• English Site
• >SPIEGEL Magazine
• >Sudan
• >

  Sudan: Chronicle of a Massacre Foretold

Sudan Chronicle of a Massacre Foretold

By Thilo Thielke

Part 2: NEXT PAGE: The Killing Continues as the World Watches

Sheik Dawudalbeit Abdulbanat stands in the town's ruins. His white robe and cap slowly darken from the ashes constantly being stirred up by the wind. Two years ago, says the poker-faced cleric, government troops armed Arabs from the Massiriya tribe and ordered them to "kill the slaves."

A month before the attack on Khor Abeche, says Abdulbanat, an African Union helicopter suddenly arrived in town, producing enough noise upon landing to drive away a horde of terrified children. An AU observer who emerged from the helicopter told local officials that the Massiriya were planning something horrible, and that they were accusing the locals of cattle theft and were preparing to attack Khor Abeche in retaliation. The AU official reported that Massiriya militia were assembling at government barracks in the village of Niteago, only seven kilometers to the south.

But the uniformed emissary also warned that it would be up to the townspeople to defend themselves. The AU, he said, had no protective mandate, and its soldiers are merely observers of a cease-fire that was never put in place. His advice to the inhabitants of Khor Abeche, who have little understanding of the intricacies of intervention law: "Ask the SLA rebels for help."

They followed his advice and, for a time, a few militaristic-looking adolescents actually patrolled the streets of the town, carrying rusted Kalashnikovs and wearing turbans at rakish angles and amulets to protect them from enemy fire. But after 20 days the SLA band withdrew. The people of Khor Abeche saw the AU helicopter one more time before the massacre, but only from a distance. Then came the killers, and the African Union's observers only had the courage to return to Khor Abeche the next day, when they took a few photographs and disappeared as hastily as they had arrived.

On May 5, almost a month after the massacre, a few dozen Nigerian AU soldiers pitched their tents near the ruins. Since then, they've been guarding little more than themselves, and have only left their camp in search of liquor and women.

The African Union and the United Nations issued a joint press release about the massacre, in which they condemn, "with utter shock and disbelief, the relentless daylong attack" on Khor Abeche.

The statement is a worthless piece of paper, especially since it neglects to mention such salient details as the Sudanese government's arming of the Arab militias, the gathering of militia in the army barracks and the fact that Sudanese military aircraft were seen circling the town during the massacre.

What's also missing is an explanation as to why no one stepped in, despite the fact that the Massiriya militia's plans to destroy the town had been known weeks in advance. Another issue that no one has addressed is why the AU observers were initially skeptical when they heard the news of Khor Abeche's destruction, even though the attack was reminiscent of hundreds like it in the past. The same Massiriya militants had just razed the nearby village of Hamada in January, killing 119 people, including many children, and raping more than 60 women. SLA rebel Ahmed Adam Suleiman, who discovered the surviving women and helped bury the dead, believes the AU is in cahoots with the Sudanese government. "They know exactly what's going on here," he says, "and they consciously allow it to happen."

"No one here trusts the African Union"

Sixty kilometers to the north, in Dar al-Salam, a rebel leader is holding a meeting. SLA secretary-general Minni Arkou Minawi and his men have moved into the small town. Grim-faced sons of the desert peering from turbans crouch on at least a dozen fully-packed pickup trucks. Others proudly haul automatic weapons and bazookas through the streets and flaunt German G3 assault weapons and Yugoslav-made Kalashnikovs. Their enemies in Khartoum contemptuously call the SLA rebels the "Tora Bora," a reference to ragtag Taliban fighters at terrorist leader Osama bin Laden's heavily bombed Afghan mountain stronghold.

The rebels' loosely-wrapped, sand-colored turbans cover all but their eyes. These young men, many of them teenagers, clearly relish playing the role of hero. The residents of Dar al-Salam ("House of Peace," in Arabic) believe that the presence of these young adventurers can protect them against Arab attackers lurking in nearby camps. Occasionally one of the guerrillas, intoxicated by his own power -- or just drunk on date liquor -- fires a volley of gunshots into the air.

