Over Tea, Sheik Denies Stirring Darfur's Torment

"The greatest threat to this peace agreement right now is the
janjaweed," said a senior military intelligence officer with the
African Union who is not authorized to speak publicly. "It is not clear
what is in it for them or how it serves their interests to disarm. No
one is sure what they will do or who exactly controls them."

The
first and most critical step of that agreement, signed in May between
the government in Khartoum and the largest rebel faction, is the
disarmament of the janjaweed. The government pledged to submit a plan
to disarm the militias of their heavy weaponry one month after signing
the agreement and to finish the job before the end of October.

But
how do you disarm a phantom army whose sponsors and leaders deny its
existence? And exactly who are the janjaweed — and is it within
the government's power to disarm them?

"Who are the janjaweed?"
asked Eltayeb Hag Ateya, director of the Peace Research Institute at
the University of Khartoum. "It depends on what you mean and who you
ask."

The term itself has long been used to refer to highwaymen
and bandits from tribes living across Sudan's western border in Chad
who roamed the vast, semidesert plains of Darfur, robbing Arabs and
non-Arabs, nomads and farmers.

But the word came to have a new
meaning after rebels attacked a government outpost in Darfur in 2003,
sparking the conflict that would engulf the region and eventually spill
into Chad.

The militias that came to be known as the janjaweed
were deployed as a kind of counterinsurgency proxy force that the
government used in place of and sometimes alongside its military. It
had used such Arab militias with brutal success in the 20-year civil
war in the south.

These fighters were paid a small stipend,
but their greatest reward was the right to loot and seize livestock and
land from the Fur and Zaghawa, non-Arab tribes from which the rebels
drew their ranks.

The chief figure in the deployment of these
militias, according to the State Department and human rights
organizations, was Mr. Hilal, who leads a powerful Arab tribe in Darfur
called Um Jalul.

Long before the war began, Mr. Hilal wielded
control over a fearsome tribal militia, and because of his deep
connections to the Arab elite of Khartoum, he was the first tribal
leader the government turned to when the insurgency among non-Arab
tribes began, human rights investigators say.