Darfur tribal leaders agree with Sudanese Sheikh Musa Hilal to lead initiative to stop war in Sudan

NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor: As soon as I saw this report it jumped out of my screen. Over the last year I've been on the lookout for news of Sheikh Musa Hilal because he has the skills and experience to stop war in Sudan.

In the Janjaweed, Hemeti a 3rd grade school dropout and camel herder humiliated Hilal by getting him and sons handcuffed and jailed. Hemeti is trembling in his flip-flops knowing Sheikh Hilal of North Darfur is back.

Reading between the lines of the report, Sheikh Hilal has not been on the side of Hemeti. Sheikh Hilal has attracted Darfur tribal leaders to lead a national initiative to stop war in Sudan. Now there is hope for Sudan.

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Report from Radio Dabanga Arabic website

Dated Wednesday, 14 Feb 2024, 17:20 - full copy, translated from Arabic:

Darfur tribal leaders agree with Musa Hilal to lead initiative to stop war in Sudan

Musa Hilal (Archive)

(Nyala) - A civil delegation of tribal leaders in Darfur states announced that it has agreed with the head of the Revolutionary Awakening Council, Sheikh Musa Hilal, to lead a national initiative to stop the war between the army and the Rapid Support.

The delegation, which included the principals of the tribes of Tarjum, Fallata and Rizeigat and notables of a number of tribes in the states of South, East, Central and West Darfur, visited Sheikh Musa Hilal in the suburb of Mistriha in North Darfur state, and the delegation spent about a week during which he held several meetings with notables of the region.

The head of the committee, Mohamed Yaqoub, told Radio Dabanga that the visit to Damra Sheikh Musa was for the purpose of searching for ways to bring peace to Sudan, and pointed out that it was agreed to form a mechanism headed by Musa Hilal to meet with all the parties to the war and tribal leaders in Sudan, and pointed out that what is happening now of alerts is a danger to the country and must be stopped.

For his part, a member of the delegation, the director of the Fallata tribe, Mohammed Al-Fateh Al-Sammani, told Dabanga Radio that the visit was for the purpose of coordination and reflection on the crisis in the country and the search for visions to get the country out of this predicament, and pointed out that a committee led by Sheikh Musa Hilal was formed to conduct internal reconciliations between the tribes of Darfur as well as communicate with the parties to the conflict to lead the project to stop the war in Sudan. Al-Samani stated that the native administration in the Darfur region united around the project to stop the war in Sudan, and appealed to the parties to the  War to support this mechanism under the leadership of Sheikh Musa Hilal in order to put an end to this war and reach internal peace.

Radio Dabanga contacted the spokesman for the Revolutionary Awakening Council to comment on the agreement on the leadership of the head of the council for the national initiative to stop the war between the army and the Rapid Support, but said that the council will discuss this matter at its meeting on Thursday and then make statements about it.

View original: https://www.dabangasudan.org/ar/all-news/article/زعماء-قبائل-بدارفور-يتفقون-مع-موسى-هلا

Related

Sudan Watch - October 06, 2023

Sudan: Chief of Arab Rizeigat Mahameed clan to mediate between warring tribes in South Darfur

“Sheikh Musa Hilal will lead the initiative as head of the council and native administration* leader, along with other native administration notables and community figures from Darfur and some other states of Sudan”. A Revolutionary Awakening Council spokesperson said that “the root causes of the clashes need to be defined and addressed, to stop them forever”.

https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2023/10/sudan-chief-of-arab-rizeigat-mahameed.html

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Sudan Watch - August 11, 2023

Sudanese Warlord Sheikh Musa Hilal of North Darfur: Lynchpin of Arab Janjaweed Militia Recruitment

Sheikh Hilal is a respected Arab tribal leader and old time warrior who rules over large swathes of Sudan using benevolence. He commands a huge loyal following. If news of his return to the battlefield is true, and I hope it is, Hemeti (if he's alive) will have sleepless nights and tremble in his flip-flops at the thought of Hilal seeking revenge while fighting onside with SAF. 

