Hilal's Journey From Shiek to Prison to Janjaweed Commander

Hilal's Journey From Shiek to Prison to Janjaweed Commander// (Khartoum, Sudan)
By Emily Wax=(c) 2004, The Washington Post

KHARTOUM, Sudan--Musa Hilal sauntered into the lobby of a downtown hotel. Jittery eyes followed as the statuesque, copper-skinned man settled into an armchair. He was recently accused by Secretary of State Colin Powell and others of leading a marauding militia that has turned the Darfur region of western Sudan into the most desperate humanitarian crisis in the world.
But Hilal had a different story. He said the crisis was overstated, and offered to give tours of the vast region, where he spent most of his life. ``I'm a big sheik,'' he said in a rare interview last week. ``Not a little sheik.''
Hilal is accused of being a commander of the Janjaweed militia. According to human rights groups, aid workers and the United States, the militia, supported by Sudan's government, has displaced 1.2 million people in Darfur though violence and pillage. What was once a lively crossroads between Africa and the Arab world has become a tableau of hunger, disease and fear.
U.S. officials have pressed the Sudanese government to end its support of the Janjaweed and hold Hilal and six other commanders accountable for the crisis. Powell, in a visit to the region last month, urged the government to disarm the militia and end the violence.
But just days after Powell's trip, and a similar visit by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Hilal sat in plain sight here in the capital, sipping mango juice and joking about his three wives and 13 children as he wound and unwound a lilac-colored scarf around his back and shoulders.
The story of Hilal illustrates the complex relationship between the Janjaweed and Sudan's Arab-led government, which promised to rein in the militia, but has not. The Janjaweed and its commanders have been allowed to continue operating freely in Darfur, and many of the fighters have also been incorporated into the government's official army.
Hilal said the Janjaweed fighters ``are soldiers now and their faith is with the government.'' Asked whether he would heed calls to disarm, he said, ``Whenever we feel the situation is completely secure and the cease-fire is being respected we will hand in our weapons.'' He added, ``Whenever the government undertakes to hand in weapons from all factions and tribes, we will hand in arms.''
Hilal portrayed himself as a defender of Arab tribes against African groups. Questioned about claims that the Janjaweed have engaged in ethnic cleansing, he dismissed the charge. ``No one can wipe out an ethnicity,'' he said.
Darfur has long been home to Arab herders and African farmers, two Sudanese groups that were both Muslim, shared resources and sometimes intermarried. Clashes sporadically occurred between them, but tensions grew more serious 25 years ago as desertification crept over the continent and the Arabs began to search for better grazing land.
Hilal's family was among those Arabs looking for more fertile areas. In 1976, Hilal's father moved his tribe to Amo, an area in Northern Darfur where African tribes already lived, according to an investigation by the Congressional Research Service conducted this year. The inquiry found that Hilal's father obtained the land through a corrupt official.
In 1997, Hilal was put in jail for killing 17 Africans in Darfur, the inquiry found. Years earlier, he had also been imprisoned for killing a security guard and robbing a bank in Nyala, a city in southern Darfur.
The tensions in Darfur exploded in early 2003. African rebels, saying the Arab-led government in Khartoum had discriminated against them, attacked a military garrison. They destroyed four helicopter gunships, two Antonov aircraft and, according to government officials, killed about 75 soldiers.
At the time, the government was negotiating a settlement in a separate conflict, the country's 21-year civil war in the southern part of the country. Officials wanted to send a strong message to other rebellious parts of country, including Darfur, that they would not give in.
The government had two main concerns about fighting the rebels in Darfur. Its forces were already stretched thin by conflicts in other areas, and at least 40 percent of the army was made up of people from Darfur, soldiers who might not to fight against their own tribes.
So the government decided to use the Janjaweed militia to help put down the Darfur rebellion. Hilal was in prison again, for crimes allegedly committed in 2002, but the government chose him to help organize the militia, according to Ted Dagne, an Africa specialist for the Congressional Research Service.
Hilal was released from prison after personal intervention from Sudan's first vice president, Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, Dagne said. Dagne said another man, General Abdullah Safi Nur, an Air Force commander and former commissioner of Darfur who is Hilal's cousin, also intervened. Dagne said the Sudanese government has relied on militia leaders like Hilal before in other conflicts, including in southern Sudan.
After the rebel attack, the government responded by bombing hundreds of villages. On the ground, Janjaweed fighters were unleashed. Some of them were jobless young men motivated by old ethnic tensions and lured into a lucrative new profession. They were then empowered by the government, human rights groups say, to burn villages, loot livestock and food, and rape with impunity.
At least 30,000 people have been killed in Darfur, according to human rights reports. Among the more than 1 million people displaced by the violence, at least 200,000 have fled into neighboring Chad. Aid groups say 300,000 people have been left vulnerable to hunger and disease.
U.S. and U.N. investigators say they believe that the most significant leader of the Janjaweed is Taha, the country's first vice president. They have accused him of orchestrating the attacks in Darfur. In February, Taha publicly told senior U.S. officials that he was going back home to ``take care of the Darfur problem.''
