MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Brian Steidle, a former Marine, served as an unarmed military observer and a United States representative to the African Union where he took photographs documenting the atrocities of the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. He recently published a book about his experiences in Darfur called A Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to a Genocide in Darfur and featured in a documentary of the same title. Brian speaks to Jerry Fowler about his experience in Darfur and his mission to bring awareness through multimedia.
TRANSCRIPT:
JERRY FOWLER: My guest today is Brian Steidle. He is the former Marine who spent time in Darfur as a member of the African Union Monitoring Team. He is recently published a book about his experiences, The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur. And he is also the subject of a new documentary film with the same title. Brian, welcome back to the program.
BRIAN STEIDLE: Thank you.
JERRY FOWLER: A lot of people may have heard your story but let us start with the basics. Why is it that a former U.S. Marine was part of an African Union mission in Darfur?
BRIAN STEIDLE: Well I had gotten out of the Marine Corps at the end of 2003, and I was looking for a job overseas, a good paying job with a little bit of adventure, and found a job on the Internet that said Patrol Leader Sudan. And so I applied for it and headed off to the Nuba Mountains first where I served for seven months with a mission called The Joint Military Commission, monitoring the north/south ceasefire. I worked my up to be the Senior Operations Officer for the mission and found myself behind a desk again. And so I heard the African Union was standing up a mission in Darfur, and so I applied for that mission and headed off to Darfur to work with the African Union.
JERRY FOWLER: But why would an American be on an African Union team? I guess most people would think that if it’s an African Union mission it would be all people from Africa.
BRIAN STEIDLE: Well the African Union Mission is mainly funded by outside sources, the EU, the United States, Australia, and Canada. And so part of that mission is that part of them that are giving the money is saying, okay, well, we will give you the money but we need to have an EU or a U.S. representative on each one of the teams. And so I was just one of the members of the teams; in addition to that the U.S. and the EU advised them on logistics and communications and intelligence, things like this.
JERRY FOWLER: Now you mention logistics, supply. And one thing that struck me is in the book you mention that you arrived in Darfur with this monitoring team and you found that they did not have any maps. And I was just wondering how do you work your way around an area like that and conduct kind of quasi-military operations without maps?
BRIAN STEIDLE: Well part of our, the makeup of our team, we had members from the rebel groups as well as members from the Government of Sudan, and they knew the area well. If they did not know where we going we would just normally ask one of the individuals that we met that we ran into on the road or in a village, say, “Hey, where is this village next?” and they would say, “Hey, it is right down that road.” And so it was fairly easy to get around, we would just continuously ask directions and get there.
JERRY FOWLER: And I guess I have heard you say at one point that in the desert all roads lead to the same place; so they lead somewhere, they do not just go off into nowhere.
BRIAN STEIDLE: No absolutely not, all the roads would lead from one village to the next village and then to the next village; they would not go off into the middle of nowhere. So if you knew which direction you were heading in, then you were normally able to make it to that location.
JERRY FOWLER: Now you mention that on these monitoring teams you had representatives from the government and representatives from the rebels, and then there were representatives from African nations, and then yourself as a representative of the United States. First, how did the rebels and the government get along?
BRIAN STEIDLE: Well when you are in the field doing the questions and interviewing the individuals, we all were considered to be neutral and we would try to stay neutral. Of course the rebels’ questions and the government’s questions would always be leading in one direction or the other, but we had very few incidences in the field of disagreements because we were trying to act as military professionals. But when we got back and we would debate these reports, there sometimes we got into heated discussions over what we needed to write in the report.
JERRY FOWLER: And you say you were debating the reports because the representatives of the parties of the rebels and the government had input to the reports and in fact you had to get some level of agreement, so that if you had seen an attack that was by the government, or by the rebels for that matter, the representative had to agree what the facts were.
