TUNDUBAI, Sudan, 7 August 2004 — The desert sands are slowly covering what remains of the houses in this abandoned village, identical to hundreds of others plundered by Janjaweed militias which, backed by the government, are inflicting a reign of terror on non-Arab minorities in Sudan’s Darfur region.
Only the ochre walls, many blackened by fire, remain, the thatched roofs having gone up in blazes set by the marauding militia. The village, 35 kilometers from the border with Chad, used to be home to about 2,000 people. Those who were not killed or abducted in the militia attack in January have likely taken refuge in camps in this western region of Sudan or over the border in Chad, where up to 200,000 Sudanese have fled.
The Janjaweed are the Arab nomads of the region, who arrive suddenly on the backs of horses or camels with their swords and rifles. They murder, maim, rape and pillage, according to aid and rights workers here. Then they melt back into their natural habitat, the desert stretching hundreds of miles across the frontier with Chad.
They are accused by international human rights monitors of systematic atrocities against Darfur’s people of non-Arab, black African origin. The United Nations describes the humanitarian crisis in Darfur as currently the world’s worst, with up to 50,000 people dead and more than a million driven from their villages.
Crockery, a teapot, a pair of sandals a wicker basket, a child’s toy, a smashed oil lamp, were among the objects lying in the narrow, deserted streets of Tundubai, the sand slowly covering them up. Inside the burned-out houses blackened cooking utensils and jars of food could be distinguished amid the piles of ash left by the incinerated thatched roofs.
Here lies a metal beam and chairs twisted by the flames. There a metal trunk, also turned black by the fire, its padlocks still intact. In most of the houses the large black earthenware jars used to store water or millet lie shattered. A morbid silence envelopes the town. There is no one around to tell what happened.
But villagers who have fled their homes across Darfur all have similar stories to tell. The Janjaweed first encircle the village, they say, then round up the villagers before separating the men from the women. Adult males are often executed, the women raped, those deemed the prettiest taken off to serve as sex slaves and servants for the nomadic militia.
The Janjaweed then loot the village, taking foodstuffs and livestock, before torching houses and forcing the villagers to flee. Here in Tundubai, the wooden doors ripped from their hinges testify to the violence of the attack. The cattle enclosures have been torn down, their former occupants long gone.
Only the bigger houses, those that were made entirely of clay, have managed to survive the fires intact. Today they stand empty in the desert breeze.
Sudan’s booming oil sector has spawned a newly affluent layer of society, especially in the capital Khartoum, where shoppers show little concern over the possibility of foreign intervention to end the conflict in the western Darfur region.
“Foreign intervention? What foreign intervention?” asked a young man at a glitzy mall here, taken aback by the question. Then he shrugs, saying: “They wouldn’t dare. Sudan isn’t Iraq.”
His girlfriend chimes in: “They’re only threats. Sudan is too complicated for them to risk coming in.” Neither of them took part Wednesday in a huge march organized by the government to protest possible foreign military intervention in Darfur.
Last Friday, the UN Security Council gave Sudan 30 days to rein in the militias or face possible sanctions — with military intervention among the options. On Thursday, Khartoum announced that it would start disarming them next week.
The African Union has said it may send a 2,000-strong peacekeeping force to protect observers monitoring a shaky ceasefire and displaced civilians who want to return home.
But at a Turkish-owned shopping mall in Khartoum, where consumers can find top-of-the-range computer and photographic equipment and designer clothes, the fighting in Darfur seems worlds away. Until recently one of the world’s poorest countries, Sudan is beginning to taste the fruit of an oil boom, though only a select few are benefiting.
At a cafeteria in the shopping center, smartly turned out youths flirt with girls wearing elegant Sudanese-style saris known as tobes as they sip on a soda and have a hamburger or ice cream.
Since consumers have been allowed to buy cars on credit, the streets of Khartoum have been invaded by new cars, jostling in the city’s chaotic traffic with wheezing old bangers and rickety taxis.
South Korean and Japanese makes have apparently cornered the market, with few European cars to be seen.
