Toyota War

The Darfuri Justice and Equality Movement’s name for their anti-government rebellion.

Reporting from northern Darfur for The Times of London,

Anthony Loyd wrote:

Known as “night locusts” by their government enemies, the rebels call their conflict the “Land Cruiser war” or “Toyota war” owing to their preferred vehicle of choice for travel and battle. The distances are huge. “It’s not uncommon to go, fight and come back having covered 800 kilometres in 24 hours,” said General Abu Bakr, 55, one of the JEM’s [Justice and Equality Movement] leading commanders, who has spent most of the past six years in the Darfur deserts.

According to Loyd, JEM is “regarded by many foreign diplomats as the only feasible threat to Sudan’s military in Darfur.”

(In 1984, Time reported on “The Great Toyota War” – the civil war in Chad, where “small groups of Toyota desert vehicles, with 106-mm recoilless rifles mounted at the rear, wheel and charge like cavalry in the vastness of the Sahara.”)