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ABUSES IN DARFUR BY GOVERNMENT FORCES

Since the beginning of the rebel insurgency in February 2003, and particularly since the escalation of the conflict in mid-2003, the government of Sudan has pursued a military strategy that has violated fundamental principles of international humanitarian and human rights law. It has failed to distinguish between military targets and civilians or comply with the principle of proportionality in the use of force.¹⁶ Its strategy deliberately targets the civilian population through a combination of indiscriminate and deliberate aerial bombardment,¹⁷ a “scorched earth” campaign, and denial of access to humanitarian assistance. The results have been dramatic: within one year, more than 750,000 people displaced in Darfur and more than 110,000 across the border into Chad.¹⁸

Sudanese government forces are responsible for hundreds of indiscriminate and targeted attacks on civilians in Darfur amounting to serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.¹⁹ In many cases the severity of the crimes committed by government forces and allied militia as well as the widespread and systematic way in which these abuses are carried out amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.²⁰

Since the February 2003 official emergence of the Darfur rebel groups, attacks on civilians have increased in scale, number, and brutality and have been conducted on villages and towns in the absence of rebel presence or military targets. Civilians sharing the ethnicity of the rebel movement, namely the Fur, Masaalit, and Zaghawa and a few small tribes, have become the main targets of government military offensives aimed at destroying any real or perceived support base of the rebel forces. Government forces and janjaweed militias have inflicted a campaign of forcible displacement, murder, pillage, and rape on hundreds of thousands of civilians over the past fourteen months.

Dozens of refugees interviewed by Human Rights Watch and others have described repeated attacks on their villages and towns. Hundreds and hundreds of villages have been destroyed, usually burned, with all property looted. Key village assets, such as water points and mills, have been destroyed in an apparent effort to render the villages uninhabitable. Numerous civilians have been killed and injured by aerial bombardment and militia raids. Hundreds of women have reportedly been raped by militia and government troops. Children have been abducted in large numbers. Once they fled their homes, thousands of civilians have been subjected to systematic attacks, looting, and violence by militias in government-controlled towns and at janjaweed checkpoints that dot the roads. Even when displaced persons have reached the larger towns where they hope to find assistance and at least a refuge from further attacks, they continue to be systematically preyed upon by the janjaweed.

The evidence from Darfur points to a systematic campaign by government forces and allied militias to violently force rural civilians from their homes and render them destitute and corralled in government towns and camps.

Patterns of Government Attacks in Darfur

It appears that the government and janjaweed attacks throughout Darfur became increasingly violent in 2003, especially after the ceasefire unraveled and hopes for a speedy resolution of the conflict dwindled. Numerous civilians interviewed by Human Rights Watch described fleeing their villages into the hills, known as jebels, or neighboring villages after initial attacks in early or mid-2003, waiting several months for the situation to stabilize, then, hopeful that the ceasefire would bring peace, returning to their homes in September 2003. When the brutality of militia attacks worsened in and after October 2003, many civilians were forced to leave their home areas entirely, moving to larger towns in Darfur or crossing into Chad.

Attacks have varied in nature depending on their location but two broad patterns have emerged to date.

Government attacks on villages and towns in northern Darfur consisted of heavy aerial bombardment followed by ground attacks by Sudanese army troops and the Arab militia janjaweed forces. In mid-January 2004, for example, following Presdient Bashir’s pledge to “annihilate” the “hirelings, traitors, agents and renegades,”²¹ the government launched a major aerial bombing offensive in Zaghawa areas of North Darfur, causing the flight of thousands of civilians into Chad later that month. Many who survived the bombing and tried to stay in Darfur were later forced to flee the area due to militia and government ground attacks.

In South and West Darfur, by contrast, there has been far less aerial bombardment. Instead, Arab militias appear to have played the most significant role in ground attacks, sometimes accompanied by army troops, in what has become a spiral of increasing violence, robbery, and destruction aimed mainly at the Fur and Masaalit communities, whose homelands are in these states.

A Policy of Forced Displacement

While the government of Sudan may not have planned that events would evolve in quite this manner, they knew or should have known that the military strategy employed would result in forced displacement and massive consequences for civilians. While there are differences in targets and context, similar strategies have been inflicted on civilians in southern Sudan for twenty years.

In the initial months of the war, rebel presence and attacks were more concentrated in North Darfur, as were government counterattacks. However, as time passed and the government military campaign failed, it drew increasingly on the allied janjaweed militias to destroy any real or potential support base of the rebels—a strategy of forced displacement of the civilian population. As an incentive, militia were given the opportunity to freely loot and capture the land of communities they had long coveted. The government-backed militias—and armed groups of bandits who took advantage of the conflict to loot—did not confine their attacks to SLA or JEM troops or assets, but went far afield, targeting undefended villages and greatly increasing the numbers of affected civilians.

As the war continued, and particularly following the collapse of ceasefire talks in September 2003, the janjaweed militias grew in size and influence. The patterns of the aerial bombardment and ground attacks, the increasing violence, and the government’s clear responsibility for not merely supporting, but encouraging all aspects of the militia activity, point to a brutal and ethnically specific strategy to force the rural Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa population from their homes.

Article 17 of the Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions of 1977,²² which addresses the protections the warring parties must provide for civilians in non-international armed conflicts, prohibits the forced displacement of civilians for reasons connected with the conflict. It does, however, allow for such displacement if “imperative military reasons” or the “security of the civilians” requires—both of which are facts within the government’s control. It has the burden of explaining them, which it has not done.

