Hanged Sudanese 'may be innocent'

From BBC April 14, 2009 - excerpt:
Hanged Sudanese 'may be innocent'

Lobby group Amnesty International has condemned as "outrageous" the hanging of nine Sudanese men convicted of beheading a newspaper editor in 2006.

"They were arbitrarily arrested, tortured and then subjected to an unfair trial," said the body's deputy Africa director Tawanda Hondora.

From Sudan Radio Service April 14, 2009:

(Khartoum) - The family of a man executed after he was accused of assassinating the journalist Mohamed Taha, says that Taha did not write an article criticizing the people of Darfur.

It was alleged at the trial of the nine men who were found guilty of Taha’s murder that an article he had written about Darfur was the motive for the killing. The nine were hanged on Monday.

Habib Ali Abdul Mageed, the brother of Abdul Majeed Ali, who was among those sentenced to death and executed for the murder, claimed that the nine executed people were innocent.

Mageed also claimed that it was the Sudanese authorities who had killed the journalist.

[Habib Ali Abdul Mageed]: “The decision is oppressive, first of all, let me correct some information for the people in Sudan, this message is to Taha’s family, so they don’t think mistakenly that he was killed by these nine people. The media tried to hide the truth. The truth is that the journalist Taha did not write anything about the Fur community or even about the court, because the accusation said that he was killed because he abused the Fur tribe, he did not write anything about the Fur. Mohamed Taha was killed by the same hand which killed these innocent nine people. The government is trying to cover up by killing innocent people who are opposing them. These people, (the government) killed Mohamed Taha.”

Mageed claimed that the suspects wanted to get to the truth by meeting Taha’s family but the authorities rejected their demand.

[Habib Ali Abdul Mageed]:]: “This is a special message to Taha’s family, that the nine innocent suspects wanted to deliver a message before they went to the gallows, but the authorities refused to allow that. The message is that they did not want mercy, because they did nothing wrong. The message was to urge Taha’s family not to become involved in the crime with the people who hatched the plot, to be patient, to seek the truth.”

Habib said that the lawyer who was defending the accused was detained and was due to be released today (Tuesday).

[Habib Ali Abdul Mageed]: “The lawyer, Kamala Omer, the hero who was sent to jail because of these innocent people, in order not to attend the catastrophe of yesterday, Kamal Omer will be released today according to my information. He does not know what has happened to the people whom he was defending.”

The editor of the Al-Wifaq newspaper, Mohamed Taha Mohamed Ahmed, was kidnapped by armed men from his home and his decapitated body was found the following morning lying on the street in southern Khartoum on September 6, 2006.

Taha was an Islamist who was detained several times and tortured by national security agents for criticizing the government.

In 2005, he wrote a controversial article about the origins of the prophet Mohamed, which was met with anger and death threats by some extremists in Sudan.

The nine men who were executed were buried together in a mass grave in al-Sahafa graveyard on Tuesday.

From Reuters April 14, 2009:
Crowd burns Khartoum shops, cars after executions

(Khartoum) - A crowd of angry demonstrators burned shops and cars in a local market in south Khartoum, residents said on Tuesday, a day after nine Darfuri men were executed for the killing of a newspaper editor.

Some 5,000 people turned out under a heavy police presence to attend the funerals of the nine men, found guilty of killing Mohamed Taha Mohamed Ahmed in September 2006.

Some in the crowd chanted slogans in support of the Sudan Liberation Movement, a Darfur rebel group which has been fighting the government in the western region of Darfur.

Local radio, citing witnesses and security sources, reported that relatives of the executed men had clashed with police in two places.

Witnesses said a small number of demonstrators destroyed and damaged shops and cars on the way to the funerals.

At the men's trial, the lead police investigator said the defendants had been infuriated by an article in Ahmed's newspaper, al-Wifaq. A defence lawyer said the article played down reports about rape in Darfur and used unflattering language to describe Darfuri women.

The newspaper had also angered Islamists with articles about the Prophet Mohammad and had criticised the ruling National Congress Party of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

The human rights group Amnesty International condemned the executions, saying the men were tortured to extract confessions.

"The execution of the nine men is outrageous. They were arbitrarily arrested, tortured and then subjected to an unfair trial," said Tawanda Hondora, Amnesty's Africa Deputy Director.

The government, viewing the killing of the editor and the trial as sensitive matters, initially restricted reporting of the case to state media.

From Sudan Tribune April 15, 2009:
Nine hanged men claimed innocence

April 14, 2009 (KHARTOUM) — Nine people executed Monday by the Sudanese authorities had asserted their innocence before being hanged for the murder of a prominent Islamist journalist in 2006. Also, the Fur tribe protested the execution and considered it as directed against their ethnic group.

The editor of Al-Wifaq daily Mohamed Taha Mohamed Ahmed was snatched from his home in a northern district of Khartoum by armed men and his decapitated body was found the following morning lying on the street in southern Khartoum on September 6, 2006.

Ahmed’s murder had been perceived at first as motivated by blasphemy for articles republished from the internet that questioned the parentage of Islam’s prophet Muhammad; also a group claiming to be al-Qaida’s branch in Sudan issued a claim of responsibility for the murder.

Sudanese authorities responded by indicting ten people belonging to the Fur tribe, one of the most affected by the Darfur conflict. Also, the Ministry of Justice kept secret for a time the details on those arrested for the killing or on their motive.

But later, they disclosed that according to the confessions obtained from the suspects, Mohamed Taha had been slaughtered because of articles questioning the morals of Darfuri women in reaction to reports about sexual violence against women in the war-ravaged Darfur region.

"The convicted told their families before being executed they were innocent and never killed the journalist," one of the relatives of the convicted people told Sudan Tribune today from Khartoum on condition of anonymity. The relative added that they told that to their family just hours before the execution.

"They said they should be considered as martyrs for the cause of Darfur and asked their families to not weep for them," the source added, before commenting "this is a political crime." He stressed that the convicted were tortured to confess to the crime.

"And you should know that even under torture only three confessed and retracted before the judge," he added.

Yesterday morning the penitentiary authorities of Koper Prison allowed the nine convicted to meet their families for two hours. Hundreds of Darfuris were gathered outside the prison, while Mohamed Taha’s family was allowed to witness the hanging.

"The execution of the nine men is outrageous. They were arbitrarily arrested, tortured and then subjected to an unfair trial," said Tawanda Hondora, Africa Deputy Director at Amnesty International.

The hanging also angered Darfuri who demonstrated in Khartoum to protest the hanging of the nine men. On Tuesday some 5000 demonstrators burned shops and cars in south Khartoum. They also chanted slogans supporting the Sudan Liberation Movement, a rebel group led by the exiled Abdel Wahid Al-Nur.

Further, in a statement released from the Darfuri Osman Tarleen, one of Fur traditional leaders called to investigate the execution of the nine Fur saying it came in line with the crimes committed by the government in the region since 2003.

All these crimes will not "cow the will of our tribe — instead such intimidations increases our determination" to struggle for the rights of our people, the tribal leader said.

The nine men executed in Khartoum-North yesterday were: Ishag Al-Sanusi Juma, aged 75 years; Abdel Hai Omer Abdel Majeed, 45 years; Mustafa Adam Mohamed Mohamed Khalifa, 72 years; Abdel Majeed Ali, 33 years; Sabir Zakariya Hassan, 28 years; Gamal Eldin Eisa Al Haj, 45 years; Adam Ibrahim Alhaj, 44 years; Mohamed Birgid, 65 years; and Hassan Adam Fadol, 55 years.

The nine were buried in Sahafa East Cemetery.

1 Comment 15 April 2009 by Mr. Moto Moto
The justice system in Sudan has and will remain a suspect because of the way justice is dispense. Because of so much interference it is hard to tell whether people are convicted rightly or wrongly. Whereas I believe intimidation of journalists should never be condone, it is quite surprising that all the supposed members of "Al qaeda in Sudan" who were hange last monday are Darfuris. This begs lots of questions

Oxfam GB submits appeal against expulsion from N. Sudan

Oxfam GB submits formal appeal against expulsion from northern Sudan
15 Apr 2009
Source: Oxfam GB - UK (via Reuters)
Website: www.oxfam.org.uk

AGENCY REFUTES ALLEGATIONS AGAINST IT, WARNS HUMANITARIAN SITUATION IN DARFUR HAS DETERIORATED SINCE THE EXPULSIONS

International aid agency Oxfam GB said today that it has formally submitted its appeal against the Sudanese government's decision to expel it from northern Sudan, and expressed serious concern at the false allegations that continue to be made against it and other expelled agencies. The agency warned the humanitarian situation in Darfur is worsening following the expulsion, with people facing shortages of water and other aid.

Penny Lawrence, Oxfam GB's International Programmes Director, said: "We have already been told that water pumps in some Darfur camps have stopped pumping, and there are growing fears about the potential for outbreaks of disease in the coming rainy season. The expulsion is already affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of the very poorest and most vulnerable Sudanese people."

