Showing posts with label Julie Flint. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Julie Flint. Show all posts

Sunday, July 09, 2023

Sudan: Darfur rebellion in 2003 was not genocide

NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor: This is my attempt to clarify that anyone who refers to the Darfur rebellion and counterinsurgency of 2003 as genocide is in fact, most likely unwittingly, spreading US propaganda.

African (and European) leaders did not say that the Darfur rebellion started in 2003 was genocide because it wasn't. For the sake of simplicity, and to save trawling through the extensive archives of this 20-year-old site, here is an excerpt from Wikipedia on the international response to the rebellion:

"The ongoing conflict in Darfur, Sudan, which started in 2003, was declared a "genocide" by United States Secretary of State Colin Powell on 9 September 2004 in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Since that time however, no other permanent member of the United Nations Security Council has followed suit. In fact, in January 2005, an International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 1564 of 2004, issued a report to the Secretary-General stating that "the Government of the Sudan has not pursued a policy of genocide." Nevertheless, the Commission cautioned that "The conclusion that no genocidal policy has been pursued and implemented in Darfur by the Government authorities, directly or through the militias under their control, should not be taken in any way as detracting from the gravity of the crimes perpetrated in that region. International offences such as the crimes against humanity and war crimes that have been committed in Darfur may be no less serious and heinous than genocide." - Wikipedia June 26, 2023.

A handful of US activists online were the first to shout genocide in Darfur. They and many others used Darfur and South Sudan as political footballs for personal gain and work. After the Bush administration (Republican) left office, most of the Save Darfur crowd faded away or moved on to pastures new, in media, govts, NGOs, UN, charity startups related to genocide etc. 

In 2003, social media platforms Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Tik Tok, Bing etc., didn't exist. Global citizens took to the Internet and 4-yo Blogger like ducks to water. Power to the people. It was wild and exciting.

Thousands of bloggers put the spotlight on Darfur by piling enormous non-stop pressure on politicians and the UN to send aid to Darfur, stop genocide in Darfur and stop (mainly black) Darfuris being slain, starved or forced to flee by gun-toting (mainly Arab) militia on horses, camels or trucks. 

The Internet, home computing and smartphones now used by billions worldwide, have taken massive leaps with Artificial Intelligence. Evidence of atrocities can be gathered, checked and verified to stand up in a court of law.

Going by the report below, it's easy to see why Sudan's military junta is against Kenyan President Ruto helping to bring peace to Sudan: it quotes President Ruto as saying "there are already signs of genocide in Sudan". 

Now in 2023, ill informed people and others with vested interests, media included, write of genocide in Darfur in 2003 based on conjecture without doing any homework or citing verifiable sources and facts. 

Social media is mainly a free for all soapbox from which anyone can say almost anything. Recently, I saw some displaced Darfuris interviewed on camera (English subtitles) using activists' buzz words and "genocide". 

AI wizardry is moving at lightening speed and is now used to spread propaganda and fake news online to great effect. Experienced journalists with access to fact-checking technology are needed now more than ever.  

In Sudan, fighters from several different countries (and prisons) use heavy weapons and custom-made trucks to help the belligerents grab land and power. There is no functioning government in Sudan, anarchy reigns.

From what I can gather, the only way to stop Sudan's collapse is for a unified civilian-led government to claim its right to govern now, even in exile, backed by the AU, IGAD, NAM, LAS, UN and the international community. African solutions to African problems, African land for African people.

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Report at France24

By Marc Perelman 

Published Friday 23 June 2023 - here is a full copy:


Kenyan President William Ruto: 'There are already signs of genocide in Sudan'

In an interview with FRANCE 24 on the sidelines of the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, Kenya President William Ruto said the world's multinational financial architecture needs to be "fixed". He also reacted to the ongoing conflict in Sudan, saying "there are already signs of genocide". More than 2,000 people have been killed there since fighting broke out on April 15.


"We pay, especially those of us from the Global South and on the African continent, up to eight times more for the same resources, because of something called risk," Kenya's Ruto said. Calling the current system "broken", "rigged" and "unfair", Ruto said the multinational financial architecture needs to be "fixed". He also insisted on the importance of clarifying climate financing in order to deal with poverty and the "existential threat" of climate change.


Ruto narrowly won re-election in August 2022, but his opponent Raila Odinga claims to have won instead and has since been organising protests. Ruto said: "I don't have a problem with Raila Odinga, we are competitors. I have no problem with Raila Odinga organising protests (...) It's part of democracy." 


Turning to the deadly conflict in Sudan, he said: "There are already signs of genocide. What is going on in Sudan is unacceptable. Military power is being used by both parties to destroy the country and to kill civilians. The war is senseless, the war is not legitimate in any way."


Ruto said he had a regional meeting about the situation in Sudan two weeks ago in a bid to stop the war. But he added: "The issue will not be resolved until we get General al-Burhan, General Hemedti, political leaders and civil society – women's groups and youth groups – to the table." He insisted that this was "feasible".

View original: https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/the-interview/20230623-kenya-president-william-ruto-there-are-already-signs-of-genocide-in-sudan


[Ends] 

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Further reading


Sudan Watch - April 08, 2006

What is the difference between genocide and ethnic cleansing?

https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2006/04/what-is-difference-between-genocide.html


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From ICC website - Darfur, Sudan - excerpts:


Situation referred to the ICC by the United Nations Security Council: March 2005

ICC investigations opened: June 2005

Current focus: Alleged genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur, Sudan, since 1 July 2002 (when the Rome Statute entered into force)

Current regional focus: Darfur (Sudan), with Outreach to refugees in Eastern Chad and those in exile throughout Europe.  ...

