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| January 20, 2009 |
Tomorrow I will be returning to the Chad/Darfur borderland where I will be traveling for four weeks. My goal this time is to seek out the elders, men and women from the three tribes targeted by the Sudanese regime (Fur, Zaghawa, Masalit) as well as one or two of the Arab tribes. I hope to document the oral history of Darfuris in the camps.
I will be accompanied by David Buchbinder (Human Rights Watch, Chad expert) We will go from camp to camp, finding the elderly story tellers,. I will invite them to tell the stories and sing the songs passed to them from their grandparents. I have spoken to people who can go back 200 years.
From the elders we will hear about life as it was before so much was destroyed; rites of passage, the ways people celebrated, and the why; methods of resolving disputes, methods of agriculture and trade, of education- everything that was important to Darfur's people.
The rich culture and traditions of Darfur are transmitted orally. Alex DeWaal told me that even in the midst of brutal warfare, the leaders in the Nuba Mountains of Southern Sudan had the foresight to summon the elders; the body-painters, the storytellers, the singers and dancers-- and they filmed them, so that their traditions would not be lost. No one is doing this for Darfur or for the (same) tribes in eastern Chad.
Alex has put me in touch with the world's foremost Darfur scholar, Prof Sean O'Fahey. He has many old photographs. I hope I can one day build a small museum in the middle of Darfur - El Fasher probably-- where the young who grew up in camps and amidst violence, can go to reclaim their heritage. The museum will contain the tapes and also display artifacts, old photographs and the written history, as archived by Prof Fahey, Jerome Tubiana and Alex DeWaal.
Darfur's culture can survive only because of what is transmitted orally.
This from Professor O' Fahey
"Non-material culture is essentially oral;
there is very little visual art. Exceptions are
very high levels of basket-weaving and carpet
making (in some areas introduced by the British
as a prison trade). Other than these there is
little in the way of visual culture.
Oral culture is a very different matter;
here, the peoples of the region have a very rich
range of story-telling."
I have come to this project out of respect for the people of the Darfur region.
I will blog whenever possible
The world hasn't stopped to celebrate with us. Rwandan military enters CongoKIBATI, Congo (Reuters) - Rwandan troops crossed into eastern Congo on Tuesday in a joint military operation by the Great Lakes neighbors to disarm Rwandan Hutu rebels seen as a root cause of more than a decade of conflict. While both countries presented the operation as part of internationally-backed efforts to end conflict in Democratic Republic of Congo, analysts said allowing the Rwandan army in posed political risks for Congolese President Joseph Kabila. The presence of the Rwandan Hutu FDLR fighters, who finance themselves by exploiting illegal mines in the mineral-rich east, triggered two previous Rwandan invasions of Congo that led to a wider 1998-2003 conflict. It also helped cause a 2004 rebellion by Congo Tutsi rebels who went on the offensive late last year.
Diplomats and U.N. peacekeepers said that up to 2,000 Rwandan troops entered Congo's eastern North Kivu province on Tuesday under a December joint accord to act against the mostly Hutu Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
The FDLR's strength is estimated at around 6,000 fighters, spread across North and South Kivu.
A Reuters reporter saw hundreds of Rwandan troops, wearing Rwandan flag patches on their uniforms and carrying mortars, rocket launchers and AK-47s, moving into Congo in the Kibati area north of the North Kivu provincial capital Goma.
"This morning between 1,500 and 2,000 RDF (Rwanda Defense Forces) crossed the border in the Munigi-Kibati zone," Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich, military spokesman for the U.N. force, MONUC, said. MONUC, the biggest U.N. peace force, said it had not been involved in planning the operation.
Congolese army forces were on the move with tanks, armored personnel carriers and mobile rocket launchers, Dietrich said.
FEARS OF ESCALATION
Analysts said the latest entry of Rwandan troops into Congo, at the same time as a Ugandan-led offensive against Ugandan LRA rebels further north in Orientale, were an acknowledgement by Kabila that he had failed to pacify his country.
"Look where we are, two years after elections, the Rwandan army back in Congo and the Ugandans are back in Congo ... and the Congolese get screwed again," one veteran foreign Congo analyst, who asked not be named, said. The analyst recalled Congo's 1998-2003 war, when Rwanda and Uganda backed rival rebel groups.
"It's a confirmation of what everybody knows -- the DRC army has no control over its own territory," said a foreign diplomat.
The presence in eastern Congo of Rwandan Hutu FDLR rebels, many of whom participated in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, has been at the heart of more than a decade of bloodshed. The 1998-2003 war sucked in the armies of half a dozen nearby countries, and triggered a conflict-driven humanitarian catastrophe that killed an estimated 5.4 million people.
Rwanda and Congo have agreed on several past occasions to cooperate to tackle the Hutu rebels, but have failed to carry this out amid accusations that ill-disciplined Congolese government forces have sided with the FDLR Hutu fighters. Fighting flared again in North Kivu last October, when the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), a Congolese Tutsi rebel group led by renegade General Laurent Nkunda ended a cease-fire and launched an offensive against Goma. The fighting, which killed hundreds and displaced around 250,000 people, prompted fears of a fresh regional war.
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On a personal note:
During my visit to Congo last month I spoke with many people-victims of the violence in and around Goma in North Kivu. Perpetrators are the Congolese Army, The Mai Mai (supporters of the former) The Tutsi rebel group, and the Hutu rebel group- both from originally Rwanda. While all 4 armed groups have been murdering, plundering, raping and stealing children, it is the Hutus, butchers of the Rwandan genocide who fled into Congo in 2004, who are committing the most barbaric atrocities and sexual violence. I spoke with women and girls who were gang raped, raped with bayonets-some also had had their legs smashed with rifle butts. If the Hutu militia, the FDLR, could be taken out of the equation, the Tutsi's stated raison d'etres, -to protect the Tutsi population in Congo, would vanish.