{"id":2069,"date":"2021-08-15T16:54:19","date_gmt":"2021-08-15T16:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/?p=2069"},"modified":"2021-09-15T17:01:42","modified_gmt":"2021-09-15T17:01:42","slug":"darfur-sudans-forgotten-war-rages-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/?p=2069","title":{"rendered":"Darfur: Sudan\u2019s \u2018Forgotten War\u2019 Rages On"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASHVILLE, Tenn. \u2014\u00a0Each morning, Juma Sefedin Shaibu, a physician assistant at the cardiology department at\u00a0Vanderbilt University Hospital<\/a>\u00a0in Nashville, Tennessee, scrolls through social media for the latest updates from his war-torn homeland, Darfur, Sudan.<\/p>\n

\u201cBandits still rape women, burn huts to the ground, and every day people are running for their lives,\u201d Shaibu, 42, told Zenger News, examining the smoking ruins on the edges of El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur.<\/p>\n

\n
\u201cChildren are starving, and people can\u2019t get adequate water. Even when they run to camps for the internally displaced people, the attackers overrun the camps, displacing the victims twice over.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

His uncle, a driver for a local aid organization, was ripped from his car and shot at on the edges of El Geneina in June 2021. He is currently recovering.<\/p>\n

\n
Shaibu came to the United States as a refugee in 2014, but the Darfur crisis<\/a>\u00a0spurred him in July 2021 to return to the troubled region that much of his family have fled from.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nIn a partnership with the reconciliation-focused non-governmental organization Sudan Sunrise<\/a>, Shaibu will assist in food distribution and delivery of medical assistance to those in need.<\/div>\n
\n

\u201cWe are buying food items like maize, beans, and cooking oil. It\u2019s important to help as much as we can with medical supplies, especially delivering painkillers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shaibu, the\u00a0Kujali Africa<\/a>\u00a0community president in Nashville, was conscripted as a child soldier for the anti-government\u00a0Sudan People\u2019s Liberation Army<\/a>\u00a0in the 1990s during the\u00a0Sudanese civil war<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n
After being rescued and educated by the United Nations International Children\u2019s Fund<\/a>\u00a0in Uganda, Shaibu became an aid worker with the\u00a0United Nations Development Program<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0United States Agency for International Development.<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

He feels that the Darfur conflict has dimmed from the press and mind of the international community, even though the region is still in turmoil, but without the same scale of media attention and humanitarian assistance as when the conflict hit the headlines in 2003.<\/p>\n

\n
Like Shaibu, Halima Hamad, 44, came to the United States with her daughter and husband as a refugee from Darfur in 2012, but her life in America still revolves around the war thousands of miles back home.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThey [militias] don\u2019t care about the age of the women,\u201d Hamad, also a Nashville resident, told Zenger News.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey will put a gun to the husband\u2019s head and make them watch the rape. There is no freedom nor justice for my people. I think of home in Darfur and what my people are going through all day, all night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamad, who has worked various factory jobs in the United States, was severely beaten with the butt of a Janjaweed\u2019s AK-47 15 years ago, an assault that left her with hormonal disorders.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy hair turned all white after the incident,\u201d she told Zenger News.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Khamis Hassan, a spokesperson for the\u00a0United Resistance Front,<\/a>\u00a0an umbrella group for five rebel factions formed in 2007, said the event that still haunts his memory happened in May 2016.<\/p>\n

Hassan, who was then a police officer, said he found several badly beaten girls and women hiding in the bush, having been gang-raped while collecting firewood in a village in Darfur.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had open wounds all over their bodies and were terrified and crying,\u201d he told Zenger News from France.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was heartbroken. I did not feel well after that. So I quit my job in the police and left the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2017, he fled to Paris, France, to focus on speaking for the United Resistance Front. He said life for those he left behind continues to deteriorate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no food, no schools, and people cannot go to their farms to cultivate crops. We need help. If not, we will fight \u2014 it is our last option. I will not sit in my house and wait while attackers slaughter my people.\u201d<\/p>\n

In January 2021, just weeks after the United Nations peacekeepers\u00a0withdrew<\/a>\u00a0following 13 years of presence, the Kirinding camp for the internally displaced was attacked by gunmen who\u00a0killed more than 160 people.<\/a><\/p>\n

The departure of the United Nations peacekeepers followed an\u00a0October 2020 peace deal\u00a0<\/a>between some \u2014 but not all \u2014 rebel groups in Darfur and Sudan\u2019s transitional government, which came to power in 2019 in an uprising that usurped longtime\u00a0President Omar al-Bashir.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Contentions between Arabs and West Darfur\u2019s preeminent ethnic community, the Masalit tribe, continue to flare in bursts through the state\u2019s remote, gold-rich southern pocket of El Geneina.<\/p>\n

Thousands suffer from severe acute malnutrition with little access to anything more than mangoes to eat, according to medical aid group\u00a0Medicins Sans Frontieres.<\/a><\/p>\n

