer Abrahamson

Men With Guns

Posted Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2004, at 5:36 PM ET

Why and when was the author in Darfur?

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MARLA, South Darfur—Before we drove into the dense bush, I asked a Sudanese colleague the word for "stop" in the Darfuri Arabic dialect. I thought it might be useful since we were the first humanitarian team to enter this swath of rebel-held territory. Young insurgents with jittery nerves and fingers don't like surprises.

It came in handy.

We were the lead car in the aid agency convoy looking for the village of Marla, which had recently fallen under Sudanese Liberation Army control. Rumor had it there were thousands of civilians who had fled to the village after being attacked by government-supported Arab Janjaweed militias. Our team was going to investigate.

The convoy followed the defunct railway line heading south of Nyala, the South Darfur state capital, for two hours before cutting west, deeper into the bush. Soon, there were no signs of vehicle tracks in the sandy terrain, and we encountered only farmers leading donkey-drawn carts, an indication that we'd crossed the invisible border into SLA country.

As we sped on, the thick grass to our left began to sway, though there was no wind. Then, in a matter of seconds, I noticed a dozen or so men running toward us, rocket-propelled grenade launchers bouncing clumsily at their sides.

"Agif, agif, agif!" I yelled to our driver, imploring him to stop.

He slammed on the brakes, and a pickup truck came careening out of the bushes, the letters "SLA" smudged in dirt on its side. The young men waved and, to our relief, seemed to recognize who we were. A top U.N. official in Nyala had contacted the local commander to inform him of our mission in advance. One rebel, no more than 16 or 17 years old and wearing bellbottom jeans with red-painted hems, plucked a Thuraya mobile satellite phone from his pocket. He made a call, apparently to his commander, to make sure it was OK for us to proceed to Marla. He apparently got the green light, and the men all piled into the back of the truck and signaled us to follow.

Nicknamed "Tora Bora," after the al-Qaida and Taliban resistance fighters who holed up in caves in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom, most of the SLA rebels joined the movement after their own villages were attacked and their relatives killed. The scorched earth tactics of the Janjaweed had the opposite effect than they intended. Instead of stamping out the rebellion that was launched by marginalized ethnically African Muslims in early 2003, it worked as an efficient recruiting machine.

The rebels led us down a dirt track, and another vehicle laden with gun-toting men suddenly appeared from nowhere, joining our convoy. Then a third truck materialized. We were on our way.

We drove through the center of Marla, and the rebels waved their fists in the air to celebrate our arrival. Children and adults alike stared blankly as the rarely seen outsiders passed.

Soon we approached a sandy slope littered with hundreds if not thousands of squatter dwellings. After a slightly harrowing journey, we had arrived safely at our destination.

The rebels hopped out of their trucks, leather hijab, or protection, pouches swinging heavily on garlands from their necks. Rooted in West African Islam, they believe the pouches, which contain Quranic verses, protect them from bullets. They stood watch, along with a growing number of the traumatized homeless families. A young rebel with a pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket, who looked to be about 12, scowled intensely at me as I took his photograph. Whip in hand, he was assigned to crowd control. We were introduced to the regional SLA commander, Adam Mukhtar, and his entourage. A camouflage cap perched high atop his head, the imposing commander ushered us to a wide mat shaded by a thatched-roof.

Our large group, composed of staff from the U.N. humanitarian coordinating office, the U.S. Agency for International Development's disaster response team, and several aid agencies—including the French group Action Against Hunger and two American Christian charities, Safe Harbor and Samaritan's Purse—squeezed into the enclosure.

Mukhtar and his men told us that civilians from 20 villages south of the railway line had been driven from their homes by war.

"They were attacked by the Janjaweed and the Sudanese government forces, so they left their homes and came here to be under the protection of the SLA," he claimed. "Really, they are living a very hard life in terms of shelter. The government uses air attacks, and they live under constant threat. Even now, there are still attacks, and they have left their farms because the insecurity is so bad."

He said that fighting between the SLA and the government forces and their militias had caused territory to regularly change hands. Tens of thousands of civilians have been caught in the hostilities; often they are targeted when they're perceived to support the SLA rebels. The African Union troops, who were deployed in Darfur to monitor violations of a cease-fire signed by both sides in May, had been contacted. Nobody had taken action to prevent breaches, he added.

The group told us that this informal camp had been established 55 days before, and now 13,000 people were taking refuge there. They had arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs and were surviving on handouts from the local villagers. But resources and generosity were running thin. They desperately needed food, water, shelter, and medicine.