If the news is true, in my view, it is a big game changer. Can't wait to find out more and what kind of deal SAF made with Warlord Hilal to induce him to side with SAF like he did when Sudan was led by President Bashir.

Musa Hilal is featured in the first blog post here at Sudan Watch. In the archives there were many great photos of him in full Arab regalia riding magnificent championship quality horses. Sadly, the photos were among 3,000+ Flickr deleted overnight, without warning, from this site's paid Flickr account. I helplessly watched in horror as each photo and thousands of hours of my work evaporated. Someone wanted them gone. 

Here is the first photo of Hilal published online. It is from the BBC captioned "The rebels started the war - Musa Hilal". The report dated 14 Nov 2004 entitled "Janjweed 'leader' denies genocide" is still online.

https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2023/08/sudanese-warlord-sheikh-musa-hilal-of.html . . .

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Scroll down to see a copy of an article from and by Radio Dabanga.org

Dated 27 November 2017 - MISTERIYA / KHARTOUM

Musa Hilal, Revolutionary Awakening Council leadership arrested in Darfur

Musa Hilal, former janjaweed leader and chairman of the Revolutionary Awakening Council, as well as his sons, brothers, entourage, and senior members of the Council’s leadership, were arrested on Sunday and arrived today in Khartoum. … The official Sudan News Agency (SUNA) reports that the Commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemeti), has affirmed that Hilal was arrested on Sunday at Misteriya area, North Darfur. Gen. Hemeti, says that Musa Hilal was “involved in a plot against Sudan which has external dimensions”.

https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2023/08/sudanese-warlord-sheikh-musa-hilal-of.html

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Sudan: Survivors give harrowing testimony of Darfur’s year of hell. There’s nobody in El Geneina.

“A country of 46 million people is heading rapidly towards collapse, with very little attention from the outside world,” says Toby Harward, the UN’s deputy humanitarian coordinator for Sudan. “While acknowledging other crises elsewhere in the world right now, the scale of this crisis is unmatched, and it will have significant ramifications for the region and beyond.”

Read more from The Guardian, UK

By FRED HARTER
Supported by the guardian.org
Dated Saturday, 30 December 2023; 13.04 GMT UK - here  is a copy in full:

‘They told us – you are slaves’: survivors give harrowing testimony of Darfur’s year of hell

With the war in Sudan poised to escalate and the humanitarian crisis growing, traumatised survivors of a blood-drenched summer in West Darfur tell of their ordeal

There’s nobody in El Geneina. It’s ghostly quiet. It’s horrific to see areas once full of life now totally empty -Aid worker

We could hear gunfire for two months but our commanders told us it was a tribal conflict and not for us to intervene -Soldier at Ardamata garrison

A group in Wad Madani, in south-eastern Sudan, rally in support of Sudan's army in December, as the war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces continues and refugees flee Darfur in western Sudan. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Gamar al-Deen was visiting a friend when gunmen poured into his neighbourhood on 27 April 2023. “I came back to find they were all dead,” he says. “My mother, my father, uncles, brothers, sisters. I wanted to die myself in that moment.”

Deen, a teacher, lost a dozen members of his family that day. Several of his neighbours were killed too. At his friend’s during the carnage, he saw a group of fighters strip a woman naked and then rape her in the street. “They told us, ‘This area belongs to us, not you, you are slaves,’” he says.

The attack was one of many by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary organisation, and allied Arab militiamen in El Geneina, capital of Sudan’s West Darfur region, between mid-April and mid-June. Their fighters carried out almost daily raids against areas of the city populated by the Masalit, an African ethnic group, according to former residents.

Gamar al-Deen, a teacher in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, lost a dozen family members on 27 April 2023 in an attack carried out by RSF paramilitaries

The attacks happened as the world’s attention was focused on fighting 700 miles away in the capital, Khartoum, as foreign governments launched frantic airlifts to evacuate their citizens. The scale of the tragedy unfolding in Darfur, a region ravaged by 20 years of genocidal violence, would only begin to emerge weeks later.