The situation in Darfur was the first to be referred to the ICC by the United Nations Security Council, and the first ICC investigation on the territory of a non-State Party to the Rome Statute. It was the first ICC investigation dealing with allegations of the crime of genocide. 

Former Sudan's President Omar Al Bashir is the first sitting President to be wanted by the ICC, and the first person to be charged by the ICC for the crime of genocide. Neither of the two warrants of arrest against him have been enforced, and he is not in the Court's custody. 

See the ICC Prosecutor's reports to the UNSC on the investigation.

Read more: https://www.icc-cpi.int/darfur

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Darfur: A Short History of a Long War and Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2006


Extract

Darfur: A Short History of a Long War. By Julie Flint and Alex de Waal. New York: Zed Books, 2005. 176p. $60.00 cloth, $19.99 paper.

In the last two years, the Darfur region in western Sudan has moved from relative international obscurity to become a symbol of humanitarian crisis and mass violence. Political scientists who research genocide, ethnic conflict, civil war, humanitarianism, and African politics all have taken interest in the region, and Darfur is likely to command scholarly attention in years to come. Yet the academic literature on the region remains thin. To date, scholars have relied primarily on journalistic accounts and human rights reports, which detail the violence but, by their nature, provide only cursory historical background. With the publication of these two short but informative books, Darfur's political history and the path to mass violence are substantially clearer. That said, the books are not designed to build theories of ethnic violence or genocide, nor do the authors explicitly engage in hypotheses testing. The books are useful primarily as detailed, lucid case histories from two sets of well-informed observers. 

View original: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/abs/darfur-a-short-history-of-a-long-war-and-darfur-the-ambiguous-genocide/49A0DF3736227EA14A61989D66F98D14

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Darfur, the Ambiguous Genocide
By Gérard Prunier
212pp, Hurst, £15

Review by Dominick Donald published in the Guardian - here is a full copy:

During 2003, occasional reports emerged in the international media of fighting in Darfur, a huge tract of western Sudan bordering Chad. Over the next year the picture became confused, as - depending on who was doing the talking - a minor rebellion became a tribal spat, or nomads taking on farmers, or Arab-versus-African ethnic cleansing, or genocide.

An outside world that understood political violence in Sudan through the simplistic lens of the unending war between Muslim north and Christian/animist south - a war that seemed to be about to end - had to adjust. And nothing that has emerged since has made that adjustment easy. If Darfuris are Muslim, what is their quarrel with the Islamic government in Khartoum? If they and the janjaweed - "evil horsemen" - driving them from their homes are both black, how can it be Arab versus African? If the Sudanese government is making peace with the south, why would it be risking that by waging war in the west? Above all, is it genocide?

Gérard Prunier has the answers. An ethnographer and renowned Africa analyst, he turns on the evasions of Khartoum the uncompromising eye that dissected Hutu power excuses for the Rwanda genocide a decade ago. He is never an easy read. While his style is fluid, there's too much brilliant, obscure but pivotal erudition, too much confident summarising, and not enough readiness to compromise for the reader cramming in another five pages on the tube.

He isn't helped by the fact that he is usually offering an incisive user's manual for a machine most of us have never seen before. But stick with him. For he deploys his fierce logic to a powerful moral purpose. He builds an understanding of a community and a culture in all its complexity to then strip away the convenient truths and confused equivocations that guilty or disinterested politicians use to explain why nothing should be done. Read Darfur and you will be in no doubt at all that the government of Sudan, whatever it says, is responsible for what is happening there. The killings are the consequence of a logical, realist's policy, stemming from a racial/ cultural contempt. You will also wonder whether anything substantive will be done to stop them.

Prunier's Darfur is a victim of its separateness - not just from Khartoum, but from everywhere else in Sudan. Geographically, culturally and commercially it always looked west, along the Sahel, rather than east to the Nile, north to Egypt, or south to Bahr El Ghazal. Its Islamic practices fused Arab with African, unlike the more ascetic, eschatological Muslim brotherhoods prevalent along the Nile, or the animism or polytheism adhered to in the south. Above all it retained a political and cultural identity apart from the homogenising forces of what became Sudan. The Sultanate of Darfur tottered on, essentially independent, until 1916; the Ottomans never established a foothold there, the Mahdists were resisted and co-opted, while once the British brought it into the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, they ruled through paternalistic neglect.

Even when Darfur was key to politicians in an independent Sudan - for instance, as a bedrock of support for the neo-Mahdists who ruled the country for much of its first two decades - it was ignored. Ravaged by the 1985 famine - Khartoum effectively denied it food aid - and proxy battles for Chad, it saw in the new century with a marginal economy and a government which, when it paid attention to Darfur, did so through the medium of militias encouraged to define tribal or cultural groups as the enemy.

As Prunier shows, it is the economics and the militias that lie at the heart of the atrocities in Darfur. The Sudan Liberation Army, recognising that the Naivasha power-sharing peace process between Khartoum and the SPLA/M in the south was going to leave Darfur even further behind, took up arms in 2002. All the government could do was unleash the militias in the hope that it could deal with the problem before southerners arrived in government and vetoed any repression. Now probably half of Darfur's population has been driven into camps for internally displaced persons (IDP), beyond the reach of international food aid, where malnutrition and disease are carrying them off at the rate of perhaps 8% a year. This suits Khartoum just fine. For while the international community havers about what it cannot see, Khartoum is free to pay lip service to the Naivasha peace process that will ensure regime survival, keep the Americans off its back, and allow the élite to exploit Sudan's oil.

