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August 10, 2004 SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS IN DARFUR'S 21ST-CENTURY POGROM Gethin Chamberlain IT WAS, by all accounts, a massacre. The atrocities committed by the Sudanese -government backed Janjaweed militia against the black African farmers of Darfur have shocked the world, but what happened in the town of Kailek deserves a special place in the annals of the horrors of that conflict. In a land where more than a million people have been driven from their homes and thousands more have been butchered at the behest of their own government, this was one of the darkest moments. What happened in Kailek was nothing short of a 21st-century pogrom. It was about 3pm when the Janjaweed attacked. A large force of the Arab fighters had moved into the area around the town on the border between South and West Darfur, but the people inside were oblivious to the danger. The raiders struck without warning. Adam Hamed Adam, the chief of Kailek, was in his home. A neatly turned-out man in a white turban, with very dark skin and a small moustache and goatee beard turning to grey, he is clad in a cream tunic worn over white trousers. He sits on a low stool in a rough stick shelter in the town of Kass in South Darfur; the sun beats down on the blue plastic sheet stretched over the sticks, providing little respite from the searing heat and less still from the rains which hammer down late in the afternoons now and into the nights. It is the middle of the day, but already the dark thunder clouds are gathering; soon it will start raining again, the water turning the dust to mud, pouring into the shelters built by the 40,000 people who have taken refuge in the town from the Janjaweed who roam the countryside outside with impunity. Surrounded by the remnants of his people, who crowd in from all sides, Adam recounts how they were held in their town for 42 days while the Janjaweed systematically executed their leaders and their young men and took away the women to be raped over and over again. They knew that there had been other attacks, but they had no inkling of what was about to befall them, he says. It was just a normal February day in Kailek. "We had eaten our food and were doing the family chores," he says. "At 3pm we heard bullets and saw about 8,000 men on horses and they shot without asking anything. "Nobody knows why they attacked but we saw the Janjaweed and the government attacking us. The strong people ran to the mountains and the disabled and pregnant women and the old women and the old men were all killed. "After they killed the people they ran on their horses and began to collect the people who had run away. They brought them into the village and surrounded us for 42 days." He draws the shapes of the numbers in the dust on the ground with his finger; a man who has offered to translate his words draws the shape of the numerals, and asks him if it is correct. Adam nods. That first day, he says, 580 people were killed. He draws the shapes of the numbers again. But that was only the start. In the villages around Kailek, the Janjaweed army was on the rampage. They tore through the villages, killing those who were not fast enough to escape, stealing their animals and anything else of value, and setting light to the huts thatched with straw. The survivors, the people of 26 villages, were herded into Kailek like cattle. Outside the town, the Janjaweed paused, encircling them. Then the executions began. "They came and selected the youths and they killed them and then they selected the chiefs and they killed them. Then they found some of their old enemies and they killed those too," Adam says. It was a time for settling old scores. These were two very different peoples; one, the black African farmers, devoting their time to the land: the other, the Janjaweed and the Arab pastoralists, dependent on moving their animals from place to place with the seasons. There had always been disputes, but now the balance of power had been destroyed. The government had given the Janjaweed weapons, using them to take on the rebel groups fighting for some sort of autonomy, for a greater say over their own lives. It was easier that way than sending the army alone; many of the soldiers in Sudan's army come from Darfur, and Khartoum baulked at asking them to kill their own people. But it did find some who were willing to join in, and pilots to fly the Antonov planes and the helicopter gunships that joined in some of the attacks. "The Janjaweed were our neighbours but the government got them to fight against the rebels. They kill every black man," Adam says. That Adam survived the pogrom was a miracle in itself. A Janjaweed soldier fired ten bullets at him; nine missed but one struck him across the forehead. His turban covers the scar; he lifts it to show a ragged shallow groove just below the hairline. "The bullet struck me and I fell down," he says. "There was blood and they thought I was killed." By the time the Janjaweed had rounded everyone up from surrounding villages, there were 17,000 people crammed into Kailek. The villages were set alight, and burned to the ground. The Janjaweed surrounded the town; anyone who wanted to go out had to hand over money. But it was not safe to venture out because there were Janjaweed everywhere. Women were taken away to be raped, men were killed. "The government soldiers left the Janjaweed to govern the area," Adam says. One Janjaweed chief in particular - he spells out his name in the dirt again, Kaummcha - was responsible for ordering most of the killings. "He ordered the people to be killed," he says. The harvest had been burned and there was little food. He runs his fingers through a bowl of some of the grains and beans that they salvaged; they are blackened and charred. Eight or nine children were dying every day from malnutrition and disease, according to the aid agencies. Adam says it was more. More numbers are drawn in the dirt; 380 people killed in executions, 650 children dead from malnutrition and illness, another 671 older people dead from the same causes. The UN knew of the plight of the people in the town; it was mentioned in a report earlier this year. It was only when UN officials said that they intended to visit the town that the siege was broken. The survivors were herded on to trucks, and dumped in Kass. This is their home now, their lives destroyed. Their homes have gone and a people who have farmed the land around the town for centuries have joined the ranks of the world's dispossessed. The rain comes every night now, but the shelters that have become their homes cannot cope with such a volume of water. Most families have only one shelter for as many as 15 people. The floors are covered with insects and water. People are becoming sick because of the rain, Adam says. The only food they get comes from the World Food Programme but it is not enough. People have to sell some of their rations to get money to buy other essentials. The Janjaweed took their animals; sometimes people see the Janjaweed in the market place in the centre of Kass with horses and cows and goats that once belonged to them, but they cannot go to the police to ask for their return. The police are afraid of the Janjaweed, Adam says. None of those jammed into Kass feels safe. Adam says the Janjaweed are still around. He has heard some are joining the army. They are present even in the town, he says. He will never return to his village, he says, unless the government takes the guns from the Janjaweed and peace comes to Darfur. Only then will he return to be a farmer. It is his wish, he says, that foreign soldiers should come to protect the people. He does not trust the Khartoum government to help. There is no sign that they are taking the Janjaweed's guns, he says. Instead, he says that the Janjaweed have been given more guns by the government. He has swapped one prison for another, he says. "We feel we are prisoners here. We feel we are surrounded and we are in a big prison." A couple of days ago the government sent people to him to ask him to tell the people to go home. "They wanted me to say that they should go back," he says. "The security officer came last night and told me to tell them. They told me they didn't want us to stay here." He says the man told him that the government was going to obey the United Nations resolution. "There is pressure on the government to make their face look smart but the people refuse. Even if they say they will kill me I won't go back." The women fear going back, he says, because they are afraid of the men who killed their husbands and violated them. During the 42 days, the Janjaweed would come to the camp to collect women, taking them away to be raped and then sending them back at nightfall. One woman, Fatimah Yousef Mohammed, says she rode back into camp naked on a donkey after she was raped by four men. She is five months pregnant now. She is not the only one. "The babies will stay with us," Adam says. "We don't kill." As the rains beat down, and they cluster inside their feeble shelters, and the water seeps in and soaks their clothes and their bedding and what little food they have, and the children become thinner and more sick, they can only wonder what has become of their lives. They have no glimmer of hope to keep them going. They were farmers; the rain should have been their friend. Now it is their enemy. Outside the town, the Janjaweed roam unfettered. Their soldiers lounge by the roadside, demanding tolls from anyone who tries to pass. Money or death, that is the deal. In the villages where the people now crammed into Kass once lived, new people have moved in, Arab pastoralists who would once have travelled here to graze their animals before moving on again. Now they have taken over the abandoned homes of the people driven out by the gunmen. They always competed with each other for space; now the land is theirs. And in the town, those who were driven from those villages sit and wait for something to happen, for something to change. And each day, a few more lives slip away. This is not living. It is slow death. It is ethnic cleansing. It is the destruction of a people.
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Copyright ©2011 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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