Sometimes the attacks were targeted, as the militiamen hunted down educated Masalits on kill lists. Mostly they were not. Masalit men and boys were accused of being fighters and summarily shot. Women and girls were killed. Women were raped near corpses.

Mahmoud Adam, a former interpreter with the African Union’s Darfur peacekeeping force, which left at the end of 2020, lived close to an RSF base in the city. He said Arab militia would arrive most mornings on horses and motorbikes before heading out to launch attacks on Masalit neighbours.

“For two months, this was their routine,” says Adam. “I would hear them talking about the number of people they had killed at the end of each day.”

The attacks started on 24 April, according to residents, just over a week after nationwide fighting erupted between the Sudanese military and the RSF. They culminated in mid-June, after the killing of the governor of West Darfur, a Masalit, which prompted a panicked evacuation of El Geneina’s Masalit residents to neighbouring Chad and the outlying district of Ardamata, home to a large military base.

Thousands of fleeing civilians made easy pickings for RSF fighters and Arab militia, who fired at the crowds and at passing vehicles, according to survivors. One witness described “a scene from hell” with dozens of bodies along the roadside and washed up on the banks of a nearby river, some with their hands tied.

The hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières in the Chadian town of Adré received more than 850 patients with bullet, stab and shrapnel wounds between 14 and 17 June.

Sexual violence was a feature of the bloodshed with gunmen rounding up and raping women and girls.

El Geneina once had a mixed population of more than half a million. Today, its Masalit neighbourhoods are deserted. “There’s nobody there, it’s ghostly quiet,” says an aid worker who visited recently. “It is horrific to see areas that used to be bustling, full of life, now totally empty.”

Destruction in El Geneina’s marketplace after fighting between the Sudanese army and the RSF on 29 April 2023

The cycle of violence would repeat itself in early November after the RSF captured the military base in Ardamata, a few miles from El Geneina. The garrison fell amid days of killings and looting. Last month, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the UN’s genocide prevention adviser, warned that Darfur risked becoming a “forgotten crisis”.

Half a million people now live in hastily assembled camps in Chad. Cash-strapped aid agencies are struggling to respond: the refugees do not have enough mosquito nets, blankets or water. About 175,000 are living in grass huts they weaved themselves.

A Sudanese refugee builds a grass hut in the border town of Adré, eastern Chad, where about 175,000 displaced people live in similar makeshift huts

“Nearly every person who crossed the border has some sort of trauma,” says Eric Kwakya, a psychologist with the International Rescue Committee. “They have seen terrible things.”

Sherif al-Deen, a social worker, was drinking coffee in an El Geneina marketplace when RSF fighters and Arab militia first attacked on 24 April. He raced home, narrowly avoiding bullets ricocheting through the streets. He spent the next seven weeks volunteering at a clinic, collecting the wounded and dead from around the city with a team of volunteers. Bodies were wrapped in blankets and loaded on to donkey carts.

Sherif al-Deen, a social worker, risked his life to help collect the wounded and dead

Sherif saw a group of Arab fighters fire on a crowd with a machine gun, killing eight. Several of his colleagues were shot. “It was very dangerous work, but I had to do it for my people,” he says.

Burying the dead carried risks. To avoid being targeted by snipers, mourners held clandestine funerals for their loved ones at night, says Abdulmonim Adam, a lawyer and human rights monitor, who attended a dozen night burials between April and June.

At one funeral, the mourners came under fire and had to abandon the bodies beside half-dug graves. “If they see you burying the dead – if they see even the flash of a torch – they will kill you,” he says.

One of the deadliest attacks came on 12 and 13 May. At least 280 people were killed over those two days, according to the Sudan Doctors’ Trade Union.

Sara Mohamed* described gunmen looting her home on 12 May. During the attack, they shot her neighbour’s 10-year-old daughter. “I rushed to hold her, to stop the bleeding, but she died in my arms,” she says.

