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Tea in Souk Libya, Omdurman's market just a few days before the JEM attack. Image: Daniel J. Gerstle.

LITERARY | Sudan: Cutting Through the Fog of War in Khartoum

 

Sudan  |  Daniel J. Gerstle  |  November 2009

Republished November 2024

This story was originally published in Humanitarian Bazaar Magazine (originally called HELO Magazine) in the second issue in November 2009.  |  Author’s note: “A Somali minivan driver who took me to the frontline right after the fighting played Bob Marley’s Black Survivor on his tape deck as we drove in. If you like listening to music while you read, this song fits and happens to be part of the story. Give it a listen.”  |  Names have been changed for people’s privacy and/or safety.

 


 

Zuber Street, a dusty urban trail in Omdurman, Sudan, runs just a few blocks northwest of the Nile River Bridge which leads to the country’s capitol, Khartoum. The street is the deepest rebel fighters have ever penetrated the government’s defenses in the ongoing Darfur War. When Darfur’s rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) emerged from their long desert journey with guns blazing on May 10th, 2008, I happened to be staying there.

 

That week, having walked Omdurman’s Libya market just before the fighting, taken refuge near Khartoum airport and then returned to the battlefield five days later to reclaim my bags, I had the rare opportunity not only to witness a historical, tragic event and learn how locals felt about it. I was also able to track in real time how the global media covered the attack, packaged vast quantities of conflicting and limited reports into news blurbs, and in the process allowed the fighting groups to lead the shaping of the story which would become the permanent history of the event.

 

Although I traveled to Sudan that spring as a consultant on humanitarian aid, I nevertheless felt compelled after the attack to write about how journalists in pursuit of ‘truth’ are often forced to speculate quickly on what is happening and how such assumptions or simplifications, if inaccurate, can lead to negative political consequences. In a sense, this is a story about how history is made in central Africa.

 

Khartoum & Omdurman

 

Before launching into a composite eye-witness account of how the Darfur rebel attack on Khartoum took place last May, as well as an analysis of how the media covered it with links to videos and reports, let us first acclimatize ourselves to the unique context of Sudan.

 

NY TIMES VIDEO ON KHARTOUM BEFORE MAJOR MEDIA RESTRICTIONS AND BEFORE THE ATTACK (link coming soon)

 

Khartoum is the capitol of the central African nation of  Sudan, built at the fertile junction of the Blue and White Nile Rivers and surrounded by the Nubian Desert. The city offers a skyline of mosque minarets, Ferris wheels, office towers with Chinese banners displayed, and the Burj al Fateh Hotel, a Libyan skyscraper designed to look like a sailboat against the glowing sky. Like many other African and Arab cities it is also a city of dust and smoke.

 

One’s nostrils twitch from the endless barrage of smoke. Diesel exhaust floods roadways. Trash fires and burned car batteries smolder in drainage ditches. Puffs emanate from Bringa brand cigarettes which dangle from the mouths of truckers and sambosa salesmen.

 

Cleaning women light frankincense and sage, waving eerie plumes of smoke over cafes and empty bedrooms to improve the ambience for clients. Hipsters tugging on hookah pipes exhale sweet apple tobacco smoke, which spills out of restaurants onto walkways.

 

Even in the gaps between those clouds of smoke there is the endless dust continually besieging the city from the Nubian Desert. “Haboob!” passersby proclaim as tan clouds of dust grow like thunder heads and wash over the city in surges that leave drivers and pedestrians coughing, and balconies and porches coated with tan dust.

 

There are moments, however, pristine golden moments, when the fires are put out and the dust storms subside. It has rained hard suddenly, or perhaps it is simply a miracle. The sun climbs across the gorgeous blue sky over Khartoum. For a moment all the smokes and dusts have died away.

 

Crumbling alleys of the old towns wake like museums opening for business. The hawkers, touts, porters, and street kids spread out among comfortable spots in the shade under acacia, palm, or neem trees.

 

The city’s elite emerge in their flowing white robes and turbans from shimmering new skyscrapers, with cell phones attached to ears. And in the wealthy neighborhoods, the young ladies in scarves and boys in button downs cluster on the grass flats of the parks, at tea shops, and pool halls, or at outdoor Lebanese, Egyptian, and Ethiopian cafes.

