 |  Enlarge | By Brian Steidle |  | | Mihad Hamid, a year old girl, whose mother had attempted to escape an attack from helicopter gunships and Janjaweed marauders on their village, Alliet, in October 2004. Mihad had been hit by a bullet, puncturing her lungs. High resolution photo available for public use |
|
| | | CRISIS IN SUDAN | | THE REGION: Largely arid plateau in western Sudan about three-quarters the size of Texas with a population estimated at about 8 million. HISTORY OF CONFLICT: Decades of low-level tribal clashes over land and water erupted into large-scale violence in early 2003 when some in the region took up arms, accusing the central government of neglect. RESPONSE: Government authorities are accused of responding to the uprising with aerial bombings and Arab tribal militias known as Janjaweed, who murdered and raped civilians, and destroyed villages. Khartoum officials deny backing Janjaweed. CASUALTIES: Estimates say 200,000 people have died, many from deprivation; 2.5 million have been displaced. SCOPE OF TRAGEDY: United Nations says Darfur fighting has caused one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters. Chaos has now spread to neighboring Chad, where hundreds of thousands of Darfur refugees are sheltering. |
| |
|
swapContent('firstHeader','applyHeader'); By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY As an admiral's son and a former Marine officer, Brian Steidle believed that following orders and doing the right thing were one and the same. Then he went to Darfur. As an official international monitor of the vicious conflict in western Sudan, he faced a choice: respect authority and honor a code of silence or show the world what he'd seen and kiss his career goodbye. He puckered up ... and blew the whistle. AUDIO GALLERY: Recording crisis in Darfur "I was a witness to genocide," he says. "I wanted to make a difference." Since returning last year from Darfur, where he was a U.S. representative on an African Union observation team, Steidle has become the most vivid chronicler of one of the world's worst humanitarian catastrophes. His photographs — which were supposed to be for his superiors' eyes only — have helped make Americans care about a complex crisis in a faraway place of little economic or strategic value. Jerry Fowler of the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington says Steidle "has given people images of Darfur they can hold onto": a soldier standing next to the store he's just torched; a military helicopter firing on a village; a baby with a bullet in her back. Since 2003, when war broke out between the Sudanese government and Darfuri rebels, about 200,000 civilians have died. Another 2.5 million, a third of Darfur's population, have been driven from home. American food has helped stave off famine and U.S. diplomacy has fostered a partial cease-fire, but it has not been enough. The Sudanese government refuses to admit 20,000 United Nations troops to relieve a poorly equipped 7,000-member African Union force. Since May, when the government and one of several rebel factions signed a peace agreement, Darfur has become even more violent and lawless. Steidle is a compact, intense 29-year-old. He lives on a sailboat in southern Maine, where he's writing a memoir. He's the son of retired rear admiral Craig Steidle, a Naval Academy graduate who flew fighters off carriers in Vietnam, tested experimental planes and trained test pilots, and directed the Defense Department's biggest aircraft program. Then he became associate administrator of NASA in charge of space exploration planning. "He was the best at everything," his son says, "and we had to try to live up to that." That's what he was trying to do in Darfur. "Brian told a story others could not," says David Del Conte, an American humanitarian worker who met Steidle in south Darfur. "He moved Darfur onto the front page. He saved thousands of lives." Shocking photographs Steidle says he went to Darfur for several reasons. Mostly, he went because of what he saw one day in 2004 on a computer screen. He was in the Nuba Mountains in south-central Sudan, working for the international commission supervising a cease-fire in another civil war, between the government and another rebel group. He was bored. Promotions had put him behind a desk. That's why he'd left the Marines in 2003 after more than four years, having served in Kosovo, made captain and risen to company commander. That day, a colleague was back from a trip to Darfur. Steidle had heard reports of atrocities against African farmers, who supported Darfur's rebels, by nomadic Arab militias armed and supported by the government. The raiders were called Janjaweed — "devil on horseback." How was Darfur? Steidle asked his colleague. The man flipped around the laptop on his desk, clicked up a slide show and invited Steidle to take a look. Steidle had never seen anything like it — schoolgirls, bound together with makeshift handcuffs and burned alive. He was shocked, then outraged, then intrigued. He wanted to see for himself. Today, when asked why he volunteered for a situation from which most would flee, he sticks his chin out: "I heard there was shooting, and I run toward bullets." Or he'll cite "selfish reasons" — money ($3,500 a week tax-free, paid by a private company under contract with the State Department) and adventure. That month he wrote an e-mail to his sister Gretchen, which she shared with USA TODAY. It suggested another motive: "I have to write to you to get this out of my mind. I have seen these photos from a confidential report. I am not permitted to send them, nor do I wish on you the same dreams that I have as a result. ... Why are we sitting here letting this happen? This is not the doing of humans, this is the work of the devil. We as humans, all races, religions, colors, creeds, etc., have to stand up for what is right." He applied for a job monitoring Darfur's shaky cease-fire under the auspices of the African Union, the association of African nations whose mission in Darfur receives financial support from the United States and other nations. He'd have no power or authority to stop the violence, not even a sidearm. But Steidle did not go unarmed. Photography had been his hobby; now he bought the best digital camera he could afford: a professional-grade Canon EOS 1D Mark II. In Darfur, it would prove more powerful, and more dangerous, than a gun. Steidle believed the world needed information to prick its conscience. If the classified photos he'd seen had been released to the public, he wrote Gretchen, "there would be troops in here in a matter of days." Photography was a touchy subject. Although then-Secretary of State Colin Powell had just described what was happening in Darfur as genocide, there had been virtually no pictures of Janjaweed attacks on civilians; Steidle says he was warned the Sudanese government wanted to keep it that way. A few photos of atrocities had been