Oxfam GB has been assisting 600,000 people across northern Sudan - not only in Darfur, but in the east of the country and the poorest areas of the capital Khartoum, which have also been affected. Programmes providing clean water, sanitation, education and microfinance have all been shut down.

Lawrence said: "We strongly refute the government's accusations that we have acted outside our humanitarian mandate. We are an independent, impartial organisation, and we have not provided any information to the International Criminal Court's investigation. For the past 25 years, our predominantly Sudanese staff have worked tirelessly to help improve the lives of the poorest people in Sudan. We have provided emergency aid during conflicts, floods and droughts, and long term development support in some of the most remote and marginalised areas of the country. We remain committed to ensuring people get the support they need."

The agency said it has still not been given an official reason why its registration has been revoked, or been given evidence of any of the allegations against it. Its appeal has been submitted in the timeframe given under Sudanese law, after lengthy legal consultations.

A recent joint assessment in Darfur by the United Nations and the Government of Sudan showed that hundreds of thousands of people now have less access to safe water, healthcare, food and shelter, and that these needs are likely to become acute in the coming months. In many locations where Oxfam GB was working, the impact is already apparent. In Kalma camp in South Darfur, boreholes have stopped pumping water. In the camps of Kass and Shangil Tobai, communities have been rationing water to try to make it available for longer. Thousands of latrines will fill up and need replacing in the coming months, and many health programmes aimed at reducing the threat of water-borne diseases such as cholera and malaria in the rainy season have ceased. Given the urgency and scale of the need, replacing these programmes will be an enormously difficult challenge.

Notes to Editors:

Oxfam GB first began working in Sudan in 1983, responding to the needs of people displaced when war erupted in the south of the country. The following year it helped people made destitute by the drought in Darfur and eastern Sudan. It has been working in Sudan continuously ever since. In 2004 it scaled up its response to the Darfur conflict, as well as working to improve the livelihoods of poor communities in eastern Red Sea State and the capital Khartoum. Although it has been expelled from northern Sudan, Oxfam GB continues to operate in southern Sudan, providing clean water, sanitation and livelihoods support to people affected by decades of conflict.

Oxfam GB submitted its appeal to the Sudanese Humanitarian Aid Commission, in accordance with Sudanese law under Article 14 of the Voluntary and Humanitarian Work Act 2006. The Act allows agencies one month to appeal.

Sudan's Bashir hails Obama's overture to Islamic world

Sudan's Bashir hails Obama's overture to Islamic world
Mon Apr 13, 2009
By Alastair Sharp

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan's leader welcomed on Monday "positive signs" sent by U.S. President Barack Obama to the Islamic world, striking a more conciliatory tone towards Washington, seen as an enemy of Khartoum in the past.

"We, our brothers and sisters, are seekers of peace and stability and we do not want our country to live under the shadows of swords and tension," President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said at the opening of the eighth session of parliament.

"Our hands remain held out to those who call for peace and justice in accordance with the standards of fairness and dignity," he added, echoing a phrase used by Obama in his inauguration address.

"We even welcome the positive signs sent by U.S. President Barack Obama to the Islamic world on more than one occasion."

Washington has had tense relations with the Islamist government of Bashir, who came to power in Africa's largest country in a 1989 coup.

The United States imposed economic sanctions on Sudan in 1997 and labelled it a "state sponsor of terrorism."

Ties were strained further by the conflict in Darfur, which both Obama and his predecessor George W. Bush have called genocide, a description Sudan's government rejects.

Bashir also used his speech Monday to defend a decision to expel 13 foreign aid agencies from Darfur last month after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes in Sudan's western region.

He said the decision was made "for the sake of protecting the sovereignty, security and independence of our country."

Bashir's comments came after a visit to Sudan this month by Obama's special envoy to the country, Scott Gration, who met officials from the government, rebel groups and international organizations, promising to "look, learn and listen."

Gration, who is expected to return to Sudan within months, said he was looking for friendship and cooperation from the Sudanese government but he did sound one note of criticism.

After visiting a refugee camp in Darfur, he said he was concerned the region was on the brink of a deeper humanitarian crisis following the expulsion of the aid agencies.

Gration's predecessor Richard Williamson, appointed by Bush, suspended talks on normalising relations with Sudan last year, saying northern and southern Sudanese leaders were not serious about reconciling after a decades-long civil war.

International experts say at least 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2.7 million driven from their homes in almost six years of ethnic and politically driven fighting in Darfur. Khartoum says 10,000 people have died.

(Editing by Katie Nguyen)

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Khartoum bureau)

Envoy to Tehran stresses Mossad's role in Sudan's insecurity

Sudan's envoy to Tehran described the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Sudanese President Hassan al-Bashir over alleged war crimes as a concerted move to help rebels establish an independent country in Darfur to support West's interests.



From Fars News Agency April 13, 2009
Envoy Stresses Mossad's Role in Sudan's Insecurity

TEHRAN (FNA) - Sudan's envoy to Tehran stressed the role of the Israeli Intelligence service, Mossad, in stirring unrests and insecurity in his country, and said the arrest warrant issued for Omar al-Bashir aimed to help establishment of an independent state in Darfur to support West's interests in the African country.

Noting that the US, Britain, France and Israel gain benefit from unrests in Sudan and that they have made lots of efforts to sow discord in the country, Sudanese Ambassador to Iran Soleiman Abd-al-Tavvab Al-Zein told FNA, "We have plenty of documents that prove Israel's interference in Sudan's internal affairs."

He described Israel as a threat to the Middle East, Africa and the Arab world and said, "First I should say that there are some (actors) behind the stage that provide the poor people in Darfur with weapons and financial aids to form armed forces and (provide) whatever needed for stirring insecurity (in Sudan)."

"If we pay more attention to the issue, we will see Mossad and other espionage and intelligence services of the West have a hand in creating insecurity in Sudan."

Referring to the underlying causes of West's campaign against Sudan, Al-Zein reiterated, "The successes gained by Sudan's Islamic government in uprooting poverty, extracting oil and economic progress, which were averse to West's desires and intentions, are not acceptable to them.

"They have spared no effort in bringing havoc, discord, unrest and division to Sudan in a bid to stop the wheel of development of this country."

He also described the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Sudanese President Hassan al-Bashir over alleged war crimes as a concerted move to help rebels establish an independent country in Darfur to support West's interests.

UNAMID: Security situation in Darfur April 13, 2009

From United Nations - African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID)
EL FASHER (DARFUR), Sudan, April 13, 2009 via APO
Daily Media Brief

Security Situation in Darfur

During the past 72 hours, the security situation in Darfur was reported to be relatively calm; however, car-jacking incidents and banditry activities continue to occur in most parts of North and West Darfur.

UNAMID Military and Police continue to conduct their regular patrols and activities throughout the region. The military component conducted 22 confidence-building patrols, 15 escort patrols, six night patrols and one investigation patrol covering 45 villages/camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs). The police component conducted a total of 96 patrols in and around the villages and IDP camps.

Human Rights Forum to kick off in West Darfur

The second regular meeting of the Darfur Human Rights Forum will be held tomorrow in the West Darfur state capital of El Geneina. This one-day forum will bring together officials from the Government of Sudan at the local and national level; members of the Advisory Council on Human Rights (ACHR), also representing the Government; members of the diplomatic community; the African Union; UNAMID and United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) Human Rights officials. It will also include participants from the Darfur State Committees on Combating Violence against Women and Children.

The purpose of the Forum is to promote transparent and constructive dialogue on human rights issues between the Government of Sudan and UNAMID. It will also form part of the ongoing efforts by UNAMID to support the Government in the discharge of its responsibilities in the promotion and protection of human rights.

Sudan hangs nine for journalist's murder: witness

Sudan hangs nine for journalist's murder: witness

KHARTOUM (AFP) — Nine Sudanese men convicted of murdering a prominent journalist in 2006 were hanged on Monday in a Khartoum prison, a relative of the victim told AFP.

"I saw the nine hang," the witness said on condition of anonymity.

The hanging took place at the Kober prison in Khartoum-North in presence of family members of Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed but journalists were not allowed to witness the execution.

Ahmed's decapitated body was found in the capital Khartoum in September 2006, a day after he was abducted by armed men from his home in north Khartoum.

The former chief editor of the pro-Islamist newspaper Al-Wifaq, he was considered close to the Muslim Brotherhood and had strained ties with the government of President Omar al-Beshir.

Ten people were sentenced to death in November 2007 for Ahmed's murder and beheading at the end of a trial that lasted nine months, but one of the suspects was later acquitted.

The accused were members of the Fur tribe from the troubled region of Darfur.

Ahmed had angered rebels in Darfur after articles harshly criticising them were published in his newspaper.

The journalist had been arrested in 2005 after being accused of writing an article on the family of the Prophet Mohammed, and publication of his newspaper was suspended by the Sudanese authorities.