It is this peace process that ensures the tragedy of Darfur goes on. The UN Security Council has passed powerful-sounding resolutions demanding the Sudanese government behave in Darfur. But it doesn't have the physical tools to coerce anyone. The African Union force it dispatched there is small, immobile, unsighted and with a weak mandate, and neither the US, UK nor France has the troops to send in its place. Above all, it won't apply too much pressure on Khartoum for fear of scuppering Naivasha - the deal that will end 50 years of on-and-off fighting, and bring a recalcitrant Sudan back into the embrace of the international community.

Yet Naivasha will almost certainly fail anyway. The Sudanese government probably has no intention of sticking to the Naivasha deal; it has never stuck to its deals before, choosing to obscure non-compliance with sorrowful tales of lack of control and warnings that enforcement will bring in the bogeyman. The process is driven by external actors, and so is hostage to their brief, easily distracted political attention spans. And it will bind the international community to Khartoum as tightly as vice versa - who will be coercing and who will be coerced? The international community believes it can't pull out of Naivasha in the face of Sudanese non-compliance for fear of losing oil deals, or an Islamic supporter in the war on terror, or of ushering in something worse. In reality it has saddled up a spaniel and sent it over the sticks, ignoring the sturdy point-to-pointer waiting in the wings.

Is what is happening in Darfur genocide? As Prunier points out, in the terms of the 1948 Genocide Convention ("deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part"), it is - particularly what is happening in the IDP camps. Yet in his superb book on the Rwandan genocide, Prunier argued for a different definition, namely "a coordinated attempt to destroy a racially, religiously, or politically pre-defined group in its entirety". Why quibble about definitions? After all, they're irrelevant to Darfuris - their suffering will be the same, whatever tag is used. They're a concern for the international community alone. But for them, he concludes, the "G" word really matters.

In the west, "things are not seen in their reality but in their capacity to create brand images ... 'Genocide' is big because it carries the Nazi label, which sells well." Unfortunately what is happening in Darfur doesn't look like Treblinka. So the international community finds itself fixated on a distraction - a legal genocide, that doesn't look like a genocide.

Instead it should ignore the "G" word and focus on the key issue. The Sudanese government is responsible for the deaths of perhaps more than 200,000 Darfuris as an instrument of policy. It is weak, profoundly unpopular, and hugely vulnerable. It needs the pretence of Naivasha. It can be coerced. Let's get on with it.

· Dominick Donald is a senior analyst for Aegis Research and Intelligence, a London political risk consultancy

[Ends]

Friday, February 21, 2020

Sudan: RARE VIDEO of Darfur & Kalma refugee camp

THE BBC's Mohanad Hashim has gained rare access to Kalma refugee camp in western Sudan, home to nearly 200,000 Darfuris.

He is one of the first journalists to travel freely in the region in a decade.

To view the amazing BBC video report, published on 12 February 2020, click here.

Friday, September 20, 2019

Sudan: Janjaweed's international path to power (Part 10)

"He [Hemeti] has a mercenary force that he’s now willing to rent out to the region" -Cameron Hudson, former CIA analyst.  Read more below.

Article from Middle East Eye.net
Dated 28 August 2019 14:25 UTC
Gold, weapons, fighters: Sudanese Janjaweed's international path to power
Now better known as the RSF, Sudan's fearsome paramilitary group has a long history of involvement in foreign countries that has continued unabated since the uprising
Photo:  Sudan's Janjaweed have moved gold, guns and fighters across borders as they have grown into one of Sudan's most powerful forces (MEE/AFP/Illustrated by Mohamad Elaasar)

Perched on pick-up trucks adorned with machine guns and baskets of rocket-propelled grenades, the notorious Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were an unsettling sight for Khartoum when they began fanning out across the Sudanese capital earlier this year.

Already infamous for their origins in the Janjaweed militias - the “devils on horseback” accused of genocide in Darfur - the now-formalised paramilitary group was no longer rampaging through Sudan’s margins, but dominating street corners in the heart of the capital. 

Amid a tussle over Sudan’s future following months of protests that brought down three-decade ruler Omar al-Bashir, the RSF has become one of the country’s most powerful forces, and many consider their commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, otherwise known as Hemeti, to be Sudan’s de facto leader. 

Removing them has appeared impossible, despite the demands of protesters who despise the RSF for the deadly violence it has unleashed on demonstrations.

The joint civilian and military government now taking shape secures Dagolo’s position as a leader and his RSF as effectively equal to the army within the military. 

The RSF's rise involved doing Bashir’s bidding domestically, but also becoming an enforcer for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, transforming its image from a militia that raided villages mounted on horses and camels to one of a significant regional actor. 

Yemen was not, however, the first time the Janjaweed played a role with implications beyond the limits of Darfur.
Photo:  Heavily armed RSF fighters have been stationed around Khartoum and Sudan since Hemeti's rise to power (AFP)

The path Janjaweed leaders have followed to wealth and power has also involved moving weapons and fighters over borders with Libya and Sudan’s other neighbours, exporting the products of a gold mining monopoly to the United Arab Emirates and taking advantage of Europe’s desire to stem the flow of refugees from Africa

That international inclination does not appear to have been tempered by the increased burden of controlling Sudan’s capital, with more than 1,000 troops reportedly deployed to Libya and sales of weapons to militias in neighbouring Central African Republic continuing over recent months. 