Here the methods used to accomplish the displacement—attacks on civilians, scorched earth destruction of civilian property, and forced movement without warning—are in violation of international humanitarian law.

In addition, the destruction of water sources, burning of crops and theft of livestock are a key element in the government’s campaign. For obvious reasons, cutting off all sources of food and water to civilians in their homes will inevitably lead to their displacement—or starvation. As part of the duty to protect civilians in conflict, the government must not “attack, destroy, remove or render useless, for that purpose, objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population” Objects considered essential to civilian survival include “foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works.”²³

A campaign of forced displacement and other abuses amounting to crimes against humanity, and no doubt other serious violations, is taking place. While militias have operated as perhaps the principal perpetrator of direct violence, the character and scale of the abuses would not have been possible without pervasive government sanction and support. Government officials have actively supported the militias and disregarded the pleas of the Zaghawa, Masaalit, and Fur for protection. The Sudanese government thereby has condoned the killings, abductions, and forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The Khartoum government’s role in arming the militias and condoning attacks on civilians was noted by numerous refugees interviewed by Human Rights Watch as the main reason for their flight. They also cited the government’s role as the key difference between the recent militia activity and clashes with Arab militias in prior decades. Commenting on this, an elderly Masaalit refugee told Human Rights Watch:

Well, before there was conflict, it’s true, but now when a village is burned then automatically a helicopter descends to reinforce the Arabs. Whenever a village resists, then the plane comes down, so for me it’s not the Arabs, it’s the government that’s different from before. It has changed its attitude.²⁴

Another man pointed out, when asked whether his village had requested government protection, “It’s the government itself coming to attack, how can we ask them to defend us? Why don’t they come to help us if they’re not involved?”²⁵

Bombing of Civilians in North Darfur

North Darfur state, which contains the “dar” or homeland of the Zaghawa, was the main target of Sudanese government aerial bombing in 2003. The vast majority of refugees interviewed in locations in northeast Chad were Zaghawa who fled their villages and towns and the rural areas in and around Karnoi, Kepkabiya, and Abu Gamra.These refugees described the government’s systematic bombing campaign as one of the main reasons for their flight.

Sudanese government aircraft (mainly Antonov aircraft, although MiGs and attack helicopters have also been used) repeatedly bombed towns and villages, at any time of the day or night, inflicting hundreds of injuries and deaths of civilians, often just prior to ground attacks by Sudanese government soldiers and janjaweed militia.

The Sudanese government’s use of Antonov bombing is not new. Human rights and humanitarian organizations have documented an overwhelming pattern of Antonov bombing in the conflict in southern Sudan over the past decade or more. Now that the targeting reportedly has improved, with some forward air control capacity supplied by janjaweed in close communication with the Sudanese army and air force, it is clear that villages are deliberately targeted. By the very quantity of bombs dropped, the Antonovs can be sure of inflicting significant casualties and destruction.

Clearly there was SLA presence in certain villages, which provides military justification for the use of force, however the force must be proportional²⁶ to the expected military gain.

The government’s bombing campaign in Karnoi, North Darfur, and other towns in January, 2004, for instance, was a disproportionate use of force in that although there was rebel presence in certain locations, the victims were overwhelmingly civilians. In addition, essential civilian installations such as water sources, vital for the survival of the population, were destroyed, an outcome that cannot be justified by any military advantage of the attacks.

In many other villages there was clearly no military presence or installations that warranted the overwhelming bombing of January 2004.

Based on Human Rights Watch interviews with victims and witnesses, the Antonovs dropped hundreds—if not thousands—of bombs in North Darfur, sometimes repeatedly bombing the same villages with dozens of bombs in a few days. Some civilians dug holes in the ground to use as bomb shelters and managed to survive the campaign for some months until the January 2004 offensive forced them out. A forty-year-old Zaghawa market woman from Karnoi, a town in North Darfur, told Human Rights Watch,

I left because of the bombing. Every day the airplanes came and hit houses and killed people. I saw the planes; they fly very high and the top is white and the underside is black. From the beginning there was bombing, sometimes there would be a few weeks with no bombing, then it would start again. We made a hole in the floor of the house and when the planes came we went inside and would come out later. Every day people died and were wounded from the bombs: one day eight people killed, another day six people, sometimes two or one person. When we realized the bombing wouldn’t stop, and when my own house was hit, that’s when I left.²⁷

Witnesses to the attacks gave consistent accounts of a distinct pattern since early 2003: Antonov aircraft heavily bombed villages and water points, followed by ground attacks, often in a matter of minutes. The Antonov bombing was sometimes followed by more precise strikes by MiG planes and attack helicopters on infrastructure, including hospitals, health centers and schools.²⁸ Although most casualties appear to have resulted from Antonov bombing, attacks by MiG planes and attack helicopters have also resulted in civilian death and injuries. Helicopters are used for troop transport as well as targeting civilians—especially when there are no rebel forces around the civilians to shoot back at the helicopters.