From Reuters, April 13, 2009 KHARTOUM -
Sudan executes nine convicted of editor's murder

Sudanese authorities on Monday executed nine men found guilty of involvement in the 2006 murder of a newspaper editor, a police source said.

"Nine people guilty in this case were executed today," the source said.

The case has been a sensitive issue for the government, which initially banned reporting of the trial except by state media. The nine men are from Darfur, a region torn by a conflict between rebels and government.

- - -

From Independent UK
Sent back by Britain. Executed in Darfur
Failed asylum-seeker followed home from airport and shot by Sudan security officials
By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
A failed asylum-seeker who returned to Darfur under a government repatriation scheme has been murdered by Sudanese security officers after they followed him home from the airport in Khartoum, The Independent has learnt.

Is peace possible in Darfur, Sudan after ICC warrant? Submit question to Andrew Natsios

From Foreign Affairs
Q&A With Andrew Natsios on Sudan
Is Peace Possible After the ICC Warrant?
April 13, 2009

Next week, Andrew Natsios will answer questions submitted by readers about what the United States and others can do to bring peace and humanitarian relief to Sudan. Submit a question.

ANDREW NATSIOS is Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and was U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan in 2006–7.

Waltz With Bashir
By Andrew Natsios March 23, 2009
The ICC's latest move against the Sudanese president will harden Khartoum's stance, push Darfuri rebels to make unreasonable demands, and raise expectations in Sudan -- complicating efforts to secure peace and justice. Read.

Arguing against the ICC - Alex de Waal reviews and debates Mahmood Mamdani’s new book on Darfur Sudan

Over the next few weeks Alex de Waal will be hosting a debate at his blog, Making Sense of Darfur, on Mahmood Mamdani’s new book Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror.

Here is an excerpt from Alex de Waal's review of the book.



From Making Sense of Darfur 12 April 2009:

Mamdani concludes:

“For Africa, a lot is at stake in Darfur. Foremost are two objectives, starting with the unity of Africa: The Save Darfur lobby in the United States has turned the tragedy of the people of Darfur into a knife with which to slice Africa by demonizing one group of Africans, African Arabs… At stake also is the independence of Africa. The Save Darfur lobby demands, above all else, justice, the right of the international community—really the big powers in the Security Council—to punish ‘failed’ or ‘rogue’ states, even if it be at the cost of more bloodshed and a diminished possibility of reconciliation. More than anything else, ‘the responsibility to protect’ is a right to punish but without being held accountable—a clarion call for the recolonization of ‘failed’ states in Africa. In its present form, the call for justice is really a slogan that masks a big power agenda to recolonize Africa.”

Is Mahmood Mamdani right? He is certainly correct that ‘For Africa, a lot is at stake in Darfur.’ The arguments whereby he reaches this conclusion—and the other conclusions in his bold book—are certain to be controversial. Over the next few weeks we shall be hosting a debate on Saviors and Survivors.

Photo of Mahmood Mamdani from Sudan Watch - April 06, 2009:
New book by Mahmood Mamdani: 'Save Darfur' movement is not a peace movement
- - -

From Foreign Policy Association blog
Arguing Against the ICC
April 11, 2009 by Nikolaj Nielsen

When in July 14, 2008 prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo charged Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, few people would have argued against.

Only a month before, Moreno-Ocampo stood in front of the United Nations Security Council and said Khartoum had slaughtered some 300,000 people. The evidence is there buried and burned with all the bodies and villages.

But then last month, Khartoum expelled NGOs hours after a warrant for al-Bashir’s arrest was issued. Oxfam said the decision would have a devastating impact on hundreds of thousands of people. Alone, Oxfam provides clean water and sanitation for 400,000.

13 international aid agencies, along with their assets, are no longer operational in Sudan. 108 countries who ratified the Rome Treaty are now obliged to bring al-Bashir to justice. Note - the United States has not ratified the ICC treaty.

Al-Bashir’s indictment by the ICC has a generated a lot of controversy. Not least because it sets a precedent and a message that world leaders are not immune (unless you belong to the club of rich nations), but also because there are fears that Khartoum will only increase the devastation against its own people.

Against this backdrop, numerous people are arguing against the ICC. No well informed individual is disputing that the people of Sudan have suffered and continue to suffer under al-Bashir.

But like so many conflicts that involves a mesh of history, culture, geo-politics, climate, economics, politics…well, just about everything…it’s important to get a perspective that falls outside the typical Hollywood activism and media frame. Let’s take a look at a couple.

1. Alex de Waal is a fellow at the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard University and has written numerous books and articles on Sudan. De Waal argues that the ICC decision will further destabilize Sudan at the expense of its people. In his article at openDemocracy, de Waal quotes a Sudanese civil-society activist. “All of us want justice but justice cannot be achieved in a social vacuum. We should choose the time for justice. Today it is the lives of people that count.”

2. Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government Columbia University. Mamdani argues in his
article at the UK Mail & Gaurdian that the prosecution’s case charging al-Bashir ignores and/or is ignorant of the roots of the conflict. The ICC, says Mamdani, has politicized justice and that the greater concern for Africa is the contentious relationship between law and politics.

3. Julie Flint is co-author with Alex de Waal of Darfur: A New History of a Long War. She argues that in her article at the Guardian that the ICC indictment will spread the suffering of numerous people who depend on the aid of international organizations. She says that while the pursuit of justice is noble in deed, there are certain realities that escape this Utopian ideal. She believes justice is a condition of peace. Without peace, there is no justice.

For more on this debate, check out the Social Science Research Council’s ‘Making Sense of Darfur’ here.

- - -

From Sudan Vision Daily
Legal Affairs Presidential Advisor: the ICC Decision is at Deadlock
April 13, 2009 by Neimat al-Naiem

Khartoum – Presidential Advisor for Legal Affairs, Judge of the Supreme Court, Farida Ibrahim, described the decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against the President of the Republic, Omar Al-Bashir reached deadlock, adding waiving the immunity from any individual holding a constitutional post is mainly dependent on a decision issued by the President of the Republic. She indicated Al-Bashir's reiteration of his rejection of handing over any Sudanese national to the International Criminal Court.

Regarding the call on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to defer the court's decision, Judge Farida said any such deferral or suspension of investigation are contingent on Article 16 of the Court's Statute, whose activation depends on a request by the UNSC in accordance with Chapter 7.

The Presidential Advisor explained the conditions required for suspending the decisions. According to her, the conditions include that the state should be a member of the ICC, the matter which is contrary to the case of Sudan. "If Sudan requests the deferral of the decision, it could be construed as recognizing cooperation with the Court." She added, "such a move is deemed inconsistent with Sudan's position on the Court's decision at the first place."

In an interview with Akhbar Alyoum Arabic daily yesterday, Judge Farida stated that cooperation with the Court is more serious than joining it, pointing out that calls on Sudan to cooperate with said Courts are aimed at achieving hidden agenda by powerful western nations such France and the United Kingdom, which solely seek to destabilize Sudan.

- - -

I have been to Sudan: What Darfur Genocide?!

Thanks to the anonymous person who posted a comment here at Sudan Watch today with a link to the following video report apparently filmed at the newly inaugurated Merowe Dam in Sudan on April 9, 2009.



Caption published alongside above film clip posted to YouTube April 12, 2009:

The LaRouche Movement in Sudan and Darfur exposes the lies spread by the British Empire about genocide in Darfur, and shows the development potential in the country and Africa.

Hussein Askary, chairman of the LaRouche movement in Sweden, and a delegation of representatives from the LaRouche movement in the U.S. participated in a tour and a conference in Sudan about the truth behind what the International Criminal Court (ICC) claims to be a "genocide" in Darfur, allegedly perpetrated by the President of Sudan, General Omar Al-Bashir.

The delegates traveled to the refugee camps in Al-Fashir in North Darfur, spoke to many people, and got lots of information on how the situation really is.

Later, they visited the massive development project around the Merowe Dam in the north of Sudan. This is not only a dam project, but a massive development project, unparalleled in the whole of Africa. The best comparison is Franklin Roosevelt's great American development projects around the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), building dams, bridges, highways, new towns and cities, airports, railways, new healthcare and educational centers, etc.

The living standard in the capital Khartoum and the north of Sudan has risen quickly in the last few years, despite civil war, sanctions and provocations from Europe and the U.S. But the people of Sudan and the governent are very open to a dialog with the United States in particular, but also United Kingdom, which is behind this campaign of lies, together with her "Fashoda tail" France. This kind of dialog is needed to solve the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, and start a peace process with the different factions among the rebels in Darfur, who are supported by Britain and Europe.

We are going to publish written and video documentation of our findings in Sudan, and on how the world can contribute to peace and economic development while paying full respect to the national sovereignty of Sudan.

