Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Haftar, Hemeti, and a Canadian lobbyist's Libyan connection - Russia moves in on Sudan, Eritrea, Egypt

Middle East Eye.net looked through public documents showing how a former Israeli intelligence officer lobbying for Sudan's military council became a major player in war-torn Libya.  Sudanese fighters have reportedly arrived in Libya, an idea first floated by lobbyists in May.  Full story here below.
Sudanese fighters have reportedly arrived in Libya, an idea first floated by lobbyists in May (AFP)

Article by Middle East Eye.net
Written by Kaamil Ahmed
Published date: 02 August 2019 11:58 UTC

Haftar, Hemeti, and a Canadian lobbyist's Libyan connection

Last week, around 1,000 members of Sudan’s notorious Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were reported to have arrived in eastern Libya, joining the ranks of Khalifa Haftar's self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) which is waging war against the country's UN-recognised government in Tripoli.

Their arrival, which was reported by Radio Dabanga, a Dutch-based broadcaster run by Sudanese exiles, coincided with Haftar's declaration of an imminent "victory" as his forces amass on the outskirts of the Libyan capital.

According to Radio Dabanga, the RSF members will be deployed to protect oil facilities in Haftar-controlled eastern Libya in order to allow him to concentrate his fighters for an assault on Tripoli. It said the number of RSF fighters in Libya could rise to 4,000 in the next few months.

Al Jazeera also reported that documents from Haftar’s backers in the United Arab Emirates showed orders to transport Sudanese fighters to Libya through Eritrea.

The RSF is a paramilitary force led by Mohammed Hamdan Dagolo, the deputy head of Sudan's ruling military council commonly known as Hemeti, and has played a leading role, according to opposition activists, in a deadly crackdown on protesters in Sudan since the beginning of June.

The movement of fighters has confirmed the fears of those Sudanese protesters about becoming entangled in more regional conflicts since the prospect of RSF fighters - who have already been deployed to Yemen as part of of the Saudi-led coalition - going to Libya was first floated in a lobbying deal made public in June. 

According to documents signed by Hemeti on behalf of the military council in May, and recently published in public listings in the US, the transfer of troops to support the LNA in Libya was proposed as part of a $6m deal between Sudan's military rulers and Dickens and Madson, a Canadian lobbying firm which also has links to Haftar and a record of past dealings in Libya.

The other signatory to the deal was Ari Ben-Menashe, the founder of Dickens and Madson and a Tehran-born former Israeli intelligence officer whose eventful career has included being arrested and put on trial in the US in 1989 for allegedly trying to sell weapons to Iran.

He was acquitted after a New York jury accepted that he had been acting on orders from Israel, according to a profile of Ben-Menashe in Canada's National Post.

Among other lobbying activities, the deal said that Dickens and Madson would "strive to obtain funding for your [Sudan's] Council from the Eastern Libyan Military Command in exchange for your military help to the LNA".

When contacted by Middle East Eye this week, Ben-Menashe said that the "exchange" proposed in the agreement had yet to take place and described it as a possibility only once a civilian prime minister was installed in Sudan.

Libyan 'Wild West'


But the agreement, disclosed under the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) which requires organisations representing the interests of foreign powers to declare these ties publicly, fits a pattern of dealings involving Libya and Ben-Menashe's lobbying firm.

Other documents available through the online FARA registry show that since the end of Muammar Gaddafi’s three-decade rule in 2011, Ben-Menashe’s organisation has provided public relations and lobbying services to several Libyan groups, including Haftar's LNA.

The latest agreement with Sudan is Dickens and Madson's fourth deal linked to Libya, where the organisation has had a particular focus on the eastern part of the country.

Dickens and Madson has offered clients services that range from polishing their image and forging diplomatic links to facilitating oil sales and bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance - in a turbulent Libyan context some observers have called a "Wild West" for lobbying firms.

Since Gaddafi was killed in October 2011, eight months into an uprising against his autocratic rule, Libya has been torn apart by competing claims to leadership between numerous factions.

The two most prominent bodies claiming power have been the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA), based in Tripoli, and Haftar’s LNA forces and accompanying House of Representatives government.

Haftar became a client of Dickens and Madson in 2015, according to a FARA filing which lists him and others including the House of Representatives as the "foreign principal" for a $6m deal in which the Canadian firm promised to lobby for recognition and favour in the US and Russia, but also vowed to “strive... to obtain” $500m in military assistance from Moscow. 

The goal, the document said, was to get international governments to recognise and help the House of Representative in its purported goal to “restore peace and order to the Republic of Libya”.

Ben-Menashe told MEE that he had not officially represented the House of Representatives since their deal expired earlier this year. He said he did not try to renew it after Haftar's assault on Tripoli began, which he claimed he had tried to prevent.