 

The pristine moment of sunshine, clean air, and soothing heat lasts just long enough for one to savor a glass of sweet cardamom tea. Then the winds pick up again lifting the tan dust, the frankincense and hookah mists, the cigarette smoke, the trash fire fumes, and the endless billowing clouds of diesel exhaust and dump them all back over the peoples of the old towns, skyscrapers, and cafes, who now run back for cover into their steamy walled compounds, air-conditioned towers, or hotel sanctuaries.

 

Khartoum, not well known in the West, is seen as a cosmopolitan metropolis and fertile marketplace to many in Africa and the Arab world. While the outer edges of the city are barren tan wasteland punctuated with mechanically-irrigated jade crop plots, the city itself is an industrial madhouse of traffic jams.

 

Pedestrians overflow walkways into the streets and the narrow strips of grass generously called parks. Only the Nile bank river walks and islands offer forested oases which provide shade for summer fishermen and teen swimmers. Meanwhile, oil-boom construction continues to alter the landscape.

 

Among the Sudanese Arabs and many African minority groups in Khartoum are Greek, Armenian, and Lebanese entrepreneurs and shop-owners. There are the Yemenis and Afghans taking part in the sprawling markets.

 

The city’s youth, as well as the Europeans, Middle Easterners, Americans, and Ethiopians, who come to churn out media, aid, or business, cluster in cafes and pizza halls in Khartoum II, Al-Amarat’s Street 15, or Africa Road. There are even shopping malls no different than those found in Nairobi or Atlanta.

 

Sayid, my Sudanese host in Omdurman, was a sixty-something government official, important enough to disguise by name here, but too sweet to have ever taken part in the Bashir regime’s war effort. When I came to Sudan to research core causes of hunger, Sayid and his wife Zeynab, brought me into their Omdurman home, a balcony-ringed fortress decorated on the inside with ornate gold-painted wood furniture and kangaroo rugs.

 

From the start, with Sayid giving me a tour of the Ahfad University for Women, I came to see the political diversity in Sudan’s elite. Many, however affluent, were concerned about human rights and the tragic Darfur War. But their perspectives on what the war meant were perhaps built on the editorial slant of Khartoum’s state-guided media.

 

Said’s circles never considered the Darfur War one of Arab versus African, for example, because they feel that they, as well as the Darfuri groups, are one people, the fighting a political, or set of sub-tribal disputes.

 

In fact, one major perspective not well examined in the Western media has been that of Sudanese, both Arab and non-Arab, who see the Darfur War as a conflict of Sudan versus Chad more than one of Arab versus non-Arab. 

 

On May 9th, before I learned of the coming Darfur rebel attack, I had arranged to have dinner with fellow aid and journalism colleagues in Khartoum-proper.

 

That day, I stepped out of my Sudanese colleague’s Omdurman mansion into the blaze of a mercurial sun and walked along Zuber Street’s sandy drainage ditch.  At that time, the rebels had broken around Sudanese forces in North Kordofan and were dividing their column for assault on a nearby air base, the Libya market, and the parliament.

 

On the sand track on Zuber, I stumbled upon a bizarre omen. On the footpath, along a busy road patrolled by Mercedes, motor rickshaws, and donkey carts, someone had discarded the fresh intestines and bowels of a large animal. There was no blood, no fur, just entrails.

 

A sour feeling hit me. But I nevertheless dashed off to have dinner. The Matthews gas station and minibus stand I passed on the corner would be rattled by rifle and rocket fire just a day later.

 

Once I arrived to the Solitaire Café in the Amarat neighborhood and sat down with friends over salad, my UN colleague Michelle rang. “You better not go home tonight, hon,” she told me. “Three thousand rebel troops are en route to your neighborhood.”

 

As soon as I got off the phone with Michelle, I rang Zeynab to tell her and Sayid about the potential attack. Zeynab hadn’t heard anything about it. Sayid was out at the office downtown, as usual. My colleagues and I debated the validity of the warning over dinner that night. We couldn’t believe the JEM would attack when the government was already mobilizing defenses.

 

Six of us stayed at Michelle’s flat in the Amarat neighborhood for the five days of the emergency. We could barely move without checking the news. The evening before the attack, we gathered on a balcony overlooking Africa Road and the international airport sipping gin and tonic and attempting to predict the outcome.

 

The Attack

 

From the rooftop beside Khartoum International Airport, my colleagues and I could see a column of smoke rising out of the yellowish haze.

 

It was May 10th, 2008. Across the Nile River to the north of Sudan’s capitol, in the market city of Omdurman, rebels of the Darfur Justice and Equality Movement had begun their attack. Here’s a video of a Darfuri family cheering as they witness the JEM rebel force driving into Omdurman.

