seruriermarshal
06-20-2004, 08:38 AM
Muslim killing Muslim in Sudan
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Jun/06062004/images/nwworld.jpg
A refugee from the village of Kailek tends a camp fire in Kas, Sudan. (Sudarsan Raghavan/Knight Ridder)
By Sudarsan Raghavan
Knight Ridder News Service
KAILEK, Sudan -- The white-robed men on horseback shot two of Hamid Rahman's boys that scorching afternoon. They were 3 and 6. But they weren't the youngest or the weakest to die. The Arab marauders targeted the blind, the disabled, the women carrying children -- anyone who couldn't run fast enough.
"They killed even babies," recalled Rahman, 40, a survivor with sad, glassy eyes.
Here, in the furnace of the Sudan, an ethnic and political war is burning through the barren province of Darfur, mostly killing the helpless. It ignores cease-fires and international condemnation while tossing its survivors into a humanitarian abyss.
Its roots lie in a long-standing rivalry between nomadic Arab herdsmen and sedentary black African farmers amid a government policy of "Arabization" in a province where many inhabitants are black. At least 10,000 have died and perhaps 1 million have been chased from their huts to neighboring Chad. Andrew Natsios, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, warned Thursday in Geneva that as many as a million may die if aid does not reach them soon.
Government officials blame the violence on a rebel movement that took up arms 15 months ago seeking economic development for Darfur and a share of political power. They deny reports of atrocities.
But U.N. officials and human rights groups are using terms such as "ethnic cleansing," "genocide" and "war crimes" to describe what is unfolding.
Kailek isn't the only place to have suffered in Darfur. But the story, told to a Knight Ridder reporter by its former residents during a rare government-sanctioned trip to the region last week, is one of a murderous rampage and two months of torture, starvation and systematic rape by government-sponsored Arab militias.
At the heart of the tale is the role of the militias, called janjaweed -- "the men on horses." Across Darfur, they have unleashed their fury on black African tribes linked with rebels.
According to survivors, hundreds of janjaweed arrived in the Kailek in February. They galloped from village to village, slaughtering hundreds of black Africans, all Muslims like themselves. Truckloads of government soldiers helped them.
They razed houses, crushed mosques and tore up hundreds of copies of the Quran, Islam's holy book. They whipped women and children, surrounded Kailek and took everyone hostage.
"It was a concentration camp," said a U.N. official who visited the area in late April. "They were eating, sleeping and dying in their own feces because they weren't allowed to go out."
There was a method to the violence. Arabs were left alone, survivors said. Some joined the janjaweed to prey on their neighbors.
Sumia Rahman, 16, and her brother Anwar, 10, fled toward the mountains after they saw their younger brothers die. But their stepmother, Fatima, 30, was caught. She was taken, with dozens of others, to the woods and beaten. Then she was raped.
"If I was an Arab, they would not have raped me," said Fatima.
Meanwhile, her husband, Hamid, and several hundred men had fled into the mountains. As he climbed, he heard explosions in the distance. Planes, he realized, were dropping bombs.
Ten days later, the janjaweed sent representatives to urge them to return to Kailek. They brought along an elder to vouch for their sincerity.
Without food or medicines, they had no other option. Soldiers, he said, escorted them down the mountain. But in Kailek, they were placed under house arrest, along with an estimated 1,700 other villagers.
The janjaweed began to execute one or two of the strongest men every day, said survivors. Children died of hunger and thirst, while scores of women endured a living death.
"In the night, the janjaweed would go into houses and select ladies and take them away to be raped," village elder Adam Muhammed Adam recounted as villagers around him nodded their heads solemnly.
In early April, aid workers from the Atlanta-based agency CARE received authorization to visit Kailek. They found the plight of the villagers so terrifying that they issued a report and passed it to other relief agencies.
U.N. officials pressed the government to allow it to visit Kailek, but it refused. The government insisted villagers were free to leave Kailek.
On April 25, a team of U.N. officials and Western aid workers were finally allowed to visit. They, too, issued a report, only more scathing.
The U.N. report concluded that the janjaweed were indistinguishable from the police and had imprisoned the villagers. It found that eight to nine children under the age of 5 were dying every day from malnutrition.
The United Nations also alleged that local security forces were ordered "to prohibit, by any means necessary, any civilian movement out of Kailek." In interviews, survivors made similar allegations.
Zayat Ahmed Zayat, the regional security chief who oversees Kailek, denied the allegations. The government denied any janjaweed were involved or that it controls them.
A few days after the report was issued, trucks came to transfer the villagers from Kailek to a refugee camp in Kas, about 40 miles north.
No one lives in Kailek today. Mud huts, their straw roofs gone, are empty. The red earth is scattered with clothing, broken pots and pans, slippers. The village has fallen silent.
All the black Africans are gone, except for a handful who collect burned wood to sell in Kas. There, the survivors of Kailek still stare at death each day. The janjaweed are still around. In the past month, men have been murdered when they left the camp. Women have been raped while they fetch firewood, say aid workers.
"I don't feel safe here," said Sumia Rahman, her face scratched with worry.
But she is too scared to return home, as the government is urging. "Arabs killed our people. We don't want to go back," she said.