``The Janjaweed are just mercenaries and are just one piece of a bigger puzzle,'' Dagne said. ``If I was Hilal I would be less worried about the U.S. list and more worried about what first Vice President First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha might do.''
The United States has also circulated a U.N. Security Council resolution to impose an arms and travel embargo on the militiamen. But Dagne said that since they rarely travel outside Sudan and apparently have no major assets, the sanctions would be largely symbolic.
Today, Hilal, 43, describes himself as a sheik, or religious and community leader, as was his grandfather in western Darfur during British colonial times. Hilal says he is responsible for more than 300,000 Arabs in Darfur.
On a recent night, Hilal, pressing together his long fingers, said his job as a leader was to protect his people and their honor. According to Hilal, Africans have killed Arabs for years in various grievances about land and water. ``Things like that give birth to bitterness,'' he said.
Hilal said that although he has never carried a weapon, he has rallied other Arabs to fight. ``When the government put forward a program of arming all the people, I will not deny I called our sons and told them to become armed and our sons acquiesced,'' he said. ``Those who became armed where no less than 3,000.''
Rep. Donald Payne of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the House subcommittee on Africa and a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, is pushing to set up an international war crimes tribunal for Darfur, like those set up for the Balkan wars and the Rwandan genocide.
Payne has developed a separate list of government officials who he says are supervising and controlling Janjaweed activities. He listed Taha as number one, along with Nur, Hilal's cousin, and several other officials.
``This is a pariah government, which once harbored Osama bin Laden and took more than 20 years to even begin to end its civil war with the south,'' Payne said. ``Darfur could happen again if we don't condemn this government's role in planning and executing the Janjaweed.''
Hilal recently visited the U.S. and British embassies, preaching traditional reconciliation methods and telling diplomats and journalists that he wants to learn English.
On April 22, 2003, Mustafa Yusuf, a slim teen-ager with high cheekbones and a square face, said that he was kidnapped by Hilal's men and taken to a Janjaweed training camp in northern Darfur.
About 6,000 were at the camp, Yusuf recounted to journalists and a U.N. investigator. At 5:30 each morning, the boys and men woke and practiced shooting and to learned how to spy on the African rebels.
Three times a week, he recalled, a helicopter gunship ferried in supplies, including weapons, ammunition and food. Yusuf, who escaped from the camp and is now a student in Khartoum, said that one day, when the helicopter landed, Hilal stepped off in a military uniform.
When the recruits arrived, Yusuf said, Hilal made a speech in which he told them that all Africans were their enemies. ``Hilal said: ... We should defeat the rebels,' '' said Yusuf, 18, shifting his eyes to the floor.
Before an attack on Ain-Sirro on April 27, Hilal and the troops sang wars songs: ``We go to the war. We go to defeat the rebels. We are not afraid of war. We are the original people of this area,'' Yusuf recalled.
Later, after he fled the camp, Yusuf said he was in the market and watched as Hilal returned in a Land Cruiser, followed by men on horseback. They had come back from raids on African villages. ``They came back with beds and suitcases, blankets and radios,'' said Yusuf, who nervously re-told his tale. ``There were camels, sheep and goats.''
According to witnesses and U.N. officials, Hilal also coordinated a Feb. 27 raid on the village of Tawilah, southeast of El Fasher. Hilal, in military uniform, landed in a helicopter in a field on the outskirts of town, witnesses interviewed in Tawilah said. He set up a canvas tent and was guarded by Janjaweed fighters on horses and camels.
Witnesses said they saw Hilal receiving weapons and food from government helicopters.
Over the next three days, the market was set on fire, 16 schoolgirls were kidnapped and at least 67 people were killed, according to a U.N. report. A video filmed by the governor's office and obtained by the United Nations just days after the attack, showed dead fly-ridden bodies rotting in the street, a fuming and charred market and women crying as they rocked children.
``This was the day the children were taken and all the people started to become displaced,'' said Saddiq Ismail, 45, a retired teacher and an African resident of Tawilah. ``Everybody wanted to fight Musa Hilal, even the little men. But Musa Hilal wanted to get rid of everyone. ... If you said you were Arab he would say, come fight with me. They were discriminating against us.''
At the time of the attack, Ismail said he hid in the bushes and took notes, because he felt it was his duty as an educated member of society to chronicle what was happening.
``During the three days the military helicopter landed and took off each day. Hilal moved and gave instructions with men unloading guns off of the helicopter,'' Ismail said. ``One day, the helicopter took the injured. They also got deliveries of food. By the time Hilal left the town was nearly empty.''
On a recent night in Khartoum, Hilal was asked about the allegations that the militia was responsible for atrocities in Daruf.
``There is death in war and until it is all over we will not know the true the extent of what has happened,'' he said, over tea and pastries.
He cautioned that the crimes in Darfur are being committed by random criminals, and not those trying to put down the rebellion. Even the term Janjaweed, he said, is being used incorrectly.
``Janjaweed is a colloquial word which means thief or bandit or highway man,'' he said. ``It means nothing and has been used to mean everything.