AP Photos of May 23: NY448-461
AP Graphic of May 23: DARFUR TIMELINE
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Doc: 00254287 DB: research–d–2007–2 Date: Sat May 26 13:46:26 2007

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aD8PC74SG0 05-26-2007 13:46:26*F BC-Darfur's Killing Fields:In the heart of

Copyright 2007 By The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

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In the heart of Darfur, a mass grave and horrifying memories feed fears of new surge in war

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AP Graphic of May 23: DARFUR TIMELINE

By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU

Associated Press Writer

MUKJAR, Sudan (AP) – Uncovered by a restless wind, skulls and bones poke above the thin dirt in this corner of Darfur, lying surrounded by half-buried, rotting clothes.

A short, bearded man named Ibrahim, 42, scratches through the sand. He is quiet and serious, close to tears. There are other, bigger grave sites elsewhere, he says, but the bones he is looking at are those of 25 people who he is sure are his friends and fellow villagers.

Some of them were dragged from the prison where he was held and were axed to death, he says.

Ibrahim is showing the burial ground to an Associated Press reporter and photographer, the first Western journalists to visit this remote town in more than a year. The western Sudan region is about to enter a new phase in its four-year-old conflict – one that villagers fear may encourage more killing.

Sudan's government recently agreed to let in 3,000 U.N. peacekeepers, a fraction of the 22,000 mandated by the Security Council last August. The deployment could still take months and villagers here fear the government will want to get rid of all witnesses to atrocities before peacekeepers move in.

"We need them to come as fast as possible, because we're all in danger," said Ibrahim.

Aid workers and U.N. personnel say the burial site is one of three dozen mass graves around Mukjar, a town at the center of the Darfur calamity, holding evidence at the heart of the international community's case against Sudanese leaders for war atrocities.

Ibrahim and others interviewed insisted their full names be withheld because they fear reprisals. It is difficult to independently verify their accounts, but they cited dates and victims' names and drew maps of grave sites. Ibrahim named nine of the people buried in the grave he showed to the AP.

Some of what the witnesses say matches up with what a prosecutor for the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, has documented: at least 51 cases of alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Mukjar area – mass executions, torture and rapes of civilians.

The prosecutor says most of the killings were done by the Sudanese army and the janjaweed, Arab militiamen backed by the Sudanese government. Their war on Darfur rebels, which turned against all black African villagers, has become the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 200,000 dead and 2.5 million made homeless.

This month, the court issued arrest warrants for two men – a Sudanese government minister and an alleged janjaweed commander – who it contends directed atrocities here.

Most of the mass killings in this area happened in late 2003 and early 2004, when long-simmering tensions in Darfur flared into its latest bloodbath.

Ali Kushayb, the alleged janjaweed commander named by the ICC, has been fired as the Mukjar region chief of the "central reserve" police, a force regarded as a cover for the janjaweed. He was replaced by his deputy, Addaif al-Sinah, who villagers say remains the area's janjaweed chief.

Ahmed Harun, who was a government minister and head of the government's Darfur task force when the killings occurred, is also sought by the court. He is now the minister of humanitarian affairs.

Mukjar offers a sobering look at the results of a government victory: Impoverished and frightened ethnic Africans huddle in refugee camps where they survive on humanitarian aid, while Arab nomads control the hinterland, threatening any farmer who tries to return.

"They did such a good job at cleansing the region in 2003 that there's not much left to fight over," said an aid worker, who like all others interviewed refused to be quoted by name for fear of being expelled by the government.

Aid workers say the town is like "a security bubble," where refugees can live in relative safety as long as they don't venture more than a mile or so into the countryside.

Janjaweed fighters still stroll through the marketplace, automatic rifles slung over their shoulders.

"We live side by side with the murderers of our families, and we can't do anything," said Ibrahim.

Nearly four times the size of Texas, Sudan is Africa's biggest country. It straddles black and Arab Africa, a patchwork of over 100 tribes and ethnicities ruled by an Arab-dominated government.

Sudan has been plagued for decades by rebellions, some separatist, driven by feelings of discrimination and economic neglect. Darfur's tensions escalated into all-out conflict just as the government was negotiating an end to a 20-year civil war with its African, partly Christianized south, and it apparently feared a new threat to Sudan's territorial integrity.