But he said he remained in contact with Haftar, and had tried to broker a meeting for him with Fayez al-Sarraj, the prime minister of the GNA in Tripoli who he said he had met in Tunisia and Malta.

"In spite of the fact that we didn’t have this contract [with Haftar anymore] we were requested to help as we know all the sides of the conflict," Ben-Menashe said. "The issue of uniting the two sides had been part of our work for three or four years."

'There has to be a unifying force'

Haftar, who has been backed by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia, has controlled the dominant military force in eastern Libya since launching a campaign against Islamist militant groups around Benghazi in 2014.

But his forces have been accused of human rights abuses and war crimes. Last month, Haftar promoted a commander who is the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over the alleged execution-style killing of prisoners in 2016 and 2017.

In May, Amnesty International accused the LNA of possible war crimes for bombarding civilian neighbourhoods in Tripoli.

Speaking to the BBC in July, Ben-Menashe credited Haftar and the House of Representatives with bringing stability to eastern Libya.

“We’ve represented the House of Representatives and I think there’s stability in eastern Libya - much more stable than it was before and we helped bring that about,” he said.

“What Mr Haftar did in Tripoli, that’s a different story. There has to be a unifying force and Mr Haftar got backing from different governments as well.”
Photo: Ari Ben Menashe in Zimbabwe, where he previously represented former President Robert Mugabe (AFP)

While Haftar has been Dickens and Madson's most prominent Libyan patron, Ben-Menashe has also continued to represent another Libyan client - the Unified Libya Movement (ULM) - about which there is limited public information.

The ULM is registered under a Tripoli address and stated in FARA filings that it was “supervised by Libya’s GNC [General National Congress] government”. Created in 2012, the GNC was Libya's transitional legislative authority for two years, before officially dissolving in 2016.

In a 2014 deal previously reported on by MEE, Ben-Menashe’s firm promised to deliver aid, financing and political support to the ULM to help “establish a stable social and political environment for building an inclusive, independent national government for a prosperous sovereign and unitary Libya”.

Speaking to MEE at the time, Ben-Menashe said that his clients were not all necessarily aligned with the GNC.

“Our clients are a group of people [Libyans] who want to bring everybody [from the GNC and House of Representatives] together and start a new legislative body,” he said. “Some [of the clients] are people who were in the GNC and some are still in the GNC.”

In the FARA filing after the deal with the ULM was struck, Dickens and Madson said it could not name the individuals they were representing because it "may place them at physical risk".

Working for the US government

In a 2017 report filed with FARA on the firm’s activity for foreign interests - which at the time consisted of only two Libyan clients, Haftar and the ULM - Dickens and Madson said it had meetings outside the US with individuals “who might in turn have some influence with respect to the position of the United States regarding the establishment of governing structures in Libya”.

The firm also said in the report that it had been working on behalf of the US government.

"Those activities taking place in the United States were undertaken on behalf of the government of the United States in pursuit of policies of the United States, not on behalf of the foreign principals to influence such policies," the report read.

Neither Haftar nor the ULM were Ben-Menashe’s first clients in Libya. 

In 2013, he agreed a $2m deal with the eastern Libya-based Cyrenaica Transitional Council (CTC) and an allied militia leader, Ibrahim Jathran, shortly after they had taken control of eastern Libya’s oil export ports, which they held until they were driven out by Haftar three years later.

The CTC had announced the creation of its own federal government that same year, and Ben-Menashe’s firm promised to seek recognition for its authority.

The deal said Dickens and Madson would work towards obtaining $75m in military aid from Russia and help find sellers and transport for the plentiful oil supplies in eastern Libya, despite opposition from the GNC in Tripoli. 

But that deal quickly fell apart, and in October 2014 Dickens and Madson reported to FARA that no work had been done for the client and no money received.

A month later, Ben-Menashe's firm began its work with the ULM. The following year, Dickens and Madson also started working with Haftar, who by then was at war with Jathran, his first client.

'We really thought we could help'

Ben-Menashe told MEE that he had made at least 20 trips to Libya over the course of his work there for Dickens and Madson and reiterated that the company had helped to stabilise the east of the country.

Under former US President Barack Obama, Ben-Menashe said he had advocated for the eastern government to run Libya instead of the UN-backed Sarraj, who he had viewed as a bad choice.

"We really thought we could help," he said. "We were successful in the east, we helped stabilise the east, we helped do everything."

While he said he no longer worked with Haftar, who he described as "impatient", Ben-Menashe said he remained active in Libya, and was also working with the Gaddafi clan and the minority Amazigh community to build a consensus for a unified Libya.

Dickens and Madson is just one among several western lobbying firms who have identified business opportunities in the continuing instability in Libya since the 2011 revolution, according to experts.

"It's like the Wild West," Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow with the Washington DC-based Atlantic Council and former CIA analyst, told MEE.

