Brian Steidle, an ex US Marine traipsed into Sudan in 2004 as a contractor to work with AU. He was supposed to monitor the happenings in Sudan. And for a person who went to a country with absolutely no idea about the going ons, he caught on quick. And tried to perform to the best of his abilities. And more than anything he had empathy for the poor people and started documenting the events. ‘The devil came on horseback: Bearing witness to the genocide in Darfur’ is the result. And Brian Steidle travels around United States trying to increase awareness. He has also produced a documentary with the same title as the book. Guardian published an interview with him a few weeks ago. Link.
Excerpts from the book:
Page 16:
As far as I could tell, for women life was extremely difficult. Sudan was primarily a patriarchal society, yet the women were the laborers. They might walk five or six hours with huge bundles of firewood or five-gallon buckets on their heads to collect their daily water. Girls could be sold by their fathers into marriage for as little as two cows - roughly $400 - and human trafficking was not uncommon. Women were stoned to death in some places if they cheated on their husbands, but men were legally allowed to take up to four wives. In almost all circumstances, men would not even stand next to a woman. The men would sit, and the women would stand behind them. I had heard that approximately 90 percent of Sudanese women still undergo female genital mutilation, and I learned that there were two methods. The first removes only the clitoris, but the second procedure involves sewing the vagina closed, often using thorns. As a results, Women experience many complications with urination and menstruation, not to mention the pain and tearing during sex and child birth.
Page 45:
An email sent by Brian Steidle to his family and friends.
I have to write to you to get this out of my mind. I don’t know whether or not you are aware of the African Union’s recent statements. They have released a report that states that they have evidence that individuals have been chained and burned alive by the Janjaweed. This is from a confidential AU report, and it included photos. I am not permitted to send them nor do I wish on you the same nightmares that I have had as a result o these photos. The individuals that were burned were children - from a girl’s school - and their family members who tried to save them. I have never seen anything more disturbing. I saw girls who had their hands bound by make-shift cuffs huddles together and burned alive. Men strewn all over the village, burned alive - this because they were trying to protect their families. The entire village was in ashes. If these photos were released to the public there would be troops in here in no time. What is going on here is most definitely a “crime against humanity” and most definitely on here is most definitely a “crime against humanity” and most definitely “genocide”. There is no question about that. These people have been burned alive because they are “too dark.” This is what the women are told when they are raped in front of their families. They are told to leave behind their child born of rape, because they will not be “too dark” - but for the mother to leave this country now or she will die. Why is the world so slow to act? Why are we sitting here letting this happen? This is not the doing of humans; this is the work of the devil. We are human beings have to stand up for what is right. There is no group of people in any place in the world that I have ever heard of, that can condone these atrocities. If we fail to act, I fear for the future of humankind. Please feel free to forward this to whomever you want. The world must know what is happening here.
Page 58:
“Take a look at this,” he said and handed me a tiny, spiraling nail with a fin on it. I held it in my hand, examining it. I immediately identified it as a flechette or “dart” in French, the contents of an anti-personnel rocket. In other words, this small dart and hundreds like it were fired at people with the sole purpose of killing or maiming them.
“Where did you find it?”
“There were tons of them used on this civilian village.”
“Seriously?” I shook my head. “They’re using these on civilians?” My stomach sank as I connected this nail with the helicopters I had seen taking off daily from El Fashir armed with rockets. I had assumed that the attack helicopters were going after bigger military targets, such as rebel vehicles. I never expected the GOS to use anti-personnel rockets containing flechettes to attach civilians.
Page 71:
“Ok, here is how we do it.” John was walking me through my first report so that I would understand the procedure. In fact, the drill was probably more bureaucratic than it needed to be.” After returning from an attack investigation., Joseph will handwrite the majority of the report’s observations, interviews and conclusions, and hand it off to you for typing and proofreading. Because English is your first language, this task will fall on you. Now, wherever possible, we add photographs and sketch out how we think the attack happened and then pull everything together into a PowerPoint presentation. I’m the designated photographer for the team right now, but when I move over to Operations, I’m assuming you’ll take that on as well.”
“Gladly,” I said. We needed to document evidence accurately and thoroughly, and I was happy for this to be my responsibility.
“Next, we make recommendations of what can be done to prevent the violation of the future - as if there is anything that would keep the Janjaweed or GOS from attacking - and then bring the report to the team for their signatures.”
“What do you do if someone disagrees with the report or recommendations?” I asked.
“We exclude anything we can’t reach consensus on,” John replied.
“|You just omit it?” I asked. “How do you create any accurate pictures of an event when all the warring parties on the team probably disagree entirely about what happened.?”
“Well, we get to some version of the truth that the majority can agree with. If a monitor still contests that final report, he still has to sign it to acknowledge that he’s read the document. But, he can write an addendum with his comments. Our GOS rep does that a lot.”
