Muhammad Ali Adam comes from one of the most feared tribes in south Darfur, the Arab Falata. As a Janjawid fighter he helped his militia to rape, loot and murder its way through village after village. Yet he is among a growing number of Arab gunmen switching sides as they grow disillusioned with the Khartoum Government.“If I remember the actions which we did, I feel very sorry and sometimes I cry,” he said, sipping sweet, black tea with half a dozen of his new comrades from the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), deep inside Jebel Mara, the mountainous stronghold of the anti-Khartoum rebels.
Once they would have tried to kill each other. Commander Adam, with his dark tan and Khartoum-issued, Chinese-made Kalashnikov, cuts an unlikely figure as a rebel commander. Yet he now ventures regularly into the hillside town of Gorolang Baje – home to the Fur people that gave Darfur its name – to take orders from his new superiors, who used to be his foes.