“[The RSF] is another name for the Janjaweed, repackaged in a new form, with more resources, which it managed to get both domestically and also from abroad,” Professor Ali Dinar, a senior lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania's Department of African Studies, told Middle East Eye. 

“The RSF is a country inside a country. It has its own economic investment, it has its own political relations with countries. There is a lot going on.”

Along the borders: Libya, Chad, Central African Republic
Darfur’s long borders with Libya, Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR) are not nearly as hard as they appear to be on the map. They are porous, traversed by both traders and herders whose tribes span across boundaries and do little to halt the movement of transnational militias. 

So when Hemeti signed a $6m lobbying deal in May that proposed sending military support for east Libya-based Khalifa Haftar, it was far from the first time fighters or weapons would be moving across those borders.

The fall of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and the subsequent division of the country led to a surplus of weapons that often made their way south. But long before that, in the 1980s, Gaddafi was linked with the flow of weapons south of the Sahara. 

“Gaddafi, both before and after he fell, was a fountain of weapons for the greater Sahel region,” said Sudan researcher Eric Reeves, describing how even now much of the RSF’s modern weaponry seems to have come from Libya. 

When Gaddafi launched a series of wars against Chad throughout the 1980s, he stationed in Darfur his Islamic Legion, a paramilitary force founded to Arabise the Sahel. There, they were hosted by the Um Jalul tribe and the father of future Janjaweed leader Musa Hilal.

According to a CIA dispatch in 1986, Libya sent convoys of military equipment, technicians, special forces and other individuals, described as aid workers but who had military training. 

The New York Times reported two years later that Chadian officials accused Libya of “smuggling in rifles in sacks of flour” by using roads built under the pretence of aid to transport weapons.

Around the same time, tensions were growing between nomadic Arab communities like Hilal’s, who were losing their traditional grazing lands to a changing environment, and indigenous agricultural communities like the ethnic Fur. 

The tensions had by 1987 led to the creation of a group named the Arab Gathering, which in a letter to Sudan's then-president Jaafar Nimeiri, promoted a vision of Arab supremacy that reflected Gaddafi’s pan-Arab ideals.

“Dating back a long time ago, [there was] a kind of war between different Arab groups who settled in the region and the Fur who were there," Dinar said. "There was this conflict throughout the 80s with a lot of destruction from both sides, and this issue intensified with access to arms during the Chadian war.”

The Sudanese government, he said, did little to intervene and even potentially benefited from the tensions. Later, the government would tap into these Arab communities to form the Janjaweed. 

Hilal was one of those Arab Gathering members, and by the 2000s he was telling his Janjaweed fighters to "change the demography of Darfur and empty it of African tribes” - playing a crucial role in a state-sponsored campaign the UN estimates killed at least 300,000 people.
Photo:  A picture taken in April 2004 shows the village of Khair Wajid after being burnt by Janjaweed militias in the western Darfur region of Sudan (AFP/Photographer Julie Flint)

Two decades after Gaddafi’s incursions into Chad, another Chadian rebellion launched from Darfur in 2008 would help cement Hemeti's ties to Bashir’s government - at a time when various Janjaweed militias were fracturing and even rebelling against the government after their initial campaign against Darfuri rebels slowed down. 

Hemeti himself briefly defected, before returning to the government's side and being deployed with 4,000 men near the border to support Chadian rebels trying to topple President Idriss Deby - who himself had come to power with Khartoum’s support. 

According to a cable sent by the US charge d’affaires at the time, Khartoum’s need for fighters to support the Chad offensive led it to agree to Hemeti's conditions which it had previously rejected, including the formal integration of his forces, the promotion of his commanders and a payment of 3bn Sudanese pounds, then worth close to $120m. 

By 2012, another Janjaweed leader was recruiting fighters to leave Darfur for a foreign war: Moussa Assimeh.

Assimeh gave himself the title of general when he became one of the leading commanders of a grouping of militias known as the Seleka, which drew mostly from Muslim inhabitants of the CAR to topple the government in Bangui. 

The Seleka temporarily achieved their goal, but the violence unleashed on Christian Central Africans along the way prompted a backlash against Muslims, and the Seleka coalition soon fell apart. More than 5,000 were killed in fighting between communities, according to a count by the Associated Press. 

Though Assimeh was not part of Hemeti’s Janjaweed faction, Africa Confidential reported that some of the fighters who fought in CAR were later absorbed into the RSF

According to UN reports, the RSF has continued to sell weapons, equipment and pick-up trucks used to transport fighters to CAR militias, despite a peace agreement signed with the government. These sales have continued to involve Assimeh and even Hilal, despite the latter's imprisonment in Sudan since 2017.

The reports detail how militias take their vehicles for repair in southern Darfur’s town of Nyala, while Hemeti has himself met with Noureddine Adam, one of the most influential leaders of the Seleka rebellion. 

Across the Red Sea: Gold, weapons and the war in Yemen
When Bashir needed fighters to send to Yemen to support his Saudi and Emirati allies in 2015, it was to Hemeti he turned. 

The RSF was in the perfect position to provide troops to fight on the ground in Yemen, providing a physical presence to complement Saudi and Emirati air strikes, by recruiting in Darfur and reportedly, even across the border in Chad. 

“It’s not a secret. People were recruited specifically from south Darfur, from Nyala, to Yemen and were promised a lot of money,” said Dinar. “When you think of the unemployment rate in Sudan in general and that region of Darfur in particular... Instead of going and working as a civilian, you go and maybe you won’t come back.”

Hemeti himself has claimed he has 30,000 fighters in Yemen. 

