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A rupture from reality

Written by Megha Mohan
Thursday, 18 December 2008 00:00

What: 24 hours with 47 survivors of a genocide

Where: A coach. A ferry. An International Criminal Court

Why: A march for freedom from tyranny. To bring dictator Omar al-Bashir to trial as a war criminal

I found Amy on Facebook. Actually, no; I found a group for UK anti-genocide organisation, Aegis Trust on Facebook, which had a link to a group for Fund4Darfur, which had a link to Amy Harrison’s profile. She responded immediately to my first email, which was an offer to meet and discuss the genocide and Diaspora of Darfur. You see, the initial article I was researching was to be an academic overview of the conflict five years on. It was going to be a profile of the policy work and campaigning executed by Aegis Trust when it came to containing the continuous culling of African tribes within the Sudanese region, by the Arab militia (the Janjaweed) and Sudanese government. It was to look at Aegis’ sister project, Fund4Darfur which raises funds to support survivors of the conflict within the region as well as in the UK. I would construct the timeline of the conflict, which started in 2003 with the mass killing, looting, and systematic rape of the non-Arab population, executed by the Janjaweed militia and supported by aerial bombardment by the Sudanese government, and trail it to today. Today, when the official line reads that the worst of the conflict ended in 2005, with the inauguration of ex-Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) leader John Garang as Sudan’s vice-president. (Garang’s untimely death in a helicopter crash just 20 days later, however, put chances of a more united Sudan on indefinite, and wafer thin, ice.)

When I met Amy, a Cambridge graduate and coordinator of Fund4Darfur, at Starbucks in Holborn, she passionately renounced the former statement: “I find it really disheartening to put across the notion that the crisis, and I don’t use that term lightly, is over. There has been a steady flow of displacements, increasing incidents of rape and rising attacks on aid workers and peacekeeping forces. Similarly, Ahmed Haroun, for whom an arrest warrant was issued by the International Criminal Court in June last year for crimes against humanity in Darfur, has since been promoted to Minister for Humanitarian Affairs by the Sudanese government, an indication of how much still needs to be done.”

International intervention has been, at best, tepid, at worst, “pathetic”, as stated by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Jody Williams. Certainly, peace agreements, such as one brokered by US Deputy Secretary of State Robert B Zoellick in May 2005, lasted a mere two months. Similarly, Resolution 1706, as initiated by the UN on 31 August 2006, to deploy a peacekeeping force to support the ill-equipped African Union, was met with strong opposition by the Sudanese government, who promptly launched a major offensive the next day. This was political theatre at its best. The UN News Service estimated in 2006 that the mortality rate hung at around 400,000, with Diaspora figures reaching 2,000,000. By 2008, they disclosed that the number had been underestimated by around 50%.

Amy wanted me to talk about Fund4Darfur’s initiative to provide solar powered lamps for the communities within the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. This would prevent women having to leave the camps in search of firewood and enduring rape by the militia (rape of non-Arab Dafuris has been a key tactic in the war, with aims to humiliate women and change the bloodline of the nation). I asked why men didn’t go in search of the firewood. “Their option is castration,” Amy replied. She told me to read Halima Bashir’s book Tears of the Desert. Bashir was a doctor in Sudan and a victim of torture and rape by the militia.

So that was what the article was going to be about. The paragraphs above, padded out with more quotes, more figures, a secondhand testimony or two extracted from the Aegis files.

And then all that changed.

Below are extracts from my journals as to why and how.

7pm Wednesday- Home

I arrive home to a plethora of visa bills and a note from Mrs. Silverman asking me to keep the music down. She has the audio dexterity of an MI5 trained Alsatian. I check my emails. The first one I open is from Amy. “I know it’s very last minute,” she writes, “but there is a rally at The Hague on Friday. The Darfur Union will be marching to the ICC to submit a letter of thanks to Luis Moreno-Ocampo for plans to bring al-Bashir to trial as a war criminal. Aegis are organising a coach from Birmingham to The Netherlands. Would you like to cover it?” It takes me about a minute to think about it. I fire back a “Yes”. Then I start wondering what I’ve done. I don’t have the time off work. I text Amy to see if she’s going too. She can’t. She has a policy meeting to attend. But I won’t be the only non-refugee on the bus. An Aegis student from Bristol will also be there. Me and an idealistic 21-year-old who has more disposable income. Good times.

8pm Thursday- Birmingham New Street

I’m outside Burger King at Birmingham New Street calling James Ingram, the president of Aegis Students at Bristol University. He says it’ll be difficult to find each other as we don’t know what one another looks like. I say I’m the one in front of him with the phone to my ear. We head off for the coach station. “How will we know which coach it is,” James asks. I say it’ll be the one with all the black people around it. James looks uncomfortable that I say this. In any sense, I’m right. We find around 60 black guys congregated in the waiting area. “What now,” I ask James. Before he answers, we are approached by a tall man with a leather jacket and a beanie. He introduces himself as Mohamed Ismail. He is the treasurer of Darfur Union. He smiles a lot.

