The action that has been taken on the political level is to mandate a United Nations peacekeeping force for the Darfur region. The UN/ African Union Hybrid Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) mandates some 26,000 troops to go in on the ground in Darfur. In theory, UNAMID went into action in December 2007, but its implementation has been less than straightforward. In practice the force remains chronically undermanned, badly resourced, and with little of the military hardware (i.e., helicopters) required to deploy in such a remote and challenging region.
So compromised is UNAMID that the UN’s own Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations, Jean-Marie Guehenno, talked of the mission failing even before it was begun. “Do we move ahead with the deployment of a force that will not make a difference?” Guehenno asked. “[A force] that will not have the capacity to defend itself and that carries the risk of humiliation of the Security Council and the United Nations, and tragic failure for the people of Darfur?”
At the start of 2008, when the UNAMID peacekeepers were supposed to be on the ground in force, Jean-Marie Guehenno stressed that insecurity in Darfur had reached unprecedented levels.
While the peacekeepers fail to take hold on the ground, the humanitarian crisis has continued unabated. In 2007, some 300,000 newly displaced people flooded into already chronically overcrowded refugee camps, bringing the total to 2.6 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and refugees.
In December 2007, the UN issued a stark report warning of the effect the delay in the deployment of UNAMID peacekeepers was having on the ground. “As a result people in Darfur are beginning to lose hope, and that may be another factor taking a toll on their health. . . . These people have been in these camps for years now, and the energy that was around a few years ago and the hopes that this situation might soon be over and people could go home—all that’s gone now.”
Who is responsible for this failure to act to stop the Darfur crisis? On one level, it is the international community that has failed to muster an effective and robust peacekeeping force—one armed and manned and mandated to stop a brutal, genocidal conflict.
On another level it is the Khartoum Government—the National Islamic Front (which has recently re-branded itself the National Congress Party)—that does everything in its power to frustrate international efforts to halt the “genocide by attrition” that is ongoing in Darfur. This includes repeatedly flouting UN Security Council resolutions designed to bring about an end to the killing.
In January 2008, in just one incident alone, the armed forces of the Sudan Government deliberately attacked a UNAMID transport convoy. This attack was designed to shock and intimidate the barely nascent peacekeeping force, while signaling to the world community that Khartoum would continue to act with impunity in Darfur.
Khartoum’s obstruction of the peacekeeping mission is its way of most publicly defying the efforts of the international community to bring about an end to the suffering. How is it able to defy world opinion, repeatedly flout UN Security Council resolutions, and fly in the face of a robust stance taken by the United States, in particular, on Darfur?
The answer here is largely China. China’s unquestioning support for the Sudanese regime—disregarding its long record of brutality and horrific excess—takes powerful economic, military, and diplomatic form.
China has repeatedly abstained from, blocked, or significantly weakened a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions on Darfur, and each time to the advantage of the Khartoum regime. China has also effectively empowered Khartoum to defy the international community. Why has China done so? The answer is oil. China is a net importer of oil, with an increasing thirst for energy. Its greatest single overseas supplier is Sudan, which pumps some 500,000 barrels per day. China is also the largest single investor in Sudan today.
China’s cozy relationship with Khartoum is even more sinister. Much of the petro-dollars that China pays to Sudan for oil is returned to China in arms purchases. During the period of Sudan’s growing oil production, China has become the regime’s leading arms supplier—providing the tanks, artillery, and aircraft that have been used to wreak devastation in Darfur.
Despite a United Nations arms embargo on Darfur, the UN Panel of Experts on Darfur has repeatedly found that Khartoum completely ignores the embargo. Human rights group Amnesty International has reported that among those weapons shipped into Darfur are arms and military supplies of Chinese manufacture.
So confident is Khartoum of its ability to defy the international community that it has, in effect, laughed in the face of the United Nations and the International Criminal Court (ICC), in The Hague. In March 2005, the United Nations referred the case of war crimes in Darfur for investigation by the ICC.
In the spring of 2007, the ICC issued its first indictments, charging a Janjaweed militia leader, Ali Kushyb, and a political official, Ahmed Haroun, with a broad range of crimes against humanity. Khartoum has not only refused to extradite both men to face charges, but has treated the ICC indictment with shocking contempt, and promoted Haroun.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has repeatedly called for Haroun to be handed over for trial. “When will be a better time to arrest Haroun? How many more women, girls have to be raped? How many more persons have to be killed? What is at stake is, simply, the life and death of 2.5 million people.”
The year, 2008, is the 60th anniversary of the original Genocide Convention, the long-fought-for international agreement whereby genocide was outlawed as a crime against humanity, and where countries of the world signed an agreement to stamp it out, once and for all.
This is the key phrase of the Convention: “The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or time of war, is a crime under international lawwhich they undertake to prevent and punish.”
The fate of the people of Darfur now rests upon the success of the UNAMID peacekeeping mission, and its ability to enable the aid agencies to continue feeding and caring for several million internally displaced people and refugees.
In Darfur, it is high time that that phrase “prevent and punish” was made a reality. For unless it is, we may never be able to go home.
As of the date of writing this book, I have not been able to find my family, or make contact with them. I will keep searching.
HALIMA BASHIR
London, February 2008
PUBLISHER’S NOTE:
In May 2008 Halima Bashir won her case and was granted asylum/refugee status in the UK, along with her family.
