The janjaweed are back.
| And just where was the Euro Reaction Force? |
They came to the dusty town of Suleia in the Darfur region of Sudan riding horses and camels on market day. Almost everybody was in the bustling square. At the first clatter of automatic gunfire, everyone ran.
The militiamen destroyed the town burning huts, pillaging shops, carrying off any loot they could find and shooting anyone who stood in their way. Asha Abdullah Abakar, wizened and twice widowed, described how she hid in a hut, praying it would not be set on fire.
"I have never been so afraid," she said.
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The attacks by the janjaweed, the fearsome Arab militias, accompanied by government bombers and followed by the Sudanese army, were a return to the tactics that terrorised Darfur in the early, bloodiest stages of the conflict.
Such brutal, three-pronged attacks of this scale involving close coordination of air power, army troops and Arab militias in areas where non-Arab rebel troops have been have rarely been seen in the past few years, when the violence became more episodic and fractured. But they resemble the kinds of campaigns that first captured the world's attention and prompted the Bush administration to call the violence in Darfur genocide.
Aid workers, diplomats and analysts say the return of such attacks is an ominous sign that the fighting in Darfur is entering a new and deadly phase one in which the government is planning a scorched-earth campaign against the rebel groups as efforts to find a negotiated peace founder.
The offensives are aimed at retaking ground gained by a rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement, which has been gathering strength and has close ties to the government of neighbouring Chad.
Government officials say that their strikes have been carefully devised to hit the rebels, not civilians, and that Arab militias were not involved. They said they were aimed at evicting the rebels, partly because they were hijacking aid vehicles and preventing peacekeepers from patrolling the area, problems some aid workers and peacekeepers have confirmed.
"We are simply trying to secure the area from the bandits that are troubling civilians in the area," said Ali al-Sadig, a government spokesman. "There is nothing abnormal about a government doing this."
But residents of the towns said the rebels were long gone by the time the government attacks began, leaving defenceless civilians to flee bombs and guns. Survivors of the attacks described a series of assaults that left dozens dead, turned large sections of towns into hut-shaped circles of ash and scattered tens of thousands of fearful residents, including hundreds of children, who fled classrooms in the middle of a school day and have not yet been reunited with their families.
"My son Ahmed, he ran, but I have not seen him since," said a woman named Aisha as she waited for a sack of sorghum from UN workers in Sirba, one of the towns that was attacked. "I just pray he is still hiding in the bush somewhere and will come back to me."
The UN estimates that the recent fighting forced about 45,000 people to flee their homes in Darfur, which is about the size of France and has a population of about six million people. Some fled to Chad, where they have not been able to reach the safety of refugee camps because of continued bombing along the border. Others have fled to Jebel Moun, a rebel stronghold to the east, and aid workers fear for the safety of about 20,000 people who are in the path of future attacks if the government presses ahead with its offensive and the rebels vow to resist.
Military officials from the peacekeeping force in Darfur said in recent days that the Sudanese military had added nearly a brigade of troops to West Darfur, along with two dozen tanks and armoured vehicles and many heavy weapons.
"You see a build-up from both sides," said Ameerah Haq, the senior UN aid official in Sudan. "Both sides must desist. We have a population that is just being attacked and hit from both sides."
Pressure is mounting on Sudan over Darfur. In January, a long-sought hybrid United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force began working in Darfur, but the Sudanese government's quibbling over which countries the troops should come from and bureaucratic delays have stalled the force's deployment.
Sudan's biggest trading partner and ally, China, has also come under pressure from advocates who have linked the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer to the fighting in Darfur. China has been more publicly critical of the Sudanese government in recent weeks. Sudan has also been trying to improve its relationship with the United States, and last week, President Bush's new special envoy to Sudan, Richard Williamson, visited Darfur and the capital, Khartoum, meeting with President Omar al-Bashir. Any improvement in relations, he said, would be contingent on tangible improvements in the humanitarian situation.
"Since the beginning of the year another 75,000 people in Darfur have been displaced," Williamson said. "That is more than a thousand a day. There are not going to be any changes until that reverses."