A refugee with a medical background who provided basic first aid to many victims of the bombing in and around Karnoi before fleeing to Chad described the impact of the different aircraft to Human Rights Watch:

Most of the civilians were wounded by the Antonov bombing, and also by helicopters. The MiG attacks started in January 2004, and they come very fast and are very dangerous. If an Antonov bombs forty times [drops forty bombs], then it may kill and injure forty to fifty people. But one hit from the MiG can kill the same number. The MiG has rockets and machine guns, and it follows people, it is the most dangerous. The helicopter also comes very near when it bombs—there’s no resistance to it.²⁹

While there was aerial bombardment through most of 2003, witnesses describe an increase in the type and patterns of aerial bombardment in North Darfur dating from early December 2003. Aerial attacks appear to have peaked during a government offensive between January 15–19, 2004, and Human Rights Watch interviewed more than fifteen victims of aerial bombing from that period. A Zaghawa student from Jorboke, near Karnoi, was injured from shrapnel from a bombing on January 19, 2004:

I was at the well with my animals, about half a kilometer from the village, when the planes came. It was about 8 a.m. and two Antonovs came flying over. It was not the first time we’d seen the planes, but it was the first time they came to Jorboke so we were surprised by the bombs. The Antonovs came first, they were very high, like small birds, and they dropped eight bombs around Jorboke. We have two wells and both were hit, the others landed outside the village. The MiGs came about fifteen minutes later and they bombed two of the houses in the village. The MiG goes up and down and is very fast. It makes noise like thunder and shoots rockets, and it hit two of the biggest compounds in the village. The houses hit by the rockets burned down.

We were a mixed group at the well—men, women and children. There were two people killed and three wounded from the bomb, including me; my leg was broken. An old lady named Mariam was one of the dead, and a five-year-old boy, Ahmed Mohammed. . . . I heard later that the janjaweed came and looted and burned the rest of the village, but I had left by then; my family put me on a camel to come out to Chad.³⁰

The bombing forced many people to leave their villages and move into the wadis, the tree-lined riverbeds where people use hand-dug wells to access water under the riverbeds. Even in the wadis, they were continually targeted by air and by ground attacks--indeed, government bombing appears to have specifically targeted the wadis, where people and their livestock are forced to come for water and shelter, given the sparse vegetation and scorching temperatures of the region. A twenty-seven-year-old Zaghawa woman whose four-year-old son lost his feet in one such incident described what happened when her village near Karnoi, North Darfur, was bombed during the January offensive:

We had moved away from the houses when the bombing started around 3 p.m. We were hiding under the trees in the wadi. There were so many places they bombed. The children were hiding in a different place when the bomb caught them, and all of a sudden we heard them screaming.³¹

The bombing in the wadis appears to have been part of a deliberate strategy to destroy the water sources and other civilian installations, such as schools and hospitals. Witnesses reported numerous accounts of the bombing of wadis, but also of wells. “Our wells were broken by the bombing, indeed the whole village was destroyed,” said one thirty-eight-year-old Zaghawa man from Fara Wiya, a commercial town and administrative district in North Darfur.³² Another man from Fara Wiya town, which was repeatedly bombed in 2003 and 2004 due to suspected SLA presence, described the bombing in June 2003:

The government bombed us with Antonov, MiG, and helicopters. About 140 bombs dropped on Fara Wiya town in that month. The MiGs specifically hit the school—the hole was more than two meters deep. After that we were afraid and took our children away into the mountains. After the bombing in the morning, we saw about 2,000 soldiers come with tanks in the early afternoon. They surrounded the village on three sides and the janjaweed came on the fourth side. The plane had already destroyed the health clinic. The janjaweed and the soldiers broke into the shops and looted, then they burned the houses. The janjaweed put a dead animal in the well.³³

Some refugees allege that the government used some form of tear gas or chemical agent that was thrown out of helicopters in certain of the attacks. One refugee interviewed by Human Rights Watch stated that “the Antonovs are coming at night and in the day and sometimes there is poison in the bombing.”³⁴ The details of such incidents remain unclear, however, and these allegations have not been verified to date.

Repeated Raids in West and South Darfur

In West and South Darfur, militia attacks on Masaalit and Fur villages increased and became increasingly brutal over the six months since October 2003. Human Rights Watch interviewed at least a dozen individuals from different villages in El Geneina and Habila provinces who described a similar pattern of attacks. Initial raids by well-armed Arab militia on camel and horseback took place in mid- and late 2003 but consisted mainly of theft of livestock and verbal threats to the population, with few casualties. The nature of the attacks worsened over time, however, becoming much more numerous and much more violent in early 2004. A typical experience was described by a Masaalit refugee from West Darfur:

There have been three attacks [on my village] since October 2003, but the last attack [in early January 2004] was the worst. The first times, the men came on camels and horses and frightened us, but in the third attack they came by car and killed a lot of people. All the inhabitants fled at once after the last attack. The military told us they would erase us. We asked why they wanted to hurt us and they answered that it was none of our business, that orders came from above.³⁵

Another Masaalit refugee in Chad also reported attacks increasing in severity during the same time: “The first time they came was in late December, but it was not so serious. They came on camels and horses and shot in the air and stole some animals, but they didn’t kill anyone. When they came back the second time they came with cars and they killed five people and beat people and took everything, all the cows.”³⁶

A seventy-year-old Masaalit farmer who saw three sons die at the hands of the militia described the attacks as follows:

The first time, it was not such a large group, but when they came the second time, they created a huge dust cloud, those janjaweed, they were so many. They were on camel, on horse and on foot. They started shooting even before they arrived. Most of the village was burned, even my hut. Someone gave me these clothes to wear. Almost twenty people were killed in that attack—it was very early in the morning so there were many people at home.³⁷

Many people said they fled their villages, but remained in the general area. They did this to salvage some belongings, remain close to water sources, and in the hope of returning home—if security permitted. Most returned to the villages between attacks, intending to stay, but were finally forced out altogether by the brutal attacks or when the villages and water points were utterly destroyed.

Villages that were destroyed and emptied of their population were generally selected on the basis of ethnicity. Observers in Darfur in February and March 2004 report that burned Fur, Zaghawa and Maasalit villages are sometimes in close proximity to villages belonging to other ethnicities that have not been touched and in which the population continues to live. The intact villages sometimes belong to Arab and other non-Zaghawa, non-Masaalit, or non-Fur African ethnic groups.