On this day, the town's rebel protectors must do without one of their Chinese-made rocket launchers. The old Toyota on which it was mounted, captured from the Sudanese army, broke down somewhere in the town's desert-like surroundings. Now the rebels in their pickup trucks are parading through cheering crowds in the town's marketplace.

SLA leader Minawi is an aloof, haggard, uncharismatic man. He normally lives in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, far away from the dreary so-called liberated territories, where people have neither power nor roofs over their heads. Today he is trying his hand as a tribune of the people, speaking to an astonished crowd of people who have never experienced anyone quite like him.

"We want 50 percent of Sudanese oil," he shouts into a faltering megaphone. Just before the batteries finally die, he manages to announce that the rebels are relentlessly marching on Khartoum.

These rebels feel strong, now that they've received weapons shipments from abroad and that the central government is coming under growing international pressure. Minawi's rebels control a corridor in northern Darfur that extends from neighboring Chad all the way down to southern Darfur. In western Darfur, they have captured the Marra Mountains, whose peaks range up to about 10,000 feet.

The government garrisons in Fashir, northern Darfur's most important city, are practically surrounded, as are those in the towns of Nyala, Kutum and Mallit. At this point, they can only be re-supplied by air or by heavily guarded convoys. When Khartoum began providing military support to rebel movements in neighboring Chad, the Chad government retaliated by arming the Darfur rebels.

SLA leader Minawi holds the international community partly responsible for the suffering in Darfur. "No one here trusts the African Union," he says, "it's corrupt. I know what these people are like. After all, I'm an African myself." He believes that the AU has no experience in crisis management, and that all it's doing in Darfur is bureaucratically counting corpses. "How many villages were destroyed in full view of the AU?," he asks rhetorically, indignantly adding that hardly anyone knows anymore. It's hypocritical, Minawi says, for the world to turn over responsibility for resolving such a conflict to an incompetent group of nations, adding that apparently no one learned anything from the Srebrenica massacre and the Rwandan genocide.

Under these circumstances, is it any surprise that the rebels refuse to disarm? They feel abandoned by the world and believe they must take their fates into their own hands.

There seems to be no end in sight to what the UN is calling "currently the world's worst humanitarian crisis." Human rights organizations have received reports of the rebels themselves committing crimes, attacking police stations and civilians. According to Human Rights Watch, the rebel movements are "responsible for direct attacks on civil installations, as well as for dead and wounded in the civilian population."

To add to Darfur's woes, the SLA is deeply divided and on the verge of falling apart. The name Darfur means "Land of the Fur." When researcher and adventurer Gustav Nachtigal visited the region in the late 19th century, he wrote that members of the Fur tribe are "of moderate height and coarse-featured; their character is arrogant, irascible and vindictive, and they have a tendency to quarrel and commit acts of violence."

The Darfur region has long been inhabited by a few dozen ethnic groups, and they haven't always lived in harmony. The Fur and Saghawa tribes, for example, clashed as recently as last November. The Fur control the encircled Marra Mountains, the Saghawa the vital corridor in the Chad border region and the Massalit a narrow strip of territory in western Darfur.

It appears that the Saghawa, lead by the secretary-general, are considering starting an internal rebellion against the president of the SLA, Abd al-Wahid, a member of the Fur tribe. Al-Wahid spends most of his time in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, attempting to direct his fighters via satellite mobile phone. Indeed, the Darfur rebels themselves say that they spend up to $300,000 a month on satellite phone charges.

Abd al-Wahid firmly believes in joint victory for the estranged rebel factions. "The government in Khartoum," he says, "is as isolated as the South African Apartheid regime once was. This unifies us."

In fact, the Saghawa seem to be gaining the upper hand in the rebels' fraternal feud, thanks to reinforcements from Chad, whose president, Idriss Déby, is also part of the Saghawa tribe. As a result, Minawi has no lack of self-confidence. "We will not rest," the speaker promises the people of Dar al-Salaam, "until Khartoum falls and the capital is in our hands."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan