Darfur is a vaguely bloody battleground in Africa to those who keep up on international news.
But for those who have escaped this marginalized western region of the country of Sudan, it’s a very real and bloody box of tales to tell.
“It hurts me a lot to talk about this,” said Darfur native Abu Asal Abu Asal. “But this is my world. This is my people.”
Abu Asal and another native, Ibrahim Hamid, spoke to an audience of about 200 at Berry College on Wednesday night, as part of a speaking tour traveling across the country featuring Darfuri refugees and sponsored by the Save Darfur Coalition.
Both men live in America now and are outspoken advocates for a solution to the conflict.
Before the talk, students saw a short film graphically highlighting the violence in Darfur: rows of bodies littered with bullets, countless burnt, black holes where 20,000 people used to live in their homes, the story of a secondary school where every young girl was raped in front of her teachers. Understandably, such images grab more attention than the underlying causes of what is widely considered to be the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.”
“I’d be willing to bet a lot of people think this is a Christian versus Muslim thing,” said anthropology professor Anne Lewinson, who teaches a class on African culture. “It’s also been framed as a race thing. But it’s about the central government trying to maintain its power.”
Since 2003, close to 400,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million people internally displaced as rebels in Darfur’s fight against the Janjaweed militia that is believed to be financed and armed by the Sudanese government.
All the players are Muslim, but the innocent bystanders being killed in Darfur are generally non-Arab, indigenous black Africans, while the Janjaweed is made up mostly of “Arabized” black Africans with different ethnic backgrounds.
The “root cause” of the conflict, Hamid said, “is the marginalization of the region itself. The government has deliberately neglected (Darfur). There is no infrastructure. The government continues to deny.”
The violence stemming from the continued marginalization threatens to wipe out the indigenous African in Sudan. Most Western governments, including the U.S., have declared it outright “genocide.”
Both Abu Asal and Hamid attempted to cast light on the importance of understanding the dynamics of the conflict, rather than telling yet more tales of bloodshed.
“I will do my best to refrain from violent stories,” Abu Asal said, though he had plenty. Even hundreds of miles away in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, he said, he saw a university student from Darfur stabbed on campus before his eyes.
“We protested the murder the next day, so the police came in and started shooting people on campus,” Abu Asal said.
The “police,” he said, were really part of the government’s secret intelligence, which is accused of perpetuating the conflict.
Both told the audience of students it’s “young people” who are able to get the word out about what’s happening.
The most important task now, Hamid said, is to put pressure on governments to deploy international forces.
“I’m sure you didn’t just come here to listen to two poor guys from Darfur,” Abu Asal said. “You can help change things. Darfur is not that far, because we are right here.”