-- READ MORE --

English - http://www.larouchepac.com

Arabic - http://www.nysol.se/arabic

Swedish - http://www.larouche.se

German - http://www.bueso.de

French - http://www.solidariteetprogres.org

-- WATCH THESE VIDEOS --

The Future of Africa
http://larouchepac.com/lpactv?nid=9926

Greening the Deserts Starts with Sudan
http://larouchepac.com/node/9299

The U.S. Can Not Tolerate Bashir Indictment by the ICC
http://larouchepac.com/node/9708

Webcast Excerpt -- On Sudan and NGO's
http://larouchepac.com/node/9722

The Coming Role of Youth
http://larouchepac.com/node/9668

SLA's Jebel Marra, the Switzerland of Sudan

In a guerrilla-held area lush with pastures, streams and groves, villagers go about self-sufficient lives very different from those of the displaced people huddled in dry, dusty camps below.

The rebels on the mountain
From Los Angeles Times
By Edmund Sanders
April 12, 2009
Reporting from Jebel Marra, Sudan —

To enter rebel-controlled territory at the base of this extinct Darfur volcano, you have to walk across a 100-yard no man's land that separates government soldiers from Sudan Liberation Army fighters. As we leave the United Nations trucks and cross a barren field toward our SLA hosts, rebel silhouettes sprout on the mountaintops standing guard. It feels oddly -- and a little amusingly -- like some sort of hostage exchange.

Getting here took nearly as much negotiation. There were awkward teas with local bureaucrats and a flurry of satellite phone calls with various insurgents before we finally procured the needed government stamps and rebel permissions. Roads to the mountain are so bandit-ridden that even the government advises against using them. Little wonder no journalist had visited in seven months.

It's agreed that U.N. peacekeepers can drop us at rebel lines but proceed no farther, because the SLA faction that controls Jebel Marra doesn't trust them any more than it does the government.

At the handoff, however, tensions quickly melt and soon rebels and troops are exchanging greetings and even posing for pictures.

The rebels are straight out of central casting. Most are teenage boys, their faces covered by sunglasses and head scarves. They'd look like schoolkids dressing up if the Kalashnikov rifles and bullet straps on their chests weren't real.

Every one of them is well-versed in the movement's dogma about the Darfur region's oppression at the hands of the Khartoum-based Sudanese government.

Asked why he joined, dreadlocked fighter Deng Khamis, 29, takes a drag on his cigarette, exhales with a dramatic sigh and says, "I was born marginalized."

From there it's a jerky, body-bruising ride up the rocky mountainside. As we climb, an unfamiliar world begins to materialize, like a mirage in the Darfur desert.

Most of western Sudan is flat, dry and almost bare of plant life. Here suddenly are pastures, streams, even forests. Past mango and orange groves lie dozens of small, quiet villages where people go about ordinary, self-sufficient lives in what some call the Switzerland of Sudan.

They live in scattered huts with plenty of land. They grow crops on terraced plots carved into the mountain. The World Food Program says the region hasn't needed regular aid distributions since 2006. The people here have rejected overcrowded displacement camps, dependence on foreign aid and the daily threat of banditry and government harassment in favor of a somewhat normal, if isolated and fragile, existence behind "enemy" lines.

It's a reminder of what Darfur must have been like before the 6-year-old insurgency engulfed it. "Up here things are OK," says Abdulkarim Hussein, 45, who was born in the village of Kutrum. "Once you leave the mountain, that's where the problems start."

It's not an easy life, he says, but it's better than the camps. "It's a trade-off," he said, pointing to bullet holes in his front door that were left in a 2007 skirmish. "But I choose this."

Fears of renewed violence have grown since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant last month for Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who is accused of leading a brutal counterinsurgency.

"The past year was the first time in a long time that we didn't have to live every day with our shoelaces tied" to be ready to run, said Hawa Yagoub Abdalla, 35, a mother of three who lives in Kutrum. "We are worried about what will come next."

The government's recent expulsion of 13 international aid groups from Darfur, including Doctors Without Borders, is creating a healthcare crisis as well. Many clinics in Jebel Marra are seeing a steady increase in meningitis cases, though they ran out of vaccinations weeks ago and are short of antibiotics.

Rebels say they are helpless to fill the gap. "We are still a movement that is in the bush, so we don't have the resources," SLA commander Mergheani Ahmed said. Ahmed, 35, spent a decade working as an intelligence officer for the government. Seven years ago he defected, and he hasn't left the mountain since.

"My face is too known," he says. "I can never leave."

For a brief moment, we're not sure we can, either. After the third flat tire, the rebels' Land Cruiser is stranded and we're late for the U.N. pickup back at the mountain base. After 30 minutes of sprinting down the mountain, motorbikes are commandeered to complete the journey. We pass the villages, the mango groves and the buffer zone to arrive back at the flat, dusty and familiar reality of Darfur.

edmund.sanders@latimes.com

South Sudan gov't unable to pay civil servants and troops

A recent fragile peace is under threat. A slump in oil revenue, which accounts for most of his regional government’s budget, as well as corruption in Juba, has left Southern Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, who is Sudan’s national vice-president too, is unable to pay his civil servants and troops.



Southern Sudan - Fear of fragmentation
April 08, 2009 (NAIROBI)
From The Economist print edition

HUNDREDS of women and children were killed last month in Southern Sudan’s province of Jonglei, either shot or run through with spears. Some locals put the toll at more than 700. Officials in Juba, the capital of the largely autonomous region of Southern Sudan, say the figure was lower. In any event, a fresh spate of killing now threatens the broad peace that the region has been enjoying—and could even upset the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in 2005 between Sudan’s mainly Arab government in Khartoum and rebels in the black African south who had waged a war of independence for most of the previous three decades.

At first it seemed the killings were the result of routine cattle raids by Nuer warriors on the Murle, whom the Nuer accused of rustling thousands of cattle. Such raids usually end in a handful of deaths on either side. But the scale of the Jonglei killings, with the Nuer apparently riddling civilians with gunfire from weapons they were meant to have given up, has cast a pall of gloom over the south. It has not been lightened by the failure of the local Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) to intervene. There have been killings elsewhere in the south too. Some fear the north-south accord is near to collapse.

Southern Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, who is Sudan’s national vice-president too, has every reason to play down the Jonglei killings. A slump in oil revenue, which accounts for most of his regional government’s budget, as well as corruption in Juba, has left him unable to pay his civil servants and troops. This has led to riots by disabled SPLA veterans and mutinies by soldiers. The border with Uganda, which handles nearly all of Southern Sudan’s trade, has been closed by veterans who said they had not been paid for seven months. Mr Kiir had to intervene with cash and grain to end the mutiny. Ugandan lorry drivers stranded on the Sudanese side of the border claimed that the SPLA harassed them.

Since 90% of Southern Sudan’s people live on less than $1 a day, tightening belts is not an option. They are as hungry, poorly educated and diseased as the ill-starred people of Darfur. Tribal leaders in the south say competition for water and grazing is adding to the tension between the tribes. Groups such as the Murle will return deaths in kind. The UN says 187,000 Southern Sudanese were displaced by tribal fighting last year. This year the number may double. As the Jonglei slaughter shows, plans to disarm have not been fulfilled. The worry is that the SPLA, a ruthless lot hardened by years of war, will end up taking sides, further unsettling the south and threatening the peace agreement.

Mr Kiir wants to stamp out “tribal spoilers” before national elections next year. Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, who was recently indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague for alleged crimes in Darfur, is nervous about the possibility of Mr Kiir running as a candidate for the national presidency, appealing to voters even in the Arab bits of the country. Mr Kiir has so far been careful not to voice an opinion on the ICC warrant but may try to use it to squeeze concessions from the north—on oil and the Nile waters, among other things—before a referendum in 2011, when the Southern Sudanese will be asked if they want to secede from Sudan to form an independent country, probably to be called New Sudan.

This may put Barack Obama’s administration on the spot. American lobbies have concentrated on Darfur, largely to the exclusion of Southern Sudan. A policy review headed by Samantha Power, one of Mr Obama’s foreign-policy advisers, may be hard on Mr Kiir even as it endorses the ICC’s effort to bring Mr Bashir to justice.

The review may also suggest ways of dealing with the Lord’s Resistance Army, a murderous Ugandan militia that was recently hammered—but not defeated—by a joint offensive of Ugandan, Congolese and Southern Sudanese troops, underwritten by the outgoing Bush administration. Many in Juba are terrified that the Lord’s Resistance Army may now kill and rape its way through Southern Sudan, perhaps with weapons and training provided by the national government in Khartoum, which remains loth to see the south of the country peeling peacefully away.

US envoy Gration has "constructive" talks with Sudanese FM

US envoy to Sudan Scott Gration said on Wednesday that he found the situation in some areas in Darfur much better than what he had expected in particular with regard to the food, while the situation in some other areas was worse especially in the areas of water and health care.

