Raymond W. Smith

Janjaweed Raymond W. Smith

The Janjaweed, Arabic for devil on horseback, are the Sudan-supported gunmen who have murdered, raped and tortured African villagers in Darfur for the past decade. By the start of 2011, the stalemate of the previous two years began to unravel and Janjaweed began raiding and burning villages randomly. Southern Sudan had voted to secede and Khartoum was determined not to lose Darfur. There appeared to be no hope for the beleaguered African villagers. Then, in an arbitrary raid, the Sudanese air force missed its target and dropped a screen of bombs, meant for a camp in western Darfur, into the desert on the Chadian border. The crater created by the raid changed everything.