GLOSSARY
Arabic English
acidah maize mash
angrheb a funeral bed
bataniyah bed cover
bhirish a white burial shroud
damirgha durum wheat porridge
fakir Muslim holy man and healer
fustan dress like girl’s school uniform
halal allowed
haram forbidden
haribah fire
hijab an Islamic totem prepared by a Fakir to wear
immah turban
jalabia robe
khawaja white man
kissra sorghum pancakes
mehia an Islamic totem prepared by a Fakir to drink
muslaiyah Muslim prayer rug
nephirh state of national emergency
shahid martyred
Zaghawa English
aba father
abu grandma
agadi Zaghawa gold necklace
agadim possibly mythical wolflike creature
Ahrao the Arab enemy
Arab hagareen “the Arabs treated us like animals”
baa a house
beeri traditional Zaghawa woman’s hairstyle
birgi plant used for medicine
eya mother
foul bean stew
garagaribah sorghum pancake-making spatula
gihr go
gini a hamlet
goro sorghum beer
gory stockade for livestock
gubhor locusts
gumbhor traditional Fur woman’s hairstyle
herdih horses
hiry carda cowboy
hjar leopard
jahoub kadai scarecrow
kawal dark savory powder made from fermented plant
keyoh adum jaghi gogo keyh “let’s play the moon-bone game”
koii a measure of drinking water
libah goat’s milk pudding, made from colostrum
molletah salad made from leafy plant
mousarran dried animal intestines
nasarra foreigners
orwa firewood
pirgi a medicinal tree
sinya nee the time when someone knows they are about to die
tagro a container made from a gourd
taihree circumcision woman
tairah the cutting
tibrih gold, the money saver
zit karkar hair oil
Special thanks to my wonderfully supportive literary agent, Felicity Bryan, and all the staff at her agency. Special thanks to my British publisher, Judith Longman, and all the team at Hodder: From the very start you believed my story had to be told. Special thanks to my German publishers, Carolin Graehl and Hans-Peter Ubleis, and all at Droemer Knaur, for your commitment and boundless enthusiasm. Thanks also to my Italian publisher, Enrico Racca of Sperling & Kupfer; my Canadian publisher, Jennifer Lambert of HarperCollins; and my American editor, Melody Guy of Ballantine Books. Special thanks also to Andrew Nurnberg of Andrew Nurnberg Associates, George Lucas of Inkwell, and Vanessa Matthews of Anne McDermid & Associates. Very special thanks to the following, for reading and commenting on early drafts of this book: Alan and Fran Trafford, Adrian Acres, Eva Lewis and Christine Major. Your words and thoughts were much appreciated. Special thanks to Louise Roland-Gosselin, and all at Waging Peace, for your groundbreaking work in Darfur, and for the use of the children’s pictures. Special thanks to Baroness Caroline Cox, for your tireless work supporting me in my fight to be recognised as a bona fide refugee. Special thanks to Albert Harwood and all at my lawyers, White Ryland and Co., and to my barrister, Graham Denholm, for fighting for my right to be recognized as a bona fide refugee. And very special thanks to my husband, for standing by me in sickness and in health, forever and a day. Finally, very special thanks to David Brown and James Smith, and all at the Aegis Trust, for your tireless work campaigning on behalf of the victims of genocide, regardless of race, color, or creed. Without your good offices, this book would not have come to pass.
A note from Halima Bashir and Damien Lewis: The Aegis Trust is a charity that works to prevent genocide worldwide. Based at the UK’s Holocaust Center, Aegis is responsible for the Kigali Memorial Center, in Rwanda, which plays a vital educational and commemorative role regarding the 1994 genocide. Aegis is at the forefront of the campaign to end the Darfur crisis, organizing the global “Day for Darfur” demonstrations, and working to end the removal of Darfuri survivors—such as Halima—from the UK to Sudan. Aegis is responsible for “Fund for Darfur,” an initiative providing support to Darfuri survivors of rape, torture and mass atrocities, and to assist destitute survivors.
For more information: visit www.fund4darfur.org and www.aegistrust.org
A donation from the money earned by the authors from this book will be made to the Aegis Trust.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
HALIMA BASHIR lives with her husband and two sons in England, where she continues to speak out about the violence in Sudan.
DAMIEN LEWIS has spent the last twenty years reporting on war in Africa, with a particular focus and expertise in Sudan. His reporting from Darfur won the BBC One World Award. He is the internationally bestselling co-author of Slave, winner of the Index on Censorship Book Award.
As of press time, the URLs displayed in this book link or refer to existing websites on the Internet. Random House, Inc., is not responsible for, and should not be deemed to endorse or recommend, any website other than its own or any content available on the Internet (including without limitation at any website, blog page, information page) that is not created by Random House.
Copyright © 2008 by Halima Bashir and Damien Lewis
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by One World Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
ONE WORLD is a registered trademark and the One World colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Bashir, Halima.
Tears of the desert : a memoir of survival in Darfur / Halima Bashir, with Damien Lewis.
p. cm.
1. Sudan—History—Darfur Conflict, 2003– 2. Darfur (Sudan)—Ethnic relations. 3. Darfur (Sudan)—History. 4. Genocide—Sudan—Darfur. I. Lewis, Damien. II. Title.
DT159.6.D27B37 2008
962.404’3—dc22
[B] 2008020588
www.oneworldbooks.net
eISBN: 978-0-345-50990-1
v3.0