BIRAK, Chad — With his white turban and gray jellabiya robe, Zakaria Ad-Dush would have looked like any civilian wandering through the Chadian market town of Birak, a few kilometers from the border with Sudan, were it not for one thing: the Thuraya satellite phone, telltale sign of a rebel commander, sticking out of his pocket. Under his robe, he was hiding a revolver, wrapped in cloth, which he showed me later as we sat in his tent. The mat we were sitting on was uncomfortably bumpy; when I looked underneath, I found rounds of ammunition.
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Ad-Dush is a man with a story to tell. Now a Darfuri rebel leader, he was once a warlord fighting for the janjaweed, as the mostly Arab militias supported by the Sudanese government in Darfur have been nicknamed. Back in 2004, during his janjaweed days, the troops he commanded razed villages, killing everyone who lived there on at least one occasion. He doesn't hide his past, and he says that he would testify about his crimes -- if he were given amnesty.
During my travels in Darfur and Chad, I have heard countless calls for a pragmatic swap of truth and reconciliation for amnesty -- a trade that would bring more stories like Ad-Dush's out into the open and could help communities in conflict learn to live together once again. Instead, however, the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has presented the conflict in purely racial terms as a genocide of "black Africans" by an "Arab" government and its militias -- hardening attitudes on both sides. Even more alarming to ex-combatants is the warrant out for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
Most government officials and janjaweed members won't tell the truth about their crimes as long as they believe they could be implicated in court -- and worse, a court that they consider a Western tool against Sudan. Yet until these men speak up about the past, normal life in Darfur cannot resume. Communities here are in desperate need of reconciliation, and the combatants need a clear path to rejoin society. Most men like Ad-Dush won't start talking -- and won't disarm -- as long as they believe that punishment matters more than peace.
The issue couldn't be more pressing. As Southern Sudan prepares to become an independent country, the international spotlight is off Darfur -- a window of distraction that many fear Khartoum will exploit. The Darfur peace process has been in a rut for years, tempting the Sudanese government to finish off the Darfur rebels militarily. As international pressure fades, community-level peace might be Darfur's best hope of avoiding another regression into violence.
I met Ad-Dush for the first time in April 2010 in the dusty borderland between Sudan and Chad, a familiar spot for so many refugees and rebels over the last decade. Here, nobody can say who is Chadian and who is Sudanese. Most people have relatives on both sides of the border and hold the passports of both countries. Until early 2010, Darfur rebels like Ad-Dush, who is a commander for the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), could drive freely in Chadian territory on their gun-loaded pickup trucks. When N'Djamena and Khartoum began a rapprochement in 2009, however, a five-year battle fought through proxy rebel groups mostly came to an end. These days, Darfur rebels have to ask the Chadian Army for permission to come to Birak, dressed as civilians.
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