Another young girl was wounded, and a woman was shot through the stomach. When the militia returned a few hours later, they shot Mohamed’s father and burned down her home.

The massacre unfolded in stages over several weeks. Throughout the bloodshed, the Sudanese garrison at Ardamata’s military base did not venture beyond its blast walls. “We could hear gunfire for two months,” says one soldier. “But our commanders told us it was a tribal conflict, that it was not for us to intervene.”

People trying to escape the violence in West Darfur cross the border into Adré, Chad, in August 2023

Mohamed and another woman interviewed by the Guardian were raped during the violence. Mohamed was gang-raped at knifepoint. The second woman was abducted off the street by a group of men, who covered her head and bundled her into a car. It was a targeted attack. “They called me by my name,” she says. “They said, ‘We know you are writing about the RSF on Facebook.’” Eventually she was driven back to El Geneina and dumped outside a clinic, hands still tied behind her back.

‘If they see you burying the dead they will kill you’: Abdulmonim Adam, a lawyer and human rights monitor who attended a dozen secret night-time burials

That was not the end of her ordeal. A few days later, as she fled to Chad, her vehicle was stopped by a group of armed Arab villagers. They shot the car’s two male occupants. Then two of the villagers took turns raping her and the other female passenger, a 13-year-old girl, beneath a tree.

One of the attackers was middle-aged; the other looked about 18. “I heard the man talking about how happy he was to rape such a young girl,” she says.

She still receives threatening social media messages from unidentified men in El Geneina. A recent voice note sent on WhatsApp said: “We will find you in Chad. You are a slut. Whenever you come back to Sudan, we will do what we want with you.”

Six months on, Sudan’s war is poised to escalate. Having captured most of Darfur, the RSF appears to be cementing its grip over Khartoum. This month, the paramilitaries took Wad Madani, the country’s second city, which had been hosting 500,000 refugees from Khartoum and serving as a logistics hub for aid agencies.

Close to 7 million people have been uprooted across Sudan, the world’s biggest displacement crisis. More than half the population need aid, and 3.5 million children under five are malnourished.

“A country of 46 million people is heading rapidly towards collapse, with very little attention from the outside world,” says Toby Harward, the UN’s deputy humanitarian coordinator for Sudan. “While acknowledging other crises elsewhere in the world right now, the scale of this crisis is unmatched, and it will have significant ramifications for the region and beyond.”

Sudanese refugees wait for UN World Food Programme food distribution in Adré

The international response to the crisis in Darfur has been “completely absent”, says Cameron Hudson, a former White House official. Hudson is critical of US-led attempts to mediate an “elite deal” between the RSF and the Sudanese military. “The US is worried the RSF won’t keep showing up if it holds them responsible for their atrocities and introduces sanctions,” he says. “They are holding the US government hostage.”

Meanwhile, among the Sudanese refugees camping in the desert in Chad, unease is growing. “Even here, I do not feel safe,” says Gamar al-Deen, the teacher.

* Name has been changed to protect identity

Rape, murder, looting: massacre in Ardamata is the latest chapter in Darfur’s horror story Read more

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

View original: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/dec/30/survivors-give-harrowing-testimony-of-darfur-sudan-year-of-hell

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IOM humanitarian cross-border convoy from Chad has arrived in West Darfur, Sudan carrying critical aid

GOOD news. Humanitarian cross-border convoy from Chad has arrived in West Darfur, Sudan carrying long awaited critical aid. Great job done by all.

IOM humanitarian cross-border convoy from #Chad has arrived in #WestDarfur carrying critical aid to reach over 46,000 ppl affected by conflict across Darfur, thanks to @Solidarites_Int & @USAIDSavesLives.

Needs are dire.Unimpeded access is needed to ensure we #LeaveNoOneBehind. pic.twitter.com/1zZwreWpEa

— IOM Sudan 🇺🇳 (@IOMSudan) December 28, 2023

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In Chad camps, survivors recount Sudan war horrors, many in critical condition physically & psychologically

AFTER surviving atrocities in their homeland Sudan and the perilous journey abroad, the refugees are now confronting the looming threat of famine. The scarcity of water in the camps in Chad has generated tensions that humanitarian organisations have struggled to calm. Read more.

