When war came to Darfur
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 22 July 2021
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the early 2000s, rebels in Sudan's Darfur region took up arms against the government. In response, the Khartoum regime launched a scorched earth campaign along ethnic lines. The Sudanese military allied to a local militia, the Janjaweed, laid waste to villages across the region, killing and raping as they went. Some 300,000 people are believed to have been killed in the conflict, more than 2 million displaced from their homes. We hear the story of Debay Manees, a young boy at the time, who's life was changed by the war.
Photo: A young Darfurian refugee walks past a Sudan Liberation Army Land Rover filled with teenage rebel fighters on October 14 2004 in the violent North Darfur region of Sudan. (Photo by Benjamin Lowy/Getty Images)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. |
| 0:30.9 | Hello and |
| 0:35.0 | welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Alex Last |
| 0:39.0 | with more first-hand accounts of events that shaped our world. |
| 0:43.4 | And today we go back to the early 2000s to remember the start of the conflict in Darfur in Sudan, |
| 0:50.1 | a war which has seen hundreds of thousands killed and more than 2 million people forced to flee their homes. |
| 0:57.0 | It was bombing by internal internal aircraft bombing everywhere. |
| 1:04.0 | Then they come. |
| 1:06.0 | They just attack in the morning, barling the village, killing everything. |
| 1:11.0 | The village were attacking by Sudanese army and danger with militias with the |
| 1:16.5 | pay-care-for-7 to hunt people like animals to loot and kill and then rape they do all. |
| 1:24.8 | Dubai Menes was just a 13 year old boy |
| 1:27.5 | when war came to his village in the vast semi-arid region |
| 1:31.0 | of Darfur in Western Sudan. The war destroyed. the war those who lost all those who lost all what they have and those who survive it |
| 1:46.5 | they still are still suffering. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.