Some Darfuris say the perpetrators of the conflict have ties to the paramilitary unit\u00a0Rapid Support Forces<\/a>, an outfit comprising remnants of the pro-Bashir\u00a0Janjaweed<\/a>\u00a0militia accused of orchestrating the genocide that first hit the region some 18 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Rapid Support Forces is\u00a0the same<\/a>\u00a0as the Janjaweed,\u201d Shaibu told Zenger News.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a powerful militia, with support from the government in Khartoum. They used to come on camels and horses, but now it is all land cruisers and trucks.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the Janjaweed are still benefiting from the war by selling minerals, such as gold, and stolen livestock.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it is worse now as nobody is paying attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

The international resource watchdog\u00a0Global Witness<\/a>\u00a0expressed concern that major buyers in the Middle East had purchased gold from armed groups linked to the Rapid Support Forces, despite alleged human rights abuses.<\/p>\n

The initial conflict \u2014 later deemed\u00a0genocide<\/a>\u00a0by Washington \u2014 broke out in 2003 when frustrated non-Arab revolt protested the Bashir-led Sudanese government, angered by the lack of resources in the barren area on the western edges of the country.<\/p>\n

Instead, the majority Arab Janjaweed \u2014 which translates to\u00a0\u201cevil horsemen<\/a>\u201d\u2014crushed the demonstrations and uprooted more than two million from their homes, according to the\u00a0United Nations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The carnage drew the attention of Hollywood bigwigs who drove the viral \u201cSave Darfur<\/a>\u201d campaign.<\/p>\n

In 2010, actor George Clooney founded the\u00a0Satellite Sentinel Project<\/a>\u00a0to monitor human rights violations by the Sudanese government.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout him, we would never have had a full picture of what was happening across our lands,\u201d Shaibu told Zenger News.<\/p>\n

But Darfuris emphasize that the continued contentions are nuanced.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cMost of us are Muslims, but we consider ourselves African-Muslims. We consider ourselves indigenous first,\u201d Shaibu told Zenger News.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut this is our land\u2014the land of our ancestors.\u201d<\/p>\n

The chaos has been rendered worse by the notion that the attention \u2014\u00a0and the subsequent aid<\/a>\u00a0flow \u2014 has faded. And even though Bashir, the central offender, is behind bars, the situation continues to worsen.<\/p>\n

After removing most of the\u00a0bilateral sanctions<\/a>\u00a0in 2017, the United States officially removed Sudan\u2019s 28-year status as a state sponsor of terrorism, paving the way for closer economic and business ties.<\/p>\n

Experts and ordinary people like Shaibu contend that they have not seen any benefits of the sanctions\u2019 removal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Sudanese economy was saddled not only with the US sanctions but more devastatingly by the systemic kleptocracy of the Bashir regime,\u201d Suliman Baldo, a senior advisor at\u00a0The Sentry<\/a>, told Zenger News.<\/p>\n

\u201cResolving the marginalization of peripheral regions would require a strong political will driving new thinking in economic planning. In other words, it would be years before Darfur and other marginal regions would see any benefits from the ending of Sudan\u2019s economic isolation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sentry is an investigative and policy team that follows the dirty money connected to war criminals and transnational war profiteers. It succeeded the Satellite Sentinel Project, which was closed down in 2015.<\/p>\n

David Otto, an international defense and security specialist and the\u00a0Geneva Center for African Security and Strategic Studies<\/a>\u00a0director, said the Darfur crisis serves as a lesson to the international community about the broader implications once peacekeeping missions conclude.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose who perpetrate violence in Darfur knew the opportunity and loophole would be created eventually,\u201d he told Zenger News.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is like any other insurgency strategy\u2014time is always on their side. Peacekeeping missions do not resolve underlying problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

The International Criminal Court\u00a0<\/a>indicted Bashir in 2009 in response to human rights abuses carried out by the military and loyal militias during the Darfur conflict.<\/p>\n

While he remains behind bars in Khartoum, the new government has not yet turned him over.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no justice, nobody has said sorry, and it was all just covered up. People feel voiceless. But we Masalit will never give up. We will fight until our last breath,\u201d Shaibu told Zenger News.<\/p>\n

Shaibu said that the United States and the broader international community could take action to alleviate the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lifting of the sanctions did not help us. We need reconciliation, and the key to that is peace and justice. We are just farmers and cattle keepers, and we don\u2019t want to fight. We need peace, and we need Washington to put pressure on the Sudanese government to stop this killing and let Bashir face the International Criminal Court.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sudanese Embassy in Washington did not respond to email requests for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Source: Zenger News<\/a><\/div>\n
Photo by Yusuf Yassir on Unsplash<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASHVILLE, Tenn. \u2014\u00a0Each morning, Juma Sefedin Shaibu, a physician assistant at the cardiology department at\u00a0Vanderbilt University Hospital\u00a0in Nashville,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2070,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa-express"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2071,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069\/revisions\/2071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}