Showing posts with label Kreinik. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kreinik. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Darfur: Sudan's Janjaweed on the attack again

NOTE from Sudan Watch editor: Further to a news report from The Telegraph reprinted here at Sudan Watch yesterday (Tue 23 May), the following report from BBC News dated 4 weeks ago, states that: 

"A major city in Sudan's Darfur region has been under fierce attack - days after thousands of people arrived there seeking safety after their own town was set ablaze by horse-riding Arab militias known as Janjaweed. 

For the first time in Geneina's history, the hospital has been completely evacuated. All health institutions in the city are closed," the country's Central Committee for Sudanese Doctors says on Twitter.


Even during the height of the Darfur conflict that started in 2003 - a war that has left about 300,000 people dead and more than two million homeless - Geneina's hospital in West Darfur kept operating.


Darfur is rich in gold - and there are accusations Janjaweed incursions are part of attempts to gain control of more land for prospecting."

Read more below about why Sudan's Janjaweed is on the attack again in Darfur, southwest Sudan. Click on a link in report to see video of a group of men. Yellow highlighting is mine for easy future reference. 

Incidentally, the labels at the end of each post, and a search box in the sidebar here, can be used to search Sudan Watch's archive. Due software improvements over the years, it takes a little time and patience to unearth old reports. In the early years, it was so dangerous reporting on Sudan, I would condense 10-20 reports within a single post so the reports couldn't be picked up by search engines and attract attention. 

From: BBC News [reprinted at Sudan Watch, Tue 24 May 2022]

By MOHANAD HASHIM

Published 26 April 2022 

Darfur: Why are Sudan's Janjaweed on the attack again?















IMAGE SOURCE, AFP. Caption, Rapid Support Forces expanded out of the Janjaweed and some of its members have been involved in the recent violence


A major city in Sudan's Darfur region has been under fierce attack - days after thousands of people arrived there seeking safety after their own town was set ablaze by horse-riding Arab militias known as Janjaweed.


"For the first time in Geneina's history, the hospital has been completely evacuated. All health institutions in the city are closed," the country's Central Committee for Sudanese Doctors says on Twitter.


Even during the height of the Darfur conflict that started in 2003 - a war that has left about 300,000 people dead and more than two million homeless - Geneina's hospital in West Darfur kept operating.


An aid worker in Geneina told the BBC that he and his colleagues were staying at a safe house and gunfire could be heard across the city.


Many families who already live in camps in the south of the city after fleeing from the Janjaweed in the past are panicking and leaving their makeshift accommodation.


The recent violence began 80km (50 miles) east of Geneina in Kreinik on Friday and more than 200 have been killed in clashes.


What sparked the clashes?


The fighting was caused by a dispute between Arab nomads and members of the Massalit community, who have clashed over land for decades.


It began after two Arab nomads were killed near Kreinik, a town that has become home to many displaced ethnic black Massalit communities over the last two decades - people who were driven from their rural villages by Janjaweed raids.















IMAGE SOURCE, GETTY IMAGES. Caption, Many people have been driven out of their settlements over the last two decades


In retaliation for the nomads' deaths, early on Friday morning Arab fighters raided Kreinik, leaving nine people dead and 16 injured.


Then on Sunday, a more co-ordinated attack was launched, this time backed by Sudan's Rapid Support Force (RSF), a paramilitary force that grew out of the Janjaweed.


The attackers arrived in 4x4 vehicles mounted with machine guns, known as "technicals", motorbikes, camels and horses, a statement issued by the Kreinik Voluntary Youth group said.


An unverified video shared on social media shows a large group of Arab fighters on pick-up trucks and motorcycles as they set on their way to attack. Men in RSF fatigues could be seen in the clip.


The town was set alight and local sources said schools and clinics were not spared - six teachers were killed in the raid.


A hospital supported by the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was targeted.


"Three people, including two medical workers, were killed. The hospital´s pharmacy was also looted," MSF said in a statement.


Why didn't the security forces stop the attack?


For many years, UN peacekeepers were trying to keep the peace, but they withdrew at the end of 2020 after their mandate expired - their presence resented across the divides. But even when they were deployed, they would not have been able to stop an attack of this ferocity.


Maintaining peace and security in Darfur is now supposed to be carried out by a joint force made up of the police, army, the RSF and the rebel groups which signed a peace deal in 2020.


But behind the scenes - they are all have competing ambitions and in no way represent a united front.


For example, the police have many non-Arab Massalit members and the RSF has many former Janjaweed members - some of whom have been caught up in the recent fighting.


The local unit tasked with protecting Kreinik withdrew from its positions before the attack, according to local activists.


Why did the fighting spread to Geneina?


The Janjaweed and RSF were chasing a group of fighters from Kreinik to Geneina - and it led to the rampaging of the hospital and general chaos as ethnic tensions flared.















IMAGE SOURCE, BBC. Caption, Geneina is the traditional capital of the Massalit kingdom - a symbol of black power in Darfur, so is viewed with disdain by the Janjaweed, who have been accused of ethnic cleansing in Darfur.


