Darfur: Liquidation of Traditional Leaders in the Camps

by Mohamed E. Suleiman

categories: Darfur & Sudan, Darfuri Perspectives, Refugees and IDPs

Published August 08, 2009 @ 08:32AM PT

The Chief of the sheikhs (leaders) Omdah Omer Adam Ishag was killed last Sunday with his wife in their home in AbuShouk camp for internally displaced persons (IDP). Last year Omdah Ahmed Hagar Karam Eldin was murdered in the same camp. Similar killings of Omdas (tribal leaders) have occurred in IDP camps of Zalengie, Kassab, and El Geneina area in western Darfur, in addition to other camps in the past few years.Last year in August, Government troops attacked Kalma camp and killed 86 people.

These violence incidents are not random. They are designed to break the will of the Darfuri people so that the rulers in Khartoum can have their way in Darfur.

The regime of Khartoum is so cunning that it resorts to devious ways in carrying out its plans to further destroy the people of Darfur. You will hear innocent denials coming out from Khartoum. In the outset Khartoum looks far removed from these assassinations, violence incidents, kidnappings of humanitarian aids, lootings and terrorizing of the camps by armed militias, and banditry operations. Yet this chaotic security environment in Darfur is the creation of the regime in Khartoum. The Government of Sudan controls and manipulates the insecurity level in Darfur effectively, since it is the sole beneficial of such situation in Darfur.

The social structure in rural Darfur for centuries is based on tribal administrative governing system. Traditional leaders and elders are the backbones of these tribes through good times and bad times. They are the means of their survivals.

Those who had underestimated that system came to regret it at the end, starting with the British, and then the national governments since the exit of the colonial powers in 1956. During peace times, the people rely on their Omdas, Sheikhs, and Sultans, to keep peace and resolve their problems, which range from disputes in farms or businesses to marital quarrels. During hard times the people rally around their leaders for guidance and solidarity.

That is the source of resilience of the displaced people who, after witnessing the most brutal acts human being can endure, are confined for six years to camps amid horrible living conditions.

The Government of Sudan was confident that, in executing a savage campaign of terror against unarmed civilians, it would oppress them and subject them to its hegemony. Knowing that the Darfuri society is a matriarch and a patriarch one, the regime in Khartoum resorted to rape as a weapon to damage the social fabric of the Darfuri society.

These horrible atrocities were intentionally perpetrated knowing the nature of the family structure in Darfur. Raping mothers in front of their children, husbands, brothers, is meant socially to break up the family and shame family members for life. All such actions are meant to turn Darfuris into broken and submissive herds of people.

By confining the Darfur people in these refugee camps, initially the Government of Sudan thought that the camps would be the perfect recycling human factories for destruction of the Darfuris as people and as human beings. To the shock of the regime six years later, Darfuris in these camps are still standing up in defiance and refuse to give in to the oppressor. Now the regime in Khartoum is seeing these camps as liability to its grip on power and to its very existence.

The ICC has millions of genocide witnesses in these camps. The mere existence of these camps is blatant evidence against the rulers in Khartoum. Now it is the Government of Sudan who is eager to dismantle these camps through "voluntary return" programs, terror, deceit, and other forms of shams.

The displaced people in these camps are holding up and holding together relying on and rallying around their traditional leadership: the tribal leaders, Omdas, and Sheikhs.

The Government of Sudan thinks that these leaders are standing on its way from being accepted back in the international community, so in its desperation, it is targeting these traditional leaders, one at time, to liquidate them.

[Photo from Sudan Tribune: Sudanese displaced at the Kalma Camp in south Darfur, in 2005 hold a banner urging deployment of UN forces in Darfur.]