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Title: The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur
ISBN: 1586485695
Author:
Brian Steidle
Gretchen Steidle Wallace
Publicate Date: 2008-03-03
Publish: 2008-03-03
List Price: $14.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $6.17
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $3.71
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| Customer Review: |
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1: shocking and infuriating
This is only the second book to make me furious and wanting to go out and take action. To allow the kind of atrocities he witnessed to continue to go on goes against the phrase "never again" which was said after the holocaust. He witnessed things a person should never have to see, and he bore witness well. I just hope that someday SOON we will do something or else it will be like rwanda, in which we ignored a cry for help. He wrote his story well, and I wish him peace for what we saw.
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2: The Devil Came on Horseback - The resource war of Darfur
It has been over 3 years since Brian Steidle was introduced to Darfur, but sadly, nothing has changed. As atrocities continue in Sudan, the world leaders continue to contemplate whether it is genocide, China continues to provide massive shipments of AK 47s to the Sudanese government and Sudanese president symbolically got his hand slapped once again when his quest to lead AU was snubbed in January.
Darfur is not only about Arab Muslims wanting to exterminate Black Muslims. It is mostly about resources. Death, famine and disease cause by endless wars of land, water, oil and racial conflicts have taken their tolls and it can only get worse as the area continues to go through desertification. Nevertheless, this book is a must read because it gives you the first-hand accounts of the atrocities. It doesn't offer any solutions but it creates awareness. After reading the book, you will be faced with thousands of haunting images and one daunting question: Can Darfur be saved?
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3: Is the devil a mythical creature or us?
In September 2004 Colin Powell officially labeled the atrocious killings in Darfur as genocide. The author, a former United States Marine, was one of only three Americans hired by the African Union to document those killings. He had neither a mandate to protect civilians nor the directive to fight back if aggressed. His job was only to observe and take pictures. He remained in Darfur for over 6 months, longer than any other observer, and was regarded by many Sudanese as family. When he finally left back to the States, many were saddened by his departure.
The title of the book refers to the "Janjaweed", a tribe supported by the Sudanese government, who attacked not just rebels, but black African civilians. The civilians referred to them as the devil on horseback. According to the author, the Janjaweed, together with government troops, murdered the black African civilians because their skin color was blacker, or darker, than the Arab blacks. The government wanted to get rid of all the `black' non-Arab Africans living in Sudan. When I read this, I had to pause and ask two Sudanese friends of mine if this was true. "Could the Sudanese government be killing its own citizens based on skin color?" I asked. The answer I got was one I did not expect.
The following might just be a conspiracy theory, who knows. According to my two Sudanese friends, the situation in Sudan is political, not racial. Darfur is rich in oil and other minerals. China is in Sudan drilling for oil and mining for other natural resources. The US is not too happy about this situation, and wants China out of Sudan (and out of Africa). So my friends think that the US is behind these killings. Remember the saying, "divide and rule"? The US is not doing the killings itself, but supporting various groups and turning tribes against each other to instill chaos.
I do not believe this could be possible. Still, I lost a lot of sleep over what my two Sudanese friends had told me. After all, the CIA is notoriously known for supporting rebels when it suits its purposes. For example, it supported the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation; its support for rebels in Cuba and Nicaragua; its role in the overthrow of governments both in Africa and in the Far East during World War II and the cold war. In the book, `Charlie Wilson's War', for example, the author describes how the US was helping the Mujahedeen secretly, and how they had to give them Soviet made weaponry as well as unconventional weaponry tinkered by the CIA in order that no trace points back to the US. In other words, the US would always be in a position to deny any support for the Mujahedeen, and no proof could ever be found indicating the contrary.
The author describes in detail the horror he saw in Darfur: the mutilated bodies; children crushed to death; eyes plucked out; limbs chopped off; decaying bodies in the sun...the real work of the devil. How could anyone do such atrocities? Worse, how could anyone allow such atrocities to happen?
The author published this book to make us aware of what is really happening in Darfur. He wants the world to act to stop this genocide. However, he does not say in his book why the world is not acting. After all, we acted against Iraq during its invasion of Kuwait. We later removed an unjust leader, Saddam Hussein, though for the wrong reasons. Why don't we do the same in Sudan? What is stopping the US and the world in acting against Sudan? The author does not give us the answer.
The author complains at how surprised he was that so few in America know about the genocide happening in Darfur. One bartender, when told the story by the author, said, "What's in it for us if we help them?" This feeling seems to be echoed by many, and this was the main reason the author decided to publish this book.
The author says that many foreign observers in Sudan were angry at the publication of this book, and accused him of just wanting to financially profit from the book as the sole reason for its publication. They also complained that since its publication, their job in Sudan has become tougher and more dangerous for they are no longer trusted by the Sudanese government.
There are a few black and white pictures in the book. Two pictures were of a decaying body; another of a skeleton. Some pictures portrayed the destruction in the villages; others were of people posing for the camera. I think it was probably inappropriate to include more pictures of mutilated bodies; but to make the author's case stronger, I think more pictures should have been included. He does say he took over 1,000 photographs. Many books nowadays come with a CD or DVD attached to the back cover (or inside the book). I think it would have been a good idea to include a CD with more pictures of the atrocities. A warning could be placed on the CD for the faint of heart. Pictures speak louder than words!
I was a little disappointed that the publisher decided not to include an index. However, I am really happy to have read this book. I am motivated to do more research on the situation in Darfur in order to learn what is really going on there. I am not interested in the politics of the situation, but rather at the psychological and moral side of the situation. What drives people to become devils? When do we cease to differentiate between good and bad? Do we all have evil in us? Is it worth all those killings when life will end up killing us eventually, whether we like it or not?
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4: Darfur
If you agree that these atrocities should not happen on our watch, but do not know the facts about what goes on when the news is focusing on celebrities, please read this book. A concerned global citizen took the time to report on the events that transpire in Darfur every day. There is also a documentary of the same name. Read and decide how to act. Let's hope that this book will be defunct soon because Darfur is no longer in turmoil.
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5: GENOCIDE IN PROGRESS...
This is an eyewitness account of the genocide in Darfur. In 2004, former marine, Brian Steidle, signed on with the Joint Military Commission (JMC) for a position as a Patrol Leader in the Sudan. The JMC was created to oversee conflict in central Sudan and monitor a ceasefire. His job was to consist of investigating ceasefire violations. Steidle accepted the position with the JMC totally ignorant of the area in which he would be working and its political issues and conflicts. By the time he arrived in the Sudan, a full blown genocide was in progress.
Steidle's role was that of reporting what he saw, and what he saw was a Sudanese government that stood idly by as innocent black African civilians, rather than rebel forces, were routinely killed and tortured by Arab civilians known as "Janjaweed" (the devil on horseback) with the seeming blessing of the Sudanese government based in Khartoum and the aid of its government troops. Frustrated by his watchdog role, Steidle carefully documented all that he saw in order to bear witness to this large scale genocide that was taking place and alert the world to it, as he was stationed where journalists were nowhere to be found.
His is a compelling birds-eye view of a regional conflict that degenerated into a full scale genocide of its native people. The shortcoming of the book is the author's ignorance of the area and its historical and political conflicts. Thus, nothing in the book is grounded into any particular context, causing it to be a somewhat one dimensional account. While the author's outrage is palpable, so is his ignorance. Still, it is a harrowing account of the suffering of the Sudan's black citizens and an indictment of the Sudanese government and the international community.
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