Conflict first erupted in Darfur in 2003 when mostly non-Arabs took up arms against the government, complaining about discrimination and a lack of development.


The government retaliated by mobilising Janjaweed to fight the rebels, unleashing violence that caused global outrage that led to the deployment of peacekeepers and international arrest warrants.


It is the third time Geneina has come under attack since 2019 - a time of change for the country as Omar al-Bashir was ousted as president after nearly 30 years in power.


In March this year violent clashes left dozens dead and injured as well as several villages burnt in the Jebel Moon area to the north of Geneina.


Darfur is rich in gold - and there are accusations Janjaweed incursions are part of attempts to gain control of more land for prospecting.


Adam Rajal - a spokesman for the IDPs Co-ordination Committee, a group that liaises between all the camps for those who have fled their home since 2003 - suggests it is also an attempt to dismantle the camps.


He implies that perpetrators of alleged war crimes in Darfur are worried by the fate of a former Janjaweed leader whose trial has recently begun at the International Criminal Court (ICC).


Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, denies charges of committing crimes against humanity. He is the first person to be tried by the ICC over the conflict - and Bashir too is wanted by the court for war crimes and genocide, which he denies.


"The target is to depopulate towns and dismantle the camps… these IDP camps are the most visible proof of the crimes of genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and the war crimes perpetrated by the previous regime," says Mr Rajal.


Why is the RSF so powerful?


The governor of Darfur's regional government Minni Minawi, a former rebel leader, has accused the authorities in Khartoum of not doing enough to rein in the RSF.


But the paramilitary force wields a lot of power in the junta, and its leader Lt-Gen Mohamed Hamdan "Hemeti" Dagolo, is Sudan's deputy leader.


Originally a Chadian Arab, he grew up in Darfur - and has expanded the RSF's membership to include fighters from across the country.


Observers say he is also using the inter-communal violence in Darfur to further his political ambitions.


The Janjaweed has long been accused of recruiting Arab fighters from Chad and other Sahel countries - encouraging them to bring their families as part of attempts to change the political constituency in Darfur.


Gen Hemeti has never commented on the allegations or on the recent violence in West Darfur, but in his public statements he calls for Darfur's diverse communities to live in peace.


More on the Darfur conflict:

View the original here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-61217999

Monday, May 23, 2022

Is Darfur sliding back into hell? Spate of violence in ‘ungovernable’ Darfur, Sudan stokes fears of war

NOTE from Sudan Watch editor: Sadly, here we are again… (Thanks CW!) 


Is Darfur sliding back into hell? 


Spate of violence in ‘ungovernable’ region stokes fears of war. 


Hopes for lasting peace scatter as the region barrels towards a series of tit for tat tribal attacks – a grim echo of a not-so-distant past. 


A local power struggle is ongoing in Darfur. 


As the Sudanese currency tanks, the control of gold supplies has become incredibly important and many experts believe that Hemeti is the most powerful man in the country. 


He is also perhaps Russia’s top ally in the region, and spent a week in Moscow at the beginning of the Ukraine invasion. Read more:

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced – a grim echo of the past
CREDIT: RAMZI HAIDAR /AFP

From: The Telegraph, UK

By WILL BROWN, AFRICA CORRESPONDENT

Published Monday 23 May 2022; 4:21pm


Is Darfur sliding back into hell? Spate of violence in ‘ungovernable’ region stokes fears of war


Hopes for lasting peace scatter as the region barrels towards a series of tit for tat tribal attacks – a grim echo of a not-so-distant past


It was the first genocide of the 21st century. A once peaceful land governed by traditional leaders split along tribal fissures and turned into a killing field the size of France. Some 300,000 people were shot, brutalised or starved to death.

After two decades of horrors in Iraq, Syria, Myanmar, Ethiopia and now Ukraine, the name Darfur has fallen out of the international consciousness – a distant memory of famished children and men on horseback with Kalashnikovs that the world would rather forget.

But last month, events in southwestern Sudan scattered hopes of a lasting peace and sent Darfur barrelling towards a series of tit for tat tribal attacks.

On April 22, the small town of Kreinik and some 16 villages around it in the West Darfur region were surrounded by hundreds of armed men. Some came on horses, others on motorbikes or in Toyotas decked out with high calibre machine guns.

The men came from the Arab Reizegat tribe. The townsfolk were mainly members of the black ethnic Massalit community. Two Arabs had been recently killed in the town and the gunmen were out for revenge.

The attackers went on a killing spree and then stormed into the Geneina, the region’s capital. The UN said more than 1,000 armed Reizegats swept into the town. According to the governor of the region, the vastly outgunned regular government forces withdrew into the local garrison.

The Reizegats pillaged the town and by the time it was all over, some 200 people had been shot or butchered including medical staff at the main hospital. Tens of thousands had been displaced, a grim echo of a not-so-distant past.