Despite the pressure, the government seems determined to fight on, and the most powerful rebel groups the biggest factions of the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudanese Liberation Army have refused to sit down to talks. So the violence continues, tracing a familiar arc as it wears on.
It was five years ago last week that an attack by rebels from non-Arab tribes like the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa seeking greater wealth and autonomy for the neglected and impoverished region of Darfur prompted the Arab-dominated government to marshal Arab militias in the region that ultimately evicted millions from their homes, burning, looting and raping along the way. The campaign effectively pushed many non-Arab people off their land and into vast, squalid camps across Darfur and neighbouring Chad.
Since the conflict started in 2003, at least 200,000 are believed to have died in the violence or sickness and hunger caused by the crisis, with the majority being violent deaths. At the same time, 2.5 million have been displaced.
In recent weeks, bombs dropped from government planes hit Abu Surouj, Sirba, Suleia and other towns in West Darfur; then came janjaweed militiamen, who killed, raped and burned, helping themselves to livestock and grain, furniture and clothing. In one town, the raiders pried the corrugated metal roof off a school, aid workers said. In another, water pumps were destroyed.
"This is the kind of destruction that makes it hard for people to return," said Ted Chaiban, the Unicef representative in Sudan. "People need security. They are totally vulnerable."
In Suleia, only a few hundred residents remained of the 15,000 who lived here. Those left behind were too weak to run and have sought safety near the army camp at the edge of town, sleeping in the open, huddled together for warmth against the frigid night winds.
Sudanese soldiers have promised to protect them from militiamen who still roam the edges of town. They prevented militiamen from stealing sacks of grain delivered by aid groups, residents said.
Adam Adoum Abdullah, a former rebel fighter who joined the Sudanese army as part of a peace deal with one rebel group in 2006, commandeered an army truck to help collect what little food, blankets and bits of shelter remained in the town for those sleeping rough..
"I am ashamed that the janjaweed come with the soldiers," Abdullah said. "What kind of army are we to fight like this? These people, they are suffering. We must help them."
On the internet:
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How the genocide unfolded
February, 2003: Fighting breaks out between rebel groups and government forces after rebel groups say Darfur has been neglected by Khartoum.
December: UN claims government-backed janjaweed militias have launched a fresh round of attacks, burning villages and killing and raping civilians. Tens of thousands of people flee to neighbouring Chad or are forced to live in camps in Darfur. Sudanese government restricts humanitarian aid access to Darfur.
January, 2004: Sudanese planes drop bombs as part of a government bid to crush the insurgency. Refugees report that Arab militias have raided villages. Thousands continue to cross the border into Chad to escape the violence.
April: Ceasefire is signed but violence continues.
July: African Union sends first peacekeeping force to Darfur.
September: US Secretary of State Colin Powell says "genocide has been committed" in Darfur.
March, 2005: UN Security Council approves resolutions to strengthen the arms embargo and prosecute Sudanese war crimes suspects.
May, 2006: Government and one rebel group faction sign peace deal. Two other groups reject the deal. Fighting continues.
August: UN Security Council passes resolution to replace the African Union peacekeeping force with a stronger UN mission. Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, below, refuses to allow UN troops in Darfur.
November: Sudanese President agrees to the deployment of a hybrid UN-African Union peacekeeping force.
April, 2007: Sudan agrees to partial UN peacekeeping assistance but rejects the full 20,000-strong force.
May: Arrest warrants issued for a minister and a janjaweed militia leader suspected of war crimes in Darfur.
July: UN Security Council authorises deployment of a 26,000-strong force for Darfur. Sudan agrees to co-operate with the hybrid peacekeeping force.
November: Demonstrators call for a British teacher to be shot after she allowed pupils to name a teddy bear Mohammed.
January, 2008: UN takes control of Darfur peace force. Government apologises after Sudanese troops fire on a convoy of the UN-African Union peacekeepers.
February: Steven Spielberg resigns as artistic director of Beijing Olympics, accusing China of failing to put sufficient pressure on Sudan to end the "continuing human suffering" in West Darfur.
March: Russia agrees to provide helicopters for UN-African Union peacekeepers. 
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