Brian Steidle: Witness to Darfur's Apocalypse

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"THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK: Bearing Witness to Genocide in Darfur," is as gripping and horrific as any title that will be published this year on the atrocities in Sudan. In it, author Brian Steidle recounts his evolution in Darfur, a region of western Sudan that is nearly as large as France and borders Libya, Chad and the Central African Republic.

Steidle, an ex-marine, starts out a happy adventurer with a year-long civilian contract to assist an African Union monitoring force in Sudan in 2004. But he becomes an increasingly agitated documentarian frustrated by his mission to monitor, not to prevent, atrocities. By his book's end, Steidle is an outraged activist back in the U.S.

"The Devil Came on Horseback" opens with a description of an infant orphan shot through the back and likely to die. The book subsequently grows more disturbing. Readers who take Steidle at his word will find "Devil" both an unflinching depiction of a 21st century genocide and a useful primer on the dizzyingly complex world of Sudanese politics.

Steidle's account of burned villages, mass graves and extreme deprivation in camps of "internally displaced persons" leaves little doubt that he witnessed massacres of civilian black Africans being carried out by both Arab militias (Janjaweed) and Sudanese government forces.

"The Devil Came on Horseback" — and the book's accompanying film of the same name — is a clear wake-up call to the conscience of its audience. The film will screen at the Avalon Theatre through Sept. 13, with guest experts on hand to answer questions after each day's final showing.

Express spoke with the activist author and Loudon Valley High and Virginia Tech alum about the latest news from Darfur, the relationship between Darfur and the Sudanese civil war, Sudan's role in the war on terror and more.

» EXPRESS: What are the latest developments in Darfur?
» STEIDLE: Well, the conflict has changed a little bit from the widespread, large-scale government attacks that we saw. It has shifted to smaller attacks, more guerilla-type warfare, small attacks on humanitarian convoys, attacks on refugee camps, cross-boarder attacks into Chad and the Central African Republic. There are very few villages left to burn. Around 90 percent of villages in Darfur have been burned already, so now they have to attack on this smaller-scale.

Also, we're seeing a shift from the rebel groups. They've had some infighting — they've been fighting each other. And also, now we're seeing the Arab militia groups break down and start fighting each other, to try to claim their land before the U.N. can come in, trying to get each other's goods that they fought side-by-side to loot from the Africans. In some ways, it's complete anarchy.

» EXPRESS: How does Darfur relate to the Sudanese civil war?
» STEIDLE: Well, it is, in itself, a mini civil war, by definition. As the civil war was coming to an end — they had a ceasefire and a peace treaty — things were already happening in Darfur. The Darfurians felt that they were left out and that they had no rights, so that's when they began to fight back — when this whole process was coming to an end. The government opted to retaliate and try to stamp them down as they do everybody — as they're starting to do in the north right now, as they've done in the past in the Blue Nile region, as they will continue to do.

The Sudanese government rules by an iron fist, so it's similar in that way. It's similar in that it's this Arab government targeting all these other groups in the country, whether they're minority groups or not. I mean, the Africans outnumber the Arabs. They target the Africans and they try to stamp them down because they're afraid of losing power.

» EXPRESS: One striking passage in your book comes when a Janjaweed tribal sheikh congratulates you on Bush's reelection. Why do you think he did that and how aware are the Sudanese of U.S. domestic politics?
» STEIDLE: This was on November 3 [2004] and I think ... he meant to let us know that he's very aware of what's happening. This is a man who lives in a little mud-brick building, literally in the middle of nowhere. I think he wanted to let me know that he's not just some guy who lives in a hut who has a couple hundred freedom fighters; he's a very influential, powerful man, with connections well outside of south Darfur. I hadn't even heard the results — and I had satellite TV. I just hadn't watched it that morning yet.

They are very aware of what happens outside of Darfur, very aware of U.S. foreign policy and very aware of governmental policy inside of Sudan — very influential people with far-reaching connections to Libya, Egypt and all over the Middle East.

» EXPRESS: What should we do to stop the genocide?
» STEIDLE: It's a three-part answer, and all of these can happen together, or one before the other.

