By Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Sudanese President, published in Views Section at IslamOnline, January 9, 2005.
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UPDATE Jan 11: Thanks to Bill for pointing out in the comments here that the above link to President Bashir's report of January 9 now leads to a report titled "Framework for Peace or Blueprint for Disintegration?" dated January 10 by Kareem M. Kamel.
Regrettably, I did not take a screenshot of the first report. Clearly, the page has now changed with Kamel's report. Interestingly, the new report does contain elements of the first report. Even the title has been inserted into a section towards the end of the report. The only thing I did extract from the first report titled "Sudan's 'Peace' Protocols: Permanent Peace or Piece by Piece?" (that was clearly billed as being by the Sudanese President and made no mention of Kamel) is this:
"Consequently, by not putting regulations on the use of oil wealth and allowing both sides to purchase weapons with the oil revenues at their disposal, the combatants can quickly expand their military capabilities and renew the conflict anytime."
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Note, I think this would be a good place to point to A Little Red Blog who asks the following good question. [I'd already thought the same question, which is why the above extract from Bashir's report caught my eye as I planned to write a post around it]:
"Now we'll have a better armed south, the existing northern forces and a new force made up of both but loyal to whom?"
Hi Ingrid,
ReplyDeleteThe URL link you provided for this posting is to an article by (Kareem M. Kamel is an Egyptian analyst based in Cairo, Egypt) according to the webpage editor.
Do you have some information on a speech or document available online in English authored by Omar al-Beshir himself regarding the signing of the latest Peace Agreement? John Garang's speech at the signing ceremony was published by The Sudan Tribune folks, but you probably already know that.
Despite what all of the naysayers, pundits, experts, and sceptics are saying, the peace in the Sudan will work when enough of us around the world get engaged with the people of Sudan and help to make it work.
Omar and his gang plus his financiers i.e. China, Pakistan, et. al. are on a very short leash at the moment and the spotlights are getting kinda hot. We need to keep turnin' up the heat and stay focused on them in order to see what comes running out of there.
Hello Bill, thank you for pointing out the link has changed. Sorry, I do not have information on a speech or document by President Bashir. Pity I did not take a copy of the Jan 9 report. I did read it but was terribly over tired at the time, which is why I failed to take a copy for reading properly later on. The report was more dense and detailed than the one that appears online now. Most of the reference credits are the same though. I wonder if Kamel has edited Bashir's report and put it out in his own name - or if it was originally Kamel's report and wrongly attributed to Bashir. Whatever the case, the report has changed. I could hardly believe my eyes when I first came across the report and checked it three times before attributing it to Bashir in my post.
ReplyDeleteI am not aware that Bashir gave a speech at the ceremony. He did not even sign the peace accord. VP Taha represented the Sudanese government and signed it with Garang. Garang now takes Taha's title of First Vice-President, reporting directly to Bashir. I guess Taha now has a sort of floating role in the background. I wonder how the foes will get on in reality. Bashir and Taha are a formidable ruthless pair who'll stop at nothing to retain power.
A few days ago Garang was quoted as saying he had been a guerilla fighter for 42 years and wanted nothing more to do with violence and would not fight any more Sudanese. Today he warned he might go back into the bush if the peace deal doesn't work.
Sudan seems ungovernable. Who knows, it may have to split up into States.
Your comment interests me greatly. I am not sure how closely you have followed what has gone on in Darfur these past 22 months. Jim Moore and I are probably the only bloggers in the world that have posted almost daily on Darfur over the past eight months.
Thousands of people around the world, politicians and diplomats within the international community and 191 member state United Nations have not been able to stop genocide in Darfur. When Jim broke the news in the blogosphere back in April, 10,000 had been killed. Experts now estimate the death toll relating to Darfur stands at 400,000. UN figures have remained static at 70,000 since October. And those figures are only from March 2004.
I wish I knew what you mean when you say peace in the Sudan will work "when enough of us around the world" get engaged with the people of Sudan and help to make it work.
How can you figure the death toll will get back to normal in Sudan without stopping the violence in Darfur? And stopping violence from spreading elsewhere and in Eastern and Central Sudan, and Southern Sudan?