9pm Thursday- Birmingham Coach Station

The coach arrives on the dot. There are 50 seats and 65 people. Mohamed makes sure James and I get on first, on the front seat. 15 people get turned away. Some had come from Wales. It’s just the way it is, Mohamed says. “This happens every time we have to mobilise ourselves anywhere. Too many people care.” I think I hear James say something under his breath, something like, “That’s not true.” Our two coach drivers get on. One is around 25. He’s whistling “Vindaloo”. The second is 50. He looks older. When he sees the full coach, he rolls his eyes. “This is going to be a long night,” I hear him tell the 25-year-old.

11pm- Thursday M6

James is 21. He’s a final year anthropology student at Bristol and the leader of Aegis Students. I ask him what Aegis means. “It’s the mythological protective shield of Zeus.” He tells me that, on the first day of term, he and around 200 other students signed up for Aegis Students’ group. I ask why he thinks such a popular cause has such little media attention and only lukewarm political consideration. “I think, when words buzz words like “genocide” are used, Jewish flags are erected, which immediately attracts public interest. But, unfortunately, after the initial blood-lust for that trigger word, married with the celebrity cachet championed by George Clooney and Not on Our Watch, the interest goes.” Really? “Well put it this way,” James says, “200 of us signed up for Aegis Students. There are five active members now.”

1am Friday Watford Services M1

We stop off for a loo break. I head for a hot chocolate and immediately get stopped by Mohamed who insists on buying it for me. The girl at the services is staring, mouth open, at the 48 of us, now in the queue. A truck driver walks into a wall. Mohamed tells me he has been in England for seven years. He has family in an IDP camp in south Sudan but regular contact is nigh on impossible. He is 38 and a student in Birmingham. So if the conflict started in 2003, why did he leave prior to that, I ask. “The conflict has been brewing for over 60 years, since the Arabic cattle herding and camel herding nomads moved into Sudan as a result of harsh climatic conditions in North Africa. There was unrest in 1989. It really started in 1989.” Mohamed is a member of the Fur tribe. Darfur means “house of the Fur”. They are one of the largest tribes in Sudan, and hence subject to most of the attacks. We are at the front of the queue and Mohamed buys me my hot chocolate. The girl still has her mouth open.

2:30am- Friday Dover

We don’t get searched in Dover, despite the 50-year-old coach driver’s loud protestations just 10 minutes prior that “trust me, they’ll be checking us for hours.” We get to the service stop while we wait for boarding. There are around 50 white students mulling around the cafe area, some talking, some texting, some half asleep, some on their handhelds. They don’t bat an eyelid when we arrive. I approach two boys. They’re 18, on their way to Amsterdam. I ask them if they know what’s going on in Darfur, “Yeah, it’s a genocide, but no one wants to call it that,” replies one. Why hasn’t it fazed them that 47 black men have just arrived in a pack? “I don’t know,” shrugs the other, “What kind of people would that make us if it did?” I leave them, thinking that at least some people out there are raising their kids right.

3:30am- Friday P&O Dover to Calais ferry

I sit down next to Dabis Girno, a 24-year-old student from Birmingham City College. He has been in the UK for two years, having escaped his village, Tina (now a ghost town) in El-Fasher, north Sudan, after it was subject to militia attacks. Having experienced capture and torture, Dabis managed to flee with the aid of the Sudan Liberation Army. He is a survivor of the genocide. I ask him to name the worst thing he has seen. “I cannot name just one. I have seen people set alight. I have seen women raped. I have seen people beheaded. I was at a mosque and they arrived and cut off the hands of hundreds of worshippers.” He doesn’t flinch, when he speaks. I ask him why. “Because we have to fight. We can’t fall apart. We have brothers there dying now.” Dabis is keen to stress that this is not a religious conflict. “We are all Islamic. It is an ethnic cleansing. All Janjaweed are Arab; not all Arab are Janjaweed though.” I ask why they are so certain that the Janjaweed and the Sudanese government are one in the same. “They wear government-given uniforms, like the SS,” is his answer. With the appointment by President Omar al-Bashir of Musa Hilal, cover star of Janjaweed atrocities, to a senior government post in January this year, it is near impossibly to argue the analogy. 6am coach to The Netherlands

It’s only just occurred to me that I’m the only woman on the coach. The strangeness of the situation had dulled my initial cognition of the fact. James says that most refugees are educated men. The women have to take care of children. And if they are raped, they are shunned from their own tribes, leaving a bleak smudge and question mark over their plight.

