The Murahalin Militias*
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Some of the most devastating raids and acts of banditry against the civilian population were perpetrated by the militias known as Murahalin, formed among the Rizeiqat, Rufaa al Huj, Misiriyah, and other groups, all members of the cattleraising Baqqara Arab nomad tribes in Darfur and Kurdufan. These Arab communities traditionally competed for pasture land with the Dinka of northern Bahr al Ghazal and southern Kurdufan. Raiding by the Murahalin between 1985 and 1988 precipitated a vast displacement of Dinka civilians from Bahr al Ghazal. Although already armed, the Murahalin were given arms and ammunition and some covert training by the SPAF. Some joint counterinsurgency operations also took place in conjunction with government forces. According to Amnesty International, the raids carried out by the Murahalin were accompanied by the deliberate killing of tens of thousands of civilians; the abduction of women and children, who were forced into slavery; the looting of cattle and other livestock; and the burning of houses and grain supplies. By late 1988, the growing presence of the SPLA reduced the threat of the murahalin against villages and cattle camps. Moreover, the devastation was so severe that little was left to plunder. Dinka refugees moving north to escape famine were still exposed to attacks, however.*
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The Rizeiqat Murahalin were responsible for one of the worst atrocities of the war when, in retaliation for losses suffered in an engagement with the SPLA, more than 1,000 unarmed Dinka were massacred at the rail junction of Ad Duayn, most of them burned to death. The tactics of the Misiriyah murahalin were similar to those of the Rizeiqat; their ambushes of refugees and attacks on villagers in northeastern Bahr al Ghazal were among the most murderous and destructive of any perpetrated by the Murahalin groups. The government armed the Rufaa al Huj as a militia in 1986, after the SPLA appeared in southern Al Awsat Province to recruit followers among the non-Arab peoples of the area. In the early months of 1987, combined operations by the SPAF and the Rufaa al Huj militia against non-Arab populations in retaliation for the SPLA offensive resulted in many atrocities.*