BRIAN STEIDLE: Absolutely. And that is sometimes where there was disagreements, that we would see shrapnel and impacts from rockets that were fired from gun ships, but the rebels- I mean the rebels would say, “Hey, helicopter gunsters were used” and the government would say, “Well you did not see them so you do not know. “ These could have been put here by somebody else.” And so some of the times we would water down the information in order to allow individuals to- all of the individuals to sign the reports. And if the government still did not agree with it, or if the rebels still did not agree with it, they were allowed to write an addendum to that report which was sent up with the report on why they did not agree with it.
JERRY FOWLER: And this might be a good time just to ask, in reading through the book there are a few accounts of attacks by the rebels, but it seemed that most of the stories that you tell are attacks by the government and often attacks against civilians.
BRIAN STEIDLE: Yeah, I would say probably around 98%-- 95, 98%-- of the investigations we did were violations of the government. They were- sometimes they were investigations against the rebels, of course-- the rebels are not angels-- but a lot of the complaints we received from the government that the rebels attacked them were unsubstantiated and after we did our investigation we found that there was no evidence of an attack, and so the majority of them were definitely violations by the government.
JERRY FOWLER: There was one story in the book that was of a type that I had never heard before from Darfur, and that was where you went to a village and the villagers had been attacked by the government and they were describing clouds of gas, and you thought that there might have been some form of chemical weapon used. Can you tell us about that?
BRIAN STEIDLE: Yeah, there was one attack in the village of Katil south of Nyala, where there were a number of RPG rounds, rocket propelled grenades, that were fired into the village, and some of these produced, by both the rebels’ account and the individual’s accounts, the civilians of the village, accounted that there was gas that was produced by them, which made them choke and cough, and we suspected that they were somehow packed with CS, with teargas, that were used on these villages-- which is classified under the Geneva Convention as a chemical weapon.
JERRY FOWLER: But that did not up end actually being in the report that was sent up to the AU, did it?
BRIAN STEIDLE: No, it did not. That was- that was something that was taken out. The AU Team members did not feel that it was important to include in the report, and I of course thought that it was very important to show that there was use of these types of weapons on the civilian population.
JERRY FOWLER: And actually later on then in your stay there you ended up getting tear gassed yourself did not you?
BRIAN STEIDLE: Yes we did. We were investigating an evacuation and leveling of an IDP camp, Internally Displaced Person’s camp, and the government would not allow anybody to come in. They kicked out all the NGOs before they started kicking the people out. And so we were there on the ground of course because we were able to go wherever we wanted to, and they did not want us taking pictures of them bulldozing this IDP Camp, so they decided to drop teargas grenades right next to us, which was an unpleasant experience but at least in the United States Military we were all qualified to use CS, and in order to do that you have to go through a- a CS chamber. So I knew the effects of it and how to deal with it.
JERRY FOWLER: But were there any repercussions to the government for tear gassing these international monitors?
BRIAN STEIDLE: No there was not. Basically the African Union has not- they have a very delicate balancing act. They are there because they have been invited by the Sudanese government and so if they speak too strongly against the Sudanese government then they risk being kicked out and then there will be no one on the ground to actually monitor what is happening. So there was a very delicate balancing act. I think there was possibly a letter that was sent up to the command saying we do not approve of you using this; but besides that there was nothing.
JERRY FOWLER: One thing that struck me in reading the book, you arrive in Darfur and you immediately go into the field, you start going on patrols, you start going and seeing villages that have been attacked. And there are really some horrific stories, atrocities. And I have to say in reading it, it was-- exhausting is not quite the right word-- it was powerful, it was moving, but it was also- it was overwhelming. And then you get to a point and you say, “And that was the end of my first week in Darfur.”
BRIAN STEIDLE: Yeah, yeah, it was. We would do at least an investigation a day and then we would receive two to three complaints every single day. I was there at a time when the Sudanese government was on a major offensive in South Darfur, with thousands of troops and thousands- hundreds and thousands of Janjaweed, moving through these villages. So they were attacking a new village every single day. On one of the days we saw 37 villages burned in the same day, and so it was a very intense time and we just tried to address as many of them as we possibly could.
