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Background

Since early 2003, the people of Sudan’s western Darfur region have experienced a brutal government-coordinated scorched earth campaign against civilians belonging to the same ethnicity as members of two rebel movements, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). The government’s campaign has combined two key elements with devastating consequences for civilians.  One is the systematic use of indiscriminate aerial bombardment in North Darfur and to a lesser extent in West and South Darfur. The second is the deployment and coordination of ethnic proxy forces known as “Janjaweed” militias who have been recruited from landless Arab nomadic tribes, some of whom have been involved in past clashes with the farming communities branded as supportive of the rebels.

Almost all of Darfur’s population has been affected by the conflict, either directly through attacks on villages, killings, rape, looting and destruction of property and forced displacement, or indirectly through the near total collapse of the region’s economy. An estimated two million people have been displaced in less than two years of conflict. An accurate estimate of the total number of conflict-related civilian deaths—including mortality from violence as well as from disease and malnutrition related to displacement—is unavailable, but is likely to surpass 100,000.⁴

In the south of Sudan, a twenty-one year conflict between the government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) has been settled by a peace agreement signed on January 9, 2005. The conflict in Darfur broke out after the southern peace talks commenced, and was not included in those negotiations. African Union-sponsored peace talks between the Sudanese government and the two main rebel groups in Darfur, the SLA and the JEM, have made little progress and the ceasefire signed by the government of Sudan, the SLA and the JEM on April 8, 2004 has been repeatedly violated by all sides.

As of early January 2005, prospects for an imminent end to the violence in Darfur remain bleak.  Despite agreements between the Sudanese government and the rebel movements in Abuja, Nigeria, on November 9, 2004, including commitments by the government to “refrain from conducting hostile military flights in and over the Darfur region,” and to “expeditiously implement its stated commitment to neutralize and disarm the Janjaweed/armed militias,”⁵ the government’s promises proved to be of little value shortly after they were made. In December 2004, the government launched an offensive on civilians and SLA targets in South Darfur, including through helicopter bombardment, prompting the African Union to issue an unusually harsh reprimand.⁶  Increasing ceasefire violations by rebel groups were also reported by the U.N. and other sources.⁷

Several “African”⁸ ethnic groups—namely the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa⁹ -- have been specifically targeted by repeated joint government-militia attacks in Darfur. Many of the abuses against these groups amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes, as the attacks are deliberately and systematically directed against civilians on account of their ethnicity. Some abuses stand out for the extraordinary level of brutality shown by the perpetrators, suggesting an intention to destroy the civilian group targeted in a given locality.¹⁰  All these incidents should be investigated in depth, and prosecuted as exceptionally serious international crimes, including potentially the crime of genocide.

Based on investigations by Human Rights Watch in Darfur in 2004,¹¹ this paper describes events leading up to and details of two specific incidents in south-western Darfur in March 2004—the summary executions by government forces and their allied militias of more than 200 Fur men in the Wadi Saleh area of West Darfur and the attacks on and detentions of thousands of Fur civilians in the neighboring Shattaya locality of South Darfur. The government’s military offensives in late 2003 and early 2004 in this area were characterized by extremely high levels of violence against Fur civilians, the predominant ethnic group in the area.

Dar Fur: Wadi Saleh, Mukjar and Shattaya localities

Deleig and Mukjar localities (mahalias) in West Darfur state and neighboring Shattaya locality in South Darfur state are in the central belt of Darfur¹². This area, which includes the Jebel Marra mountains and the land around it, is among the most fertile agricultural areas in Darfur. Historically, the area is part of the dar or homeland of the Fur tribe, from which Darfur takes its name and whose sultanate ruled most of Darfur for several hundred years before the British captured the area in 1916.

Some of the key towns there--Deleig, Garsila, Mukjar, Shattaya and Kailek—are located in a U or semi-circle shape around a cluster of hills or small mountains (jebel) called the Sindu Hills, which straddle the border between West and South Darfur. The Fur tribe is mainly agricultural and rural village-based, although many communities also own livestock and some are semi-nomadic or transhumant.¹³ The larger towns, such as Garsila and Mukjar, are administrative centers and have a greater ethnic mix due to the presence of merchants, traders, military forces and migrants from other parts of Sudan.¹⁴

Historical tensions over land

While the area is bordered by historically pastoral or nomadic¹⁵ groups of Arab ethnicity such as the Beni Halba, whose dar is south of Shattaya, an important point of contact between settled Fur communities and migrating Arab tribes has been during the annual livestock migrations. Several north-south migration routes (known as marhal) transit the Deleig-Mukjar-Shattaya region.¹⁶

Darfur’s migration routes have been delineated since the days of the British colonial rule, when the system of dars was elaborated. Official and customary law regulated the timing and use of migration routes by nomads and included prohibitions on cultivation or fencing along the routes, many of which have been reasserted in more recent agreements between ethnic groups as both the area under cultivation and livestock numbers have increased.¹⁷ However, over the past few decades, there has been increasing conflict over land, especially between sedentary Fur¹⁸ farming communities and migrating Arab nomads, particularly landless nomadic groups, due to a number of factors: increasing human and livestock population, environmental degradation, expanding agricultural cultivation, inadequate water resources and the migration of nomads from Chad into Darfur.¹⁹ 

Darfur has long experienced underdevelopment, as have most Sudanese regions on the periphery of Khartoum.  Since the current National Congress government took power in a military coup in 1989, however, Fur and other non-Arab communities increasingly complained that instead of addressing the underlying causes of the Darfur conflicts, the government armed and assisted the nomadic Arabs in the localized clashes that took place in the late-1980s and 1990s. These local conflicts—and the hostility and mistrust that they have provoked between communities—have been a contributing factor in the violence of 2003-2004. These local clashes were, however, far surpassed in scale and suffering by the impact of the conflict that has been taking place between the government of Sudan, its ethnic militia allies, and Darfur rebel movements since 2003.