ZALINGEI, SUDAN — He was shopping for cooking oil when Arab gunmen attacked his village. Adam Abdalla Omar, 70, tried to rescue his cow, but the invaders shot off his left arm. Now he lives in a displacement camp, so desperate and bored he worries he's losing his mind.
It's a sadly familiar story in Darfur, except that Omar too is an Arab.
Arabs in the western Sudanese region of Darfur are usually depicted as the aggressors in a conflict with black African ethnic groups, but many Arabs now find themselves caught up in the violence, forced into camps by intertribal fighting and cut off from traditional migration routes they've relied upon for centuries to survive.
In the latest twist, Arab militias armed by the Sudanese government as part of its counterinsurgency strategy are turning their guns against each other.
In the last three months, such inter-Arab clashes have killed nearly 200 people in southern Darfur, officials estimate. Thousands of Arabs have been forced into makeshift displacement camps around towns such as Kas, Nyala and Zalingei.
The deadliest fighting has been between a powerful group of Arab pastoralists, known as Reizegat, and a smaller Arab tribe of seminomadic farmers, called Targem. Officials say the two tribes once were allies and have participated in the systematic attacks against non-Arab farming villages that have left more than 200,000 people dead in Darfur since 2003, mostly of disease or hunger in the early years, and an additional 2 million displaced.
About 32 Targem villages were torched last month by Reizegat attackers, African Union officials said. Four Targem children were executed in their sleep, the officials reported.
"This is absolutely new," said Mariam Sadiq Mahdi, daughter of former Sudanese Prime Minister Sadiq Mahdi, who is the leader of the opposition Umma Party.
Experts say Arab tribes used by the government as mercenaries are starting to panic about how they'll figure in Darfur's political future, particularly in light of a fragile peace agreement signed in May between some non-Arab rebel groups in Darfur and the Sudanese government.
"Arabs were not part of the negotiation," said Mohmed Izzat, who represents Arab nomad populations in the state government of North Darfur. "They got nothing." Such views have led to fighting over the land and resources that the government promised Arab militiamen, experts say.