“Where do the reports go?”
“well, we turn over each report to the sector commander for comments and then on to the AU regional headquarters in El Fashir. Next it passes through the Ceasefire Commission and then on to Addis Ababa, the AU international headquarters in Ethiopia. Finally they’re supposed to be disseminated to all of the donor countries through their embassies, but I doubt that actually happens. We never get any feedback on our reports. But, we go through the motions,” John shrugged.
At the JMC, we frequently got feedback on our reports from Friends of the Nuba Mountains member countries. In Darfur, we would hear absolutely nothing.
Page 163:
The permanent military positions were established when the military was advancing. When I first arrived, the area in South Darfur was approximately 75 percent rebel controlled. There were two main rebel areas, one around Adwa, another around Mujajeriya. There was also a smaller concentration of more mobile groups around Ketil, south of Nyala. During the months I served in South Darfur, I watched the government held areas increase dramatically as the rebel strongholds began to wither away. The Adwah pocket was eventually pushed east into Khot Abeche and then farther cast to the Shariya area about 50 kilometers north of Muhajeriya. Mujajeriya still had some rebel presence. I was not aware of where the Ketil group went when the GOS military advanced into the area, but my speculation was that they moved to Muhajeriya.
Most crimes committed by the regular GOS troops usually occurred because commanders just let things happen, such as the looting of smaller items that could easily carried by the soldier. But larger items that required transportation - beds, oil barrels, and motor, for example - were looted on express orders from a commander. We heard that GOS soldiers were sometimes paid in food or loot instead of money. I had no knowledge that looting incidents were ever reported up the chain of command. Similarly, I was not aware of any GOS conducted prosecutions or trials relating to the crimes we investigated and reported.
What we typically referred to as Janjaweed in Darfur consisted of both the formal PDF force and informal Arab militias. They were most easily distinguished by the difference in their uniforms. The militias would have either no uniforms, its own bases, and proper equipment. The weapons used by all Arab militias were usually in very good shape. When we asked the informal Arab militias where they got their weapons, they often told us that they came from the PDF. The militias also told us that they got weapons from the governments or the Wali, the GOS-appointed governor or mayor for a region, but they would not give us further details on how the process world. My general impression was that the informal Arab militias in the area and the local PDF units knew each other, and when more manpower was needed, members of the PDF would gather other nomads they knew and give them weapons.
The informal Janjaweed militas were also trained by the government. I heard from my US and local contacts that there had been a graduation of a militia in mid-November 2004 from El Gardut, which is on the southeastern slopes of the Jebel Marra. My contacts had been monitoring the traning of this particular group, according to their reports, some of the trainees had even been sent to a special operations school north of Khartoum to receive training. I shot a picture of Taisha on November 4 that showed Arab militias clearly trained by the government. The militias were well equipped with ammunition belts and paragrooper-version Kalashnikovs with retractable stocks and aiming sticks.
Page 186:
“There’s a new class of Janjaweed tranees that has just graduated from the training facility in El Gardut,” Oscar informed me. “Intelligence suggests that many of these graduates have trained to be specialists such as snipers or reconnaissance experts. Some militia will move on to special forces schools north of Khartoum, in the desert just south of the Egyptian border.
Page 194:
Back in operations, John said that our AU air officer had something to report. The AU had assigned us an air officer to coordinate travel, maintenance, and all other logistical needs from a small office at the airport. When he first arrived in Nyala, John and I had asked the officer to observe every move of the GOS, we also made a point of keeping him well supplied with beer. Tooday, he had witnessed the GOS offload an estimated 5 metric tons of ammunition from an Antonov 26. We also had numerous reports of C-130s with Saudi flags painted on their tails bringing in ammunition.
Page 212:
A few days later, one of the top executives from my civilian contracting company arrived from the US to visit our operations on the ground. Arriving from the airport, he stepped out of his Land Cruiser accompanied by a woman who served as director of Africa for the company. I had met with her in Washington and also during her frequent visits to the region.
“This is Captain Brian Steidle, one of our American monitors,” she said proudly.
The executive seemed to saunter as he walked over to shake my hand and said casually, “Oh, Brian, nice to meet you.” He was wearing what looked like a safari outfit he ordered straight from a catalog: a bright white short-sleeve, button-up shirt with khaki pants. He was the cleanest man in Darfur that day. There was something about him I didn’t like.
“I heard you’ve seen some interesting things here,” he said, smiling, as if there was some private joke between us.
“Interesting?” I asked. “Interesting?” I repeated. “Hmm. That’s not exactly the word I would use to describe it,” I said, looking him in the eye.
I turned and walked away. That was the boss of a massive civilian contracting company who was supposed to be making a difference here in Africa, and he was acting as if the genocide was freak-show entertainment.