 

THE JEM ARRIVES (link coming soon)

 

“We heard some rumors a few days before the attack,” N., a Khartoum medical student, told me, “but nobody actually believed it was true.” N, whose family comes from Darfur and resides near the national parliament and Nile River Bridge in Omdurman, was about to witness the battle firsthand.

 

“The day of the attack started normally for me and my family,” she explained. “Some of us were at home and some went to work. I was getting ready to go to the tennis club with my friend when my oldest sister called.

 

“She told us that Omdurman was under attack, that the rebels already entered Omdurman and that there was fighting at the Libya Market. She told us she was on her way home and told us to stay inside the house. Then we called my other sister and my father. An hour later or so, we were all together at home. My mother didn’t want any of us to leave the house.”

 

From the rooftop in Al Amarat where I stood at the time, I watched as people ran past the airport fence along Africa Road below with cell phone to ears trying to figure out what was happening, where the fighting was exactly and what they needed to do to get their families to safety. Soon enough, two tanks groaned as they rumbled by on the way to the frontline.

 

Two MiG reconnaissance jets took off from the main airport with a loud swoosh. As evening fell, ambulances soared toward the front. Lorries tailed them, crowded with eager Sudanese soldiers who sang traditional songs to motivate each other for the fight.

 

Michelle, a counter-famine coordinator from Indiana, served moussaka. She suggested the JEM would be fools to attack Omdurman when Khartoum had been forewarned.

 

Erika, a media expert, was on and off the phone and handset radio all evening trying to stay ahead of the diplomatic corps announcements which stated:

 

“UN and partners staff are urged to stay in their residences until further notice. Those in Omdurman should evacuate to city center…”

 

Roger, a good-humored Trinidadian humanitarian air pilot, flipped on the satellite television inside, scrolling through channels to see if there was any news. “Fighting has broken out in…Beirut, Lebanon…” Nothing on Sudan.

 

Erin, a soft-spoken American aid worker who had just flown in from Darfur for the weekend, sadly laughed that she might end up unable to go back to work.

 

Roman, a Sudanese-British consultant and the sixth of our group taking refuge here by the airport, just happened to be working with the Sudanese government. Connected to us socially, Roman took occasion to step out and take calls from the global media and ferry their queries about what was happening, for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

 

Although his working for the Bashir Administration would have some Darfuri minority sympathizers a little curious about him, Roman was incredibly warm and worked hard to see all sides of the event.

 

With the streets vacant, the blasts of rocket detonations could now be felt from the distance: Mppp…Mppp… A tall, growing column of smoke rose like a veil over the setting sun. The rooftops around us were all stuffed with other spectators trying to get a glimpse through the rooftop clutter toward the sources of smoke on the horizon.  Many had brought their liquors and beer cans to soften the mood. I rang Zeynab.

 

“Everything is not alright. I have to find my kids.” And Sayid was missing. Shooting had broken out near Zuber Street. Meanwhile, in central Omdurman, N and her family were afraid for their lives.

 

“As I was curious to know what was happening – there was nothing on TV about it yet,” N recalls, “I went upstairs to the roof of our house which is facing the main street leading to the bridge that connects Omdurman to Khartoum. When I looked out I saw the cars, the rebels and their weapons. It was scary. 

 

“They were covering their faces and heading towards the bridge. I shouted and called my family. I started counting the cars and stopped after thirty when my mother told me to get down, that I might get myself killed. One of the cars stopped at the roundabout in front of our house. As they went further towards the bridge, we started to hear the sounds of rifle fire and heavy weapons.

 

“As the sounds of the fighting got louder and our house literally started to shake, the power went off. At that moment it really felt as if we were in the middle of a war zone and we actually were. My mother and sisters started praying and reading the Koran. My father was listening to the news on the radio. I remember that on the BBC one of the rebel leaders said that they had already taken over Omdurman and were heading towards the Republican Palace.

 

“We have a sick neighbor with kids whose husband was outside Sudan and we knew that she must have been scared, so my brother went to bring her and her kids to stay with us. After he left the house, we heard a very big and loud explosion. We were terrified and ran outside to check on my brother. Thank God they were all fine, but the bomb was very close to them. Then another couple living next to us jumped over the wall and joined us, so we were now three families together.

 

“While the fighting was right outside, I connected with my friends through Facebook mobile to check on the ones who were in Omdurman and to ask the others to pray for us. I remember my status on Facebook was: ‘I am so scared. Allah help us! Pray for us my friends.’”