Source: Xinhua (Khartoum) Thursday, 09 April 2009 - excerpt:
U.S. envoy has "constructive" talks with Sudanese FM

The special envoy of the U.S. president to Sudan Scott Gration said on Wednesday that he held "constructive" talks with Sudanese Foreign Minister Deng Alor on the situations in the western Sudanese region of Darfur and southern Sudan.

The U.S. envoy told reporters at the end of the meeting that he briefed the Sudanese foreign minister on the results of his visits to Darfur and Juba, the capital of southern Sudan, as well as Abyei, a disputed area between northern and southern Sudan.

He said that he found the situation in some areas in Darfur much better than what he had expected in particular with regard to the food, while the situation in some other areas was worse especially in the areas of water and health care.

He added that a coordination between all parties concerned was necessary to improve the situation of displaced persons in Darfur and improve their poor nutrition condition.

Gration noted that the priorities for the next phase would focus on addressing the emergency situation in Darfur in the humanitarian and security fields and reach a ceasefire between the conflicting parties.

The Sudanese foreign minister, on his part, expressed his confidence that the visit of the U.S. envoy to Sudan would help the new U.S. administration to deal with Sudan in the coming period. Editor: Deng Shasha

Photo: Traditional healer Abu Bakr Mohammed prepares a prescription at his straw hut near Abu Shouk refugee camp in el Fasher, Sudan Friday, March 27, 2009. With her health options limited, one woman in this Darfur refugee camp is considering a risky alternative: a traditional healer who promises his potion of holy water, charcoal and glue, touched by verses of the Quran, can cure her uterus inflammation. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

UNAMID peacekeeping chief meets with Minni Minawi

Photo: Supporters ride on horses and camels as they welcome Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir (not in the picture) before a rally at Zalinge town, west Darfur, April 7, 2009. Sudan's embattled president told a rally on Tuesday that his own officials would track down war criminals in Darfur, dismissing Western attempts to bring justice to the region. Picture taken April 7, 2009. (Reuters/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallh)

From UNAMID - Wednesday, 08 April 2009:
UNAMID Joint Special Representative meets with Mr. Minni Minawi

UNAMID Joint Special Representative, Mr. Rodolphe Adada, today met with the Special Assistant to the President and the Chairman of the Transitional Darfur Regional Authority (TDRA), Mr. Minni Minawi.

They discussed a series of issues, including the enhancement of security and the humanitarian situation in Darfur. Mr. Minawi requested more frequent contacts between UNAMID and the TDRA. Mr. Adada and Mr. Minawi also discussed development issues and how UNAMID can support the people of Darfur through more Quick Impact Projects (QIPs).

Mr. Adada stressed the importance of keeping close contact with the TDRA and reiterated UNAMID’s support for the effective implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) and other subsequent Agreements, in line with its mandate. In this context, it was agreed that a liaison mechanism between TDRA and UNAMID should be further strengthened.

The meeting was also attended by the Deputy Joint Special Representative (DJSR) for Operations and Management, Mr. Hocine Medili.

Photo: Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, center, addresses supporters during his visit to the western Darfur town of Zalengi, Sudan, Tuesday, April 7, 2009. Sudan's embattled president on a visit to Darfur Tuesday called on the people of the region to bring armed groups battling the government around to peace talks. (AP Photo/Abd Raouf)

Darfur, Sudan: ICC's deputy prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, urged nations to "deny Omar al-Bashir any form of support"

Photo: The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, left, speaks at a press conference as Deputy Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, right, looks on, at the seat of the Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday, July 14, 2008. Moreno-Ocampo has filed genocide charges against Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir. The charges include masterminding attempts to wipe out African tribes in Darfur with a campaign of murder, rape and deportation. (AP Photo/Fred Ernst)

Court prosecutor: isolate Sudan's president
By MIKE CORDER Associated Press Writer April 07, 2009
via Contra Costa Times:

THE HAGUE, Netherlands—The International Criminal Court's deputy prosecutor urged world leaders on Tuesday to cut ties with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the court for alleged war crimes in Darfur.

The U.N.-backed tribunal issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir last month on charges including genocide for allegedly orchestrating efforts to wipe out three African tribes in his oil-rich country's Darfur region.

Since then, al-Bashir has made a series of trips to neighboring African countries and an Arab League summit in Qatar. He also expelled 13 major relief organizations from Darfur—a move denounced around the world.

The international court has no police force and relies on other countries to execute arrest warrants.

The 22-member Arab League said, however, it decided not to enforce the warrant when al-Bashir attended the Qatar summit March 30, as many Arab and African countries have said pursuing al-Bashir could further destabilize the region.

The court's deputy prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, urged nations to "deny Omar al-Bashir any form of support."

"States should implement a consistent diplomatic campaign to support the court's decision," she told diplomats in The Hague. "Nonessential contacts with Omar al-Bashir should be severed."

Fighting in Darfur since 2003 has left up to 300,000 people dead and driven another 2.7 million from their homes, the United Nations says.

It says al-Bashir's expulsion of the 13 humanitarian agencies has deprived more than 3 million people of crucial food aid, health care or drinking water.

"The expulsion of aid workers is another step in the commission of the crime of extermination," Bensouda said.

Photo: Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, on top of a vehicle, cente, drives past supporters as he arrives back home after attending the Arab summit in Doha, in Khartoum, Sudan, Wednesday, April 1, 2009. Thousands of chanting, singing people greeted the Sudanese president, who's wanted for war crimes, as he returned Wednesday from his trip to the Arab League Summit. (AP Photo/Abd Raouf)

Sudanese president urges Darfur rebel groups to join peace talks
From China View April 07, 2009:

ZALINGEI, West Darfur, Sudan, April 7 (Xinhua) – Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir urged on Tuesday rebel groups in western Sudanese region of Darfur to join the negotiation in order to reach a peaceful settlement to the conflict in the region.

Addressing a rally of local residents in Zalingei town in West Darfur state, al-Bashir said that peace and security were the key for development and reconstruction in the region, adding that the government could not implement projects of development and reconstruction in areas affected by war without security and consensus for a peaceful solution.

Al-Bashir reiterated his government's commitment to development in Darfur and payment of individual and collective compensation for those affected by the war and returning of displaced persons to their homelands.

After arriving in the town of Zalingei in West Darfur in the morning, the Sudanese president inaugurated a number of projects of development and basic services, primarily hospitals and health centers.

Al-Bashir's visit to the Darfur region came in the framework of the Sudanese government's efforts to persuade political parties in the region the need for consensus on a political solution to end the conflict which has lasted for more than five years.

This was the third visit for al-Bashir in Darfur since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued on March 4 an arrest warrant against him over charges of war crimes and crimes of anti-humanity.

- - -

Sudan president: Peace in hands of Darfur people
From Associated Press April 08, 2009 - excerpt:

Sudan's embattled president on a visit to Darfur Tuesday called on the people of the region to bring armed groups battling the government around to peace talks.

It was the third visit by Omar al-Bashir to Darfur since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him March 4 for allegedly orchestrating atrocities against Darfur's ethnic African tribes. His comments came in the western Darfur town of Zaleingi, home to a prominent rebel leader and the closest al-Bashir has ever been to rebel-held areas.

"You are the people suffering, and you are the people who want peace, and you will be the ones to bring peace," he told the crowd of thousands at the organized rally.

On Tuesday, al-Bashir appeared less confrontational than in recent speeches. Although still critical of the expelled aid groups, the president welcomed those offering humanitarian help so long as they didn't violate Sudan's sovereignty.

He blamed rebel groups for sabotaging peace overtures, and undermining security and development in the region, and called on Darfurians to bring them around.

"What is asked of you is to bring peace. No one here doesn't have contact (with the rebels). No one in the bush doesn't have relatives in the town...These are our sons. What you care about they care about, and what they care about, you care about," he said.

Zaleingi native, Abdelwahid Nur, a rebel leader who now lives in exile, has repeatedly refused to join peace talks, saying the government must first bring security to Darfur, and disarm government-allied militias.

Rebuffing international efforts to hold people accountable for the Darfur conflict, al-Bashir said it should be up to the people of Darfur to bring justice to the region. He said local tribal committees are working to determine the victims and culprits, and that the government will pay compensation.

Commentator Al-Tayeb Zein al-Abdeen, a professor in Khartoum University, said after showing defiance, al-Bashir is now looking for a way out of the ICC impasse.

"He has finished his first round. Nothing is left now...and the tone is reconciliatory," Zein al-Abdeen said.

The Sudanese president also said an African Union-appointed panel, headed by former South African president Thabo Mbeki, will visit Darfur soon to assess the conflict and find ways to achieve reconciliation and justice. Mbeki said a report will be ready in July.

Sudan's Minister of Health says the health situation in IDP camps in Darfur is stable

Just in from Sudan Radio Service:

07 April 2009 - (Khartoum) - The Minister of Health in the Government of National Unity says the health situation in IDP camps in Darfur is stable.

Doctor Tabitha Boutros was speaking at a press conference in Khartoum during World Health day on Sunday.