Its response was a fierce counterinsurgency.

The government is accused of arming some of Darfur's Arab nomads and paying them to attack not just the rebels but innocent black African villagers. The name janjaweed roughly translates as "demons on horseback." The Sudanese army also is allegedly involved.

These forces swept through parts of Darfur searching for rebels, and some black Africans fled Mukjar – a coveted part of the arid region where water and vegetation are more abundant.

The International Criminal Court's prosecution, issuing a report in February that capped 20 months of investigation, limited itself to events between August 2003 and March 2004. It charged that Harun and Kushayb bore "criminal responsibility in relation to 51 counts of alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including persecution, torture, murder and rape."

All the cases stemmed from the Mukjar area. The Sudanese government disputes almost all the allegations.

For Ibrahim, finding his friends' bones in a shallow grave was just one of the torments he described.

In February 2004, he said, his father, a sister, three brothers and five nephews were slain during an army-janjaweed raid on his village, Trindi. He said it was targeted because it is inhabited by people of the same tribe as that of a rebel group.

He managed to bury his relatives in a hurry, then fled to Mukjar, a three-hour hike away. But the following week he was arrested and jailed.

He and other witnesses said that nearly every day for over a month, government forces would pluck a few men from the jail. Ibrahim said he saw or heard people being killed. Others just disappeared, and sometimes their bodies would turn up later, he said.

"I learned to survive by hiding at the back of the cell when they came to pull people out," Ibrahim said.

He said he was jailed until April 2004, when the international aid group Doctors Without Borders reached Mukjar and first reported atrocities.

The ICC report says large-scale purges had begun some eight months previously after Harun, the minister, met in Mukjar with Kushayb, whom the ICC describes as the "colonel of colonels" of all janjaweed in the zone.

It says Harun armed and funded the janjaweed with government cash and made regular follow-up visits to Mukjar.

Ibrahim recalled watching from his jail cell when about 1,000 janjaweed gathered in front of the prison to receive their share of looted cattle.

"The minister (Harun) told them their mission was to burn all the region down," he said.

Next, he said, Kushayb ordered his men to "get rid of every Fur" and turn their territory into Dar al-Arab, meaning "Land of the Arabs." Fur are the main tribesmen of this region, hence the name Darfur.

Kushayb then opened the cell's barred door, pulled out a prisoner and split his head open with an ax, Ibrahim said. He said he witnessed the killing.

Ibrahim said Kushayb then axed two more prisoners to death while his men shook their right fists and shouted "janjaweed, janjaweed."

As for Harun, Kushayb's boss, "The minister was sitting under the shade, and he was also cheering," Ibrahim said.

With Ibrahim in prison was Abdallah, a young man who said he never belonged to a rebel group. In a separate interview, he said he witnessed the ax killings described by Ibrahim.

Abdallah said he was repeatedly beaten with an iron rod and saw others being burned or lashed or having their nails torn off.

He said two men were crucified on the prison wall. "A janjaweed then hammered a nail through one man's forehead," he said, and the other was nailed through the chest.

Both Ibrahim and Abdallah separately said they had seen and heard women being brought to the prison and raped for hours by janjaweed.

They said the janjaweed shouted they were "planting tomatoes," a reference to their skin color. Darfur Arabs describe themselves as "red" because they are slightly lighter-skinned than ethnic Africans.

"I heard the women's cries all night," said Abdallah.

After the ICC report pointed its finger at Kushayb, the Sudanese government said it arrested him. That cannot be independently verified, and Sudan's justice minister told the AP he could not comment on when the government investigation into Kushayb's doings would be concluded.

But Abdallah Khamis, acting governor of the West Darfur region, said the "central reserve" force in Darfur is now commanded by al-Sinah, the former deputy.

"It's standard procedure – everywhere in the world: A deputy replaces his superior if he is removed," Khamis said in an interview in el-Geneina, capital of West Darfur.

As for Harun, a prominent figure of the ruling party, Sudan's justice minister has said authorities investigated and found "not a speck of evidence" against him.

Harun initially agreed to an interview with the AP but then bowed out, saying his schedule was full.

