Customer Reviews

The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur

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Former U.S. Marine Brian Steidle signed on to go to Darfur on an African Union ceasefire monitoring mission, but standing idly by while "African" civilians were massacred, mutilated, and raped by predominantly "Arab" tormenters in the service of the Sudanese Government was not what he had bargained for. In his eyes, he gained a small measure of redemption by meticulously documenting everything he saw, heard, and experienced, and then trying to stir the world's conscience, though this was certainly not his initial intention.

This book's greatest strength comes from the vivid and detailed descriptions of the author's often-harrowing experiences. The Devil Came on Horseback pulls no punches in describing the slow-motion tsunami that the Khartoum regime is inflicting upon its people. Steidle provides great descriptions of events and sequences of events, and these are supported by a very good map of Darfur, which enables the reader to follow the evolution of events on the ground.

What is often lacking in the book is a detailed analysis of the complicated social, cultural, and political context of the Darfur conflict and genocide, though in Part Three ("Genocide") he provides more of this kind of information than he does earlier in the book. His outrage and passion are palpable, but analysis is often lacking. A novel aspect of this volume is that the author is a military observer, but he unfortunately does not look very deeply at the political constraints or other factors that hinder the effectiveness of African Union forces. Steidle's military background would have given him an interesting vantage point from which to examine the pros and cons of peacekeeping forces led by the African Union as opposed to the United Nations, for example, but he never goes into much detail on these important issues.

Nevertheless, Steidle's first-hand witnessing of actual events in the Darfur tragedy is a valuable addition to the existing emerging literature on Darfur. This book is a great companion volume to works that focus on the social, political, and historical context of the Darfur humanitarian crisis, such as Gerard Prunier's The Ambiguous Genocide or Julie Flint and Alex de Waal's A Short History of a Long War.

The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur by Brian Steidle and Gretchen Steidle Wallace is the story of Captain Steidle's year as an observer with the African Union Mission in Darfur. The book is an earnest account of attacks Steidle witnessed and investigated, and the photographs section is particularly powerful. It's a must-read to understand what life on the ground for Darfuri civilians was like during some of the worst of the genocide in 2004. There are some very disturbing descriptions of attacks but there are also heartwarming moments of international (and local) understanding that will someday help end the crisis.

This is an eyewitness account of the genocide in Darfur. In 2004, former marine, Brian Steidle, signed on with the Joint Military Commission (JMC) for a position as a Patrol Leader in the Sudan. The JMC was created to oversee conflict in central Sudan and monitor a ceasefire. His job was to consist of investigating ceasefire violations. Steidle accepted the position with the JMC totally ignorant of the area in which he would be working and its political issues and conflicts. By the time he arrived in the Sudan, a full blown genocide was in progress.

Steidle's role was that of reporting what he saw, and what he saw was a Sudanese government that stood idly by as innocent black African civilians, rather than rebel forces, were routinely killed and tortured by Arab civilians known as "Janjaweed" (the devil on horseback) with the seeming blessing of the Sudanese government based in Khartoum and the aid of its government troops. Frustrated by his watchdog role, Steidle carefully documented all that he saw in order to bear witness to this large scale genocide that was taking place and alert the world to it, as he was stationed where journalists were nowhere to be found.

His is a compelling birds-eye view of a regional conflict that degenerated into a full scale genocide of its native people. The shortcoming of the book is the author's ignorance of the area and its historical and political conflicts. Thus, nothing in the book is grounded into any particular context, causing it to be a somewhat one dimensional account. While the author's outrage is palpable, so is his ignorance. Still, it is a harrowing account of the suffering of the Sudan's black citizens and an indictment of the Sudanese government and the international community.

If you agree that these atrocities should not happen on our watch, but do not know the facts about what goes on when the news is focusing on celebrities, please read this book. A concerned global citizen took the time to report on the events that transpire in Darfur every day. There is also a documentary of the same name. Read and decide how to act. Let's hope that this book will be defunct soon because Darfur is no longer in turmoil.

This is only the second book to make me furious and wanting to go out and take action. To allow the kind of atrocities he witnessed to continue to go on goes against the phrase "never again" which was said after the holocaust. He witnessed things a person should never have to see, and he bore witness well. I just hope that someday SOON we will do something or else it will be like rwanda, in which we ignored a cry for help. He wrote his story well, and I wish him peace for what we saw.