JERRY FOWLER: And so you were seeing this violence and you make the comment at some point where you say that having been in the Marines you felt that you had been desensitized to violence, and you talk about when you were in training as a Marine you would go and spend time in the Emergency Room in an inner city hospital and see casualties brought in, and it got to where it did not bother you. But then it sounds like there is this process in Darfur where it began to bother you, where you were not desensitized perhaps any more. How did that happen?
BRIAN STEIDLE: Well, I think that you never really get desensitized to civilians being ruthlessly murdered. You can get used to blood. And that is something I have never really had a problem with. But when you see these people murdered, you never really get used to it. And people say, “Well, you just turn off your emotions while you are there. You just turn the switch off.” And that is really not true. I mean, those emotions are always there, and they will come up later on after you leave the situation or after you leave to come back to the States. But the emotions are always there.
JERRY FOWLER: But do not you have to turn them off? I mean, how could you cope, otherwise? I would think you would be a wreck.
BRIAN STEIDLE: Well, think that the--.
JERRY FOWLER: Maybe, you were a wreck. I do not know.
BRIAN STEIDLE: I think that the way you cope with it is you are conscious of what is happening, and you absorb all of it. But you do not react at that period of time. I am not going to completely break down and lose myself there at that situation. You have to-- in order to be a professional or to deal with those situations-- you have to be conscious to gather it all up and then to adjust your emotions.
JERRY FOWLER: And you talk about you said, earlier, that the emotions would be there afterwards. Do you feel-- are there emotional repercussions from your time in Darfur that you are experiencing, now, in the United States that you have been experiencing?
BRIAN STEIDLE: Well, I mean, when I first came back, it was extremely frustrating for me to jump back into this society that, basically, has its blinders on and is extremely privileged, and does not really care about what is happening. So that was difficult, to me. And still, sometimes, it is difficult for me to try relay this information people, and to have them not care about it. But it is-- you have to be able to involve yourself and act within society, or people will never listen to you.
JERRY FOWLER: Yeah, I know, the-- one of the things that always gets to me is the checkout stand at the grocery store. And just all the magazines where every week it is Britney, or it is Lindsey Lohan or whoever. I do not even know all the people. But it just seems like so much attention and effort is put on things that seem so unimportant.
BRIAN STEIDLE: Yeah, I completely agree with you. And I think that people become interested in those. And people read about them, because the press and the media are putting them in front of you. But if they put Darfur in front of you and told the stories of individuals that are living in the refugee camps, of individuals that have lost their families, I think that people would begin to care and be interested in them, too. And so that onus is on us to tell the press that we are interested in different issues, not issues of how Anna Nicole Smith died or whether Britney shaved her head or not. But that we are interested in real world issues, and we are interested in the genocide of the 21st Century.
JERRY FOWLER: When you came back, one of the ways that you first started spreading your story was with photographs that you had taken there. Four of them were on-- or four photographs were on the Op Ed page of the New York Times. And then, since that your- your photos have been widely reproduced, including on the website of the Holocaust Museum. One question I had-- a lot of those photographs are very high quality, because you had a professional camera. And how did that come about? Were you a hobby photographer before or why was it that you had such a good camera in this very out of the way place?
BRIAN STEIDLE: I had always been interested in photography. I got my first camera when I was 12, and started taking pictures. And so I took my camera with me, my older film camera with me to the Nuba Mountains. And while I was there, I had made enough money and saved it up that I could purchase a higher quality camera. And I just wanted to take the best pictures I possibly could, to be able to document what was happening. You know, these people are absolutely beautiful. And where they live is an amazing place in the world and I wanted to capture that. And then, when I got to Darfur, I was able to purchase this camera on the Internet, and had a friend who brought it over for me, from the States. And I was very glad that I was able to have it, because I was able to take some really good high quality photos what I would not have been able to take, otherwise.
JERRY FOWLER: But one of the points that you make is that when you first got in Darfur, the African Union, actually, would not let you use that camera, because it was-- I think, the phrase used was, “too imposing.”