According to Cameron Hudson, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former CIA analyst, Bashir used the RSF to deepen his relationship with the Saudis and Emiratis - but the relationship also helped Hemeti grow in stature himself. 

“He’s been on the ground in Yemen and has routinely gone through Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, meeting with military and political figures around battle plans in the Yemen campaign and has earned their trust and respect,” Hudson said. 

After Sudanese forces, apparently led by the RSF, dispersed in Khartoum a months-long peaceful sit-in in June against military rule, killing more than 100 protesters in the process, Hemeti’s forces swept across the city, some of them in UAE-made military vehicles. 
[Sudan Watch Ed: Above tweet by Christiaan Triebert @trbrtc Jun 6, 2019
"Here's a sharper picture of one of the Emirati-made NIMR Ajban 440A. It's driving north along Bashir Elnefeidi Street in Khartoum, #Sudan" 
View the original tweet and comments here: https://twitter.com/trbrtc/status/1136723968323440640 ]

After the military council took over from Bashir, with Hemeti officially named deputy leader, it was promised $3bn in aid from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Hemeti’s relationship with the Gulf has not relied solely on weapons however. He has also found fortune in Darfur’s gold mines. 

The mines of Jebel Amer had been attracting small-scale gold miners from the area and even across the borders in Chad and Central African Republic since 2010, but they quickly fell into the hands of the Janjaweed. 

Hilal’s forces built a monopoly, making money by imposing duties on prospectors and mining, and exporting gold themselves. 


By 2017, Hemeti was in charge of those mines, having taken them over during a government-sponsored disarmament campaign in Darfur during which the RSF defeated Hilal’s forces and imprisoned the rival Janjaweed leader. 

“Gold is money, gold is power and I think that whoever controls that gold has a lot to say in politics,” said Dinar. “Though the government of Sudan knows that, instead of putting its own hand on it, it subcontracts it to Hemeti and Hemeti has to show his loyalty.”

North towards the Mediterranean
On the long route north to Europe via the Mediterranean, Sudan is both a stopping point for and a source of refugees. 

The European Union, wanting to both stem this movement of people and the numbers dying during the crossing, started the Khartoum Process in 2015 to invest in projects in the Horn of Africa.

While the projects were aimed at improving the living conditions refugees were fleeing in their countries, they also involved working with border forces to stop people from reaching Libya, the main embarkation point for Europe. 

In Sudan, it was the RSF who took on these responsibilities. Though the EU denies it ever provided funds directly to the RSF or the Sudanese government, a UN employee told MEE that the EU’s partner organisations do.

Hemeti himself has claimed the RSF works on Europe's behalf to "protect their national security” by stopping thousands of migrants.

Meanwhile, a September 2018 report by Dutch think tank Clingendael cited interviews with migrants claiming the RSF had also been involved in trafficking people to Libya.

“The EU looked the other way, it didn’t complain about this,” said Sudanese researcher Suliman Baldo, a senior advisor at the Enough Project, which campaigns for solutions to major conflicts in Africa. “It didn’t complain that the RSF were implicated in several incidences of being involved in human trafficking.”

“The EU needs to seriously subject itself to a thorough review of the negative consequences it has had, chief among them that it legitimised a deadly militia.”

Hemeti’s lobbying deal signed with Canadian firm Dickens and Madson in May promised the development of more international links beyond Africa and the Middle East, dangling the possibility of securing meetings with US officials - including President Donald Trump.

The firm also promised to lobby Russia, with which Sudan already has a strong relationship. Russian security firms train the Sudanese military and since 2018 have been operating in southern Darfur, training fighters from the CAR, according to Amsterdam-based Sudanese broadcaster Radio Dabanga. 

A mercenary force
The US charge d’affaires in Khartoum wrote in February 2008 that the “ruthless Janjaweed” militias of Darfur had shown in their dealings with the Sudanese government that they were pragmatic and concerned above all, about preserving their own political and economic interests. 
“[They] will go with whoever offers them the best deal,” he wrote. 

Over the following decade, various Janjaweed militias have continued to engage in both domestic and regional missions, serving their own interests as well as that of the government's. 

According to Hudson, the large force Hemeti now commands will always need work to keep the fighters satiated and loyal, which increases their likelihood of continuing to work beyond Sudan’s borders.

“He needs to keep them fed and he needs to keep them happy,” said Hudson. “He has essentially a mercenary force that he’s now willing to rent out to the region and that should be a concern to all the states in the region.”

“I think the message to the Saudis and Emiratis is that he may be your man in Khartoum, but be aware that one day he might sell his services to the highest bidder.”

This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.


The notorious militia leader seizing control of Sudan's future

Saturday, June 29, 2019

Darfur Sudan war history by Julie Flint & Alex de Waal - Secret World of Friedhelm Eronat and Darfur oil

Darfur Sudan war history by Julie Flint and Alex de Waal

SINCE 2003 when war broke out in Darfur, western Sudan, the humanitarian tragedy in Darfur has stirred politicians, Hollywood celebrities and students to appeal for a peaceful resolution to the crisis. 

Beyond the horrific pictures of sprawling refugee camps and lurid accounts of rape and murder lies a complex history steeped in religion, politics, and decades of internal unrest. 