She said her ministry has "stabilized" the health situation in the IDP camps in Darfur which deteriorated after the expulsion of the international non-governmental organizations last month.

[Tabitha Boutros]: “What happened after the NGOs left was that the Ministries of Health and Humanitarian Affairs made an assessment of the situation in the camps and we found there were gaps of medical drugs but the Ministry of Health and the medical services have closed the gaps and so the situation is good now.”

She added that her ministry plans to upgrade existing hospitals and establish others in different regions in the country to cater for the growing population.

[Tabitha Boutros]: “With all sincerity, in the past, hospitals were built without any objectives, especially the private hospitals. Someone has a house and just converts it into a health center, or someone has a building and makes it into a private hospital. We do not like it this way. We have put in place policies and descriptions of a hospital and other health units according to the population in those specific areas. For example, 50,000 people will be served by a health center with hospital equipment and a laboratory service will be available. And now we are working on the hospitals to see how we can preserve the equipment and their service.”

Dr. Tabitha said the government intends to involve all stakeholders at all levels of government to ensure that the strategic plan to deliver health services to the people succeeds.

Photo: Kalma camp, Darfur, W. Sudan (Voitek Asztabski/AP)

Sudanese president promises justice and compensation

Sudan's president told a rally on Tuesday that his own officials would track down war criminals in Darfur, dismissing Western attempts to bring justice to the region. "After the reconciliation we will investigate those who are criminals and those who committed crimes and those who were killed and those who were killers. This is all guaranteed. Compensation will be paid. Everyone will get their right. This is justice" he said.

Source: Tue Apr 7, 2009 Reuters report by Ibrahim Hamdi - excerpts:
Sudan's Bashir vows to try Darfur war criminals

ZALINGEI, Sudan, April 7 (Reuters) - Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir -- who is himself wanted on charges of masterminding atrocities in Darfur -- addressed a crowd of thousands in Zalingei, one of the most politically charged towns in Darfur.

"We know about justice between us and we know how to solve our problems. We have a committee for tribal reconciliation," Bashir told the crowd.

"After the reconciliation we will investigate those who are criminals and those who committed crimes and those who were killed and those who were killers. This is all guaranteed. Compensation will be paid. Everyone will get their right. This is justice."

Zalingei is the birthplace of some of Darfur's best-known rebels, including Sudan Liberation Army founder Abdel Wahed Mohamed Ahmed al-Nur, and is a hotbed of anti-government sentiment.

But there was no obvious sign of opposition at the rally where Bashir arrived on the back of an open truck, as streams of white-robed Darfuris rode past him on horses and camels.

On the edges on the crowd, people climbed trees and stood on the raised scoop of an industrial digger to get a better view.

Bashir praised Arab and African efforts to bring peace to Darfur, including the recent visit of the African Union's own panel on Darfur, headed by former South African president Thabo Mbeki.

"We thank the AU and the former presidents headed by Mbeki who came here ... But we don't want those Khawajas (foreigners)," he told the crowd.

"Judgement, it's not here. It's not with Ocampo or others. Our judgement is before God," the president said. Luis Moreno-Ocampo is the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court who is leading its war crimes case against Bashir.

Sudan appointed its own special prosecutor to look into reports of war crimes in Darfur in August, but the move has so far not produced any new prosecutions.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Abdelaziz in Khartoum, Writing by Andrew Heavens; Editing by Giles Elgood)

AU/UN officials report humanitarian progress in Darfur

April 06, 2009 Voice of America News report by Peter Heinlein:
AU/UN Officials Report Humanitarian Progress in Darfur

Addis Ababa - A senior official of the hybrid African Union-United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur says progress is being made in filling the gap left by Sudan's expulsion of 13 humanitarian aid agencies. The war crimes indictments handed down against Sudan's President, Omar al-Bashir, have not led to a deterioration of security in Darfur.

Rodolphe Adada, the joint A.U./U.N. Special Representative for Darfur says Sudan's decision to expel more than 10 percent of the aid agencies in Darfur has complicated the work of the hybrid peacekeeping force known as UNAMID. "It is like a threat. You cannot be doing just your normal business in front of many hungry and angry people," he said.

Adada says hungry Darfurians do not want to hear that UNAMID's mandate is strictly peacekeeping and not aid distribution.

After briefing the African Union Peace and Security Council on Monday, Adada acknowledged that the recent influx of displaced persons at the Zam Zam camp in northern Darfur has strained humanitarian operations. But he says a feared deterioration of security conditions has not occurred.

"We think there have been no major consequences in the security in Darfur. And it is more than one month later -- the situation is fine now. The problem in Zam Zam was a little bit different. But we are trying to help the best we can. This humanitarian thing is a concern because we are on the ground. And if we have to pass through a disaster, it will impact immediately on UNAMID," he said.

Also speaking to the Council was Sudan's A.U. Ambassador, Mohiedin Salim, who described the 13 expelled aid groups as spies and charged that the expulsion had created what he called a "false media outcry".

Salim acknowledged a gap in humanitarian services since the expulsions, leaving thousands of people displaced by the fighting in Darfur without food and medical care.

But he said the more than 100 agencies remaining in the region could quickly make up most of the aid shortfall. "The NGOs [i.e., non-governmental organizations] are already there. We have 105 foreign NGOs; we have now 14 American NGOs. We have now 12 British NGOs. They are right now on the ground working. Forty-five percent of the work in Darfur now is exercised by the Red Crescent of Sudan," he said.

The United States says diplomats recently visiting Zam Zam camp found worsening conditions, including water shortages.

Aid agencies say more than six years of civil war in Darfur has forced 2.7 million people to flee their homes. Officials estimate that at least 200,000 people died in the first two years of the conflict.

But UNAMID figures show conflict-related death tolls have dropped sharply during the past few years, averaging about 1,500 people a year since early 2005.

US Senator John Kerry to visit Darfur and Khartoum, Sudan

Senator to make rare Darfur visit
April 06, 2009 Reuters report by Andrew Heavens - excerpt:

Khartoum - The chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry, will lead a delegation to Sudan's Darfur region, U.S. officials said on Monday, in a possible sign of a growing willingness to engage with Khartoum.

"This is significant," a U.S. diplomatic source told Reuters. "It is the first Congressional delegation to Sudan we have had since 2007. Like the U.S. envoy's current visit, it is a new tack."

The U.S. diplomatic source said Kerry, a Democrat, would lead a Congressional delegation to Darfur, and would meet senior Sudanese officials in Khartoum in the middle of next week.

The state-run Sudanese Media Center said the U.S. Congressional delegation would visit Sudan for three days next week. (Editing by Giles Elgood)

- - -



Photo: US Democratic Senator John Kerry, seen here in March 2009, participates in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will visit Darfur next week, a US official said on Monday, amid signs of thawing US-Sudan relations. (AFP/Getty Images/File/Mark Wilson)

Kerry to highlight peace deal
April 06, 2009 AFP (SA) report - excerpt:

Washington - Democratic US Senator John Kerry will discuss US-Sudan relations and snarled efforts to implement a 2005 north-south peace deal when he visits the country next week, an aide said on Monday.

But the top lawmaker will not meet with President Omar al-Bashir, who is under an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the six-year conflict in Darfur, the aide told AFP.

Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "will discuss US-Sudan relations and the implementation of the comprehensive peace agreement" reached in 2005, the aide said.

"John Kerry will arrive in the middle of next week, he will visit Darfur and meet with officials in the country. His visit will last a few days," said that official, who asked not to be named.

Implementation of the 2005 agreement, which ended Sudan's two-decade north-south civil conflict, has hit many snags, but some leaders in the region have suggested that the ICC warrant should be deferred if Bashir implements existing peace accords. [...]

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Photo: Flowers in El-Fashir, northern Darfur, Sudan (Andrew Heavens)

Note to self for future reference.

PoliticsOnline: The Second Superpower campaigns for Kerry
For the first time in history, the rise of global citizen activism through the Internet is impacting the U.S. presidential elections.
- Jim Moore - October 16, 2004.

Prendergast's Enough Project discussing U.S. relations with Sudan: Kerry himself mentioned previous American leadership failures in relation to Sudan policy as well as his and Secretary Clinton’s interests in the no-fly zone and American engagement with Africa generally. He told the assembled group that this is, “a moment for serious people to buckle down and find serious responses,” to Sudan’s crises. Senator Kerry ended the hearing by asking each expert to pull together a summary of what they think the key U.S. policy priorities should be for Sudan.
- Sudan Watch - February 14, 2009.



Cartoon by Mike Luckovich circa Apr 2006

New book by Mahmood Mamdani: 'Save Darfur' movement is not a peace movement

Copied here below are two reviews of a new book entitled Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror (Pantheon) by Mahmood Mamdani, the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University. I am copying the reviews in full because they contain points of view on the 'Save Darfur' movement.