BRIAN STEIDLE: Yeah, I mean, it is a very large camera, and so they were afraid that I was going to scare people by putting it in their face. So at first, they would not let me take pictures, at all. And then, they finally said, “Okay. Well, I guess, you know what you are talking about, and we will let you take pictures with our small digital camera.” And then, I said, “Hey, look guys, I can take pictures with this thing.” And there was one attack, where I just, finally, said, “Hey, look, I have got to document this.” And so I pulled out my big camera and took the pictures. And they were not too happy about it, at first, until they saw until they saw the pictures that I was taking until realizing that I could zoom in and shoot somebody that was on the ground, from a moving helicopter that is moving at 300 miles an hour, 1,000 feet above the ground. And they were quite amazed that I could, actually, do that. And so they were more than happy, at that point in time, to allow me to use my camera.
JERRY FOWLER: But that ended up being a bit of a source of controversy. The African Union was taking pictures as part of their reporting process. But then, as you, kind of, detail in the book, the reports go on this little chain to nowhere. And you kept all the pictures that you took. I mean, you included them in reports, but then, you kept a copy and brought them back with you. And when you started publicizing them, there were complaints, as I understand, from the African Union and from the State Department that, that those really should not have been your pictures, that they belong to the African Union and you were endangering the ability of the African Union to continue, by publicizing them. Did you have any qualms about that?
BRIAN STEIDLE: I did not. I knew the laws and the copyright laws. And I knew that, since I took them with my own camera, that they were my pictures. I was sharing them with the African Union when I was there. But I kept all of them. I wanted to share them with my family and my friends, and show them what was going on there on the ground. I never really had the intention of releasing them. But after talking to Kristof at the New York Times, he convinced me that this is the best way to get the word out to try to make a difference, is to share these photographs with the world.
JERRY FOWLER: As I said at the beginning of the program, one way that you are sharing it is-- sharing those photographs and sharing your story-- is through the documentary film, The Devil Came on Horseback, which goes along with, or is similar to the book. The book, people can get at Amazon.com or at various bookstores. If people want to see the film, how do they do that?
BRIAN STEIDLE: Well, the best way for them to see the film, is if they go to TheDevilCameonHorseback.com. From there, they can find out where we are going to be showing and what towns we are going to be showing. And then, they can also sign up to purchase a DVD if they need to.
JERRY FOWLER: And if they want to rent it, will it be in Blockbuster or Netflix or something like that?
BRIAN STEIDLE: It’ll be available on Netflix in early November.
JERRY FOWLER: So they can add it to their queue.
BRIAN STEIDLE: Yep.
JERRY FOWLER: And what is ahead for Brian Steidle? I heard there may be a feature film project in the works?
BRIAN STEIDLE: Yeah, we are, actually, just working right now on writing the screenplay for a feature film. We felt that one of the best ways to tell the story is to try to tell it in as many different media as you possibly can. And feature film is one of those. And we have a documentary. We have a book. And if we can tell the story through a feature film, we believe that we can influence that many more people. And so I think that Hollywood can be used as a very effective method of social change. People did not know about Hotel Rwanda-- people did not know about Rwanda, the genocide in Rwanda, until Hotel Rwanda came out. And so we think that we can really inform a large number of people by producing a feature film.
JERRY FOWLER: And any ideas about whom you want to play yourself?
BRIAN STEIDLE: Oh, no. No. Not at this point in time. They are seeking a number of individuals out, but you know, we will see.
JERRY FOWLER: Well, you probably need a Brad Pitt to do you justice.
BRIAN STEIDLE: Thank you.
JERRY FOWLER: We have been talking to Brian Steidle, who is the former marine, who was a member of the African Union monitoring team in Darfur, about his book, The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur, and the documentary of the same name. Brian thanks for taking time to be with us.
BRIAN STEIDLE: Thank you very much.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about preventing genocide, join us online at www.ushmm.org/conscience. There you’ll also find the Voices on Genocide Prevention weblog.
