'We were being ordered to kill our own people' guardian.co.uk

Colonel Samir Jaja's orders to the assembled soldiers before their dawn attack on the village were absolutely clear: "Don't leave anybody alive. If we leave these people in this place, they will support the rebels against the government. The area must be emptied so the rebels can't find any help and have to leave the country."

B Kajabier, 34, a Sudanese army deserter, describes the scene just before Sudanese army troops stormed a village in southern Darfur, Sudan, in April 2003. Colonel Jaja addressed his 400 troops, most of them Arab, but some African, after they descended from their vehicles. There were more precise commands.

"Rape the women, kill the children. Leave nothing," Jaja said.

Six years later Kajabier, who has now fled Sudan, has decided to speak out against the Sudanese government.

"My people are suffering, and I want the world to respond," he said, speaking through an interpreter.

After the April attacks, Kajabier refused to take part in any more raids. He said he was tortured for his insubordination and during the interview pulls up his trouser legs to show the scars from where molten rubber seared flesh.

"When they burned the tyre, they hung it from the tree and it was dripping," he said. A few days later, Kajabier and two other soldiers deserted while the troops were marching through narrow mountain roads.

"We wanted to desert because we were being ordered to kill our own people," the former Sudanese soldier said.

He eventually joined the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) before fleeing the country.

In the interview, Kajabier made it clear that Sudanese armed forces committed the atrocities, as well as the Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, or devils on horseback.

Kajabier, an African from Darfur who was conscripted into the Sudanese army, said he took part in attacks on several villages in April 2003.

He could not be specific about the number of people who were killed and raped, but said the biggest village consisted of 500 homes.

"It is difficult to give a precise number but there were many dead," he recounted, in a matter-of-fact way.

Kajabier does not use the phrase scorched earth, but that was the clear intent: the villagers were killed, as were the livestock, and the wells were poisoned. The villages, including Korma, Ber Tawila and Sani Koro, are still abandoned, Kajabier said.

"We would surround the villages and the Janjaweed would follow behind on camels and horseback and chase those who managed to slip through the army cordon," Kajabier said. "We started burning the huts one by one and started shooting. Very few people got away."

An estimated 200,000 people have died and 2.7 million have been displaced since fighting erupted between government troops and rebel forces in Darfur in 2003.

Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, is the first sitting head of state to face accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Darfur.

Bashir has always insisted that the international community has exaggerated the scale of the crisis and has described the conflict in the region as a "traditional conflict over resources … coated with claims of marginalisation".

The Sudanese government admits mobilising "self-defence militias" after rebel attacks in 2003 but denies any links to the Janjaweed, which has been accused of trying to "cleanse" black Africans from large swaths of territory. But according to Kajabier, the Sudanese government did not just arm the Janjaweed; it sent army troops to take part in the attacks.

According to human rights groups, Sudanese government forces and government-backed militias have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes on a massive scale in Darfur. Human Rights Watch says Sudanese troops and militias attacked civilian populations from land and air and carried out widespread summary execution, rape, torture and pillaging of property.

Kajabier, who still has nightmares and has to take pills to go to sleep, says the worst images are those of children being raped.

"That will always stay with me," said Kajabier, who also described how his fellow soldiers were forced to commit rape. After what he has witnessed, he fully supports moves by the international criminal court to arrest Bashir.

"If they arrest him today, it will be good," he said, "The people of Sudan have suffered so much."

* B Kajabier is an assumed name