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Sudan fighting turns deadly again as Arab militias return
Tue, Mar 04, 2008 The Straits Times
SULEIA (SUDAN) - THE janjaweed are back. The Arab militiamen came to this dusty town in the Darfur region of Sudan on market day recently and laid waste to the town - burning huts, pillaging shops, carrying off any loot they could find and shooting anyone who stood in their way, residents said. It was accompanied by government bombers and followed by the Sudanese army. The attacks spell a return to the tactics that terrorised Darfur in the early, bloodiest stages of the conflict. They have rarely been seen in the past few years, when the violence became more episodic and fractured.

The janjaweed attacks, which came three weeks ago, involved close coordination of air power, army troops and their allied Arab militias in areas where rebel troops had been.

They were aimed at retaking ground gained by the Justice and Equality Movement, a rebel group which has been gathering strength and has close ties to the government of neighbouring Chad.

'I have never been so afraid,' said villager Asha Abdullah Abakar, who hid in a hut praying it would not be set on fire.

Government officials said the strikes were aimed at evicting the rebels in part because the rebels were hijacking aid vehicles and preventing peacekeepers from patrolling the area.

'We are simply trying to secure the area from the bandits that are troubling civilians,' said Mr Ali al-Sadig, a government spokesman. He denied the involvement of Arab militias.

But residents said the rebels were long gone by the time the government attacks began, leaving defenceless civilians to flee bombs and guns.

'My son Ahmed, he ran, but I have not seen him since,' Ms Aisha said as she waited for a sack of sorghum from UN workers in Sirba, one of the towns that was attacked. 'I just pray he is still hiding in the bush somewhere and will come back.'

The United Nations estimated that the recent fighting forced nearly 58,000 people to flee Darfur, which has a population of about six million people.

In January, a long-sought hybrid UN and African Union peacekeeping force began working in Darfur, but the Sudanese government's quibbling over which countries the troops will come from and bureaucratic delays have stalled the force's deployment.

Sudan's biggest trading partner and ally, China, has also come under pressure from advocates who have linked the Beijing Olympics this summer to the fighting in Darfur.

China has been more publicly critical of the Sudanese government in recent weeks. Sudan has also been trying to improve its relationship with the United States.

'Since the first of the year, another 75,000 people in Darfur have been displaced,' US special envoy to Sudan Richard Williamson said in a telephone interview. 'That is more than a thousand a day. There are not going to be any changes until that reverses.'

NEW YORK TIMES