In 3rd week of January UN will consider 9,000-10,000 UN peacekeepers for Southern Sudan. The long awaited 2,000 AU troops have yet to appear in Darfur. AU Security Council met yesterday and called on the AU to have extra troops arrive in Darfur by the end of this month.
3,000 troops in Darfur is nowhere near helpful enough. Experts say for every four weeks that go by, another 10,000 die in the camps from malnutrition and disease. Water, food and medicines are still not reaching everyone. Increased violence is still hampering the aid effort and threatening the lives of aid workers. Four from a British charity have been killed. How can the refugees return home before the minefields are cleared?
I'd be interested to know what you mean when you refer to enough of "us". Who are all these people you talk of. How come they were not able to quell the rebellion in Darfur and get unimpeded access for aid? What will the people you talk of do about Eastern Sudan? When the Sudanese in South Sudan get disillusioned with what is (or is not) happening there, how will the people you talk of get peace to happen?
Experts say at least 40,000 protection troops were needed in Darfur many months ago. It still holds that 40,000 or more (ideally 70,000) will be needed in Darfur in order for aid to reach those in need - otherwise many more tens of thousands will perish. 800,000 died in Rwanda in a very short space of time - Darfur is described as Rwanda in slow motion - and the death toll is just reaching the half way mark now ...
What can we bloggers do to put more heat on? Any suggestions and ideas - no matter how wild - would be much appreciated and gratefully received.
PS Personally, I hope the international community is secretly behind the rebels supporting them to overthrow the regime in Khartoum and that all of the rebels are working in collusion to weaken Khartoum to such an extent they have no power. I cannot see how there can be a future for Sudan with Bashir and Taha in power. They have proved themselves completely untrustworthy and are not fit to govern Sudan. Perhaps Sudan is ungovernable and will have to split into states - but with those two genocidal dictators in power, Sudan has no chance because you cannot believe a word they say and they will say anything to save their own skins.
Thanks Ingrid for that update. If al-Beshir wrote or gave a speech about the new peace accords for Sudan and it appeared online somewhere, then we can find it. Somebody may have printed a copy or it's in some cache somewhere or whatever. Maybe we should just ask Omar, I'm sure he's looking for good PR these days.
ReplyDeleteI'm not even going to attempt to answer ALL of the points you made in your reply to my comment today, except that I will say the following:
There's lots of folks all over the world focused on what's happening in Sudan at present, especially in Darfur. A large number of these folks (us, you and me and zillions of others) are outraged at what we see, hear, and think we understand. And we are eager to learn more so that we can somehow better understand why it is happening and do something to stop it now and in the future.
What you and your co-author friend Jim and myself and lots of blog authors and journalists and senators and U.N. officials and NGO's and etc. etc. are doing by writing about it and talking about it and in some cases taking various actions of protest and pressuring our government leaders and so forth... what we are doing collectively is Raising Hell and Shining Hot Lights on this disaster and making a lot of (important) people look very bad. Important people really hate to look bad and they hate to be in the lights of international media attention when they are doing evil to people. They are absolutely terrified of something called "Bloggers" 'cause they don't even understand what that is or how to control it.
So even though you may feel terribly frustrated (I feel frustrated too) don't be because what you are doing is to help keep these issues in people's faces, keeping it on people's minds who troll the Blogosphere for information. And those people will talk to other people and perhaps a few of them will actually find a way to do something....and it just snowballs from there.
The only thing that is going to save the lives of the indigenous peoples of Darfur, the women and children and men (who are still left) is the threat to Khartoum that if you keep this s___t up you are going to lose everything, power, money, right to govern, everything. Actually this goes for some of the so-called rebels as well. The majority of people of the Sudan want Peace, and many of us in the world want Peace for Sudan.
Now the interesting thing to watch over the next months is how the various "tools" available to us ( the concerned governments and citizens of the world) come together and are put to work to force the Khartoum regime and the rebels to "see the light"...quick. Something is going to break, you watch. Unfortunately it won't be in enough time to save the lives of 10,000's of innocent people now dead or trapped on the unforgiving terrains of the Sahara Desert in makeshift camps and just plain out in the open.
I hope I haven't made a fool of myself on your fine blog here, but that's how I feel. Keep beatin' on your little drum there lady, we hear you loud and clear.