In Darfur, Teens With Machine Guns See No End to Violence

May 24, 2006 — -- The Darfur rebels are an intimidating bunch. Teenagers, many of them, look dwarfed by their heavy guns and ammunition. They look like kids playing Rambo.

Cloth covers their faces, partly to conceal their identities, but it seems there's also a practical reason to wear this disguise. Crammed by the dozens in the backs of pickup trucks as they patrol the barren landscape of northern Darfur, they need to keep out the dust.

Verses from the Koran adorn the camel skins they wear on their bodies. They are stamped with elaborate writing, including talismans against harm.

"This one protects me from big guns, this one from small guns," said the rebel chief of staff, a slender man in his 20s who goes by the nom de guerre Tiger. Some of his men wear 20 or 30 such symbols at a time.

We had arranged to meet the rebels with the help of African Union peacekeepers, who have the thankless task of patrolling a part of Darfur where at least five different factions fight every day.

There are no front lines here. Only patches of turf that the different groups defend to the death. In the place where we meet the rebels, fighting broke out just the night before.

The rebel factions have clashed for three years with the Janjaweed militiamen, Arab tribesmen who are blamed for a torrent of killings and rapes, and arson that has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and forced more than 2 million from their homes in Darfur.

Earlier this month, the Sudanese government, which has been accused of supporting the Janjaweed's campaign of terror, signed a peace agreement with one of the three main rebel groups, but reports of attacks on civilians continue.

The rebels were eager to tell us why they oppose the new peace plan for the war-torn region.

Their group, led by a man named Abdul Wahid, is the main faction that has refused to sign the peace plan. A smaller splinter faction, mostly members of the Zaghawa tribe, accepted the peace deal. But the rebels we met rejected it. They are mostly Fur tribesmen, the tribe that gives Darfur its name. They represent roughly two-thirds of the population of the region. Without them onboard, many say the peace accord would be meaningless.

They have an extensive 13-point list of demands. Put simply, they want self-determination for Darfur, with greater autonomy from Khartoum's repressive regime. They say that is why they rebelled against the Sudan government in the first place, sparking a bitter conflict that the government and its allies put down by murdering thousands of suspected rebel sympathizers, including women and children.