The United Nations says that, as of Oct. 1, 2004, there were 1.6 million known displaced people in Darfur, like the homeless in Marla, who need vital life-saving assistance. There are another 200,000 living in camps across the border in Chad. The humanitarian community is trying to provide relief for as many of these people as is physically and financially possible. Increasingly, it is pushing farther across the frontlines into rebel territory to reach innocent civilians trapped in a vicious cycle of violence and loss.

Although humanitarian agencies have been reaching incrementally farther into SLA territory to reach civilians, the rebels are nervous about outsiders entering their territory for fear they might be government spies. Nonetheless, the rebels have expressed a desire to help the desperate population and have agreed to work with the international community with a strict set of notification and security procedures.

Still, it is becoming increasingly dangerous for foreigners to work in SLA territory. Last month, two aid workers were killed when their vehicle hit a landmine in an SLA-held area, and in late August a team of U.N. staff was abducted—and released soon thereafter. In the past few weeks, the security situation has deteriorated even further, and many aid staff have been forced to evacuate "no-go" areas where fighting is rife.

After the debriefing, our humanitarian team fanned out across the squatter camp, each assigned to assess the needs of various aid "sectors": water, nutrition, health, sanitation, and shelter. They had to act quickly because this was just the first stop in a long day. Once the assessment was complete, we were heading back across the frontlines to Saniafandu, a half-hour drive away, to assess another community of newly homeless civilians.

As I roamed among the fragile shelters, a white-sleeved arm reached out from beneath the shadows of one matchbox dwelling and summoned me closer.

The old man pointed to the five inhabitants languishing in the tiny space. One 28-year-old woman called Hawa, her rib cage protruding from her chest, sat vacant-eyed with a listless and shrunken baby in her lap. A 2-year-old girl lay asleep in the dirt beside her. The mother pleaded, touching her empty breasts. Although I did not understand the words, the message rang loud and clear: "We are starving."

I flagged down a Sudanese nutritionist working for Action Against Hunger. He whipped out a plastic measuring stick and wrapped it around the little girl's arm. Swarms of mothers materialized, each cradling young children with undersized limbs. The nutritionist rapidly jotted down ages and measurements.

The team reconvened and prepared to depart for Saniafandu, filled notebooks in hand. The SLA foot soldiers quickly scrambled back into their trucks and drove away. The scowling boy smiled broadly, giggling, and waved at me as they disappeared back into the brush.

In Saniafandu, a few slow-moving, stone-faced government soldiers with tight, short haircuts greeted us as we rolled into town. A military vehicle, its rearview mirror dangling with purple plastic flowers (Darfuris adorn everything including horses, bicycles, and cars with these flowers), arrived soon after. After a short discussion, they assigned a plainclothes security official to my vehicle. He got in beside me. We were soon in front of another crowd of homeless civilians affected by the same violence as their neighbors now under the care of the SLA.

A buzzing crowd of turbaned sheiks and other men gathered under the shade of a giant tree to tell the visitors what they needed. First, water, they said. Then food, medicine, and shelter. Women and children dressed in disintegrating clothes gathered around the tree to watch.

While discussions were under way, Ismail Mohamed, his eyes hiding behind large wine-tinted sunglasses, carefully unfolded a piece of paper and presented it to me. Dated 25 Sept., 2004, its lines were filled with jagged English words which read in part:

To our friends abroad, to help me … I came here a month [ago] from Umm Boum village because [Janjaweed] attacked our village and killed many men and also took all things [from our] homes [even] our clothes. We ran away from our village until we arrived here."

Like Hawa in Marla, Ismail claims he fled attacks that swept through villages south of the railway line. A primary school teacher, he'd watched his classrooms burned to the ground. In his letter to the visiting assessment team, he begged for a job.

The skeiks explained that fighting had been raging between the SLA and government forces in the areas to the south for months and that the Janjaweed had ravaged their villages, destroying everything in sight.

"There were bodies, I don't know the number, but there were many, many," the teacher explained in halting English. "Even the clothes I am wearing were donated by a friend in the village here. We took nothing with us, no luggage, it was all burned in the fire. From the foreigners, we need food, medicine, tents, and water."

Under pressure to return to Nyala before sunset, the assessment team gathered what information it could, gave the residents a small supply of soap, and piled back into their convoy.

As I said goodbye, Ismail asked that we return soon with help. He neatly folded the letter, gripped it tightly in his hand, and turned to walk away.

dispatches
entries
1234
from: Jennifer Abrahamson

Men With Guns

Posted Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2004, at 5:36 PM ET
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Jennifer Abrahamson, a freelance writer based in Johannesburg, South Africa, spent two months in Sudan helping to set up a public information/press office for the humanitarian wing of the United Nations.
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