A never-ending war against black Africans - and South Africa's silence
April 2024
South Africa was not the only state in Africa subjected to a brutal racist dictatorship during the decades of the apartheid regime. Conditions were far worse in Sudan, and they continue now to inflict havoc and destruction on the lives of its black African subjects. The horror continues, day after day.
Contemporary reports such as the one headed "Sudan: Rapid Support Forces commit ethnic killings in Darfur, UN says", published by Africanews on 1 March, have minimal appreciation in South Africa, despite South Africa's own experience of apartheid. There is a shameful narrow-mindedness and self-centredness in a country with South Africa's own history, which was preached to the whole world and received worldwide attention.
Yet next to nothing is known about the carnage and displacement in Sudan among the great majority of South Africa's citizens, and the African Union has failed in its efforts to relieve the horror.
To give some idea about conditions in the most western province in Sudan, Darfur, I have set out below a range of passages from one of the most respected histories of the conflict, a very detailed and thoroughly documented book written by Julie Flint & Alex de Waal, two historians who did their own research in Sudan, from the second edition of their book, Darfur: A New History of a Long War (Zed, London, revised paperback edition 2008).
A grim African reality is that the "long war" against black Africans in Darfur - and in Sudan generally - has now been longer and is even worse than recorded by Flint and de Waal.
It is South Africa's shame and disgrace that ignorance about such a state of horror in a fellow African country continues for so long, among black South Africans in particular.
Please read and come to your own conclusion.
- Paul Trewhela
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Julie Flint & Alex de Waal, Darfur: A New History of a Long War (Zed, London, revised paperback edition 2008)
* "One basic fact remains: non-Arabs have been killed in their hundreds of thousands and driven from their homes in millions: Arabs have not been." (p. x)
* "Documents obtained by the authors refer to [Musa] Hilal as leader - amid - of an Arab supremacist organization called the Tajamu al Arabi, usually translated as the 'Arab Gathering'. ...
" In August 2004, ... Hilal spelled out his objective in a directive from his headquarters in Misteriha, twenty-five miles south west of the garrison town of Kebkabiya: 'Change the demography of Darfur and empty it of African tribes.' The directive was addressed to no fewer than three intelligence services: the Intelligence and Security Department, Military Intelligence and National Security, and the ultra-secret 'Constructive Security' or Amn al Ijabi.
"In the figure of Musa Hilal, criminal impunity merged with Arab supremacism and counter-insurgency, and left in its wake a trail of devastation. ... In the documents obtained by the authors, Hilal made clear that he was doing more than merely combating a rebellion. He was waging 'jihad', 'cleaning our land of ... agents, mercenaries, cowards and outlaws'. Hilal signed himself 'The Mujahid and Sheikh Musa Hilal, Amir of the Swift and Fearsome Forces'. He was a holy warrior, tribal leader and military commander. ...
"The 20,00 men Hilal could reportedy muster at the height of the war were distinguishable from regular troops only by their sandals, turbans and the emblem they wore on their jackets - an armed man on camel-back. The government denied any responsibility for militia abuses, but Musa Hilal claimed Khartoum had command responsibility. 'All the men in the field are led by top army commnders ... These people get their orders from the Western command center and from Khartoum'." (pp.37/38)
"Hilal's messge to recruits in Misteriha was that civilians from the same tribes as the [black African] rebels were the enemy. 'Zurga [blacks] always support the rebels. We should defeat the rebels.' A young Zaghawa who ran away from the camp was told that non-Arabs like him would be sent to fight the rebel soldiers - their ethnic kin - while Arabs would attack villages. 'We are the lords of this land,' the young Arabs in Misteriha told him. 'You blacks don't have any rights here ... We are the original people of this area.'" (p.39)
* "Musa Hilal reported to Khartoum, not to the army generals in al Fasher. 'You are informed that directives have been issued ... to change the demography of Darfur and empty it of African tribes', he wrote in August 2004 to the commander of the Western Area Command, citing orders from President Bashir himself. The means would be burning, looting and killing 'of intellectuals and youths who may join the rebels in fighting'. ...