leaked outside official channels, so African Union commanders — not wanting to offend the host government — were suspicious of the new man with the camera that could zoom in on a face on the ground from 500 feet in the air. It took Steidle several weeks to win their trust before he was allowed to use his camera. That was Oct. 20, 2004, when his team visited a village that the Janjaweed had torched. They found some women and children huddled under a tree. A woman handed Steidle a 1-year-old girl. This was Mihad Hamid. Her mother had been shot to death while fleeing with Mihad in her arms. Mihad was shot in the back. She was having trouble breathing. She probably didn't live the night, he says. There were many days like that. On the worst, he counted smoke from attacks on 37 villages. On another, he stood next to a Sudanese army commander, who watched as soldiers looted a village. Steidle says that when he asked Brig. Gen. Ahmed El Hajer Mohammed why he didn't stop them, the general said they weren't his men — anyone could put on a uniform. He heard Janjaweed riders explain that they destroyed villages over stolen cattle. He saw neither regret nor remorse: "It was like looking into the devil's eyes." A failure to protect "My reports," Steidle used to say, "are my ammunition." He soon realized he was firing blanks. His photos and descriptions vanished into the AU's bureaucracy; others reached the AU's sponsors, including the U.S. government, months late. In secret, he began to send reports directly to the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum. After a mission, he'd head straight to his tent to download all his images on his laptop. Only then would he go to the operations tent, download into the AU computer and delete the images from his own camera as required. He became increasingly frustrated with the AU's impotence. By charting Janjaweed attacks, movements and motives, "We got to where we knew where the next attack would be," he says. "But I couldn't stop the attacks I was predicting." Some attacks were deterred by the AU observers' presence. The top commanders, however, refused to systematically place teams in the way of attacks. Steidle says he knew why. The AU was in Darfur with the government's permission, and anything that antagonized Khartoum — especially taking sides against its Janjaweed proxies — threatened the AU's ability to function. "The attitude was, 'We gotta tread lightly,' " Steidle says. (The AU did not respond to a request for comment. In the past, the AU has emphasized the legal, logistical and financial constraints on its operations in Darfur.) In January, he predicted — based on Janjaweed movements — that the town of Hamada would be attacked within two weeks. When it was hit 10 days later, Steidle says he refused to go with the observation team: "I knew what they were going to see. I said, 'I've seen enough.' " The team found babies with their faces bashed in. When members came back to the post, "they were like zombies," Steidle recalls. "A guy who'd usually brief me just held up his hand and said, 'I must go pray.' " The people he'd hoped to help were furious. "They'd say, 'Leave if you can't protect us.' I thought, 'What are you doin' here? Just here makin' money?' " He returned to the USA in February 2005 with hundreds of images, including those of a man castrated and left to bleed to death, people with their ears cut off and eyes plucked out and an aerial view of government troops joining ranks with the Janjaweed. A difficult decision Steidle planned to make public his photos, not his identity or affiliation. "It was never his intention to speak out," Gretchen says, "even when he quit." He'd break the trust of AU commanders and make them less likely to share intelligence with the humanitarian agencies for whom AU patrols were eyes and ears. He'd ruffle the U.S. State Department, which had not authorized him to go public. He'd throw away a lucrative career doing freelance military and security work overseas. "Did I promise not to release anything? No. Do I own the copyright to my photos? Yes. I took them with my own camera," he says. "But I was apprehensive. I was paid to do what I was told, keep my mouth shut, and go home." Gretchen put him in touch with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Steidle gave him some photos but said not to use his name. After the Times printed the photos Feb. 23, Steidle says, Kristof called. "He said, 'Everybody's asking me where I got these photos. Can I use your name?' " His father says Brian struggled with the decision. "He felt he gave his word." But Steidle thought about what his sister — the family's social conscience — had asked: "Who has the right to keep genocide a secret?" He thought about the impact of personal testimony. People could look at a photo, but unless there was a witness to tell them that this girl's name was Mihad Hamid and that her mother was shot in the back, it was just a picture. "I thought about if for a few days," Steidle says, "and I told Nick, 'Go ahead.' " Back in Darfur, some of his comrades felt Steidle had broken trust. In May 2005, USA TODAY spoke with Dale Fage, a former U.S. Army officer who served with Steidle on the AU force, at the airport in south Darfur. When Steidle's name came up, Fage's face hardened. "Brian was only here five months," Fage said. "He didn't take all those photos himself." (Photos of the attack on Hamada had been taken by another photographer.) "What he did created problems for people here." Having vented his frustration, Fage relented. "He's a good kid," he said. "He just wanted to do the right thing." For the past 18 months, Steidle has shown his photos, told his story and asked people to lobby the Bush administration and the U.N. to stop the carnage in Darfur. He has taken his message to Congress and the British House of Commons, to an audience of 35 on a college campus in San Antonio and to 100 people at church in Fort Wayne, Ind. Wherever he goes, a newspaper story or broadcast interview usually follows. (Khalid Musa, spokesman for the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, did not respond to a request for comment on Steidle.) Sometimes he seems haunted by his photos, like the ones on display last week for a Darfur benefit at a gallery in New York City: "The whole thing comes back to me, not just that image, but the whole scene — the smell, the sound, everything. When I look at ... that burned guy that I (photographed) who was burned alive in his hut, I smell him every time I look at that photo." As the situation there has grown more desperate, so has he. "I've been banging my head against the wall," he told The Philadelphia Inquirer in February during a stop on a national speaking tour. "It's like screaming in a dream, and no sound comes out." He says he has no regrets about going public. Neither does his father. "I knew he'd make the right decision," Craig Steidle says. "I'm proud of him." | 
