NOTHING is as it seems in this blighted part of Sudan. The rains have come. The countryside is lush green. An hour from Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, a village of thatched huts appears a picture of African serenity, with children kicking a football near a newly painted mosque and men in flowing white robes talking in the shade.
It seems a far cry from the squalid camps of makeshift plastic shelters that house the hundreds of thousands of refugees from Darfur’s violence. Yet life for the 6,000 people now living in this seemingly idyllic settlement is far worse.
One senior aid official called the village “the rape capital of the world”. On three consecutive days last week, there were reports of gang rapes by armed militia that roam the surrounding areas on camel and horseback. The victims were women who had been forcibly driven from their farms and come here seeking safety in numbers.
But having lost their livelihoods, the new arrivals must forage for firewood outside the village. That poses a terrible dilemma: the men face being shot or the women raped; so the women are sent out. The Sudanese Government flatly denies that these rapes are still occurring and seeks to buy time as the world’s attention shifts elsewhere.
The US has declared the situation in Darfur to be genocide, but the threat of sanctions against Sudan’s oil industry remains just that, as countries such as China seek to protect their extensive interests there.
Aid agencies have been allowed to ship in food and avert a humanitarian disaster, but the security situation for many of the displaced people is deteriorating by the day.
The Times agreed not to identify the village for fear of reprisals there. We travelled alone, so as not to implicate any aid agency. The road from Nyala was littered with army checkpoints. Tyres were strewn in the road every few kilometres, while army officers dozed in huts nearby. Herds of cattle and camels grazed near the roadside. “Janjawid,” our translator said as we passed a man on a camel, referring to the government-sponsored militia that has driven 1.45 million people from their homes and a further 200,000 into Chad.
He had no way of knowing, but here the victims and aggressors — settled African farmers and mainly Arab nomads — look the same and share the same Islamic faith, and it is easy to point fingers.
At the village, a community leader said that dozens of male villagers had been killed by Janjawid attackers over the past year. At a cemetery with mounds of earth covered in thorn trees, he read out the names of the dead from a sheet of paper covered in neat green script.
Another man displayed fresh scars — a bullet in each knee from attackers using AK-47s and other rifles.
While the men are often killed, the women must live with the horrors inflicted upon them. Fatima, 27, sits beneath a tree nursing a deep gash in her hand while her companion, Aisha, 17, refuses to face us even when she talks.
They were among six women who went to collect firewood. Four men in army uniforms arrived on camels. “They told us to leave, and then they attacked us,” Fatima said, staring vacantly ahead as her baby played in the dust.
One of the attackers drew a knife and Fatima grabbed the blade as it swung towards her. The man lashed her with his whip, but she and Aisha escaped. Two of the other six women were gang-raped by the four men.
Detailed reports of rapes near the village record that on September 16 two cousins, aged 16 and 27, were gang-raped. The father of one of the victims, afraid of the shame it would bring on their family, took them to a settlement 60 km (40 miles) away.
A day later, ten women were ambushed by two men on camels. A pair of girls, 15 and 16, were separated from the rest. The men tried to load the girls on to their camels. Their mothers pleaded with the attackers not to abduct and rape them. All four women were then lashed with camel whips before the men left.
The village sheikh keeps a log of these attacks, but there are no police to report them to. In any case many of Darfur’s displaced say that police are often the perpetrators.
An Amnesty International report in July said that rape was being used as a weapon of war, but a government rape commission visited South Darfur the same month and denied that any rape had occured. Aid organisations call the commission a cruel joke. “It is possible that in a few cases there are false claims, but it is now so widely reported that there is no doubt it is systematic ,” said one aid worker.
“These women have nothing to gain from claiming they were raped. They do not get extra food or better housing. You have to remember that rape is a shameful thing for the victims in this society.”
So far most of the victims’ families have been supportive. “The people here see the rape as an accident for the women. We know it’s not their fault and we know how the Janjawid behave,” a community leader said.
But the younger, unmarried victims face a difficult future. Esther Dingemans, a child protection officer with Save The Children, said: “It will be much more difficult for these girls to find a husband. They may be able to marry an older man or become someone’s third or fourth wife if they are lucky.”
There are rape victims who became pregnant, who are now giving birth to “Janjawid babies”. The fate of those babies remains uncertain. “People just don’t know how they will be treated in future,” Ms Dingemans said. The ongoing violence is taking its toll on the aid workers. Joop Hegeman, a nurse with Médecins Sans Frontiè res, said: “Women have come and told me that they were raped by ten men. One girl was nearly drowned in a well before being raped repeatedly. What can I do when I hear that? All I can say to them is that they are just so brave.”