Harun has told other interviewers, mostly for Arab media, that all his orders came from the top. The ICC report quoted him as saying the government gave him "all the power and authority to kill or forgive whoever in Darfur for the sake of peace and security."

Sudan says that, like the U.S., China or Israel, it is not party to the International Criminal Court and will not hand over suspects.

The ICC prosecutor's office says it has the right to investigate Darfur crimes nonetheless and will push ahead. In an e-mailed reply to a question, the court said, without elaborating, that the prosecution "continues to gather information about alleged crimes committed in Darfur."

Most rebels are gone from the Mukjar area, nearly all the villages have been burned to the ground and the Sudanese government considers the zone peaceful by Darfur standards.

But some 14,000 refugees have moved into Mukjar.

"We're always frightened," said Ibrahim. "We live in Mukjar like in a prison without walls. ... We're not safe, but we can't leave."

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Doc: 00256419 DB: research–d–2007–2 Date: Sun May 27 13:15:40 2007

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aD8PCRPF00 05-27-2007 13:15:40*F BC-Darfur's Misery:In a Darfur town, women

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In a Darfur town, women recount numbing tale of their hell of rape and suffering

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By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU

Associated Press Writer

KALMA, Sudan (AP) – The seven women pooled money to rent a donkey and cart, then ventured out of the refugee camp to gather firewood, hoping to sell it for cash to feed their families. Instead, they say, in a wooded area just a few hours walk away, they were gang-raped, beaten and robbed.

Naked and devastated, they fled back to Kalma.

"All the time it lasted, I kept thinking: They're killing my baby, they're killing my baby," wailed Aisha, who was seven months pregnant at the time.

The women have no doubt who attacked them. They say the men's camels and their uniforms marked them as janjaweed – the Arab militiamen accused of terrorizing the mostly black African villagers of Sudan's Darfur region.

Their story, told to an Associated Press reporter and confirmed by other women and aid workers in the camp, provides a glimpse into the hell that Darfur has become as the Arab-dominated government battles a rebellion stoked by a history of discrimination and neglect.

Now in its fourth year, the conflict has become the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and rape is its regular byproduct, U.N. and other human rights activists say.

Sudan's government denies arming and unleashing the janjaweed, and bristles at the charges of rape, saying its conservative Islamic society would never tolerate it.

It has agreed to let in 3,000 U.N. peacekeepers, but not the 22,000 mandated by the U.N. Security Council. It claims the force would be a spearhead for anti-Arab powers bent on plundering Sudan's oil.

Meanwhile, more than 200,000 civilians have died and 2.5 million are homeless out of Darfur's population of 6 million, the U.N. says, and a February report by the International Criminal Court alleges "mass rape of civilians who were known not to be participants in any armed conflict."

Kalma is a microcosm of the misery – a sprawling camp of mud huts and scrap-plastic tents where 100,000 people have taken refuge. It is so full of guns that overwhelmed African Union peacekeepers long ago fled, unable to protect it. It is so crowded that the government has tried to limit newcomers – forbidding the building of new latrines, so a stench pervades the air.

Anyone venturing outside must reckon with the janjaweed, as Aisha and her friends found out.

In Sudan, as in many Islamic countries, society views a sexual assault as a dishonor upon the woman's entire family. "Victims can face terrible ostracism," says Maha Muna, the U.N. coordinator on this issue in Sudan.

Some aid workers believe the janjaweed use rape to intimidate the rebels, and their supporters and families. "It's a strategy of war," Muna said in an interview earlier this year in Khartoum, the capital.

Sudan's government is especially sensitive about such accusations and denies rape is widespread.

Sudanese public opinion would view mass rape much more severely than other crimes alleged in Darfur, said a senior Sudanese government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from his superiors.

He acknowledged the janjaweed had initially received weapons from the government – something the government officially denies – and said authorities now are struggling to rein in the militias.

Nasser Kambal, a prominent human rights activist and co-founder of the Amel center, a Sudanese group helping victims of rape and other abuse, offers a similar view.

"I don't think raping was planned by the government. Killing and looting and torture, yes, but not rape," he said.

Kalma isn't the only place where multiple accounts of rape have surfaced. Some 120 miles away, in the town of Mukjar, two men separately described women being brought into a prison where they were being held and raped for hours by janjaweed.

