The first genocide of the 21st century, the Darfur genocide has caused the deaths of approximately 400,000 Darfuris, and displaced more than three million people
Darfur Genocide Background
While international attention was focused on negotiating the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and ending the conflict between northern and southern Sudan, another major conflict was beginning in
the western region of Sudan known as Darfur.
In February 2003 (two years before the signing of the CPA), two rebel groups—the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA)—rose up against the Khartoum government claiming
years of inequitable treatment and economic marginalization, among other grievances. The rebellion, led mainly by non-Arab Muslim sedentary tribes, including the Fur and Zaghawa, was orchestrated
against the mainly Arab government.
Instead of directly attacking the rebel forces, the government launched a widespread campaign to “get at the fish by draining the sea”, and targeted non-Arab tribes in the region, regardless of
whether they were civilians or rebel forces.
The government unleashed Arab militias known as the Janjaweed (“evil men on horseback”) to carry out attacks on villages and destroy communities. Janjaweed attacks were notoriously brutal and invoked a
slash a burn policy that included killing and severely injuring the people, burning homes, stealing or burning food and livestock, and poisoning water wells. While these attacks would happen from the
ground, the government would also attack civilians from the sky with indiscriminate aerial bombings wreaking havoc on villages.
In September 2004, President George Bush and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell declared what was happening in Darfur to be genocide.
Ibrahim Harun (62 years old), one of the survivors of the genocidal war in Darfur, told Darfur 24, “I was lying on the bed of sickness, suffering the pain of malaria, so I could hear the cries of the people
of the area, the sounds of bullets and the neighing of horses, and the dust spread throughout the village. I was terrified, however, residents did not know what was happening and where they were going,
so I fled without any warning from the Bandsi area until I reached the village of Jokma al-Sharqiya”, which is about 20 kilometers to the west.
Upon our arrival in Jokma , we found that it had also been attacked and its resident had fled to the area of Mukjar, we saw 6 dead people lying in the middle of the village.
It’s worth noting ,that the areas of Mukjar, bendis and Kajoom witnessed the worth war crimes in the region of Darfur between 2003 and 2007.
After that the international criminal court ICC issued arrest warrant for the then president Omar Albashir, his defense minster Abdelrahim mohamed Husein , State minister of interior Ahmed Haroun and the militia leader Ali Kushyib who orchestrated the massacres himself.
Mohamed Abdallah Abdul Karim, from the village of Jokma al-Sharqiya”, which is located between the localities of Bendasi and Mukjar told Darfur 24, that he fled after his village was set on fire in 2003 and
attacked with six four-wheel drive vehicles and large numbers of horses and camels. We were in Friday prayers during the attack on the village, so a number of our people were killed, and all women,
children, elderly people and men were displaced to separate places.
Some of us fled to the areas of Mukjar, Kalma, Al-Hamidiyah, Garsila, and Deleig and we fled after Kushayb burned our villages.
Genocide and burning of villages
Yaqoub Musa, who is 46 years old, said on the seventeenth of March of the year 2003, the Janjaweed militia led by Ali Kushay attacked our village ,Jokma al-Sharqiya, with bullets of heavy weapons, and they
were on cars, horses and camels. The merciless attackers were killing even children at the age of seven years, in a scene of a fierce war, we did not know the cause of it, so we fled from that hell, because we
were defenseless and the attack on us was with heavy weapons
“I remember that day I was sitting in my house, then the fire was burning and the ammunition was launched from the muzzle of the rifles from all directions. There was no choice but escaping with a group of
men, women and children to the Kaddum area, which is about 15 kilometers away, and there the militias followed us again”Yagoub added.
“Militias set hits on fire while residents were sleeping inside” Musa further added.
The helicopter of Ahmed Haroun
A week after the attack on the village of “Bendasi”, residents were surprised by the landing of a helicopter carrying the Minister of State at the Ministry of Interior, Ahmed Haroun, who later became the second wanted person at the International Criminal Court.
Al-Tayyib Abkar Hasan, a teacher in the primary school , says that Ahmed Haroun got off his plane, and said to the soldiers of Ali Kushayb,” I don’t want see any one here” referring to killing them
all- “and that these people are infidels, and their money and blood is permissible for you”.
Abakar Hasan stated that the forces killed a large number of citizens at the direction of Ahmed Haron, but I was lucky to be released because of my professional card that they found in my
possession.
“The situation was difficult and fires were burning in all the villages around Mukjar” Hassan added.
Detention barn
In the course of his attacks on defenseless citizens, Kushayb and his forces landed north of the Mukjar area in a mountain called “the White Mountain” “Gozsang” in the Fur language. The men tied them with ropes,
and killed them one by one.
Musa indicated that Kushayb decided after that to burn the city of Mukjar despite the police chief’s refusal, but he burned the city on the whole and put a group of detainees moved them to the forest and
killed them all.
1830 people Killed and entire families annihilated
In front of one of the mass graves of the massacres committed in the Mukjar area in March 2003 AD, the head of the displacement camps in Mukjar, Suleiman Ibrahim Hussein, told Darfur 24, ” this cemetery in
which we are now , west of the city of Mukjar, adjacent to the headquarters of the peacekeeping mission UNAMID, in which 97 corpses were buried. Among them: Mayor Yahya Ahmad Zarrouk, Mayor Issa Harun
Nour, Mayor Adam Hussein Abdul-Mahmoud, imams of the mosques of “Abdullah Hassan and Muhammad Ali Baloud,” teachers and merchants, were killed at the hands of Ali Kushayb without mercy.
Survivors’ demands
Survivors of the massacres of “Mukjar, Bindsi and Jokma Al Sharqiya are still demanding that all war criminals be handed over to the International Criminal Court to be tried for the crimes they committed
against them.