First, there's the protection phase: troops being deployed. I advocate for UN, or possibly NATO, troops, but no U.S. boots on the ground. Nobody, in my mind — besides [Democratic presidential candidate Joseph] Biden — has called for that and I think it's a very uneducated view.

Then you have the peacemaking phase. Peace talks are going to be starting in October in Libya.

The last one is the punishment phase. Punishment is everything from the enforcement of ICC [International Criminal Court] provisions to indict individuals who are responsible for war crimes to — if the Sudanese government doesn't abide by this UN resolution — further sanctions against them, enforcing a no-fly-zone, things like that.

From a specifically U.S. standpoint, we can enforce a no-fly-zone with no boots on the ground and monitor it with unmanned aerial vehicles, satellites and surveillance flights — and when an aircraft takes off, attacks a village and comes back and lands on the ground, then we can destroy the aircraft on the ground, so that we don't endanger U.N. flights or humanitarian flights. We don't have to shoot people out of the air.

We can impose further sanctions. We can prohibit any company that's operating in Sudan from operating in the United States. We can pass national legislation for divestment, like we've been doing on a state-level and city-level.

I think this U.N. mission that's going in, the U.S. should have some influence on that mission, meaning that we support them logistically — communications-wise, intelligence-wise, things like that. That may require a few people on the ground. Right now we have U.S. citizens on the ground, supporting the African Union's mission. That's a role the U.S. can play.

» EXPRESS: Where do you think the U.N. troops should come from?
» STEIDLE: Well, they've already all been committed. They've already got commitments for 26,000 from African countries. They said that there's no need for outside countries, that they have enough commitment from African countries that they can make it an African mission.

I think there needs to be some outsiders, mainly for the fact that we bring a lot to bear. We have satellites and advanced logistics — things that the African countries don't have. I think that we can assist in the mission and make it more successful. When I say "we," I mean the West.

» EXPRESS: Do you expect a substantial U.N. force to be there by the end of the year?
» STEIDLE: I would like to be optimistic and say, "Yes." We have seen that the Sudanese government is capable and willing to hold up these deployments. The mission was approved earlier — nothing happened. There is doubt about whether the Sudanese government is going to cooperate.

» EXPRESS: You've accused the U.S. government of "appeasing" Sudan because it's helping us fight al-Qaeda. Do you care to expound on that?
» STEIDLE: The Sudanese government is apparently helping the United States in the war against terror by providing us with intelligence about al-Qaeda. At the same time, they still are supporting al-Qaeda and allowing al-Qaeda training camps to operate within their country.

It's a two-faced thing. They're giving us information about where al-Qaeda is in Iraq and at the same time allowing people to train to be exported to Iraq — to kill Americans. The Sudanese government is where much of the funding came for the bombings of the embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and also the bombing of the USS Cole — all of that came out of Sudan. So for us to cooperate with them is a little silly. There's a very strange relationship between the two of us.

We are kind of turning a blind eye to what they're doing in return for intelligence. I don't think we should be doing that. I don't think it's the greatest intelligence, I don't think they're meaningful in doing it and I don't think the hunt for one man is worth the deaths of 400,000 civilians.

» EXPRESS: Compare your book to your movie.
» STEIDLE: The movie is a very dramatic representation of the entire story. It gets people motivated and empowered to do something. The book is the whole story; it's nearly everything from my time there. We even add some of the fun stuff that we did — to show the light side of all this darkness.

The movie is darker. The last half of the movie is what goes on right after the book. We have little bit in the book's epilogue, but I didn't talk so much about my time back here traveling around and trying to convince people. The movie touches more on that.

Each one has its place. Some people don't read books and some people aren't going to watch the movie. I would encourage everyone, if they're interested at all in this situation, to pick up the book. Neither one of them is meant to be an examination of the conflict from a scholar's or Sudanese expert's perspective. I'm just a witness on the ground, telling my personal story. That's all they are.

» Avalon Theatre, 5612 Connecticut Ave. NW; through Sept. 13, various show times, $9.75; 202-966-6000. (Friendship Heights)

Written by Express contributor Tim Follos

Images courtesy Public Affairs Books