“It is destined to continue and escalate. I don’t expect the violence to subside any time soon. Darfur is ungovernable right now for any armed security force,” said Suliman Baldo, at the International Centre for Transitional Justice and a top expert on Darfur. But why now? Why is Darfur slipping backwards after years of peace negotiations and tens of billions of dollars spent on peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts?

Unresolved tribal competition

The borderland area between Sudan, South Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic is probably the most ungoverned space on earth. Much of what’s going on is a mystery – but there are clearly several factors at play behind the spate of violence.

First, a local power struggle is ongoing. While Darfuri history and communal relations defy simplistic stereotypes, a key factor at the root of the recent spate of violence is a longstanding and unresolved tribal competition for access to resources, according to Mr Baldo.

Darfur is not the endless barren desert portrayed in glossy NGO brochures pleading for funding. Parts of the region are incredibly wealthy with good pasture, arable land and vast quantities of gold.

As Sudan’s tattered economy struggles with global shocks of the pandemic, war in Ukraine and a regional drought, competition over these scarce resources is increasing.

“This is strongly reminiscent of the conflict we’ve seen in Darfur before running along tribal and racial fissures,” said Jonas Horner, an independent expert on Sudan. “The root causes of those conflicts were never addressed.”

Events some 700 miles away in the Sudanese capital are also playing a major role.

For much of the last century, Darfur has been a periphery area that elites in the bustling metropole Khartoum have tried to dominate for resources. The current situation in Khartoum is tense and experts say power struggles are spilling out into the periphery.

Sudan’s old Islamist dictator, Omar al-Bashir – who once played different Darfuri groups against each other and terrorised Darfur with bands of Arab janjaweed militiamen – was swept away in a revolution in 2019 after almost four decades in power.

A liberal former UN-staffer, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, was charged with guiding Sudan along the road to full democracy as part of a complex transitional government. But he was ousted in a coup in October 2021.

Now two major groups are tussling for control. On one hand, is the Sudanese Armed Force (SAF), headed up by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan – who is now the de-facto head of state and in many ways represents the old interests of the old centralised elites.

On the other hand there is Hemeti, a Darfuri warlord from the same Arab Reizegat tribe who carried out last month’s massacre. Hemeti heads up a well-armed militia movement called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which was formed out of the old janjaweed raiders and controls some of Darfur’s major gold mining areas.

Locked in a simmering struggle

As the Sudanese currency tanks, the control of gold supplies has become incredibly important and many experts believe that Hemeti is the most powerful man in the country. He is also perhaps Russia’s top ally in the region, and spent a week in Moscow at the beginning of the Ukraine invasion.

Both the SAF and RSF are locked in a simmering struggle which keeps coming perilously close to outright conflict. There are multiple eyewitnesses and media reports indicating that uniformed RSF soldiers supported the Rizeigat Arabs when they attacked the Massalit last month.

Even though the SAF forces have a duty to protect Sudanese civilians, they did not want to confront the RSF in Darfur – most probably because it could have escalated into an even larger fight.

Mr Baldo said the recent attacks shows just how incompetent and ethnicised Sudan’s security forces are, and how little control the Sudanese state has in rural areas.

“The massacre is an indictment of the military-led government in Khartoum, in place since the October 25, 2021 coup. When the military seized power their claim was that they – as security forces – needed to step in to provide security,” Mr Horner said.

“Recent evidence in Darfur and elsewhere sees them failing completely in their most fundamental task,” he added.

Russian mercenaries could also be a factor in the recent spate of violence. Mercenaries working for the Wagner group are involved in diamond and gold mining in the Central Africa Republic and have been accused of carrying out massacres close to the Sudanese border.

This could be feeding into local power dynamics in the Darfur area, upsetting a complex web of local interests in ways which are not fully understood.

Another factor is Chad. The country’s former dictator Idriss Déby used to be the West’s go-to strong man in Central Africa. Mr Deby’s well-trained desert army helped keep a lid on many of the nastiest groups in the region for years, guaranteeing his dictatorial regime strong Western support.

But since Mr Déby was killed last year, allegedly while fighting with his troops on the frontline, his son Mahamat Idriss Déby has struggled to fill his father's shoes. The Chadian security forces are struggling to exert the same amount of influence in Chad’s borderland areas.

This could, Mr Horner says, be giving oxygen to some of the more violent groups in Darfur.

PHOTO AND CAPTION: Darfur has fallen out of the international consciousness – a distant memory that the world would rather forget CREDIT: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters


PHOTO AND CAPTION: A child refugee from the Darfur region of Sudan pictured at a refugee camp in Chad in 2004 CREDIT: Scott Nelson/Getty Images


PHOTO AND CAPTION: A local power struggle is ongoing in Dafur CREDIT: MARCO LONGARI,/AFP


PHOTO AND CAPTION: Supporters of Sudan's former President Omar Hassan al-Bashir protest in Khartoum in 2008 CREDIT: MOHAMED NURELDIN ABDALLAH /REUTERS


View the original here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-security/darfur-sliding-back-spate-violence-ungovernable-region-stokes/