LETTER FROM DARFURA journalist feels the heat being transported in an 4x4 with the Justice and Equality Movement, writes ROB CRILLY
THE REBELS were as good as their word. After a series of satellite calls to commanders deep in the desert and a courtesy visit to their representative in the Chadian capital N’Djamena, a mud-smeared 4x4 appeared in the tiny border town of Bahai.
The mud was camouflage. Caked over every inch of bodywork and windscreen – apart from a six-inch gap for the driver to see the road ahead – it was designed to reduce glare and hide us from Sudanese government bombers flying overhead.
Rocket-propelled grenade launches dangled from each wing mirror. I was invited to jump into the passenger seat, resting my feet on grenades and ammunition cases.
My hosts were rebels from the Justice and Equality Movement, one of Darfur’s many rebel groupings. With bases inside Chad, this was an established route for bringing recruits, arms and cash in and out of Sudan.
This time their cargo was a slightly nervous journalist, already sweating hard from the intense heat of the desert.
This was the rebel tour, an alternative way of seeing Darfur, without the restrictions of Khartoum’s repressive security apparatus.
The border was not much to look at. Our sturdy Toyota plunged down into the first of three powder-dry wadis before lurching up the other side. After the third we were in Sudan.
The country on either side looked identical: a sun-bleached landscape stretching into the distance.
“Welcome to your second country,” said Al Tom Ibrahim Jabarallda, who asked me to call him Tommy. He spread one arm out of the window to gesture at the parched land ahead of us.
“It may only be desert, but we love it,” he said with a smile as broad as the dusty horizon.
We can’t have gone far before we lurched to a halt.
The driver, Yahia, was peering frantically through the tiny clear spot in his windscreen, looking up at the vast blue sky. This didn’t look good. Suddenly we were off again, jolting our way into a sparse copse of thorn trees.
Yahia pulled up close to a trunk, branches spread across the roof.
High in the sky, the reason for our abrupt halt became clear. A tiny speck was describing tight circles directly overhead.
I didn’t need to be told what it was. I had heard enough stories from villagers bombed from their homes to know it was one of Sudan’s ageing Antonov cargo planes, now used as a crude bomber. They were makeshift and inaccurate, their crews simply rolling oil drums – packed with explosives and shrapnel – from the loading doors.
They were as likely to kill donkeys as humans. More often they just left a temporary scar in the sand, a two-foot crater.
But as the drone of its engines reached us in the shade of the thorny acacia, something became very clear. The Antonov’s main weapon was not the home-made bomb. It was the fear that arrived with the sound of its engines.
“We are in control” seemed to be the message carried through the air. “We are everywhere. You cannot hide.”
The flimsy tree offered little protection as the plane seemed to stop, almost hover in the air.
The crew must have spotted the plume of choking brown dust kicked up as we raced from the border. Now they would have binoculars pressed to the eyes, trying to target our vehicle.
We were locked in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
Each time the Antonov straightened its course we jumped back into the 4x4 and sped off towards the main rebel column. Each time it began circling, we holed up using whatever cover we could find.
By the time it ran out of patience or fuel, it was too late to drive on.
There could be no cooking fire after dark. Dinner came in a shallow metal bowl. I put it to my lips and took a long draft of sweet, syrupy water. This was the rebels’ secret weapon, they told me – a mixture of flour, sugar and water that could keep them fighting fit for days.
It wasn’t as bad as it sounded but, in the dark, I couldn’t see the twig that caught in my teeth.
Bed rolls appeared and were spread in the sand. The blankets were man-made, and crackled with static electricity as I rolled over.
With the Antonov gone, there was only silence, a rare thing in Africa.
There is always the sound of radios, cocks crowing or children laughing.
But there was no sound, only light. Above, the sky turned into something like a Jackson Pollock painting. All the stars joined up till there was almost no darkness left.
Two shooting stars raced by. We slept.
Rob Crilly’s book Saving Darfur was published by Reportage Press on February 9th