| Gee. Golly. Who'da thunkit? |
They wear uniforms without insignia, travel a rolling countryside of charred and emptied villages on camels, horses or pickup trucks with mounted machine guns, and call themselves "the Quick and the Horrible." International monitors and non-Arab African farmers who accuse them of raping, killing and burning call them something else: Janjaweed. Fighters at this stronghold — visited by journalists Tuesday for the first time since Darfur's war began — belong to the government-allied Arab militia that international monitors blame for the worst atrocities of the 20-month-old war.
The Sudanese government describes its allies in Darfur as militias hastily organized to defend against rebels. The fighters known as Janjaweed, it says, are renegades and bandits, and it has no ties to those men. But international organizations and the victims of the violence say the fighters in Mistiria are the Janjaweed. The fighters in Mistiria said Tuesday they have close ties to the government — in coordination, sympathies and the salaries of about $20 a month they collect. "The government called on us to defend our land, and the tribes responded," said fighter Ina Saleh, a member of the Arab Rizigat tribe, wearing a uniform with no marks or name tag. "We responded, like the other tribes."
| "We defended our land by taking their land! What could be more tribal than that?" |
Mistiria, in northern Darfur, 16 miles west of the town of Kabkabiyeh, is identified by foreign governments and international rights groups as the birthplace of the Janjaweed. In February 2003, Sudan's government sent out a plea for fighters to help combat two non-Arab rebel groups that had taken up arms in western Darfur, the international community says, in accounts backed up by the fighters. Arab tribal leader Musa Hilal, who lived in Mistiria, answered that plea, rallying men of several Arab tribes, training them and arming them, they say. In all, some 2,000 tribal fighters responded to the government call, most from Hilal's tribe, said Omer el Amin, a lawyer in Kabkabiyeh representing Hilal and other men now accused as alleged Janjaweed. In Mistiria, they called themselves the Bloodthirsty Martyrs of Isssssss-lam Border Intelligence Division, and answered to Hilal, el Amin said. |