Man Hopes Photos Can Personalize Darfur Genocide

By Jonathan Mummolo (Contact)

Sunday, September 2, 2007

He thought that by shooting the dead, he might keep others alive.

But former Marine captain and Loudoun Valley High School graduate Brian Steidle has found that using his photographs to rouse the public and government officials to address the genocide in Darfur is not as simple as he once thought.

Armed only with a camera, Steidle toured the war-torn region of Sudan for six months in 2004 and 2005 with the African Union, the association of nations charged with monitoring — but not enforcing — a cease-fire in Darfur.

A documentary film chronicling his experience, "The Devil Came on Horseback," will be screened at Leesburg’s Tally Ho Theater from Sept. 7 to 13, and Steidle will be in attendance on opening night — a sort of homecoming for the former Hillsboro resident who has become one of the foremost U.S. voices against the violence that international experts say has killed as many as 450,000 people and displaced 2.5 million.

As a sanctioned observer with the A.U., Steidle had access that no journalist could acquire in Darfur, watching firsthand as militia groups known as the Janjaweed cooperated with the Sudanese government in an extermination campaign — a claim backed by human rights groups but denied by officials in the capital, Khartoum — against African tribes and rebel groups that had taken up arms against the government in 2003.

Janjaweed means “devil on a horse.”

Courtesy Gretchen Wallace

Loudoun native-turned-Darfur-advocate Brian Steidle

“It’s just ludicrous,” Steidle said of Sudan’s denials of working with the militias. “It’s like saying the sky isn’t blue.”

After the frustration of not being able to protect victims became too much to bear — combined with his reports not being released— Steidle returned home in 2005, went public with his images and recollections via New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, and has been on a whirlwind advocacy tour since. He has testified before Congress, met with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and returned to neighboring Chad to help refugees from the conflict.

The film, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January, is a journey through the worst that human nature has to offer. The sharply melded collection of video and still images displays burned carcasses, butchered infants and testimonials by jaded and devastated refugees, many of whom have seen their families slaughtered.

The film also chronicles Steidle’s initial hopefulness at his blitz of media appearances when he returned and follows him as he gives in to the realization that the evidence he had taken public had not spurred productive intervention.

Submitted

Loudoun native and Darfur advocate Brian Steidle.

“I thought that if you showed these things, people are going to be empowered, they’re going to be totally amazed these things are going on,” said Steidle, 30, who lives in Los Angeles. “What came about was people kind of shrugged their shoulders, rolled their eyes and said, ‘Yeah, it’s a terrible situation.’ Not everybody, but a lot of people. . . . Somebody told me once after a Q and A that if Anna Nicole Smith had just died in Darfur, maybe we’d hear about it.”

But Steidle has not lost hope. He said he is encouraged by news that a 26,000-member U.N.-A.U. peacekeeping force could be in Darfur by the end of the year.

Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who led the first congressional delegation to Darfur along with Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) in 2004, said he is skeptical of whether that plan will come to fruition.

“Every time it gets close, they seem to move the goal post,” said Wolf of the Sudanese government. “They agree to certain things, the world takes its focus off and then they slip out of it.”

Wolf, who will address the movie audience in Leesburg on Sept. 7, said he hopes Steidle’s film will be a “spark” for action.

“People can talk about what they think is going on,” Wolf said. “Brian has seen what has gone on.”

Steidle is one of several people from Loudoun to take up the Sudan cause of late. Last school year, a group of Loudoun Valley High School students raised funds and petitioned lawmakers in support of the issue. Earlier this year, fifth-graders at Mill Run Elementary School in Ashburn published a book of Darfur-themed poems with an introduction by Maya Angelou. And last year, Crossroads United Methodist Church in Ashburn co-sponsored a two-day conference at George Mason University aimed at raising awareness of the crisis and reuniting separated relatives.

Steidle’s devotion to the issue has left locals gushing.

“We’re going nuts,” said LeeAnne Johnson, Loudoun Valley’s director of guidance, who oversaw the student-led Darfur project last year and said she intends to attend the opening night of the screening. “I just think it’s just so exciting.”

About 45 percent of the film’s profits will go to assist Darfuri refugee women in Chad through Global Grassroots, a nonprofit group headed by Steidle’s sister, Gretchen Steidle Wallace.

Although aid to Darfur has been slow to come, Steidle said he would only do one thing differently if he could turn back time.

“I would have taken more pictures,” he said.

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