 

Sayid called me once he made it home to the frontline. He had been driving home but got stopped at a checkpoint on the Nile. Bargaining his way through, Sayid stopped at a bakery near home. Just as the owner took his cash and handed him bread, someone ran in. “What are you doing? They’re shooting right outside!”

 

Sayid got to his car and narrowly missed the JEM’s forward team as they crossed into his neighborhood. The rebels got pinned down at the two gas stations there where I had walked and seen the entrails a day before.

 

Once home, behind the high walls of his compound, Sayid found Zeynab, his kids, and grandkids safe. But would the fighting groups come to the door? With the power cut, did they have enough fuel for the generator?

 

Back on the safe side of town, beside the airport, the six of us planned contingencies. What if the power and generator were cut here? What if we ran out of food? What if a rebel cell tried to attack the airport or an embassy nearby? What if the government overreacted and arrested or deported us for being Western sympathizers for the Darfur cause?

 

Overnight, we took turns watching murder mysteries on DVDs, intermittently changing channels through Al-Jazeera, BBC, CNN, and Khartoum news, muting the sound to hear how close bombs were hitting, running to the roof to see if military aircraft or tanks were passing our building, or trying to no avail to sleep through the tension. Although we felt quite secure where we were, we knew people who lived in the area of fighting.

 

By morning, the Sudanese government had claimed victory, but we could still hear explosions across town. Roman relayed the government line that the continued fighting was simply a mopping up operation. There were rumors of Sudanese forces rooting out rebel cells who had allegedly been waiting with caches of weapons throughout the city ready to reinforce the rebel force once it crossed the Nile.

 

Other rumors told of a Sudanese government going overboard and storming homes and businesses run by radical Islamists and ethnic Zaghawa who may not have had anything to do with the attack.

 

One journalist’s videos, posted on Youtube under the name Noralov Sudan give a raw view into the aftermath of the battle. When I found this footage, I was startled as this was the road I took in and out of the Mohandesin section of Omdurman everyday when I stayed there. Note the uniforms of the dead soldiers lying along the walkway.

 

GOVERNMENT SOLDIERS THE MORNING AFTER: VIDEO I & VIDEO II (links coming soon)

 

“One of my friends told me their neighbor got killed as the bomb landed on his house,” recalls N of the morning after the climax of the attack and of the dissolution of the rebel force.

 

“Another friend told me she and her family were taking cover under the dining table! Our sick neighbor was crying during this. It was horrible, a very horrible feeling!

 

“We felt such relief when the first day was over, although we continued to hear the sounds until the morning of the next day. But then the Sudanese army took control. I saw some of the captured soldiers. One looked very young! We heard that some of them ran and tried to hide in the houses, that they were very hungry and just asked people for food and water. They even said some of them didn’t even know where they were and that they were confused.”

 

By the second evening, although the major networks had barely more than a blurb about the unusual events, Khartoum news was playing videos on a loop depicting victorious SAF cheering beside destroyed and burning rebel vehicles. Then a series of young boys, filthy and traumatized, were being marched palm-to-shoulder into custody. The boys were prisoners-of-war, likely village kids from Darfur and Chad who had never been to a city before and now had come to invade one. 

 

Aftermath

 

Five days away from home, still wearing the same clothes and missing my gear, I decided to go back to Zuber Street by minivan taxi, see my host family, and get a frontline view of what had happened to Omdurman.

 

What a tragic sight it was, a carnal punch-drunk trip to find the Matthews petrol station had been blasted by weapons just a few blocks from home. A T-72 tank round nailed the station sign dead center, forever silencing the words spelled out there. The plastic shards of the letters of the sign spiraled out like glitter all over the pumps, the pay station and the few cars still parked beneath.

 

A second tank shell left a dazzling sunray scar on a wall nearby. Rifle rounds—pop, pop, pop-pop-pop—had shattered the reinforced glass of the cashier’s window and peppered the cement wall beyond it. By some miracle the fighting ended before either side dropped a spark into the underground fuel tank. Now that would have left ears ringing.

 

I caught sight of a Sudanese man sweeping up detritus from a rocket-propelled grenade explosion which had hit the building across the street. He was a middle-aged shop owner, a flesh-and-blood, God-fearing man with a mother, a wife, kids, a community of friends, neighbors, shop-keepers, and clerics.