Reportedly, some of the other African villages also suffer from the depredations of the militia, although not to the extent of the targeted ethnicities. Some villages pay large sums of money, up to U.S. $7000 in one such case, to the janjaweed militia to avoid attack.³⁸ Individuals have also been reported to have to pay janjaweed to allow them to farm their own land and return to their home villages. Once returned, however, their villages are attacked again, and in some cases, for instance, these villages have been occupied by settlements of Arab nomads, for instance in the rich agricultural area of Wadi Saleh province.³⁹

Although government forces appear to have had less responsibility for the widespread killings, rape, and assault on civilians during the ground attacks described by these refugees, future investigation may reveal a far greater direct role in abuses. Witnesses overwhelmingly note that government troops regularly participated in joint attacks, and coordinated with militias who plundered civilian property and destroyed infrastructure.

The janjaweed have visibly amassed tens of thousands of heads of Masaalit cattle, held in full view of government authorities in huge cattle camps. The government, by encouraging these reported abuses and by refusing to criminally prosecute any janjaweed, have given the janjaweed militia full impunity.

The Janjaweed Militia and Links to the Government of Sudan

The Arab militia groups known as janjaweed are but the latest incarnation in a longstanding strategy of militia use by successive Sudanese governments.⁴⁰ The militias in Darfur are clearly supported by the Sudanese government, which uses them as a counterinsurgency proxy to attack civilians while somewhat hiding the government’s hand.

The Sudanese government is reported to have recruited 20,000 janjaweed militia members.⁴¹ Most are believed to be from Arab camel-herding tribes from North Darfur and Chad. The tribes and clans most frequently mentioned by refugees and other credible sources are the the Irayqat and Ouled Zed subclans of the camel-herding northern Rizeigat, the Mahariya, and the Beni Hussein.⁴² Many of the militia members are believed to be Chadian in citizenship and while some have been attracted to the janjaweed by the increasing ethnic polarization in the region, the prospect of loot apparently has been a greater incentive for most.

Some of the janjaweed members are also known to their victims. Witnesses to attacks in Fur areas of West Darfur stated that they knew their attackers.⁴³

Witnesses and victims of the attacks consistently describe militia members as wearing Sudanese government military uniforms, generally green khaki. They sometimes have insignia of a man on horseback, or a red patch on the shoulder, but the ranks displayed are regular government army ranks, and their two main leaders have the rank of “general.”

The militia members carry new weapons (including Kalashnikovs, G-3s, and Belgique) and communications equipment such as Thuraya satellite phones. In addition, janjaweed militia sometimes travel in Sudanese government vehicles, although they are typically on horseback or camels. They are invariably present in ground attacks and raids, and sometimes accompanied by Sudanese government troops in attacks.

Human Rights Watch interviewed a former government soldier in Chad who had been forcibly recruited by the government in eastern Sudan in the beginning of 2003 and later captured by the SLA. His description of joint attacks by government forces and the janjaweed militia was telling and confirmed the many witness accounts of government and militia collaboration:

We went to Adar [North Darfur] to fight in early 2003. We weren’t told about the SLA, only that we were there to fight robbers. We [the government troops] were in green pickup trucks with red flags. The red flags are especially for the war. We were several thousand and it took ten days to go to Adar. There were janjaweed with us, they came on horseback. We fight together but they [janjaweed] stay together and they camp in separate places. They had their own leader, and before they enter the fighting, their commander would get together with the other commanders and organize the plan for the attack. They also had communications equipment to stay in contact with the other commanders.

The way the attacks go is that first the Antonovs come to bomb and frighten away the SLA and the civilian population, the helicopter usually comes with us, with the soldiers, and the janjaweed attack from a different side. The janjaweed get khaki uniforms and new guns too—G-3s, Doshkas—that come from Khartoum.⁴⁴

Human Rights Watch was told by several credible sources that new recruits to the janjaweed militia received an initial fee that could range from U.S. $ 100 to U.S. $ 400 and that relatives were guaranteed continuing support should a militia member be killed in battle.⁴⁵ Many janjaweed also reportedly receive monthly stipends that exceed the salary of army soldiers (about 100,000 Sudanese pounds or $100). Militia members also receive regular supplies of sugar and oil. In addition to arms, uniforms, salaries, communications equipment, and other forms of support, janjaweed apparently also received identity cards from the government, according to documents captured by the SLA in December 2003.⁴⁶

The command structures of the janjaweed are less well understood. Several people interviewed by Human Rights Watch mentioned a janajweed leader named “Shochortola” who was reportedly killed in fighting in North Darfur in January 2004. A Rizeigat leader from Kutum was also mentioned as a prominent force among the janjaweed. Several sources concurred that janjaweed regularly use El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, as a base for operations, that training camps are located outside the town, and that ammunition is regularly distributed to the militia by sources within the government’s military intelligence unit.⁴⁷

As of March 2004, despite the government’s announcement that the war was won, there were new reports of government recruitment of combatants.⁴⁸

Government Responses to Militia Attacks

Government forces not only participated and supported militia attacks on civilians, they also actively refused to provide security to civilians seeking protection from these militia attacks. Human Rights Watch received testimonies indicating that, when the attacks began in 2003, large numbers of civilians fled to towns and villages which housed military barracks and/or police posts, or sent messages to military units alerting them of the attacks and requesting help. The government forces rarely, if ever, responded.

