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Sadiq El Madhi is the great-grandson of El Mahdi, who declared himself the savior of Islam in the 19th Century. 

Journal Entry for October 28, 2013*

October 28: Went to Darfur on Monday, leaving early on a WFP plane. Darfur means "land of the Fur" and was an independent Sultanate until 1916 when the British made it part of Sudan. Flying out with us was a new government minister brought in to deal with the conflict in Darfur, a grandson of the last Sultan. We went first to Geneina, close to the Chad border. We met there, and in our second stop El Fasher, with the local Wali (governor) and Emirs (tribal chiefs). Darfur, like everyplace in Sudan, has a rich mixture of different tribes and peoples. All are Moslem and all consider themselves Arab, though most would be judged as “African” by non-Sudanese. There is an age old conflict between farmers and herders and between cattle herders and camel herders. Many members of the government and military come from Darfur but the government has never given much attention or resources to the region. Then this year, a small scale civil war broke out and the government troops were beaten. The government then gave the camel herders guns and unleashed them on the others. Some 600,000 people lost their homes and had to flee the war. Most are still refugees. USAID is helping feed them and care for their children through WFP, UNICEF and other UN agencies. I went to Darfur accompanying the AID Director.

The people we met treated us very well because they know how much help the US has given them and because they need more help. We wanted them to know that we are ready to do more when the government ends the war.

Monday was the second day of Ramadan. Our hosts in El Fasher – where we stayed for the night – fed us four meals even though they were fasting. Ramadan is the holiest month in the year for Moslems. It is a month of peace. It begins on the first day of the 10th month in the Moslem calender when the first crescent moon is sighted after sunset. The faithful fast from sunup to sundown, taking no food and no water. Someone told me that Mohammed set up the rules in this way so that for that month, no one would have the energy to fight. I fasted today to see what it was like and I can say I was not anxious for strenuous activity.

I got the idea for fasting last night at breakfast. At around 6:30, when the sun goes down here, the faithful break their fast with a quick light meal before evening prayer. The traditional meal included dates, nuts, liquid and a mixture of sorghum and meat paste. We were invited by our hosts – who had spent the afternoon talking with us – to join them. We removed our shoes and sat on large turkish rugs laid out on the lawn(picture below).  After prayer, we joined them for a larger meal. They set up some tables for us and some joined us while most took their meal on the carpets. We ate outdoors under the gaze of a tame gazelle. At my table, one of the Sudanese suggested I try the fast because it would help clean out my system and make me feel better. So I did.

The sleeping quarters were very humble (and this morning there was no water.) But I did have a cigar and some bourbon with a couple of colleagues under the stars while evening prayer was called. We talked about war and peace and how good it can feel to be in Africa.

*Note:  see 03Khartoum 0959 below 

Photos to go with 03 Khartoum 0959

Russian-made Hind helicopter used in Darfur.  Photo taken October 27, 2003 in El Geneina, (see para 5 below).

The Iftar in El Fashar

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US Embassy Khartoum and EU counterparts sought to alert capitals to what we knew by October 2003 was going on in Darfur -- state-conducted ethnic cleansing -- with no great success.  In Washington, focus was on the north/south Sudanese conflict.  Eventually aid flowed but no support for pushing Sudan government to end its efforts to push African Moslems off land to contain the rebel insurgency and no real support for AU/UN peacekeeping until 2007 when ethnic cleansing was more or less completed.

Journal Entry for September 27, 2003

I have now spent several weeks being driven from place to place through Khartoum.  I’m beginning to see things a bit better.  One of the reasons for this is the ample time one has for studying street life while stuck in Khartoum’s awful traffic.  Khartoum has somewhere around 5-7 million people in the extended urban area around the confluence on the two Niles.  I’d say at least a million of them are driving cars, riding in or on buses, trucks, scooters and motorcycles, plodding along on donkeys or walking at any one time.  Because only certain roads are paved and still fewer cut from one section of the city to another, all the traffic gravitates to the same half dozen routes.  During business hours – from around nine till six everyday except Friday – the streets are clogged.  Because many of the “paved” roads have obstacles of various sorts – holes, ripples, rough spots, train tracks – traffic often slows down even more and gyrates through a complex set of avoidance maneuvers, adding to the leisurely pace.  Through it all, the Sudanese patiently make their way by moving sharply to claim any open space and through liberal use of hand gestures.