From France24
By Agence France-Presse (AFP)
Dated Saturday, 23 December 2023 - 17:27 - here is a copy in full:

In Chad camps, survivors recount Sudan war horrors

Adré (Chad) (AFP) – Sitting outside her makeshift shelter in eastern Chad, Sudanese refugee Mariam Adam Yaya warmed up tea on some firewood in a bid to quell the pangs of hunger.

Thousands of Sudanese have fled for neighbouring Chad and found refuge in overcrowded camps such as Adre © Denis Sassou Gueipeur / AFP

The 34-year-old from the Masalit ethnic group crossed the border on foot after a four-day trek with no provisions and her eight-year-old son clinging to her back.

She said "heavily armed" men attacked her village, forcing her to flee and leave seven of her children behind amid brutal violence that has sparked fears of ethnic cleansing.

Sudan has since April 15 been plunged into a civil war pitting army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, his former deputy and commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Thousands have fled for neighbouring Chad and found refuge in overcrowded camps such as Adre where Yaya has settled.

In the western Darfur region, paramilitary operations have left civilian victims belonging to the non-Arab Masalit group in what the United Nations and NGOs say is a suspected genocide.

In the West Darfur town of Ardamata alone, armed groups killed more than 1,000 people in November, according to the European Union.

"What we went through in Ardamata is horrifying. The Rapid Support Forces killed elderly people and children indiscriminately," Yaya told AFP.

Trauma

Chad, a country in central Africa that is the world's second least developed according to the United Nations, has hosted the highest number of Sudanese refugees.

The UN says 484,626 people have sheltered there since the fighting broke out, with armed groups forcing more than 8,000 people to flee to Chad in one week.

The United States and other Western nations have accused the RSF and its allies of committing crimes against humanity and acts of ethnic cleansing 

© Denis Sassou Gueipeur / AFP

Formal camps managed by NGOs and informal settlements erected spontaneously have sprouted throughout the border region of Ouaddai.

A traumatised Amira Khamis, 46, said she was targeted due to her Masalit ethnicity and has lost five of her children.

Recovering in an emergency medical structure run by the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) near the Adre camp after shrapnel fractured her feet, she told AFP women and young girls were raped.

"They systematically kill all the people of dark black colour," she said.

Mahamat Nouredine, a 19-year-old who is nursing a fractured arm and has lost four relatives in the violence, said the RSF mercilessly hounded the Masalit community before he escaped to Chad.

"A group of RSF followed us to a hospital and tried to kill everyone... they laid us on the ground in groups of 20 and fired at us," he said.

"Their unspoken goal is to kill people due to their skin colour."

'Critical conditions'

The United States and other Western nations have accused the RSF and its allies of committing crimes against humanity and acts of ethnic cleansing.

An estimate by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project puts the war's death toll at 12,000. Almost seven million people have fled their homes, according to the UN.

After surviving atrocities in their homeland and the perilous journey abroad, the refugees are now confronting the looming threat of famine.

The scarcity of water in the camps has generated tensions that humanitarian organisations have struggled to calm © Denis Sassou Gueipeur / AFP

Yaya said she and her child have "barely" eaten since their arrival in Chad.

The scarcity of water in the camps has generated tensions that humanitarian organisations have struggled to calm.

Gerard Uparpiu, MSF's project coordinator in Adre, said the influx of Sudanese refugees was creating a "worrying" situation.

"We receive them in critical conditions. They are shaken physically and psychologically," he added.

MSF's hospital is surrounded by fencing and constantly monitored by a guard, measures necessitated by the brutality of a conflict that has not spared the wounded.

"They also attacked us when I was being taken to Chad to receive treatment," said Amir Adam Haroun, a Masalit refugee whose leg was broken by an explosive.

View original: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231223-in-chad-camps-survivors-recount-sudan-war-horrors

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