On the contrary, in some cases when civilians fled to towns where army barracks were located, they were told to leave by Sudanese military and police. An elderly Masaalit refugee described the reaction of Sudanese police in Konga when he and other villagers fled there after a janjaweed attack in late 2003:

We took what was left of our belongings and we fled to Konga, where there was a Sudanese military post. It took two days to go to Konga—those who went to Konga were mostly the old men, the women. . . . When we got to Konga, there were many people there, people from at least four or five other villages that had been burned. We went to the military, but they said, ‘Go away, if you come here then the Arabs will come too and kill you and maybe kill us too, so go away.’ That’s why we came to Chad, because it was clear the government wouldn’t protect us.⁴⁹

Even when displaced people reached a relatively larger town with greater military presence, such as Nyala (capital of South Darfur), El Geneina (capital of West Darfur), or Kepkabiya, there was no guarantee of security. In January 2004, numerous janjaweed militia attacks on displaced communities were reported, even around major towns like El Geneina and Kepkabiya.⁵⁰ In late January 2004 there were at least three militia attacks on Aramata displaced camp alone, just six kilometers from El Geneina town. Over 500 cattle were looted and an unconfirmed number of civilians were apparently killed in these incidents, three of hundreds of attacks on displaced communities in the region.⁵¹

Examples of the government’s refusal to provide protection to certain groups of displaced persons abound. In Nyala on January 14, 2003, security forces insisted that the displaced people of Initifadah camp move to another location at least fourteen kilometers away from the town. The majority of the displaced fled the camp before the planned relocation occurred, fearing a lack of security in the new site. Armed police forced persons who remained to move, at gunpoint. Some displaced scattered in panic to escape the forced relocation. Eventually an estimated 600 people were moved, despite their fears of increased vulnerability to attacks and despite the fact that the new site had not been adequately prepared with water and shelter.⁵²

Among the displaced were malnourished children and families who previously fled their burned villages, losing all they possessed only a few weeks earlier. Due to these hardships and the minimal humanitarian assistance available in Nyala town, children under five were estimated to be dying at a rate of 6/10,000 per day in mid-January, a rate that is considered to be alarming in the extreme.⁵³

In yet another telling example of the government’s refusal to provide security for civilians, a number of tribal leaders of the Fur, Zaghawa and Masaalit communities reportedly made repeated attempts to inform government authorities of the grave abuses taking place. They appealed to the highest levels of government in Khartoum. They presented documented cases of violations, with no response. In at least one case, the Sudanese government warned the Darfurian representative to stop his appeals.⁵⁴

Abuses by Government-Allied Militias

Killings of Civilians

Witnesses from dozens of villages report that the janjaweed deliberately assaulted and killed civilians, both those perceived as rebel supporters and others lacking any link to the rebel forces. It is estimated that hundreds of civilians have been killed in the conflict thus far, but given the lack of access to most of rural Darfur, this number could be a serious underestimate.

Refugees interviewed in Chad often noted that although the government troops failed to protect them and were clearly responsible for aerial bombing, it was the janjaweed they most feared because “they are uneducated and they don’t differentiate between men, women, and children.”⁵⁵ The vast majority of the victims in village attacks—indiscriminate and targeted—have been men, many of them between twenty and forty-five years old. An unknown number, perhaps in the hundreds, of women and children have also been killed in direct, deliberate targeting by the militia forces and in crossfire during the attacks.

Some of the casualties in certain attacks are no doubt SLA combatants. Others, especially the young and middle-aged men from the Fur, Zaghawa and Masaalit communities⁵⁶ organized self-defense committees in their villages, taking up arms in the attempt to defend their families and property, and have died in the fighting with the janjaweed. According to the information available to Human Rights Watch, these self-defense groups are a longstanding strategy of deterring Arab attacks on villages that dates from the early 1990s, and they were only lightly armed, rarely possessing more than five or six rifles or non-automatic guns per village.⁵⁷ In almost all cases they were no match in 2003-2004 for the more numerous janjaweed, armed by the government with many modern automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades and mortars. As one elderly Masaalit man noted, “[My village] is a big village, there were more than 1,000 men there. If we had had arms, we could have defended ourselves, but we had no arms and they are expensive to buy.”⁵⁸

In many cases documented by Human Rights Watch and other credible sources such as Amnesty International, the dead were unarmed civilians—men, women and children—who were killed by fires set to the homes, and by bullets while trying to defend their livestock. The numbers of civilian casualties vary widely from village to village, often depending on whether the village had been previously attacked. For instance, in a typical attack on a village where most residents had already fled, the main casualties incuded those too old or sick to flee, and those who resisted livestock looting. A thirty-five-year-old Zaghawa man from Adar told Human Rights Watch what happened in his village:

There were no SLA in our village at that time, but when we heard the janjaweed were coming, I myself took a gun to fight with them. I fought because my family was there. The janjaweed came in on horses, maybe 150 of them, with Kalashnikovs and G-3s. They were wearing government uniforms and I and twenty other men, we took the guns we had and prepared to defend the place. But then we heard that big troops were coming from Kepkabiya, we saw the government coming in cars, and they were just too many. Finally we left. Everything we left in the houses, they destroyed. The older people, the ones who were unable to leave, they were killed. About twenty-five people were killed. They were mostly old men like Bashar Bahia, he wouldn’t leave his house and they shot him and broke his head. Fatima Abdallah, she was blind and her son ran away. She burned to death when they set fire to the [thatch roof of the] house with a match. Others were killed when they tried to stop them taking their camels and cows, or other goods. Daoud Issa, he was in his sixties and he was killed when he tried to stop them looting his shop.⁵⁹