11am Central Station, The Hague

When we alight, Mohamed issues everyone with stewed goat or seasoned potato wraps and sweet mango and custard apple juice. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. Although no one has slept more than a couple hours, everyone is energised when the placards are taken out the coach. Among many slogans are “Omar al-Bashir: Murderer”, “Dafauris murdered as world watches”.

We make our way to a clearing, where Reuters meets us. Soon there are loud exclamations as Dafuri refugees from Germany, The Netherlands and France reunite with their English friends.

1pm- March to ICC

As 200 refugees begin the march accompanied by 25 policeman, a man comes over to introduce himself to me. His name is Bella Kodi and he is the chairman of the SPLA Holland. I feel star struck. I had read his article titled My Africa, My Story detailing his visit to the Nuba Mountains after 17 years exile from his continent. He is disappointed with the press turn out. “Few people care unless a celebrity takes interest,” He says. He is interrupted by a man who speaks quickly in Arabic. Bella turns back. When he is gone, “It’s interesting, isn’t it? There has been an ‘Arabicisation’ of our nation, but not an ‘Arabisation’. Not yet, anyway.” I guess that’s what we’re fighting against, I say. I don’t mean to say “we”. Bella smiles.

3pm outside the International Criminal Court

Amid chants of “Justice, justice for Darfur!”,“Janjaweed to ICC!”, and “Stop killing children in Darfur!”, I notice Yagoub Adam, head of Sudan House in Birmingham stop dead in his tracks. He had told me on the ferry that he had heard from friends that there was a hair’s breadth of a chance that his brother, whom he has not seen for 13 years, would also be at the demonstration. He has seen Esmil Adam. The two men stare at each other, too shocked for tears. It’s a moment that cements in memory.

4pm ICC

The petition, with signatures thanking Ocampo for making moves to bring al-Bashir and Janjaweed leader Ali Kushayb to trial as war criminals, is submitted. Three women are present, all in head scarves, all vociferous. I recognise Ikhlass Mohamed, a 43-year-old with an MBA degree in clinical psychology (with plans to study for a PhD): an articulate female survivor, lauded by Prime Minister Gordon Brown as a distilled example of stoic courage. She tells me that her sister had witnessed her three children culled in front of her, “like sheep”. She doesn’t tear up. I do. She asks me if we should stop. I apologise for my lack of professionalism, but implore her not to. “I’ve seen the kind of things you could not imagine in your worst nightmare. Your worst. Whole villages destroyed by torches, screaming children, castration...You see, they want to change the race, so they kill the men and boys and they rape the women.” I think back to Amy telling me in Starbucks about Tears of the Desert. I make a note to buy Bashir’s book the minute I get home. I ask Ikhlass if she has been raped. “Of course. Many, many, many times.”

5pm Africa Union HQ

James and I walk to Africa Union HQ for food before our coach arrives. We are all ushered into a room where our friends sit in tired, comfortable silence. “Do you think today made a difference,” I ask James. “What’s the alternative,” he replies. Mohamed arrives with two bottles of Fanta, which he hands to me and James. “What about the others,” I ask. “We are getting theirs soon. Drink. Drink.” Neither James nor I can bring ourselves to open the bottles. The others don’t bat an eye lid that we have been served first. “Please drink; you are our guests,” says Huitam Matar, the 33-year-old survivor sitting next to me. In Sudan, he was a human rights lawyer. In the UK, he works in a supermarket. I take a sip. It’s hard to swallow.

We are served patties and sweet tea. I fall asleep sitting up soon after. I’m pushed awake by Huitam at 8pm to tell me that we are heading back to the coach. On the way out, a tall, suited man nods at me, “Thank you for coming,” he says. I ask him who he is. He doesn’t want to give his name; he is a member of the ICC. “We heard the demonstration. We were very heartened by the effort. We know we are on the right road.”

James and I almost cartwheel back to the coach.

9pm coach back to the UK

We drive past a series of witches, ghouls, Freddie Kreugers, Jasons.
“It’s Halloween,” James says.
“I’d forgotten.”
“Of course you have. You’ve had the biggest rupture from reality of your life.”

10pm coach leaving The Hague

James is asleep and I’m making notes when Abdul Hassan, a 27-year-old survivor who I had earlier shared a Snickers bar with, taps me on my shoulder. “Will you keep in touch with us,” he asks. I say yes. Definitely. We’re friends now. He smiles. “Will you also say in your article that Sudan...it is a beautiful place. It was a peaceful place with kind people.”
“I can imagine that,” I say.
“You must go there one day - not as a journalist, as a guest. When all this is over.” I will.

All images taken by James Ingram