 

Perhaps he had lost someone dear to him on this spot. Sweating like a bullfighter in the scorching desert sunlight and battling to ignore the endless diesel exhaust coming from the traffic, the man labored to heal the latest wound in his country’s civil war.

 

The bespectacled Somali cabbie who piloted the minivan I rode in was conflicted about how he felt about the battle and its aftermath.

 

“I fled war in my country and came to the safety of Khartoum,” he told me with a smile. “Now the war has followed me here!”

 

He laughed and pressed play on his cassette deck. Bob Marley’s anthem, “Survival”, hopped out of the speakers. No shit; he must have had it cued up before I got in the minivan. The lyrics were perfect: We’re the survivors; Yes, the black survivors! I tell you what, some people got everything; some people got nothing…

 

As we passed the beaten shop-owner, I saw that the street now had its own platoon of government soldiers camped out across from the Matthews. Baking in camouflage fatigues, they were lazy in the afternoon heat. They camped out in the shade beneath blankets hung from acacia branches with their feet up on stones. A tank waited in the drainage ditch just north of the petrol station. We passed just close enough to look down the barrel.

 

Now the Sudanese man we had seen, the sweaty, angry man sweeping up the glass, has somehow reached into the pit of my stomach. The human pain comes to me. Now that the fireworks have passed, a heavy, gargantuan, lead spike is pressing on my soul. There were bodies here.

 

Boys from the desert. Some were Darfuri teenagers who had never been to Khartoum before, journeyed for days to get here and got their heads blown off in a confusing, hot fog, fighting to take over a filling pump near the National Parliament. They never reached the Nile.

 

And this was the street where I had been staying. There was a good chance that I would have been trapped here with Sayid and his family. They had hunkered down in their nearby compound, listening to the shootings and explosions without knowing when it might come through the door. The excitement I had of seeing the fresh battlefield had passed. This was a cold day in the burning desert. The neighborhood had just seen death.

 

Creating the Story

 

Coverage of the recent Battle of Omdurman began on Friday May 9th, 2008, when the UN and diplomatic corps in Khartoum, Sudan, circulated warnings that JEM rebels were speeding across the desert toward the capital city.

 

All reports agree that after five years of war in Darfur, JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim, a controversial Islamist who had often operated separately from other rebel factions, and had the backing of Chadian President Idriss Deby, had abandoned hope for international intervention and launched his troops on a mission to topple the Sudanese regime of President Omar al-Bashir. From here, the stories vary.

 

There were several versions of the story of how Darfur rebels attacked Khartoum. The first story tells of a brave rebel movement launching a brilliant surprise attack against a cruel regime responsible for scores of murders of civilians. The strike failed to topple the dictator simply because the Islamist allies in the city failed to rise from their secret hideouts and reinforce the righteous invaders.

 

I talked with one UK-based news agency which was in the process of training Sudanese journalists when it pre-maturely published Peter Eichstadt’s commentary on the attack which – in the rush – not only got facts off the mark (for example, the attack was not a surprise by a long shot, the UN had been circulating warnings for three days and Sudan was lying in wait) but betrayed the editor’s pro-Darfur rebel bias (he calls it a “JEM” of a plan).

 

IWPR COMMENT

 

The second version of the story of the attack tells of a valiant national army anticipating an attack by marauding desert hooligans. The army moves to defend its capitol and easily neutralizes the rebels. The people rise in support of their leader and protector.

 

Sudan’s version of events comes across clearly in a report from Al Anbar TV news of Khartoum. They offer a summary of images from the attack, including the bodies of dead rebels. The Al Sudan TV report is a bit grittier with footage of rebel leaders, as well as prisoners of war, some of whom are quite young.

 

AL ANBAR TV REPORT: “Omdurman Attack May 2008”

AL SUDAN TV REPORT (link coming soon)

 

But there is a third story, one told by skeptical international observers who were there on the ground. In this tale, both rebel attackers and defenders were largely unprepared for the fight as well as the consequences.

 

Both sides mourn their dead. Nothing at all was gained by the attack nor by the government’s response afterward. Since this third story is complex, requiring consumers of news to make some of their own judgment calls, it did not get as much traction as the others.

 

“What I don’t understand until now,” N reflects, “is why did the [JEM rebel leaders] want to take the war to Khartoum and terrorize us like they did? For instance, I am from Darfur myself. Is it a crime to live in Khartoum? We are all humans. We are all Sudanese. After this experience, I can finally understand what the word terrorism means. And I think this made things worse for Darfuris. They were the victim in the eyes of some people, but after the attack a lot of people started to think of them as the attackers, especially people from Khartoum.”