In cases where the attacks came by surprise or there were larger numbers of people still present in the village, men tended to be the most heavily targeted, but in some cases, the militia members killed most of the civilians they found, regardless of age or sex—including some hiding in mosques. An eighteen-year-old Zaghawa man from Goz Naim who survived the janjaweed destruction of his village told Human Rights Watch:

The first attack was in early January [2004]. First the plane bombed and then the janjaweed came. Most people fled but after three or four days they had no water, so they returned to the village for water, especially for the animals. The second attack was two weeks later, in late January. First there was bombing about 9 a.m., then the janjaweed came by horse and car; there were hundreds of them. I was at the well giving water to my animals when I saw them coming. I was on my horse and I was hit by a bullet and I fell off my horse into the bushes. The janjaweed collected all the animals but they didn’t see me, otherwise they would have killed me.

They killed fifteen people in the village—three women and twelve men. Two of the women were old women, in their fifties, they were shot while trying to protect their animals from being stolen. The men were in the mosque when they were killed. They had gone to the mosque at 6 a.m. They stayed inside the mosque when the janjaweed came, they were praying for life. The janjaweed shot and killed them there.⁶⁰

These are not the only reports Human Rights Watch has received of janjaweed murders of those hiding or praying in mosques.

Human Rights Watch has also received several allegations that cannot be confirmed that in some towns where displaced Fur have fled in Darfur, janjaweed militia are targeting unarmed, displaced civilians and possibly executing them. These reports have not been confirmed to date. There are reports that the janjaweed rounded up civilian men, including community leaders, in groups of a few individuals to dozens or persons, and take them away--never to be seen again. To date, their whereabouts are unknown and it is widely believed that they have been killed by the militia.⁶¹ Similar reports of targeted roundups of community leaders—who are never seen again—have been received from Masaalit areas as well, suggesting there may be a plan for disposing of local leadership.⁶²

There have also been clear reprisal actions against or collective punishment of certain villages in which janjaweed militia summarily executed, assaulted, and committed other acts of violence against whole communities perceived as SLA supporters. Human Rights Watch received information regarding several such incidents, including one in early January 2004 in which, following an SLA attack on a militia position, the government and janajweed forces jointly attacked the village and killed more than one hundred people. Men were systematically killed, as were some women and children, and some women had their breasts cut with knives. Parents reportedly were given the choice whether they would prefer their children were shot or thrown in the fire.⁶³

Rape and Other Forms of Sexual Violence

There have been numerous reports of rape by janjaweed militias throughout Darfur, but those reports received by Human Rights Watch came particularly from Zaghawa areas of North Darfur. Given the type of trauma involved and the social stigma attached to rape in the Sudanese and Chadian cultures, many women are reluctant to be identified as survivors of rape and of sexual attacks. Many do not recognize the need for medical care following an assault, and even if they do, confidential health care is rarely available in the Darfur context. It is likely that hundreds of women have suffered from rape during the past year of the conflict. Incidents of rape appear to have increased over the past six months, part of the ever-increasing brutality of attacks. Women have sometimes been abducted by the militias either before or after a rape.

A medical student who had been in North Darfur until late February 2004 told Human Rights Watch that he had treated more than fifty women and girls who had been raped by janjaweed and soldiers around Karnoi. In a particularly brutal incident with clear racial overtones, an eighteen-year-old woman was assaulted by janjaweed who inserted a knife in her vagina, saying, “You get this because you are black.”⁶⁴

Human Rights Watch also received at least eight credible reports of rape of women and girls in the Um Barou and Abu Gamra areas in January 2004. There were additional, unconfirmed allegations that ten young boys of “karda” age (shepherds) had also been abducted from Abu Gamra by janjaweed, allegedly for sexual use and domestic labor.

More recently, United Nations and other humanitarian staff in North Darfur reported widespread rape in the Tawila area following janjaweed attacks on the town on February 27, 2004. According to these sources, residents of the town stated that sixty-seven people were killed and forty-one schoolgirls and female teachers were raped by the militia. Some were raped by up to fourteen men and in front of their families. The same reports stated that some women had been branded on the hand following the rapes, apparently in an effort to permanently stigmatize them.⁶⁵

Rapes have also been reported in the displaced camps in Darfur, in the context of continuing militia attacks, although few details are available about specific cases.

Abductions of Children and Adults

Refugees’ testimonies have also noted an alarming number of abductions of young girls and boys. It is not possible at this time to obtain an accurate number of children who have been abducted. Access to all the displaced and refugees remains limited, and many families have been separated by the conflict and are unsure whether children and other family members are lost, dead, or kidnapped by the attackers. At a minimum the numbers of abducted children are likely in the hundreds, ranging in age from infants to adolescents.

Children were sometimes taken directly from their parents, who were then killed if they protested. In an attack on Goz Naim in late January, for instance, a twenty-year old Zaghawa woman named Mecca Hissab was shot to death by janjaweed when she cried and tried to stop the militia from taking her three-year-old son.⁶⁶

Older children were also abducted and sometimes risked death if they resisted. A young man from Jirai, a village some forty-five kilometers from Kepkabiya, saw the bodies of three young boys he knew; they had been shot by the militia during the attack on the village. The boys were aged ten, twelve, and thirteen. All three had been herding their animals on the outskirts of the village when the janjaweed tried to steal the animals and kidnap the boys, who resisted. A twelve-year-old girl who was in the same area at the time of the attack has since disappeared and is believed to have been abducted.