Julie Flint and Alex de Waal have written the definitive history of the Darfur conflict. Very detailed and thoroughly documented from first hand sources, the book will quickly become a classic and will correct some of the outside misperceptions of who did what to whom and why. Arguments/dp/1842779508
  

Image Darfur: A New History of a Long War (African Arguments) 2nd Edition (April 1, 2008) by Julie Flint and Alex de Waal

The book 'Darfur' traces the origins, organisation and ideology of the infamous Janjaweed and other rebel groups, including the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). It also analyses the confused responses of the Sudanese government and African Union. This thoroughly updated 2nd Edition also features a powerful analysis of how the conflict has been received in the international community and the varied attempts at peacekeeping. 
Julie Flint is a highly regarded film-maker and journalist with many years of experience living in Darfur and travelling in Sudan where she has many Sudanese friends. Alex de Waal is one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa and executive director of the World Peace Foundation.

Look inside and see more reviews at Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Darfur-History-Long-African-
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The Secret World of Friedhelm Eronat and Darfur oil

HERE from the archive of this site Sudan Watch are three must-reads on the secret world of the Chelsea oil tycoon Friedhelm Eronat. The three investigative reports give a good insight into the real reason behind for the Darfur war, to clear the way for oil. “Oil is not a commodity,” Eronat said. “It’s a political weapon.”
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Friedhelm Eronat's oil deals in Darfur, Sudan - Secret World of the Chelsea Oil Tycoon
By Adrian Gatton, London Evening Standard
May 26, 2005
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Friedhelm Eronat is behind Cliveden Sudan and Darfur oil deal - It's blood for oil in Southern Sudan
June 09, 2005
Here is a transcript of UK Channel 4 News' Jonathan Miller's report entitled "Briton involved in Sudan oil drill" - below which is a rare photograph of Friedhelm Eronat, courtesy Channel 4 News.
Photo: Friedhelm Eronat
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Invisible hands: The secret world of the oil fixer (Ken Silverstein)
“Oil is not a commodity,” Eronat said. “It’s a political weapon.”
Invisible hands: The secret world of the oil fixer
July 15, 2009
By Ken Silverstein, Harper’s Magazine, March 2009  
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Thursday, January 20, 2011

Spare a thought for the other Sudanese (Julie Flint)



Photo: Julie Flint, co-author, with Alex de Waal, of “Darfur: A New History of a Long War,” has written extensively on Sudan. Further details below.

From THE DAILY STAR :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb
Spare a thought for the other Sudanese
Commentary by Julie Flint
Friday, 14 January 2011
Full copy:
As southern Sudanese celebrate their self-determination referendum, spare a thought for those they leave behind – all those in northern Sudan for whom the birth of an independent state in the south of the country will be the death of a dream: the democratic, decentralized “New Sudan,” united and free of racial, ethnic or religious prejudice, which was the stated aim of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (S.P.L.M./A.) under the leadership of John Garang.

Conventional wisdom has tended to be that the National Congress Party (N.C.P.) of President Omar al-Bashir would fight tooth and nail to prevent the South seceding. Prominent commentators, especially in the United States, have warned that another “genocide” was on the cards. One went as far as to say the violence was likely to resemble “what happens in a stockyard.” Instead, Bashir recently traveled to the southern capital, Juba, on the eve of the vote and promised “to respect the choice of the citizens of the South.”

The North-South understanding is of course fragile. There are many flashpoints, many spoilers, and many people in Khartoum who think Bashir has given away too much (a third of the country, three-quarters of national oil production, and much rich grazing land that is of critical importance to northern pastoralists). Generally, however, the approach of the president’s N.C.P. seems to be that the S.P.L.M. has set secession as its objective, and the N.C.P. will accept it, but also make the price very high.

Part of the price is that the S.P.L.M. will not be permitted to continue as a political party in the North. The S.P.L.A., the armed wing of the S.P.L.M., will be permitted no presence – except for a minority that could be integrated into the Sudan Armed Forces (at the discretion of the N.C.P., and on its terms). The S.P.L.M. and its international backers must accept that they will have no role or access across the new border after partition.

Already there are signs that the N.C.P. is closing down in terms of tolerating dissent in the North – military offensives in Darfur, arrests of journalists and activists in Khartoum, inflammatory statements from the very top of the N.C.P., especially regarding the future of southerners in the North. Notice to quit has been served on the United Nations peacekeeping force, or U.N.M.I.S.

There is special concern among the Nuba people of Southern Kordofan state, “African” tribes at the southern limit of the Arabized North, many of whom fought alongside the southern S.P.L.A. for 15 years, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. A special protocol in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (C.P.A.) that ended the civil war failed to satisfy the aspirations of S.P.L.M. supporters in the Nuba region and the second “protocol state,” Blue Nile – most importantly, their demand for self-determination.

The Nuba war was a civil war in its own right, an indigenously mobilized rebellion with strong local roots. With international attention focused on the conflict in southern Sudan, Khartoum sealed the region off from 1991 until 1995. At its height, the war was not only a war to defeat the rebels; it was a program of forced relocations designed to empty the mountains and resettle the Nuba in camps where their Nuba identity would be erased. Humanitarian access was denied. Educated people and intellectuals were detained and killed, according to a security officer who later fled the region, traumatized by what he himself had overseen. The aim, as he recalled, was “to ensure that the Nuba were so primitive that they couldn’t speak for themselves.”

After 1991, cut off even from the S.P.L.A. in southern Sudan, the Nuba fought alone, without resupply from the South. In the middle of a three-year famine, they established a civilian administration and judicial system, organized a religious tolerance conference, and took a popular vote on whether to fight on or surrender.

The unique nature of the rebellion was one of the reasons why the Nuba became something of a cause célèbre for a few years, once the atrocities of the government’s war in the mountains were exposed. Then came the C.P.A., and the war in Darfur. The Nuba fell off the agenda and implementation of the provisions relevant to them in the C.P.A. was neglected – jobs, development, and, critically, the formation of a new national army incorporating S.P.L.A. units.

