FEAR OF A BLACK HAT:

... And with Darfur’s rebels:
Cynicism is the easy position to take on an African civil war, but for at least one Western observer the SLA really are the guys in white hats (David Pratt, 8/08/04, Sunday Herald)

Since returning in February and again in May this year, [p has hotographer Marcus] Bleasdale been one of the few journalists to spend substantial time with the SLA.

“I am absolutely flabbergasted at the lethargy of the international community in responding to the situation in Darfur. The United Nations should be ashamed of itself,” says Bleasdale angrily.

He argues that agencies like the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other independent aid groups are doing their best with limited resources, but much more should have been done to prevent the conflict and killing from spiralling out of control in the first place.

Almost all the relief agencies are in government-controlled areas, he says; very few if any are in the north, where Bleasdale travelled with the SLA ,which is now the people’s only real line of defence against the marauding Janjaweed.

“The SLA fighters come from all walks of life. The younger and less educated tend to end up as footsoldiers and are formed into small platoons of 15 to 20 in number, using one Toyota Hilux to get around,” he explains.

“There are only seven Hiluxes in the country under SLA control, so the rest of the fighters use horses or camels.”

As well as the footsoldiers, the rebels’ ranks are being filled by well-educated doctors, engineers, teachers and businessmen who have come from Europe, the Sudanese capital Khartoum and neighbouring Chad to join the ranks of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), the political wing of the SLA.

Many have spent time in jail in Khartoum and have had enough of the persecution, but leave their families behind at the mercy of the Sudanese government to join up, says Bleasdale

“One of the main spokesmen for the SLA … call him Mussa [not his real name] … is about 65 and had spent two of the last three years in jail. The authorities had torched his business in Khartoum and harassed his family to such an extent they could no longer survive in the capital.”

Bleasdale insists that the SLA are far more effective than the other rebel group fighting the Janjaweed, the Justice and Equality Movement.

Until recently most of their supplies came from raids on government camps. Many of their vehicles and weapons came from a raid in January on the town of El Fashir, which the government then bombed regularly with MiG and Antonov planes.

“The SLA pride themselves on their ability to advance. They are extremely superstitious and wear lots of ‘gris gris’ [talismans], which are leather medallions filled with fragments of the Koran. These ‘protect’ them from the bullets when they just overrun an objective,” Bleasdale says.

Perhaps the SLA’s most valuable weapon to date, however, is their hearts-and-minds campaign among the many ordinary people targeted by the dreaded Janjaweed.

“There’s a huge level of respect between the SLA and the refugees. They protect towns, and where possible hand out sugar and flour, which they themselves buy and never steal.”

One can be ambivalent about whether there are "good guys," but you have to be anti-Janjaweed.

MORE:
Riding with the Janjaweed: The murderous Janjaweed militias have terrorised millions and killed thousands as they ethnically cleanse Darfur. But who are these itinerant ‘devils on horseback’? And who are their masters? (Fred Bridgland, 8/08/04, Sunday Herald)

[Y]esterday a UN report blamed Sudan’s government for extra-judicial killings, amounting to crimes against humanity.

[Musa Hilal's] militias were authorised by President Omar al-Bashir to burn villages and loot livestock and food on a grand scale. They were also allowed to rape with impunity, according to human rights groups. They are now also busily settling in cleared African villages.

The president enlisted the help of the Janjaweed not just because of Arab kinship but because they are exceptionally hard men. It is far better to have them on your side than against you, says Shaun O’Fahey, who lived among the Darfur Arab nomads and who is now Professor of African History at the University of Bergen, Norway.

“They [the forebears of the Janjaweed] immigrated 12 centuries ago from the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula,’’ says O’Fahey. ‘‘Their hospitality is traditionally Arab. When I went to nomadic encampments I was received as an honoured guest, although conversation was limited, mainly about religion.

“The situation really disintegrated with the decision of the Sudanese prime minister in the mid-1980s, Sadiq al-Mahdi, to give arms to the Arabic-speaking nomads, ostensibly to defend themselves against the Sudan People’s Liberation Army [in far distant southern Sudan]. Nobody was surprised when they began to turn their guns on their African farming neighbours. Conflicts over wells that in earlier times had been settled with spears or mediation became much more intractable in an area awash with guns.”

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 8, 2004 11:36 AM