Adults have also been taken away by the janjaweed according to several witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch describe men and women of all ages being taken away by the militias after raids on villages. During the government offensive around Tine, on the Chad border, in January and February 2004, government and janjaweed forces abducted as well as killed many civilians. Witnesses provided several dozen names of individuals. One, a Zaghawa woman from Damanic, a small village in North Darfur just kilometers from the Chadian border town of Tine, said that up to fifteen people from her village were taken away by the janjaweed in early February 2004, and gave Human Rights Watch the names of three women aged fifteen to sixty, and six men and boys aged seventeen to seventy who were abducted.⁶⁷

Looting of Civilian Property and Related Violence

The janjaweed militias active in Darfur have systematically looted villages of civilian property. Some looting and accompanying violence is due to economic opportunism—Darfurian and Chadian armed robbers who have long been active in the area take advantage of the current conflict to carry out their own attacks, marauding, looting, and raping. Refugees interviewed in Chad sometimes referred to this second group as “peshmarga” and described them as “looters who come in to steal after the government has come in.”⁶⁸ In some areas they reportedly engage in highway robbery. It is unclear how large a group this and how much overlap there is with janjaweed.

Typically though it is the janjaweed who carry out what has become a campaign of systematic pillage and related violence which occurs particularly if they encounter resistance. Janjaweed even beat and abuse elderly women caught digging up hidden assets—underground grain stocks in their abandoned villages—if they refuse to comply.

The primary target in most cases has been livestock—thousands of camels, cattle, sheep, and goats belonging to Fur, Masaalit, and Zaghawa villagers have been stolen from their owners. Throughout much of the region, pastoral populations count their wealth in the head of livestock they possess. Livestock are also trade and used for family consumption. Internal trade and export of livestock is one of the economic mainstays of the region. The impact of the theft of livestock on the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in the region cannot be overstated. Without restitution or compensation for their losses, thousands of families have already been rendered destitute.

Dozens of witnesses also described militia members looting goods from houses before setting the homes ablaze. Some stolen goods were sold in government towns. Civilians from Tine (Sudan) told Human Rights Watch, “The janjaweed, when they came to Tine, they took all our things, they carried them to El Geneina and people in El Geneina saw our things in the market.”⁶⁹

Civilians who made any attempt to stop the militia from looting their property risked serious injury or death. A Masaalit farmer from a village near Misterei, West Darfur, told Human Rights Watch about the deaths of his wife and one-year-old twin sons during a janjaweed attack in January 2004:

It happened on a Thursday afternoon. I heard shots and a neighbor’s child came running over, crying that her father had been killed. I went out of the house to see what was happening and before I left I gave my wife some money to hide. There were two Arabs outside wearing green khaki. They were untying my two camels from the tree. I tried to stop one of the men untying the rope and the other one shot me. Then they took the camels and left. Some of the men had also gone inside my house and demanded money from my wife. She refused to give it to them and they shot her as well. They threw a match in the house and the house burned with my wife and twin boys inside.⁷⁰

The above account of looting and violence by militia members has been echoed in numerous refugee testimonies and accounts of displaced persons and eyewitnesses within Darfur.

Tens of thousands of families have lost their homes and all assets in these raids, in addition to the deaths and injuries inflicted by the attackers.

Displaced civilians in Darfur and refugees in Chad have continued to be attacked and looted even once they fled their villages—especially if they managed to salvage some livestock and household goods. Civilians en route to Chad have been intercepted by janjaweed patrolling to prevent their escape, and looted of their livestock and belongings . A seventeen-year-old Zaghawa girl who left Fara Wiya, a village in North Darfur, in early February, told Human Rights Watch:

On our way from Fara Wiya, we saw the janjaweed coming. Some of us were walking and others were on donkeys. We ran into the jebel [hill] and left all our luggage and the animals. The janjaweed took everything, our bags and our ten camels.⁷¹

Reports from the few humanitarian workers and other observers able to access Darfur in February and March 2004 describe constant attacks on displaced communities in camps and near towns throughout the region.⁷² These raids not only targeted the remaining livestock of the displaced, they also looted blankets, food, and other items that had been distributed to the displaced by humanitarian agencies. In some areas, displaced communities even requested that no humanitarian assistance be distributed for fear that the food and goods would draw new attacks upon them, a poignant indication of how little protection the displaced receive from any government or agency.⁷³

Deliberate Destruction of Homes, Water Sources, and Other Essential Civilian Property

The accounts of refugees and displaced persons, and the observations of the few international journalists, diplomats, and others who have managed to enter Darfur universally describe scores of empty, burned villages off the main roads of Darfur. No one has accurate figures for the total number of villages that have been destroyed, but even a conservative estimate would be in the hundreds. One eyewitness stated that between the larger towns, “everything you see is burned. In some places there are some walls left, but everything is gone.”

Small details of the destruction indicate a wholescale policy to forcibly displace the original residents. Witnesses describe destroyed granaries, even the underground sites where villagers had stored grain, which were searched for, dug up, and destroyed. Village mango trees were reportedly cut down and the fruit fed to the janjaweed’s camels. Janjaweed also allowed the camels into the fields where they quickly consumed the crops.⁷⁴

Most alarming, given the arid environment, has been the systematic destruction of wells and other water sources, both in bombing and militia raids. Some refugees noted that militia threw bodies in the wells specifically to contaminate the water source and render return impossible.⁷⁵

Denial of Access to Humanitarian Assistance in Darfur

Between October 2003 and January 2004, the Sudanese government almost entirely obstructed international humanitarian assistance to displaced civilians in Darfur—and provided virtually no aid from its own coffers to hundreds of thousands of displaced victims. In addition, for four months, the government sorely restricted the entry permits and movement of international aid workers into and around the region. Almost all humanitarian workers were restricted to the pre-existing locations in which they were present by October 2003.