Last night I saw the film `The Devil Came On Horseback'. Through the efforts of Brian and Gretchen Steidle, I was able to sweat in the baking sun and travel the raw dirt roads of Africa to bear witness to outrageously evil and willful acts of violence. I was also able to sit and sob with the victims of these horrendous acts - those who had lost their homes, their families and some their very flesh during this still ongoing genocide in Darfur. I was given the opportunity to see their beautiful souls as well as their great and dire need. To say that `The Devil Came On Horseback' was a wonderful and awe-inspiring film may sound strange. But as I watched the stories of individual survivors and the atrocities they had suffered, I felt my own sleeping spirit rise and a deep desire to help these people with whom I now felt so connected. I felt alive and blessed, strong and powerful and more fully awake than I had in years. Ironically, I am able to empathize with some of the individuals in the film. I believe we all have faced tragedy and loss in our lives. We all have scars from our personal battles - we have all felt alone and scared. The people of Darfur are right now fighting for their very existence. Why? Because they had the audacity to be born on a particular piece of land that some insane people think they should own exclusively? And doesn't this all sound awfully familiar? Haven't we seen these same hideous events way too many times in the past? Did you have the nerve to be born brown or Jewish or female? We are born into our various shapes, colors and beliefs. We are all different and yet so very much the same. We cannot be silent and accept the torture and murder of our fellow humans. We must tell all those who seek to harm others and specifically now those committing genocide in Darfur - WE SEE WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND IT IS NOT OKAY. YOU WILL STOP AND YOU WILL PAY. Please help open the eyes and raise the voices of everyone you know.

After four years as a captain in the Marines, in September 2004 Brian Steidle moved to Darfur, in western Sudan, where he joined an international team from the African Union to monitor the unfolding tragedy "where Arab Muslims kill African Muslims because the Africans are 'too black.'" Their team was unarmed and officially impartial to all sides; their duty was to "observe, inquire, and write reports," although by the end of his stint Steidle realized that of the 80 reports his team wrote only four reached the American Embassy by normal channels. When he left six months later he had assembled a comprehensive documentation of the Darfur genocide, including a photo archive of 3,000 pictures (twenty of which are included in the book), an audio journal he made on an MP3 player, personal notes, emails, and intelligence collected from some 30 NGOs.

Steidle's book is his eyewitness account of the horrors he documented on a daily basis-- children who had been shackled together, raped, and then burned alive; gang rape of women and girls of all ages; grotesque dismemberment of victims; the total burning of dozens of villages; the bull-dozing of camps for internally displaced victims; starvation; mass graves; jets and helicopter gunships slaughtering civilians; and endless cases of pillage and plunder. "Welcome to hell," one of his colleagues said when he first arrived. Estimates vary, but about 300-500,000 black African Muslims have been killed by the Sudan government (both army and police) and the janjaweed militia (literally "devil on a horse") that they have funded, trained (complete with graduation exercises), armed, and closely collaborated with in attacks. Another 2-3 million have been internally displaced. One of the most chilling pieces of evidence in his book, if anyone needed more evidence, is a government document specifying the steps they were taking to execute an official policy of ethnic cleansing. Most disheartening of all, Steidle understood that the Sudanese government knew that it could continue the genocide unabated because the international community would do nothing at all. Violence has spilled over into neighboring Chad and also threatened NGO and humanitarian workers. In addition to his book, Steidle has made a film that was released in the summer of 2007 (see www.thedevilcameonhorseback.com).

I found this book to be clearly written, and from a very personal point of view. Others have criticized the author's sense of outrage, calling this arrogant. This is not a passionless expose. I have to give Steidle credit for having the guts to serve as a witness and reporter of these atrocities, facing down killers, unarmed, when Americans were targets throughout the Islamic World. Steidle shares enough about himself to discern that he is a decent human being.

I feel fortunate to be able to relive Steidle's experience through this book, because I certainly didn't have what it took to go to Darfur myself.

Four stars for style, six stars for content.

Worthwhile, but ultimately the reader feels the same frustration as the author: What good is this doing? Why can't I really help?

Of the many books written on Darfur, none is as compelling as Brian Steidle's book and video of the same name, THE DEVIL CAM ON HORSEBACK.
He does not pull punches. He makes you feel the suffering of the Darfur people and his own justified anger at a world that is doing precious little to stop this genocide. It is a book bravely written.