I’ve observed that hand gestures, though in some sense equivalent to “signaling,” are quite different in effect.  As traffic moves along, people wishing to turn into the road will at the first opening edge out and claim right of way.  Someone in the car, driver or passenger, will wave the vehicle cut off to stop or slow down.  When the turn is completed, the two drivers will then exchange waves of “thanks” and “your welcome.”  Because all of this occurs in slow motion, it has a certain friendly quality, as if two villagers meeting in the town square.  This cuts the edge off what would drive motorists in other countries crazy.  Imagine moving down a road with paved area for two lanes.  Three lanes of traffic are moving down it, two in one direction and the third in another.  The two lanes in your direction are moving slow or approaching an intersection, the opposite “lane” is open for a couple of car lengths.  Off you go into that lane, against the flow of traffic to reach your turn or just to move ahead.  That third lane of traffic, now made a fourth, jerks over into the dirt until things sort out.  Now the time it takes for that fourth lane to reestablish itself creates just enough space for someone else – such as a bus driver – to edge into traffic from a side street.  Everybody is gesturing as circumstances demand.  Meanwhile an old women with a child will launch into the river of vehicles fending off the various currents with her own waving.  Remarkably no one seems to get angry – it is too hot – and there are few accidents. 

A brief word about women.  Almost all of the women in the street wear head covering.  My guess is that the non-Moslem women from the south are the ones wearing the brightly colored wrappings.  A good number wear what must be the more traditional black.  (The Arab males get to wear white robes and headdress.)  Only a few wear the complete chador.  But I can only imagine that under the black bulk are some truly sweaty and uncomfortable people.

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Journal Entry for trip south & meeting John Garang

October 6: Went deep into southern Sudan over the weekend. Flew to Rumbek, the capital of "New Sudan" ruled by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). For hundreds of years, people have been moving down the Nile Valley through and to Sudan. (Spoke to a Dutch archeologist last week who runs a dig at one of the oldest known sites with signs of modern men – 200,000 years old.) Over the last few thousand years, people moving north have met other people whose ancestors had moved north and beyond even longer ago. So long ago, they forgot where they came from, as we all do. The more recent movements north have been by "Africans" and they have met "Arabs." The people have mixed, fought and lived among each other. The Arabs preyed on the black Africans, taking them as slaves, treating them as animals. The Africans – found mostly but not all in the south – themselves are split into hundreds of tribes, big and small. Some farm, some raise cattle. They too have fought with each other. The largest African tribe is the Dinka, the Nuer next. They are split into further groups that have also fought with each other.

When the British left Sudan in 1956, they left behind an old boundary separating north and south Sudan. The south has been fighting the north ever since. This became a war for the independence of the south and the SPLM became the prime liberation movement in 1983. The SPLM represents the Africans. John Garang has headed it for most of its existence. Garang lived for nine years in the US and received a PhD in agricultural science from the University of Iowa. I went to Rumbek to meet Garang and to greet a retired US four-star general who also was arriving in Sudan to meet with him and the government.
 

Rumbek is around 500 miles south of Khartoum. It is deeper in the rain belt and it rained right after we arrived on Friday afternoon. Bringing rain in Africa is considered good luck. It had not rained for 12 days and the sorghum needed water to finish growing by harvest time at the end of October. It also cooled things off a good bit.

The British had kept the Arabs out of southern Sudan during the colonial period to protect the people there. But that is all they did. No development or investment of any kind took place. Southern Sudan today is almost totally primitive. No paved roads, no electricity, no plumbing, no modern medicine, no telephones, no TV, no AC. Simple mud huts, water from rivers and wells, brutally hot days, nothing but hard work, survival, family and friends. When we attended a large SPLM ceremony on Saturday, Garang told us they had nothing to offer the guests but the good free air but we could have all of that we wanted. (Nevertheless, our visiting ex-general was given the usual village greeting for an important person: he jumped over a big cow held on the ground and with its neck freshly cut. The village then celebrates with a feast.)

Garang is very impressive: thoughtful, quick, subtle and farsighted. Not bombastic and clearly able to tolerate a bunch of rowdy “sons,” the younger leaders pursuing their own ambitions and who have at times been with him, then with the government and then back again. We met twice. 
 

I stayed in a safari-type camp run by a South African company but with an American manager. They served bacon at breakfast and beer at the bar (under a tree). No sharia here. The Civilian Protection Monitoring Team uses most of the tent city to house the Rumbek team. Their job is to investigate possible abuses of civilians by the two opposing armies. The USG funds the CPMT and they flew me to Rumbek. I was apparently lucky the two nights I was there. With a fan blowing – the tents had electric power – I used a sheet at night and slept well. The days were hot. The CPMT also took me on a four-hour plane tour of the south. Took some good shots, including of a typical little village.

Note:  The death of John Garang in July 2005 was a tremendous loss for Sudan and South Sudan.  He had achieved a peace agreement and became 1st Vice President of Sudan before he died in a helicopter crash.  The SPLM leadership he left behind has proved unable to work together and the country has descended into civil war.