Darfur’s terrible export

07 June 2006

Peter Oborne reports from the battlefield on the Chad–Sudan border where Janjaweed bandits, armed with AK-47s, grenades and helicopter gunships, are ethnically cleansing local African tribesmen

The SLA has now become President Deby’s second line of defence. We discovered this while spending a week on patrol along the Sudanese border and into Western Darfur with this cheerful militia army, sleeping in their camps, eating their food and enduring their various privations. When hungry they eat anything they can get. They are unpaid. They travel in ancient Toyota pick-up trucks, a machine-gun mounted on top. These trucks broke down on a daily if not hourly basis, and routinely required a push start. About 25 soldiers tend to travel in the back of these pick-ups, along with all their possessions: fuel, rugs to sleep on, if they are lucky a goat or sheep purchased in the local market. On one occasion we found a grenade rattling around on the bottom of the truck. One night when we camped out on the dry river bed that marks the Chad/Sudan border, one young soldier shot himself, it was thought fatally, while playing with his rifle, and badly wounded his comrade. These incidents must be common.

The SLA has enjoyed some military successes, as well as terrible defeats, despite being totally outgunned by the Sudanese government forces who have tanks and helicopter gunships. You can’t help admiring the desperate bravery of the SLA — some 108 of the 3,000-strong group we were attached to had been killed since the start of this year. Without exception, the soldiers I spoke to had signed up because of the murder, rape and dispossession of their own family members within Darfur. When I asked them how long they hoped to stay in the SLA, they replied, ‘Till the day we can return to our own villages.’ Each one I spoke to was utterly opposed to the Abuja peace agreement negotiated while we were inside Chad by Mini Minawi, their nominal leader. I grew fond of this ramshackle militia, taught them cricket in the evenings, and felt sad when we finally parted and I watched them good-naturedly bump and lurch towards their probably hopeless future.