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From (http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Jun/06062004/nation_w/173133.asp)
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Jun/06062004/images/nwworld.jpg
A refugee from the village of Kailek tends a camp fire in Kas, Sudan. (Sudarsan Raghavan/Knight Ridder)
By Sudarsan Raghavan
Knight Ridder News Service
KAILEK, Sudan -- The white-robed men on horseback shot two of Hamid Rahman's boys that scorching afternoon. They were 3 and 6. But they weren't the youngest or the weakest to die. The Arab marauders targeted the blind, the disabled, the women carrying children -- anyone who couldn't run fast enough.
"They killed even babies," recalled Rahman, 40, a survivor with sad, glassy eyes.
Here, in the furnace of the Sudan, an ethnic and political war is burning through the barren province of Darfur, mostly killing the helpless. It ignores cease-fires and international condemnation while tossing its survivors into a humanitarian abyss.
Its roots lie in a long-standing rivalry between nomadic Arab herdsmen and sedentary black African farmers amid a government policy of "Arabization" in a province where many inhabitants are black. At least 10,000 have died and perhaps 1 million have been chased from their huts to neighboring Chad. Andrew Natsios, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, warned Thursday in Geneva that as many as a million may die if aid does not reach them soon.
Government officials blame the violence on a rebel movement that took up arms 15 months ago seeking economic development for Darfur and a share of political power. They deny reports of atrocities.
But U.N. officials and human rights groups are using terms such as "ethnic cleansing," "genocide" and "war crimes" to describe what is unfolding.
Kailek isn't the only place to have suffered in Darfur. But the story, told to a Knight Ridder reporter by its former residents during a rare government-sanctioned trip to the region last week, is one of a murderous rampage and two months of torture, starvation and systematic rape by government-sponsored Arab militias.
At the heart of the tale is the role of the militias, called janjaweed -- "the men on horses." Across Darfur, they have unleashed their fury on black African tribes linked with rebels.
According to survivors, hundreds of janjaweed arrived in the Kailek in February. They galloped from village to village, slaughtering hundreds of black Africans, all Muslims like themselves. Truckloads of government soldiers helped them.
They razed houses, crushed mosques and tore up hundreds of copies of the Quran, Islam's holy book. They whipped women and children, surrounded Kailek and took everyone hostage.
"It was a concentration camp," said a U.N. official who visited the area in late April. "They were eating, sleeping and dying in their own feces because they weren't allowed to go out."
There was a method to the violence. Arabs were left alone, survivors said. Some joined the janjaweed to prey on their neighbors.
Sumia Rahman, 16, and her brother Anwar, 10, fled toward the mountains after they saw their younger brothers die. But their stepmother, Fatima, 30, was caught. She was taken, with dozens of others, to the woods and beaten. Then she was raped.
"If I was an Arab, they would not have raped me," said Fatima.
Meanwhile, her husband, Hamid, and several hundred men had fled into the mountains. As he climbed, he heard explosions in the distance. Planes, he realized, were dropping bombs.
Ten days later, the janjaweed sent representatives to urge them to return to Kailek. They brought along an elder to vouch for their sincerity.
Without food or medicines, they had no other option. Soldiers, he said, escorted them down the mountain. But in Kailek, they were placed under house arrest, along with an estimated 1,700 other villagers.
The janjaweed began to execute one or two of the strongest men every day, said survivors. Children died of hunger and thirst, while scores of women endured a living death.
"In the night, the janjaweed would go into houses and select ladies and take them away to be raped," village elder Adam Muhammed Adam recounted as villagers around him nodded their heads solemnly.
In early April, aid workers from the Atlanta-based agency CARE received authorization to visit Kailek. They found the plight of the villagers so terrifying that they issued a report and passed it to other relief agencies.
U.N. officials pressed the government to allow it to visit Kailek, but it refused. The government insisted villagers were free to leave Kailek.
On April 25, a team of U.N. officials and Western aid workers were finally allowed to visit. They, too, issued a report, only more scathing.
The U.N. report concluded that the janjaweed were indistinguishable from the police and had imprisoned the villagers. It found that eight to nine children under the age of 5 were dying every day from malnutrition.
The United Nations also alleged that local security forces were ordered "to prohibit, by any means necessary, any civilian movement out of Kailek." In interviews, survivors made similar allegations.
Zayat Ahmed Zayat, the regional security chief who oversees Kailek, denied the allegations. The government denied any janjaweed were involved or that it controls them.
A few days after the report was issued, trucks came to transfer the villagers from Kailek to a refugee camp in Kas, about 40 miles north.
No one lives in Kailek today. Mud huts, their straw roofs gone, are empty. The red earth is scattered with clothing, broken pots and pans, slippers. The village has fallen silent.
All the black Africans are gone, except for a handful who collect burned wood to sell in Kas. There, the survivors of Kailek still stare at death each day. The janjaweed are still around. In the past month, men have been murdered when they left the camp. Women have been raped while they fetch firewood, say aid workers.
"I don't feel safe here," said Sumia Rahman, her face scratched with worry.
But she is too scared to return home, as the government is urging. "Arabs killed our people. We don't want to go back," she said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From (http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Jun/06062004/nation_w/173133.asp)