On July 9, the C.P.A. will end – and with it the agreements that determine the fate of the Nuba people. A leaked N.C.P. document has identified them as “new southerners,” who must be “weakened … controlled [and] pulled out at the roots.” Secessionists, in other words. Rightly or wrongly, many Nuba fear the worst, beginning now.

The promised “popular consultations” for the two protocol states to review C.P.A. implementation remains a weak and ill-defined mechanism that can be drawn out indefinitely by disagreement with the center – even if the concept survives a North-South split. Southern Kordofan needs more than a popular consultation. It needs an internationally mandated mechanism to oversee implementation of unfulfilled C.P.A. commitments beyond the end of the C.P.A. It needs agreement on a new international presence, with examination of non-U.N. options in case Khartoum remains opposed to U.N. troops. It needs security mechanisms acceptable to and involving S.P.L.A. units. Northern Sudan as a whole needs the democratization the C.P.A. promised to deliver, but didn’t.

Southerners may feel they have won their battle. Northerners have not.
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BOOK: "DARFUR: A NEW HISTORY OF A LONG WAR"
Authored by Julie Flint and Alex de Waal





Image courtesy: Amazon. Further details online at:

(UK) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Darfur-History-African-Arguments-Short/dp/1842779508

(USA) http://www.amazon.com/Darfur-History-Long-African-Arguments/dp/1842779508
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LATEST NEWS FROM SRS - SUDAN RADIO SERVICE:

Thursday, 20 January 2011 (Kadugli) – The people of southern Kordofan are still waiting for a response from the national election commission on when the new voter registration exercise will start.

The SPLM spokesperson and the information secretary in Southern Kordofan Mohammedan Ibrahim spoke to SRS on Thursday from Kadugli.

[Mohammedan Ibrahim]: “Now we are organizing for the elections in southern Kordofan so that afterwards we go for a popular consultation. We are now in the process and the Election Commission is insisting that they will work with the old register. However, all the political parties in the state are rejecting that. Last week citizens of South Kordofan went on a peaceful demonstration. They took a letter from the political parties to the commission rejecting the old register. Finally the commission stopped the process. The commission in Khartoum held a meeting and we reached a solution that they will work with the new census result. However up to now the election commission hasn’t announced the new timetable for the registration exercise in southern Kordofan.”

Mister Mohammedan Ibrahim explains the controversy behind the delay of the new voter registration exercise for elections scheduled two months after the southern Sudan Referendum.

[Mohammedan Ibrahim]: “There are two sides on the story. One, the people of southern Kordofan have rejected the first census result. The census was done yes but there are new geographical constituencies. Again there are some elements in Khartoum who are trying to delay the elections. But this will be the deadline and we will organize a popular consultation which will be peaceful. If there is anyone who doesn’t want popular consultation to take place thinking that if it doesn’t happen it will kill the will of the people of Southern Kordofan then that person is mistaken. Our will, will never die. We will struggle to tell them we got the right of our people.”

Initially, the registration was scheduled to start on January 16th but has now been postponed till further notice.

Over the weekend citizens of Southern Kordofan held a peaceful demonstration against what they call inappropriate procedures of the voter registration process.

According to the CPA, South Kordofan and Blue Nile states will hold elections before the popular consultation exercise in the two regions.
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Thursday, 20 January 2011 (Khartoum/UK) – The United Nation Security Council is urging the federal government not to get involved in aerial bombardments in Darfur but work towards a ceasefire arrangement with the anti-government groups in the region.

On Wednesday, the federal Advisor to the minister of information, Dr. Rabie Abdulaati accused some elements inside the UN-SC of wanting to create a new conflict in Darfur.

Abdulaati says this call by the UN Security council comes after the federal government has fulfilled its commitment to the people of Southern Sudan by conducting a self determination referendum.

[Rabie Abdulaati] “It is clear that this call in which the Security Council urges to stop air raids in Darfur comes at a time when the comprehensive peace agreement was implemented. They fully know that the Sudanese government originally aimed at peace stability, not only in Southern Sudan, but all over Sudan.

This call only came to draw attention once again, after peace was established in Southern Sudan, and chance was given to Southern population to decide its fate through the ballot box, for whether to secede or unite, this achievement should have been the axis upon which Western countries should concentrate. Instead of calling to stop air rides which don’t exist.”

However, the anti-government group the Justice and Equality Movement welcomes the call for negotiation by the Security Council.

The Justice and Equality Movement leader Al-Tahir Al-Faki told SRS about their readiness to reach a peace agreement with the federal government if the latter shows serious willingness to negotiate a political solution in Doha.

[Al-Tahir Al-Faki] “JEM accepts that the ideal solution for Darfur is a peaceful agreement and the last part is that the solution must be a comprehensive one. Not that a single movement to sign an agreement with the Sudanese government. The movement praises the stand by the UN and assures that, the movement believes in the strategic peaceful resolution, and it will be available at Al-Doha for that purpose.”
JEM delegation in Doha started last December talks on a cessation of hostilities agreement with the federal government. The mediation team said the movement is committed to engage political talks after the agreement.
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Thursday, 20 January 2011 (Abyei) – Tensions are once again rising in Abyei, with SPLM accusing the Messeriya community in Abyei of continuing road blocks in the region.

This comes just a week after the Ngo’k Dinka and Messeriya communities signed an agreement on secession of hostilities and a peaceful co-existence in Kadugli in Southern Kordofan.

The deputy SPLM chairman for Abyei area, Juach Agok, spoke to SRS on Thursday from Abyei.

[Juach Agok]: “Yes, the road has been blocked and commodities and the IDPs are being prevented from coming in to Abyei .Possibly, the Messeriya are behind this, but, behind them is the popular defense force which was formed by the government. So, I still do not point a finger to the Messeriya alone; the Central Government is behind it also. This started long before the start of the referendum and up to now, they are still blocking roads, looting and raping. They say it is the Messeriya but actually, it is the NCP because the NCP is using the Messeriya so that they Claim Abyei through the Messeriya.”

Juach Agok is urging the federal government and the Government of Southern Sudan to resolve the matter rather than considering it a problem of the Abyei people.

[Juach Chol]: “This thing should not be left to the people of Abyei because this road is connecting the whole of Warrap state , part of Unity state, Northern Bahr el Ghazal state, Western Bahr el Ghazal , even Central Equatoria and Western Equatoria use this road .So, it should be taken seriously by the Government of Southern Sudan . And, the humanitarian issue because some people have now spent more than 20 days on the road, suffering of hunger just because of this blockade. So, we appeal to the Government of Southern Sudan to take this as an important issue and not just leave it like that.”

Efforts to reach the federal government for a response were unsuccessful.
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Thursday, 20 January 2011 (Wau) – The residents of Wau town, capital of Western Bahr El-Ghazal State have expressed satisfaction with the preliminary results of the self-determination referendum in their state.

The state referendum high committee announced on Wednesday that Western Bahr El-Ghazal state scored ninety-five percent secession votes during the polling process.

Sudan Radio Service spoke to some residents of Wau town on Thursday.

Mister Faohat Richard Hasssan Maburuk is the Secretary-General of the Islamic Council for Southern Sudan:

[Faohat Richard Hasssan]: “What happened was expected because the people of Wau actually truly they are always with what Southern Sudanese are up to. Whatever a Southerner wants to do he would do it. As such, our opinion is that this referendum has come and passed peacefully and its result is what pleases the citizens of Western Bahr El-Ghazal State now. Every Southerners must accept this result and be pleased by it. All of us must accept this result because it was what was expected”.

Madam Antonit Benjamin Bubu is a woman activist in Wau:

[Antonit Benjamin Bubu]: “As a woman in Western Bahr El-Ghazal State, I am very happy indeed about the results announced yesterday and I have accepted these results, because truly there was a spirit of democracy manifested and truly the referendum was free and fair, because there is no where all the people are the same. If the results were to be hundred percent secession then there would be nothing like that it wouldn’t have been free because everybody has their own opinion. When it was reported that there were unmarked papers, it means there were people who were neither for unity nor for secession.”.

Madam Angelina No is another woman activist in Wau:

[Angelina No]: “I am very happy indeed with the result which scored the percentage of ninety-five secession votes. I am talking in the name of women of Western Bahr El-Ghazal State and a citizen, I am urging those who voted for unity to change their opinion, I am demanding that let them change their opinion because our aspiration in the referendum was that we determine our destiny as Southern Sudanese. For anybody who voted for unity should change their mind. People say it was democracy, but we as southerners all of us were supposed to vote for secession because we want to determine our destiny as southerners in order to be free so that we don’t continue to be second-class citizens, we want to be first-class citizens in our own country Southern Sudan”.

Michael Manyel Masheik is a youth in Wau:

[Michael Manyel Masheik]: “We were expecting the result to be more than that, but the result which is ninety-five percent is a honorable result, it is good. I would like to congratulate the people of Western Bahr El-Ghazal State for having scored this result and I would like to say they are not less nationalistic than the other states. What they have done is a great work, and I am one of the people who voted for secession and what I am left with is only to wait for the result which will be announced officially in February”

Those were views of some residents of Wau town.
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Thursday, 20 January 2011 (Wau) – The Governor of Lakes State has condemned the police in Rumbek for lashing girls allegedly dressed indecently in Rumbek town.

Governor Chol Tong Mayay said the act was done out of ignorance by untrained policeman in the state.
He spoke to SRS on Thursday in Rumbek.

[Chol Tong Mayay]: “I have to say it was total ignorance that the untrained police which we used by then to help us in maintaining security during the referendum polling as you may have observed were not carrying arms. They were just carrying sticks. It was part of training that they have to be exposed on how to be policemen. However they went ahead and took the law into their own hand and started beating up the girls”

Governor Chol said that the policemen who were involved in the act have been arrested and the matter is being looked into.

[Chol Tong Mayay]: “We have to say we regret as the government. There is no government body which has ever issued such kind of directives. So we have condemned it and measures have already been taken. Those who have committed this unlawful incident are now in jail and all measures are being taken against them. From that day they were immediately flashed out from the market and taken back to the training centers. So now they are being trained.”

The governor added that there has been no order to slash girls on what is termed as indecent dressing in the state.
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MORE NEWS FROM SRS - SUDAN RADIO SERVICE


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Postscript from Sudan Watch Editor
Shortly after publishing the previous post here at Sudan Watch on January 6th my computer was hacked to such an extent that it crashed and died. On January 10th I purchased a new £2.5K system, hence the reason for not being able to blog until now. Also, I was unable to receive a satellite signal or use digital radio to tune into BBC World Service. Until the other computer is repaired, I have no access to six years of data and email addresses. I have spent the past week reconstructing 1000+ news feeds and bookmarks from memory. If you are a friend of Sudan Watch and wish to keep in contact or I owe you an email please send me your email address asap. Thanks.