They said the assailants shouted that they were "planting tomatoes" – a reference to skin color: Darfur Arabs describe themselves as "red" because they are slightly lighter-skinned than ethnic Africans.

According to Muna, U.N. agencies are working closely with Sudanese authorities to improve the government's response to rape allegations. In 2005, the government created a task force on rape in Darfur, headed by Attayet Mustapha, a pediatrician, government official and women's rights activist.

In an interview this year, Mustapha said social workers were being deployed to address the problem and a special female police unit was being assembled in Darfur.

"We tell officials that the government has decided to enforce a zero tolerance policy toward rape in Darfur," she said.

U.N. workers say they registered 2,500 rapes in Darfur in 2006, but believe far more went unreported. The real figure is probably thousands a month, said a U.N. official. Like other U.N. personnel and aid workers interviewed, the official insisted on speaking anonymously for fear of being expelled by the government.

Victims usually can't identify their aggressors, which makes prosecutions impossible. Only eight offenders were tried and sentenced for rape crimes in Darfur by Sudanese courts in 2006, said Mustapha, the task force leader. "They received three to five years prison, and 100 lashes" in accordance with Islamic law, she said.

In May, after the top U.N. human rights official charged that Sudanese soldiers had raped at least 15 Darfur women during one recent incident, Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi asked where the evidence was.

"We always seem to get sweeping generalizations, without naming the injured, without naming the offenders," he told reporters.

In Kalma, collecting firewood needed to cook meals is becoming more perilous as the trees around the camp dwindle and women are forced to scavenge ever farther afield. It is strictly a woman's task, dictated both by tradition and the fear that any male escorts would be killed if the janjaweed found them.

Agreeing to tell the AP their story earlier this month through a translator, the seven women's voices wavered and hesitated, broken by embarrassed silences. All gave their names and agreed to be identified in full, but the AP is withholding their surnames because they are rape victims and vulnerable to retaliation.

The women said they set out on a Monday morning last July and had barely begun collecting the wood when 10 Arabs on camels surrounded them, shouting insults and shooting their rifles in the air.

The women first attempted to flee. "But I didn't even try, because I couldn't run," being seven months pregnant, said Aisha, a petite 18-year-old whose raspy voice sounds more like that of an old woman.

She said four men stayed behind to flay her with sticks, while the other janjaweed chased down the rest of her group.

"We didn't get very far," said Maryam, displaying the scar of a bullet that hit her on the right knee.

Once rounded up, the women said, they were beaten and their rented donkey killed. Zahya, 30, had brought her 18-year-old daughter, Fatmya, and her baby. The baby was thrown to the ground and both women were raped. The baby survived.

Zahya said the women were lined up and assaulted side by side, and she saw four men taking turns raping Aisha.

The women said the attackers then stripped them naked and jeered at them as they fled. On their way back, men from the refugee camp unraveled their cotton turbans for the women to partly cover up, but the victims said they were laughed at when they entered the refugee camp.

"Ever since, I've made sure that women living on the outskirts of the camp have spare sets of clothes to give out," said Khadidja Abdallah, a sheika, an informal camp leader, who took the women to the international aid compound at the camp to be treated.

They were given anti-pregnancy and anti-HIV pills, thanks to which their families haven't entirely ostracized them, the women said. The baby Aisha was expecting at the time is doing well. His name is Osman.

Sheikas in Kalma said they report over a dozen rapes each week. Human rights activists in South Darfur who monitor violence in the refugee camps estimate more than 100 women are raped each month in and around Kalma alone.

The workers warn of an alarming new trend of rapes within the refugee population amid the boredom and slow social decay of the camps. But for the most part, they added, it all depends on whether janjaweed are present in the area.

The sheikas say they are making some headway toward persuading families to accept raped women back into their embrace and let them report attacks to aid workers. One advantage is that they get a certificate confirming they were raped.

"We tell husbands they might be compensated one day," said Ajaba Zubeir, a sheika. "But I don't think that's going to happen."

The seven women say they haven't left the camp since they were attacked. They have started their own small workshop and make water jugs out of clay and donkey dung to sell to other refugees.

As they worked on their large pile of jugs and bowls, they said they are even poorer than before, because they now have to buy their firewood from other women.