Photo: Mahmood Mamdani was previously the dean of the faculty of social sciences at Makerere University and the founding director of the Centre for Basic Research in Kampala, Uganda. He has also taught at the University of Dar es Salaam and the University of Cape Town in South Africa. His previous books include "Citizen and Subject," "When Victims Become Killers," "Scholars in the Marketplace" and "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim." He lives in New York City and Kampala. (sdsuniverse.info)

From The National April 03, 2009
The devil is in the details
By Wesley Yang

Mahmood Mamdani’s stemwinding book on Darfur brilliantly punctures the sanctities of the international humanitarian order – but doesn’t know where to stop,Wesley Yang writes.



Photo: A soldier in the Sudanese Liberation Army, which rebelled against the Sudanese government in Darfur, holds a bullet as he loads an aging Kalashnikov. (Benjamin Lowy/Corbis)

The international community is presently engaged in a high-stakes game of poker with the government of Sudan. At stake is the legitimacy of the International Criminal Court, the permanent sitting tribunal whose purpose is to punish those that commit the worst crimes against humanity. Also hanging in the balance are the lives of 2.5 million Darfurian refugees who have been driven from their homes by a scorched earth counter-insurgency campaign launched by the Sudanese government in response to rebel attacks in the region in 2003.

Both sides in this international stand-off have already demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice those lives for the sake of the principles they support. The Sudanese government has thrown out 13 international aid groups who provide the food and medicine necessary to sustain those refugees, under the pretext that they gathered evidence for the ICC against Sudan’s president, Omar al Bashir. The ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo went ahead with the indictment in full knowledge that this was the likely consequence. He claims to be acting in the interest of justice alone, without reference to the political or humanitarian situation – and no one disputes that by arming and abetting mounted Arab proxies (later dubbed “devils on horseback” in the press) to put down a rebellion with indiscriminate violence against civilians, al Bashir violated the spirit and letter of international law (as have many rulers before him). We have a struggle for primacy between the two principles – national sovereignty and international law – that seems likely to define global politics for the rest of this century.

Providing an accurate account of these principles, and the intricate politics in which they are embedded, involves wading through self-serving and overwrought claims from both sides while weighing two genuine and incommensurable claims to legitimacy. In his new book, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror, the distinguished Africa scholar Mahmood Mamdani does his readers the considerable service of laying waste to many of the dangerous and self-serving illusions of one side of this argument. But he erects a mirror edifice of illusions in its place; getting the story straight requires disentangling the true from the misleading in Mamdani’s account.

On one side, there are the claims of universal justice that the ICC purports to represent. The ICC is the institutional face of a growing movement seeking to make real the promise of “Never Again” inscribed into the Convention on Genocide of 1948. The ICC indictment of al Bashir was the first against a sitting head of state, and it was hailed in editorial pages across America as a great progressive advance for global justice. Even those who worried about the consequences of the indictment still placed hope in its deterrent value. The goal was to worry the minds of subsequent heads of state tempted to use mass rape and murder as a counter-insurgency tactic.

Taken on its own terms, in narrow isolation, this is a worthy and unassailable mission. But nothing exists in narrow isolation, least of all moral purity and universal justice. Such claims exist in a real world of actual politics amid complicated histories, which many Darfur activists have made it their business to elide – portraying the conflict in Darfur as what Mamdani dubs “a morality tale unfolding in a world populated by villains and victims who never trade places and so can always and easily be told apart”.

On the other side are the rights of sovereign governments to govern themselves without outside interference, which the Sudanese government and the Arab nations that have rallied to its side purport to defend. Sovereignty has been, since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the currency of the international system, and, as Mamdani reminds us, a privilege hard-won by postcolonial states only recently.

In the wake of the American misadventure in Iraq, the weird confluence of moralistic rhetoric and bellicose policy that characterised Bush’s foreign policy, the complicity of so many ostensibly liberal hawks caught up in the Iraq War fervour, and a history of one-sided enforcement of humanitarian rules, it should surprise no one that the leaders and intellectuals of formerly colonised states are wary of the claims to universal justice emanating from what Mamdani dubs the “new humanitarian order”. At this week’s Arab Summit in Doha, Arab leaders, many of them signatories to the ICC, (which the United States has refused to sign) lined up in unanimous support of al Bashir.

The human rights lobby views this emphasis on sovereignty as the first and last resort of butchers who employ anti-colonialist rhetoric to defend their crimes. Weary of the grubby compromises of diplomats and corporations willing to do business with tyrants and criminals, one faction of the human rights community calls for armed western intervention to defend helpless victims of state violence everywhere. The Save Darfur movement, an aggressive and media-savvy coalition “whose scale recalls the anti-war movement of the late 1960s and 1970s”, rose up with the intention to turn Darfur into a test case for western action to halt what it called a genocide in progress.

Mamdani devotes the first section of his book to assailing the credibility of Save Darfur. He accuses them of inflating the scale of the killing, obfuscating the reality of a “civil war” and “cycle of insurgency and counter-insurgency” that it called genocide, bombarding viewers and readers with “a pornography of violence” that removed the conflict from its political context, sustaining an impression of ongoing genocide long after the claim was plausible, portraying the conflict in racialised terms as a genocide conducted by Arabs against Africans and ceaselessly advocating for hard-line policies more likely to harm than to the help the victims they intended to save. On each of these counts, Mamdani assembles a more or less devastating case. Save Darfur publicised a figure for the number of deaths – 400,000 – that was twice as high as reliable estimates (Mamdani cites a study commissioned by the US Government Accountablity Office to this effect) and escalated its rhetoric at precisely the moment – January 2005 – when the scale of killing fell dramatically. Save Darfur have continued to clamour for aggressive action despite a humanitarian crisis that was largely stabilised due to the cooperation of the Sudanese government with aid agencies that had reduced the mortality rate to between 100 and 200 month in Darfur – “below emergency levels”, according to World Health Organisation.

Most important for Mamdani’s purpose, though, is the Save Darfur Coalition’s emphasis on the race of the perpetrators and victims: “The central claim is that perpetrators and victims in Darfur belong to two different racial groups, Arab and African and that the Arab perpetrator is evil.” Mamdani is not content to say, as he does, that Save Darfur are committed to policies that will do harm. He intends to demonstrate that they are part of a more insidious agenda written into the War on Terror. To strip Darfur of its politics serves a political project of its own, and Mamdani makes it his mission to reveal its workings – what he sees as the foundation of a post-Cold War order in which American clients and proxies act with impunity while rogue states are subject to violent discipline at the hands of the international community, with America at its head. It is a politics notable for denying that it is a politics at all and, as Mamdani narrates it, one that portends a bleak future for the inhabitants of the developing world.

In the long historical section that makes up the centre of the book, Mamdani traces the centuries-long intermingling of Arab and African identities in Darfur, and their reciprocal permeability. He also shows how these identities were politicised under the “indirect” rule practised by British colonial administrators that pursued a policy of “re-tribalisation” of the various groups that shared Darfur by assigning homelands to certain groups and denying them to others.

This backdrop allows Mamdani, in his third and final section, to return to the question with which the book opens. Since Americans are inclined to regard Africa, to the extent that they regard it at all, as a site of “meaningless anarchy – in which men, sometimes women, and increasingly, children, fight without aim or memory,” why has there been “a global publicity boom around the carnage in Darfur”?

The worst conflict since the Second World War, with a death toll of 3.9 million between 1998 and 2004, raged in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; the figure of “excess deaths” caused by the Iraq war likely outstrip the same numbers in Darfur. Yet only Darfur, a conflict in a remote and impoverished region without oil or other significant exportable resources has generated a lavishly funded advocacy organisation. For Mamdani, the answer is embedded in the definition of genocide itself. “Only when extreme violence targets for annihilation a civilian population that is marked off as different ‘on grounds of race, ethnicity, or religion’ is that violence termed genocide,” Mamdani observes:

“Given that colonialism shaped the very nature of modern ‘indirect rule’ and administrative power along ‘tribal’ (or ethnic) lines it is not surprising that both the exercise of power and responses to it tend to take ‘tribal’ forms in these newly independent states. From this point of view, there is little to distinguish mass violence unleashed against civilians in Congo, Northern Uganda, Mozambique, Angola, Darfur, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, and so on. Which one is named ‘genocide’ and which one is not? Most important, who decides?”

The new humanitarian order is, as Mamdani describes it, “a bifurcated system whereby state sovereignty obtains in large parts of the world but is suspended in more and more countries in Africa and the Middle East,” in which subjects exchange their political rights as citizens of sovereign states for the “human” rights possessed by “wards in an open-ended international rescue operation” in a humanitarian “system of trusteeship” administered by an international community that lacks either accountability or responsibility. The world he describes he looks a lot like the world as the Palestinians under the jurisdiction of UNRWA see it, and the vision Mamdani projects of an Africa delivered piecemeal to the good intentions of the international community is a stark one.

