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  The Black Janjaweed: Sudan's War within a War

The Black Janjaweed Sudan's War within a War

By Thilo Thielke and Volkhard Windfuhr

Part 2: Next page: a tinderbox

David Mozerky's office is in a gleaming white office complex on Nairobi's busy Lenana Road. Mozerky is a Sudan expert with the International Crisis Group and possibly the most accurate chronicler of the disintegration of the Sudanese state.

"If we're not careful, the entire country will blow up in our face," he says. "The bloodshed in Darfur is already expanding into a war with neighboring Chad. And in the East we're concerned about the rebels from the Eastern Front staging a rebellion."

Developments in Sudan are beginning to take on a form that's characteristic of many earlier wars elsewhere on the continent. Fighting initially revolves around recognizable political goals, such as access to land or resources, but then the conflict becomes increasingly splintered. Rebel groups split up and local warlords begin fighting for their own account and in their own interest. The war turns into a purpose unto itself, with peaceful resolution becoming an ever more distant goal.

Sudan's south presents a textbook example. Although the rebels of the southern Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) signed a peace treaty with the government in Khartoum in January 2005, the fighting continues among various militia groups.

Meanwhile, corruption and mismanagement are on the rise in the region. Secession and the rise of a new African dictatorship seems to be in the cards for this region of southern Sudan. The South, whose representatives currently form part of the government in Khartoum, is just as unlikely to help resolve the Darfur crisis as are the countries of the African Union.

Because of the African Union's ineffectiveness, US President George W. Bush has been demanding for weeks now that its mandate be transferred to the United Nations, so that UN peacekeepers can finally put an end to the massacres and ensure that international aid is able to reach the population. The man in charge at the White House has recognized that this is an impossible task, and that it would require "NATO administration" and "probably twice the number of peacekeepers."

But even that wouldn't put a stop to the suffering. Germany's Welthungerhilfe (German Agro Action) is concerned that by November the entire country could face "a severe famine."

But the capital faces an entirely different set of worries. Bush's decision to bring NATO into the discussion, has prompted Khartoum's Islamists to suddenly spring back onto the scene. Darfur will become a "cemetery for the imperialists," says President Omar el-Bashir, who has called for mass demonstrations against the possible deployment of troops under the UN umbrella. The leader of the country's national youth trade union has even announced that his supporters are ready for jihad. A few thousand hardliners, trucked in by the government, occasionally hold demonstrations in front of the presidential palace, waving signs that read: "Death to the foreign soldiers."

It also didn't take global terrorist Osama bin Laden long to issue yet another taped message from his hiding place, calling on Muslims to wage a holy war for Sudan. "All mujahedeen and their supporters, especially in Sudan and on the Arabian Peninsula," should prepare for a long war against the "plundering crusaders in western Sudan," he recently announced in a message broadcast on Arab network Al-Jazeera.

Preparing for the next phase of conflict

Lam Akol was also a rebel once. He has fought the Arabs with the SPLA, but he has also thrown in his lot with government forces. But life has never been as good to Akol as it is today. Sudan's foreign minister since the peace treaty between the North and the South came into effect, his conclusions are nothing short of amazing. Everything, he says, is going according to plan in his realm. Even in Darfur.

The rebels themselves are to blame for violations of the cease-fire in Darfur, he claims. The UN, he adds, will never be allowed into the country, nor will Darfur's inhabitants achieve their own, independent state. Things sounded a little different not too long ago, when the SPLA was urging "its brothers" to wage war against the Arabs, arranging weapons shipments from the South and sending its own soldiers to fight in Darfur. But today southern Sudan's only concern seems to be its own independence, while its leaders are primarily looking to maximize their profits.

Meanwhile, the factions in Darfur are preparing for the next phase of the conflict. The rebel groups that were unable to come to terms with Khartoum are looking for new recruits to beef up their ranks -- and the giant refugee camps just across the border in Chad present an ideal recruiting ground for new combatants.

Bredjing is one of those camps. Only 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the border, the camp sits in the middle of one of the most inhospitable places on earth. The once-white tents of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) have long since become coated with a fine layer of sand. To shield themselves against the unforgiving desert wind, Bredjing's inhabitants have built makeshift enclosures of dried grass and brush, plastic tarps and cardboard boxes.

Mohammed Djuma Mohammed, a village teacher and one of the displaced, has been living in the camp in Chad for the past two years.

On March 18, as he walks his customary route to the schoolyard, a group of young men suddenly block his path. They say that they're from the SLA and that Mohammed is under arrest. They take him to a collection point where more than 200 other men are already cowering on the ground, kept in check by six guards. Two are carrying pistols, while the others wield clubs.

Finally the entire group begins to walk. After an eight-hour forced march, the group arrives in the town of Arkum. Within a short period of time, this method produces 3,716 young recruits. They're counted twice a day, are given meager rations of porridge and are routinely beaten. But the men spend most of their time in training: crawling across the ground, running, standing at attention. At some point they finally realize what their new surroundings mean. "You are now soldiers of the SLA," they're told, "and your commander is Chamis Abdullah Abakr."

But what the new recruits don't know is that Massalit leader Abakr has only recently split off from the rest of the SLA. They're unaware of the fraternal feud among blacks and of the fact that the war against the Arabs has long since morphed into the region's next conflict. But they are terrified. Whenever one of them tries to escape the horrors of the camp, the guards, wielding clubs, quickly drive him back in. The man is thrown into a hole in the ground filled with thorny brush. His screams are heard throughout the night.

Village teacher Mohammed is one of the lucky ones. He and two other men manage to escape the rebel camp after 10 days and return to the Bredjing refugee camp. But their lives are now filled with fear, and they quickly hide whenever even the most harmless pickups rush through the camp, stirring up clouds of dust.

The horror of war has come to Bredjing, but this time it isn't in the form of the apocalyptic mounted militias, the Janjaweed. This time the threat comes from those who claim to be waging war on behalf of those suffering in Darfur.

The Darfur conflict has developed into a war in which everyone is fighting against everyone else. "And this new slaughter," says the "Refugee President" of Bredjing, Jamal al-Din Daud, "has just begun."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan