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June 10, 2004, Scotsman EYEWITNESS TO MURDER Gethin Chamberlain Diplomatic Correspondent HE WAS staring out of the window at the cattle grazing by the wadi near his house in the village in Darfur in western Sudan when he first caught sight of the Janjaweed. The wadi was an important place: people from the neighbouring villages brought their cattle there to drink from its waters. Some of his friends and family were there too, keeping a watchful eye on the animals as they lapped at the water. Some of the Janjaweed were on camels; the others rode horses. He remembers that they did not dismount, but rode hard, firing their guns towards the people and the cattle. The villagers began to run. Inside his house, Abdou Abdallah Ismael scrabbled for his gun. The government in Khartoum allowed every village to keep three or four guns, to fight off the thieves who sometimes came to steal their cattle. But it reserved the most powerful weapons for the Janjaweed, the Arab militia it has decided to back in its attempts to wipe out the black Africans who live in the western part of Sudan, the Darfur region. From inside his house, Abdou could hear the sound of gunfire. Looking out of the window, he recognised the Janjaweed from the uniforms the government had given them. "I took my gun and when I stood up I saw people running away. Some took their cattle and others left their cattle and ran," he says. "I saw a lot of Janjaweed on horses and camels. They were circling the cattle and shooting at people. They killed 13 people. "I was shooting back, and so were some of the others in the village. Some of the Janjaweed were killed too, but the others did not stop." As he fired, Abdou felt a sharp pain in his stomach on the right side of his body. Looking down, he saw that he had been hit. The bullet had cut a hole through the leather belt he was wearing and passed through his body, before exiting through the belt at the back. "I could not move one leg, so I lay down on my side, and after maybe ten minutes some young people came. I can't remember what happened after that. I was out of myself. "Later, people told me a lot of blood had left my body," he added. The others took him to a hospital, where the doctors found that the bullet had missed all his vital organs. Slowly, Abdou began to recover. That was Abdou's first encounter with the Janjaweed. For years, the Janjaweed were of no interest to Khartoum; nomadic shepherds who rode their camels and horses through the poor lands of the west. Now, though, they are useful, and the government has given them arms. The Janjaweed are Sunni Muslims, like the black tribes, but this is not a religious fight. The poor black tribes have long argued for a share of what they feel is theirs, for fair government and a say in their own affairs. Their reward has been marginalisation, and now something far, far worse: genocide. Tens of thousands have been killed, an entire population driven from their homes. Their villages have been razed to the ground. A million people, maybe more, have been displaced. Some 130,000, and perhaps as many as 200,000, have poured over the border into the desperately poor country of Chad to the west. Others have sought refuge in the cities, where their extended families struggle to share with them what little they have. It is not a fair fight; the Sudanese government has sent MiG fighter jets and helicopters to bomb the villages before the Janjaweed ride in to attack. Of course, it denies that it does any such thing, but those who have seen the evidence of the slaughter know better. Day after day, the villages have been destroyed, until there is nothing left. Aid agencies warn of a humanitarian catastrophe, of hundreds of thousands of deaths before the end of the year as hunger and disease take their toll. Facing extermination, the black villagers began to fight back. Many joined the Sudanese Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement. In his village, Abdou became the local leader of the SLA. Abdou is 32 years old. To study for his baccalaureate at the university in Khartoum, he first had to serve his time in the Sudanese army. Afterwards, he returned to his village and married Chowba Habiba Issa Mahatmat, and they settled down to bring up their two children, Allamadjine, a boy, and Islam, a girl. Now, though, their village is gone. Last July, Abdou was in his house with some of his brothers and friends. They were sitting around on the floor, playing jacks. Abdou left them to it. He stood up and walked out of the door, strolling down to the little river close to the house. His wife and children were away, visiting a family member who had been wounded by a bullet. He remembers hearing the shooting start. People were running out of the village. Soldiers were running from house to house, firing at the villagers and setting fire to their homes. The soldiers had arrived in vehicles; they looked like government soldiers, though Abdou could not be sure. He was unarmed; it was a hot summer's day and there had been no sign of danger. Without a weapon, there was nothing he could do. He ran towards the hill near the village, where the other men who had managed to get away from the soldiers were heading. The women and children fled towards the village of Kabir. Up on the hill, the men took cover, and waited. Down below, they could hear the sound of gunfire. The village was on fire. Eventually, the soldiers left, but the men on the hill stayed where they were. For a day, they waited. The following day they decided to go back into the village. It had been burned to the ground. Everything had been burned. All that was left were a few bits of brick and stone. There were bodies lying on the ground, a lot of bodies. Each had a bullet hole in the temple. The soldiers had checked who was dead and who was not dead. They shot everyone on the ground with one bullet in the head. Abdou and the others counted the bodies. The soldiers had killed 72 people, 17 of them in Abdou's house. He was the only one of those who had been inside who had escaped. They dug as many graves as they could and piled in the bodies. In some graves there were more than eight people. "When you go to where my house was now, you can feel the blood there," says Abdou. "The soldiers shoot at the young people, but sometimes they accidentally shoot the old people too. "They take the young girls and some of the children too. They rape the girls and keep the children to do menial tasks. Sometimes they let the girls go, or sometimes they keep them for three or four days. "When I went to Kabir, the girls talked about it. They had been raped, so they talked about it." A little while later, the interior minister, Abdul Rahim Mohammed Hissei, turned up at the village. Abdou says he walked up to the minister and told him what had happened. "'You are the interior minister,' I said to him, 'Why do you let this happen?' I said if this happens again there will be a big problem that they could not resolve." The interior minister left, but a few days later soldiers arrived to round up more of the survivors and to put them in jail. Abdou was asleep outside when they arrived. "When they came they said I had to go with them. I said I wanted to go to get my clothes, and they let me go to get them, but it was dark and I got away. I ran away from them. "When they did not find me, they took my wife and they kept her in jail for 24 hours, and they asked her where I was and she told them, 'You saw him and you let him get away'." The soldiers had taken the children as well. They were sure that this would make Abdou come back, but he believed that they would not hurt a wife and children, so he stayed away. In the end, the soldiers let Chowba and the children go. Abdou found her and sent her away to another village, where the government would not know to find her. A veteran of 30 or more encounters with the Janjaweed and government forces, Abdou now heads the SLA's ceasefire commission. On 8 April this year, the government signed a ceasefire agreement with the SLA, but still the killings go on. Last week, bombs fell on the village of Tabit. Eight people died and 27 were injured. Since 8 April, there have been meetings with the government, but nothing has changed. The Janjaweed continue to kill people and the planes continue to bomb, Abdou says. "We will continue fighting. When we have real democracy in Sudan, these things will change." The rebels vow that they will not give up until the government in Khartoum allows them to be governed by their own leaders, gives them some control over their own lives and ends its attacks on their people. "Until this is changed," says Abdou, "we will continue to fight, to fight, to fight until the last bullet."
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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