 

Al Jazeera, by May 13th and 14th, was the first major foreign media company able to do an in-depth video report on the ground.  Here, with the Sudan government’s permission, Al Jazeera covers the rocket attack which killed civilians in a brick factory.

 

AL JAZEERA’S INSIDE STORY (links coming soon)

 

The Sudanese press, Al Anbar TV and others representing the Khartoum elite and the Sudan Tribune representing the global alternative, had the story throughout the event. But human rights groups like Aegis Trust immediately identified gaps where the foreign, more objective media from Reuters to Al Jazeera needed to step in, investigate and clarify.

 

The foreign press had long been focusing on the Darfur War in Darfur and the delicate political situation in the divided oil town of Abyei, so when the JEM launched its attack in the north outside of Darfur to Khartoum there were few correspondents left there to cover it.

 

As a result, the collective media churned out a few stories based on Sudanese government press releases cross-checked with just a few newly-developed sources from the site. And it was difficult after the stories were out to then question their validity.

 

One unconfirmed anecdote  from an inside source in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed that CNN’s Nic Robertson had been trying for days to get permission to travel to Darfur before knowing about the coming attack. The government granted him permission just after the warnings of the rebel attack began to circulate inside the Ministry, so Robertson apparently landed with his CNN crew in faraway El Fashir, Darfur, just as the story erupted in the heart of Khartoum. And the team simply could not fly back in time.

 

The Sudanese government led by President Omar al-Bashir paid close attention to how the foreign press was reporting, perhaps as it claims misrepresenting, the story. Foreign media has long simplified the story of the Darfur War, in order to prepare it for easy understanding by a wide audience.

 

The fight for Darfur is portrayed in the West as one of Arabs versus Black Africans, even a genocide committed by Arabs against Black Africans, despite the fact that some of the Sudanese government leadership leading the counter-insurgency are Black African, many of the Arabs of Darfur not wanting to participate in the fighting, and the heavy presence of Darfuri Black Africans living peacefully in other parts of the country.

 

The Bashir Administration was able to present such inaccuracies in the Western press to the Arab world and generate great sympathy for their plight, claiming that the Western media was inherently biased against them. When the Attack on Khartoum came, the stage was set for the Bashir Administration to write the story.

 

Foreign reports declared that the JEM’s May 10th attack was a surprise, but local journalists as well as the United Nations had been tracking the battle in North Kordofan several days earlier in which the rebels blocked Sudanese forces with one column and sent their attack column around the fight to wage a new fight for the Wadi Saidna airbase north of Omdurman before finally driving right into Omdurman proper.

 

Western as well as Arab reports repeated the Sudanese governments’ assertion that the JEM rebels had rocketed an Omdurman brick factory, killing a number of noncombatants, before there was time to investigate who had launched the rockets. If Sudanese rebels were to be charged with a war crime, one of these reports could be presented by Sudan prosecutors as evidence.

 

Perhaps even more incendiary were the foreign press editors’ replaying of Sudan’s accusations against Chad. There is a long parade of apparent evidence claiming that Chad had actively supported the JEM’s attack on Khartoum:

 

According to one source, Sudan lab-tested fuel in captured vehicles confirming it was Chadian in origin. A number of rebels captured in Khartoum during the attack were identified as Chadian. And the motives are plentiful as Chadian President Idriss Deby is ethnic Zagawa like the JEM leadership and vocalized his assumption that Sudan was behind a Chadian rebel attack on N’Djamena several months earlier.

 

But the foreign press embraced this assumption too quickly at a time when a full Sudan-Chadian War could have erupted. The Bashir Administration, anticipating the Internal Criminal Courts prosecutors’ steady march toward their offices with arrest warrants, took every opportunity they found to reject the premise of foreign press reports, but in this case it chose to conduct the foreign reports like a symphony.

 

“As for the Arab and Western medias,” says N, “they always take different sides. That’s why I watch both and add to what I see with my own eyes to get the real picture. War is an ugly thing. Nothing good can ever come out of it whether you were right or wrong. And no one should live through such a thing; not in Darfur, not in Khartoum or any other place.”

 

The fight was more than a human horror coming on the end of so many others. It was also a tragedy of missing, distorted, and confusing information and no one will ever no exactly what happened.

 

This is the story of cutting through the fog of war in Khartoum. And it can teach us lessons about what truth-seekers may face when they take on the political smokescreens and interferences of the next war.