While the Khartoum government cited insecurity as the rationale for barring access, some state government officials—contradicting this rationale—apparently declared large areas accessible and secure for humanitarian access by late December 2003.⁷⁶ The more likely reason for the immoveable restrictions is that government officials wished to restrict international access—and witnesses—and further weaken potential civilian support for the SLA by rendering the entire Fur, Masaalit, and Zaghawa populations destitute.

Under increasing international pressure to improve humanitarian access, the government declared in mid-February 2004 that nine locations would be open to relief workers,⁷⁷ but progress was slow. Aid workers were still forced to wait up to six weeks for visas and travel permits in March 2004. On March 6, 2004, in an unusually pointed public statement to the government of Sudan, the president of the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) noted the fact that “the ICRC, under present constraints, is not in a position to carry out a meaningful humanitarian operation [in Darfur].”⁷⁸

When some of these few newly accessible areas were accessed in March 2004, aid workers typically found thousands of newly displaced people in towns along the roads. These people fled attacks in December 2003 and January 2004 and were since been cut off from food, medical, and any other humanitarian aid. Hundreds more surged into small towns and villages, living in the open air without shelter, health care, already traumatized and constantly terrified of further attacks.⁷⁹ Some people fled to Chad, but for many this option was virtually impossible because of the distance and increasing janjaweed and Sudanese government interdictory patrols.

Fleeing Darfur: Another Trauma

As of the writing of this report, more than 110,000 Sudanese civilians, the vast majority Zaghawa and Masaalit, have sought refuge in Chad. For many of these people the decision to flee into Chad was made only after repeated attacks and violence, and at great personal cost. Some stayed in their home areas as long as possible for various reasons. Despite Zaghawa and Masaalit kinship ties across the border, most people were reluctant to leave their houses and lands where they had regular access to water and pasture for the animals. Those who managed to save some of their livestock realized that given the arid regional environment, survival in Chad, particularly for their animals, would be difficult. Others lost their means of transportation—donkeys and camels—and were reluctant to abandon elderly or sick family members who could not travel on foot.

More than 750,000 people, including the bulk of the Fur population targeted so far, are believed to have been displaced within Darfur. Few Fur have entered Chad. For the Fur, it is likely that Chad offered less appeal as a refuge, largely because they have no kinship and ethnic ties with communities in Chad, unlike the Zaghawa and the Masaalit. In addition, the majority of the Fur population resided in central Darfur, around the Jebel Marra massif and further east. The difficulties of traveling to Chad—already immense for many communities far from the border—have only increased over the months. Refugees arriving in Chad routinely described arduous treks of days and weeks to reach the border, often at night; deaths of livestock and sometimes family members along the way looting and attacks by janjaweed patrols.

Obstruction of Refugee Flight and Restrictions on Civilian Movement

The government of Sudan forces moved into towns and villages along the border with Chad in early 2004, having successfully scattered if not defeated the rebels in those towns in the January 2004 offensive, Sudanese refugees have reported increasing difficulty crossing the border to Chad since that time. Reportedly, government troops and janjaweed have deliberately blocked would-be refugees, even beating persons suspected of trying to leave Sudan. Janjaweed roadblocks are common on the roads leading to Chad; five were reported on the road from El Geneina to the Chadian border a few kilometers away.⁸⁰ A thirty-one-year-old Tama woman walked for several days from her village, skirting El Geneina town because of government troop and militia presence in and around the town. She tried to enter Chad from Habila. She said,

From Habila, I managed to cross the border on foot. I did not take the shortest way to come into Chad, because each time the Arabs were blocking the roads and we could not cross. . . . To cross the border, we stayed hidden in the dark, in the bushes.⁸¹

Another refugee who fled his village near El Geneina said that while men had the most difficulty entering Chad, even women risked assault if they were caught by the Arab militia. He reported,

There are Arab checkpoints at the border, I witnessed that myself. I went there and hid. I saw some women who tried to cross the border—they got beaten up with leather whips. The males would be killed, but the females are allowed to go through.⁸²

The description above was repeated by civilians in other locations, who told Human Rights Watch that movement inside Darfur is increasingly difficult in recent months and that people are virtual hostages in the towns. Eyewitnesses reported that large numbers of displaced people in and around El Geneina town, for instance, were unable to leave because they were threatened by the Sudanese government forces there that they would “betray Sudan” if they fled the country.⁸³

Human Rights Watch heard other accounts of janjaweed manning roadblocks and checkpoints along the roads in West Darfur further from the border, demanding that vehicles pay fees for passage; some commercial trucks still ply the road to Chad. Janjaweed have also reportedly requested payments of 500 or 1000 Sudanese pounds (less than U.S. $1) for letters of authorization which permit the bearer to leave a town and move to another area.⁸⁴

These accounts of the restrictions on movement and the freedom to seek refuge outside Darfur illustrate a government and janjaweed policy and practice of preventing civilians from fleeing from Darfur to Chad. Possibly, Khartoum fears the potential for a large refugee population in Chad to become rebel recruits. Constant displacement, extortion, violence, and threats of violence permit the government and its proxies to control civilians through terror. The humanitarian crisis and ethnic tensions brought into Chad are already having a destabilizing effect on that country--and on Khartoum’s ally President Déby, whose political position is precarious. Whatever the motivations for this policy and practice, it is illegal under international law.