A problem with this claim, however, is that the record of American policy in Sudan challenges it. Indeed, proponents of humanitarian intervention in Darfur make a diametrically opposite charge against the American government – that it has subordinated its interest in the cause of human rights to its desire to maintain relations with Sudanese intelligence to aid the War on Terror. Mamdani’s argument also passes over the American response to Sudan’s much longer, more brutal and more complex civil war, a two-decade conflict pitting Christians and animists from the south of the country against the Arab Islamist cabal to the north that controlled the state and the military.

It was here that al Bashir pioneered the technique of using proxy war conducted by mounted Arab warriors. And it was this conflict that first aroused activist concern among the evangelical Christian movement at the base of George W Bush’s electoral coalition.

Islamists in Sudan were waging a brutal war against the Christian coreligionists of the single most belligerent electoral constituency in American politics. If the goal of American policy was, as Mamdani alleges, to “slice Africa by demonising one group of Africans, African Arabs”, then surely the Sudanese Civil War was the perfect opportunity to carry out this agenda. But the Bush administration instead expended considerable diplomatic resources cajoling the North and the South to make peace in a negotiated settlement that Mamdani himself acknowledges as Bush’s only foreign policy accomplishment.

While there were plenty of hardline advocates for the fantasy of regime change in Sudan, the United States remained effectively committed to the stability of the Bashir regime, as the only guarantor of the peace deal it had signed, through the end of the Bush Administration.

And so, when Mamdani describes the “the responsibility to protect” as “a slogan that masks a big power agenda to recolonise Africa”, he is mistaking the fantasies of American activists for the policies of their government. He is also asserting the existence of a hidden nefarious agenda where none exists, and providing a false clarity that is the merely the obverse of the good-and-evil dichotomy of the War on Terror and the humanitarian order that he assails.

This overreaching damages the credibility of Mamdani’s powerful and incisive criticism of the international justice movement. So much of what Mamdani argues is true, and so much of it cuts against the grain of the usual coverage of Darfur in ways that are essential for the broader public to understand. And neither he, nor the rest of us, can afford to squander the opportunity to set the record straight.

Wesley Yang is a frequent contributor to The Review.

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From Philip Weiss at Mondoweiss (www.philipweiss.org)
April 06, 2009
Mamdani: 'Save Darfur' movement is not a peace movement

James North writes:

I remember Mahmood Mamdani from 35 years ago, when he was the most dynamic leader of the newly-organized union of graduate students at Harvard. Today he is a distinguished professor at Columbia, one of our most original analysts of Africa, most recently of Darfur. He is himself an African (from Uganda) of South Asian descent, and his decades of teaching and doing research all over his home continent command our interest.

His most recent work, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror (Pantheon), is really several books in one. A large middle section covers the ethnic/tribal/political history of Darfur itself in enormous detail, and will be useful mainly to Africa specialists. But his opening segment, a brilliant dissection of the Save Darfur movement, should be read by everyone who thinks they understand what is really going on today in that area of Sudan. His conclusion is similarly indispensable, in which he raises doubts that the Western passion to pursue "justice" in places like Darfur can also promote peace.

First, the facts.

Two rebel movements in Darfur rose against the Khartoum regime in 2003, which responded over the next 2 years with murder and repression. Starting in 2005, all the experts agree, death rates there dropped dramatically. But, Mamdami notes, "The rhetoric of the Save Darfur movement in the United States escalated as the level of mortality in Darfur declined." He carefully documents that prominent people in the Darfur solidarity movement, such as the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, are chronically vague about how many died and when.

Since then, the two Darfur rebel movements have splintered into 20 factions, some of which are fighting each other, and the civil war element which was present from the start has only gotten worse. But the Darfur solidarity movement continues to see the conflict in one dimension, as "Arabs" committing "genocide" against "black Africans."

Mamdani says:

"It was a feat of imagination that required, at the least, a combination of two things: on the one hand, a worthy conviction that even the most wretched and the most distant of humans be considered a part of one’s moral universe but, on the other, a questionable political sense that the lack of precise knowledge of a far-distant place need not be reason enough to keep one from taking urgent action."

What’s more, Mamdami contends, and here the expert opinion is all on his side, that the solidarity movement’s proposals – the most prominent is to send foreign troops – will make a bad situation worse. He says pointedly:

"One needs to bear in mind that the movement to Save Darfur – like the War on Terror – is not a peace movement: it calls for a military intervention rather than political reconciliation, punishment rather than peace."

Mamdani then makes a daring and original effort to interpret the origins of the Darfur solidarity movement. He points out that Darfur protests were far bigger than demonstrations against the simultaneous U.S. war in Iraq, in which far more people were then dying. He is not entirely sure why. First he comes close to suggesting that the Save Darfur movement was a deliberate or at least a convenient way to depoliticize opposition to Iraq, especially among students. But then he suggests that Darfur may be a roundabout way for Americans to avoid Iraq:

". . . Iraq makes some Americans feel responsible and guilty. . . Darfur, in contrast, is an act not of responsibility but of philanthropy. Unlike Iraq, Darfur is a place for which Americans do not need to feel responsible but choose to take responsibility."

Whatever the explanation, Mamdani emphasizes that Save Darfur’s moral outrage interferes with a peaceful settlement. He spends more than half the book outlining the tangled ethnic, tribal, historical, regional and environmental history of the region. The reader’s head is swimming in names, but Mamdani’s central point has registered: Darfur today is extraordinarily complex, not reducible to simply "Arabs" vs. "Africans."

Toward the end of the book, Mamdani raises questions about the International Criminal Court (ICC), which last year indicted Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir for "genocide." He points out, reluctantly but realistically, that the demands of "justice" may conflict with "peace." If Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress had in the early 1990s insisted on prosecuting the responsible officials in the apartheid regime from top to bottom there would have been no peaceful settlement. Similar painful compromises and overlooking of past crimes were necessary in Mozambique and elsewhere.

He does recognize a "kernel of truth" in the International Criminal Court’s indictment, with respect to "the period of 2003-4, when Darfur was the site of mass deaths." He says, "There is no doubt that the perpetrators of this violence should be held accountable, but when and how is a political decision that cannot belong to the ICC prosecutor."

Maybe Mahmood Mamdani’s own African origins help protect him against simple-minded moralizing. He is familiar at first-hand with human rights violations; his own family was expelled from Uganda in the early 1970s by the infamous (and at first Western-backed) dictator, Idi Amin. But for him Africa is his original home, not a distant fantasyland in which to work out his psychic conflicts. He has earned our respect and considered attention.

Comments

its taken far too long for people to challenge groups like save darfur, which oppose peace in sudan.
Posted by: mohanad, April 06, 2009

Darfur, like Bosnia and Kosovo, became a neocon cause, partly, I think, to show that the U.S. would intervene to protect Muslim victims of ethnic cleansing, to defang the "clash of civilizations" dragon.
Posted by: Grumpy Old Man, April 06, 2009

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Cryptic note to self, thinking about the real story and Jim.

AU Peace and Security Council briefing attended by AU-UN Joint Chief Mediator, Djibril Bassolé

Latest developments in Darfur focus of UN-African Union meeting
April 06, 2009 report from UN News Centre - excerpt:

Officials from the hybrid United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) were in Addis Ababa today, where they briefed the AU Peace and Security Council on the latest security and humanitarian situation in the war-torn western region of the Sudan.

The AU-UN Joint Special Representative Rodolphe Adada briefed the Council on the impact of the arrest warrant issued at the beginning of last month by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir. [...]

Mr. Adada also briefed the Council on the current military strength of UNAMID, which stands at more than 12,000 of the 19,555 force authorized by the Security Council over one year ago. [...]

The AU-UN Joint Chief Mediator, Djibril Bassolé, also attended the briefing to discuss the arrest warrant with the AU Council as well as the recent peace initiative resulting from the Summit of the League of Arab States in Doha and its consequences for his mediation efforts.

Participants from the Government of Sudan and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) took part in today’s meeting in the Ethiopian capital, which is also the headquarters of the AU. Deputy Joint Special Representative Hocine Medili, Deputy Joint Chief Mediator Azouz Ennifar and the Director of the Communications and Information Division of UNAMID, Kemal Saïki, also participated.

Yemeni President Saleh confirms solidarity with Sudan

Sudanese Director General of the National Security and Intelligence Service Gen. Salah Abdellah Gosh has visited Yemen to deliver a letter from Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

From Yemen News Agency (SABA) 06 April 2009:
President Saleh receives letter form Sudanese counterpart

SANA'A, April 06 (Saba) - President Ali Abdullah Saleh received here on Monday a letter for Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir over the latest regional developments, particularly in Darfour and the International Criminal Court decision.

The letter handed over by Director General of the National Security and Intelligence Service Gen. Salah Abdellah dealt also with brotherly relations and aspects of cooperation between the two countries.

President Saleh asked Sudanese envoy to convey a replying letter, confirming Yemeni solidarity with stability and security of Sudan. MD/AF