Babies conceived of rapes by janjaweed face daunting futures -KR

[Rose Siding]

ABU SHOUK, Sudan - There were no smiles, no blessings at the birth of the light-skinned girl with the ebony eyes and curly black hair. Not a glimpse of joy. For a family still bleeding from war, the baby was like salt on their wounds.

"My father didn't speak for the entire day," recalled her mother, Suad Abdalaziz, 28, her voice cracking and her face streaming with tears. "He was not angry at me. He was angry at the janjaweed and the government for giving me this baby."

In the troubled province of Darfur, pro-government Arab militias called the janjaweed have raped countless black African women in a campaign that the Bush administration has called genocide.

Now, their babies are emerging across this tableau of human suffering. They are outcasts in a war-scarred society where rape is a source of shame and a father's identity defines the child.
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Suad's ordeal began in February, when the janjaweed raided Tawilla, burning huts, pillaging livestock, and raping hundreds of black African women, most of them members of the Zaghawa tribe. Three militiamen on horseback chased her down as she ran through the scabby terrain and dragged her into a hut. They ripped off her top and tore it apart, stuffing one piece in her mouth and wrapping the other over her eyes.

Then, the lighter-skinned Arabs spat out the words that haunt her today: "We want to change the color of your children."
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"I don't dislike my baby," said Salima, round-faced with a smile that appears tattooed to her face. "I want him back"

But aid workers and tribal elders paint a different picture. They say Salima is mad. She watched the janjaweed kill her husband. Then they gang-raped her. Now, Ismail torments her. She has hit him and tried to drown him. So Bakhur ordered that Ismail be taken from her.

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