... Colonel Ahmed Mohamed Haroun ["Indicted by the ICC (International Criminal Court) for crimes against humanity commited in Darfur in 2003-04 in his capacity as Minister of State for the Interior and head of the Darfur Security Desk.", Notes, p.283] "encouraged ... Janjaweed commanders in Mukjar, Wadi Saleh, that since 'the children of the Fur' had becomes rebels, 'all the Fur' had become 'booty'." (pp.128/29)
* "Sexual violence had seldom been seen in Darfur before - and never on anything like the scale that was now unfolding. Investigators later determined:
The rape of individual victims was often multiple, carried out by more than one man, and accompanied by other severe forms of violence, including beating and whipping. In some cases, women were repeatedly raped in public. and in some incidents, women were further berated and called 'slaves' or 'Tora Bora'.".(p.134) [The name Tora Bora (meaning "black cave" in Pushto) comes from a cave complex in eastern Afghanistan, where a fierce battle took place in November/December 2001 between United States forces and the Islamist jihad organisation, al Qaeda, following its attacks on the United States in September 2001. - PT]
* "In Darfur, the first signs of an Arab racist political platform emerged in the early 1980s. ... The notion of Arab superiority had been a feature of northern Sudanese society for centuries, but this was something new. This was militant and inflammatory." (p.49)
* "Suleiman Hassaballa Suleiman is the longest-serving shartai [senior chief] of the [black African] Fur. ... He remembers ... 'the beginning of the process of occupying Fur land'.
I heard the word 'Janjawiid' for the first time in 1987 from the Arabs themselves. Beginning in 1986, under [then President] Sadiq al Mahdi, the government began arming and training Arab tribes against non-Arabs and making conferences with them. ... Their leader is [Omda] Juma Dogolo [the uncle of the Rizeigat General Mohamed Hamdan Dogolo (or Dagalo), known as "Hemedti", the commander of the Rapid Support Forces now controlling most of Sudan - PT]. At the beginning of the 1990s, Dogolo made many attacks against the Fur. There was much rape. ...
" In 1990, Shartai Suleiman sent a letter of complaint about the arming of Arabs to the commissioner of Nyala ... and was detained for eight months. The following year, he was captured by the army. ... Bags of ammunition were put on top of him. He was tied, hanging, to a tree and cursed: 'Slave! Black monkey!' One of his tormentors jumped on his right foot and broke it." (p.67)
* ... Juma Dogolo led the unit that entered Kidingeer on 10 October 2002, and killed thirty civilians including three of Shartai Suleiman Hassaballa's brothers. ... It was now clear that the Arab militia enjoyed complete impunity." (p.70)
* [In 2004] "The first target was Adwa, held by the SLA [Sudan Liberation Army, representing black African communities of mainly Fur and Masalit people]. It had been attacked on 18 March, with six villagers killed, according to one of the sheiks of the area. The November attack was larger, and the villagers counted 126 dead, including thirty-six children. ... AU [African Union] officials interviewed the leader of one of the Rizeigat militias involved in the attack on Adwa, who had dawdled in the village. Mohamed Hamdan 'Hemeti', nephew of Juma Dogolo, who attacked Kidingeer village in Jebel Marra in October 2002, admitted the government-militia alliance: he said the attack had been planned for several months, and that an Antonov [military attack aircraft] and two helicopter gunships were involved. ...
"Government and Janjawiid forces destroyed everything that made life possible." (pp.144/45)
* "In May 2007, Juma Dogolo, an omda [middle-ranking administrative chief] of the Awlad Mansour clan of the Mahariya [Arab tribe], Hemeti's uncle and one of the most abusive militia leaders of South Darfur, issued an ultimatum to the government: unless 500 of his men were put on the state payroll, financial compensation was given for 'soldiers' killed in action, and a nazirate granted to the Mahariya at last, he would cease protecting the Nyala area for the government, and take 1,500 members of the Border Intelligence over to SLA- [led by] Abdel Wahid. ...
"Hemeti never stopped bargaining with the government over the price of loyalty,and was ready to cut a deal with Khartoum at any time, if the right rewards were on offer.." (pp.260,262)
* "On 29 February 2008, Hemeti signed a deal with Khartoum that brought 2,500 of his men into the armed forces, including more than fifty as officers. They also received local governments posts and other rewards." [Note 70, chapter 9, p.306].
* Relating to UNAMID, the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur, "Ayman al Zawahiri, deputy to Osama bin Laden in al Qa'eda, denounced it as another instrument of American imperial occupation of Muslim lands." [al Jazeera News, 1 October 2006]. A year later, bin Laden himself released a videotape in which he called for 'jihad against the crusader invaders ... infidel apostates'." ['Bin Laden Calls for Holy War against Darfur Peacekeepers', Sudan Tribune, 24 October 2007]. (pp. 270-71, 306].
*By 2008, Omar Hassan Ahmad al Bashir had been Sudan's president for nineteen years, longer than any of his predecessors. ...Above all, Bashir was a master of survival. His government had been ostracized and sanctioned for hosting Osama bin Laden and other international jihadists but had held on to power. ... For a decade, Bashir was over-shadowed by Hassan al Turabi, who ran a state within a state, promoted a radical vision of political Islam, and then sought to remove him. ...
"During the years of firestorm, 2003-04, the government's armed forces and militias terrorized Darfurians, causing the deaths of some 200,000 non-combatants, and left millions homeless. The legacy was a torn and fractured society ... ". (pp.274-76)