"But at least we never have to go out again," said Aisha.

None of the women has any faith that Sudanese or international courts will ever give them justice. All Zahya asks is that one day she can return to her village.

"If people could at least help end the fighting, that would be enough," she said.

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Doc: 00259868 DB: research–d–2007–2 Date: Mon May 28 17:10:24 2007

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aD8PDH3BO2 05-28-2007 13:30:23 BC-Darfur-On the Air:U.S.-funded refugee r

aD8PDHDGG0 05-28-2007 13:52:02 BC-Darfur-On the Air, 1st Ld-Writethru:U.S

aD8PDKAG00 05-28-2007 17:10:24*F BC-Darfur-On the Air, 2nd Ld-Writethru:U.S

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BC-Darfur-On the Air, 2nd Ld-Writethru,0770

U.S.-funded refugee radio station offers a new voice along Darfur's violent border

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By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU

Associated Press Writer

GOZ BEIDA, Chad (AP) – Men driving donkey carts to the market and refugees crouching in the shade finally have something to break the boredom of life in this arid Darfur border village – news, hip-hop and Arabic music coming in on cranky transistor radios.

It's Radio Sila, the village's only radio station, funded mostly by U.S. taxpayers and pumping some fun into a violence-region suffering the spillover from the Darfur conflict next door.

"People follow our car in the streets, shouting 'radio, radio,'" said Fiacre Munezero, the station's supervisor. "It's a good start."

Broadcast from a metal cargo container converted into a studio, the station is run by Internews, a California-based aid group spreading news and music to crisis zones.

"First and foremost, we're a community radio," said Jocelyn Grange, a French journalist who manages the program in eastern Chad. "We try to be directly useful to our listeners."

About 230,000 Darfurians are refugees in Chad, along with some 140,000 Chadians who also were uprooted by the violence.

Thousands of Darfur refugees are packed into a camp around Goz Beida, and the border region has become a crossroads of violence, where people live in fear of attack by Chadian fighters as well as Darfur's dreaded janjaweed militia allied to Sudanese government forces.

Radio Sila is modeled after two others opened by Internews in 2005 and mid-2006 in eastern Chad, which offer a mix of local news and music seven days a week from morning to dusk. The stations also alert listeners to dangers, such as a recent janjaweed raid on a Chadian village that left 400 people dead.

On a recent day, the news on radio Sila covered a U.N. VIP's visit, an upsurge in attacks on a nearby refugee camp, and a calendar of junior league soccer matches.

The Voice of Ouaddai in the region's main town of Abeche broadcasts in French and Arabic – Chad's two official languages. To the north, Radio Absoun is also broadcast in Zaghawa, the African language spoken in many villages and by the tens of thousands of Darfur refugees.

Radio Sila, in the south, largely caters to the Massalit tribe, whose language is rarely spoken in Chad, which is why it took longer to go on the air – it had to find a Massalit speaker with broadcasting skills.

Wearing a bright red cotton robe, Awatif Oussma did not seem at first glance like a radio host. Her soft voice was barely audible and she often appeared more concerned with her 2-year-old daughter crying on her lap than the bulging microphone in front of her.

But when Radio Sila's studio light switched to red, she broke into a fast-paced diction and read the news headlines in Massalit's rolling, high-pitched guttural sounds.

A schoolmistress by training, Oussma said she fled western Darfur three years ago when janjaweed attackers destroyed her village.

Now living in a refugee camp next to Goz Beida with her husband and two children, she was hired and trained by Internews to become a radio journalist.

Camp elders first wanted Oussma to remain a teacher, said Ahmed Zene, the station's editor in chief.

"But then they realized it was better she switched to radio so that she could teach the whole community," Zene said.

Internews' three stations operate on a $1 million budget for this year, with most of the funding provided by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Along with news and music, the stations feature six weekly shows addressing topics such as health and safety in the camps. The star program, "She Speaks, She Listens," addresses women's issues.

"We consider there's no taboo, as long as you're careful about how to address things," Grange said. "The only topic we carefully avoid is politics."

Music outplays news, and men glued to their radio in the Koubigou refugee camp said they preferred it that way.

"Life is so, so boring in the camps," said refugee Abakar Hamid. "At least listening gives us something to do."