Among Darfur Rebels and Refugees: A Road Diary (Day 8)

Editor's Note: In March, Kurt Pelda, Africa Bureau Chief of the Swiss daily the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, traveled to eastern Chad on the border with the Sudanese crisis region of Darfur. Over 200,000 Sudanese refugees live in eastern Chad, having fled the violence in Darfur. The region likewise serves as staging grounds for the Darfur rebels fighting against the Sudanese government. During his three weeks traveling in the region, Pelda kept a diary, which provides a portrait of the Darfur conflict that is perhaps unrivaled in its detail and nuance. In daily installments through the beginning of August, World Politics Review presents this important document for the first time in English, concluding with an epilogue penned by Pelda exclusively for WPR. Read other entries.

Day 8: Of Blacks, Arabs and Angels
The Racism is Real

6 March

We need to find a car to rent. Before it gets too hot, Adam and I head off on foot to the market in Abéché. Unfortunately, Adam is completely unfamiliar with the town. I try to remember my earlier visits and to find the side street where a proud Goran once rented me a four-by-four with a reliable driver. The Goran tribe comes from the north of the country and its members are often involved in commerce. The Goran are the tribe of former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré, who was overthrown in 1990 by Idriss Déby, a Zaghawa. As a consequence, many Goran today support the rebellion against Déby and his Zaghawa regime. Mahamat Nouri, a former advisor of Habré, is the most important leader of the rebellion. He too is a Goran.

A friend helps us to find the small auto rental office. The owner is named Saleh and he remembers me. But that does not mean that he is going to give me special treatment. The haggling begins: in French and Arabic. Saleh sits barefoot on his desk and holds forth to us from on high, as we have settled into two low armchairs. He is prepared to cut the daily rental rate by $20, but in that case, he does not want to assume the risk of us being attacked by bandits and the car disappearing for ever. What could happen to us in such an eventuality does not seem to interest him much. He is concerned about the car. In order to determine the distribution of risks, he indicate the routes that are safe and those on which I would have to be responsible for covering any possible damages. The border region to Darfur is held to be especially dangerous -- and that is exactly where I want to go.

This game is much too risky for me. I prefer to pay the extra $20. When the negotiations are concluded, we are provided a Toyota four-by-four: the workhorse of preference for driving in the desert. I use the same model at home in Kenya. By Chadian standards, the car is in very good condition and the driver makes a respectable impression. So that we can get started as early as possible tomorrow morning, we fill up the tank right away and we buy 36 liters of drinking water, a couple of cans of condensed milk and, on Adam's suggestion, a packet of energy-bars.

Although Adam is interpreting for me and speaks passable English, there are constantly misunderstandings: above all, when I want to interview people.

"Why did the man flee?"

"Because the Janjaweed attacked his village."

"No, Adam: ask him the question and then translate what he responds."

Adam is an inveterate tribalist. He is a member of the Fur tribe: the largest tribe in Darfur, from which the region takes its name. "Dar" means something like "home" or "homeland." Whenever Adam meets another Fur, then, as far as he is concerned, that person is automatically good and trustworthy. Whenever we need help, then Adam always tries first to find a Fur. He invariably has reservations with respect to members of other tribes and he is sometimes outright mistrustful. In Adam's world, the Zaghawa are uneducated robbers whose proverbially violent side must always be taken into account. The same goes for Arabs, whom Adam does not like at all. The Chadians, for Adam, are only after money. He concedes, nonetheless, that they are courageous fighters. "When I was in Libya," he remarks, "everyone was scared of the Chadians. They always had a dagger hidden under their sleeves."

In most cases, his or her belonging to a given tribe -- or to a particular clan within a tribe -- tells one a lot about where the political loyalties of a Chadian or a Sudanese lie. Political ideas, on the other hand, play only a subordinate role: not only in Chad or Sudan, but throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Tribes are the vehicle for obtaining power or participating in its exercise. In dangerous times, one puts one's trust in the protection offered by one's tribe or clan -- not in the state. The marked "left-right" schema of European politics has little meaning in Africa, where politics is perceived, above all, through tribal or ethnic lenses. And, of course, politicians are virtuosos in playing on the tribal strings, whereby they pursue their own interests -- namely, in securing power.

Adam is in many ways typical of the attitudes that form the basis of the conflicts in Darfur and Chad. The two wars are not exactly the same, but they are so tightly intertwined that one can hardly consider them independently of one another. Adam's life story makes clear how little significance the border between Chad and Sudan has in practice. Although the Fur are, above all, native to Darfur, there are also a few in the extreme southeasterly part of Chad. There they are known as Fongoro. Adam's family comes from Wadi Saleh in Darfur. But he was born on the Chadian side of the border -- approximately 45 years ago, as he says. As a child, he first attended a Chadian school and he learned French. But his father soon sent him to al-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur. Later, he studied to become an electrician in Khartoum and he worked in a sugar factory. Little by little, however, the state-run firm let go all the Fur employees: "They said it was for the good of the country." When Adam lost his job, he moved to Libya, where he found a well-paid position with a German company.

"As far as the Libyans were concerned, all blacks were slaves. That's what they called us. When other Sudanese said, 'But they are Arabs'," the Libyans laughed at them. 'If you blacks are Arabs,' they said, 'then what are we? Angels perhaps?'" In 1995, Adam went to the Sudanese embassy in Tripoli to have his passport renewed. He was asked to which tribe he belonged and when he said, the embassy officials seized his passport: "Luckily, I had friends in the Chadian embassy. They gave me a Chadian passport." As a result, Adam is nowadays a Chadian citizen. Nonetheless, he speaks about Chadians as if they were foreigners. Adam adds that discrimination against blacks by the Sudanese who consider themselves Arabs was not anything new in 1995. On his account, already as a youngster in the early 1980s he was confronted by discrimination and condescension on the part of "Arabs." Adam is not the only one who says so. Many people in southern Sudan and in Darfur have told me similar stories. The racism is a reality.

"Day 9: Shadows in Moonlight"

Kurt Pelda is the Africa Bureau Chief of the Swiss daily the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. The diary of his trip to the Chad/Darfur border first appeared in the NZZ Online. The English translation is by John Rosenthal.