“As we say here: there’s gold on those hills. There’s money to be made in eastern Libya for those who take the risk. 

“Just as someone’s willing to sell weapons, someone’s going to be willing to do the PR. There are a lot of bottom-feeders out there.”

Ahmed Gatnash, a co-founder of the Kawaakibi Foundation, which works to promote liberal values in the Arab and Muslim world, said the trend for Middle Eastern powers to hire lobbyists, even beyond Libya, might not do much to increase their standing with the US or other foreign powers but could indirectly impact the public’s view of diplomacy. 

“They kind of show the populace that their politicians are potentially buyable,” he said.

"Even if the lobbying firms don’t do something, it fuels a kind of despair that the world is for sale, democracies are easily corruptible. Why would anyone back democracy in Libya when it can easily be bought?"

More than a dozen parties and factions in Libya have struck deals with US-based lobbying firms since 2011, according to FARA documents. Most of them have focused on strengthening relations between the client and the US government, or polishing their public image.

Both Haftar and the UN-backed GNA have signed new lobbying deals even since the LNA assault on Tripoli began. Donald Trump spoke to Haftar in a telephone call in April, in which a White House spokesperson said the US president had recognised Haftar's "significant role in fighting terrorism and securing Libya’s oil resources".

In May, Haftar’s LNA signed a deal with Houston-based Linden Government Solutions for “assisting in relations between the US government and Client, international coalition building, and general public relations”.

The GNA sought similar assurances from New York-based Mercury Public Affairs.

Sudan's military sidesteps protesters with lobbying and ralliesRead More »

Further Reading

1,000 of Sudan RSF fighters deployed to warlord Haftar's Libya offensive
REPORTEDLY, four thousand members of Sudan’s notorious RSF militia are thought to be deployed to protect Haftar’s oil resources during the offensive on Libya's capital Tripoli.
Sudan Watch - Thursday, August 01, 2019

Sudan militia chief Hemeti hires Canadian lobbying group for $6m to influence US, Russia, Saudia Arabia, UN, AU, Libya in favour of TMC
Article from The Financial Times.com
Sudan Watch - Tuesday, July 02, 2019

Russia Moves in on Africa: Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan
REPORTEDLY, three months before the coup last April in Sudan, a 'draft military agreement' was signed between Moscow and Sudan. 
Gatestone Institute - Tuesday, August 13, 2019
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14714/russia-sudan
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Message to TMC FFC and rebel groups in Sudan: This is what civilian control of the military looks like

The British Ambassador to Khartoum Sudan, Irfan Siddiq @FCOIrfan retweeted a tweet (see below) posted by British Member of Parliament Ms Harriett Baldwin. In the photo the person seated at the head of the table is the UK Secretary of State for Defence @PennyMordaunt. Here below is a photo of Ms Mordaunt and links to her Twitter page and website. She loves cats! Me too!
To visit the above tweet click here: https://twitter.com/hbaldwin/status/1152982530527830016
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

The women of Sudan's protests - Sudan needs women at its negotiating table

Opinion Piece from ISS Today
Dated Tuesday, 06 August 2019 
Sudan needs women at its negotiating table

Having played a leading role in Bashir’s ousting, women can improve prospects for mediation and long-term peace. 

Sudanese women played a leading role in the pro-democracy movement that started in April and set their country on the long road to transition. Since the popular uprisings though, women’s participation in shaping Sudan’s political landscape has been limited. Their notable absence from negotiations to date is a missed opportunity to achieve lasting positive change.

Restoring power to civilian rule is proving difficult in Sudan. As the military continues to exert power over the population, civilians continue to protest. Non-violent resistance has been met with the butt of a rifle and women, in particular, have been targeted. Between April and June, 70 cases of rape and gang rape of protesters, female medical personnel and human rights defenders were reported, with over a dozen minors injured or killed.

By July, Sudan’s Transitional Military Council and the civilian Forces of Freedom and Change agreed on a preliminary power-sharing agreement aimed at transferring control to civilian rule. On 4 August the two groups agreed on a constitutional declaration that will ensure the formation of a transitional government. The formal signing will take place on 17 August. A three-year transitional period will be set up with a ruling body that comprises six civilians and five generals.

Political arrangements – like the one currently struggling for survival in Sudan – are not the end of a process but rather the beginning of building more accountable and transparent governance. They don’t guarantee stability or security on their own but are indicative of the type of society that will follow.

Including women in peace processes not only bridges divides between conflicting parties, but leads to better long-term outcomes. When women are involved, peace agreements are 35% more likely to last at least 15 years, and 64% less likely to fail. Women’s level of influence over a peace process is also associated with the likelihood that an agreement will be reached and that it will include gender-specific provisions.

Women aren’t considered key actors in peace processes because the focus tends to be short-term – ending the bloodshed – rather than the type of society and peace the negotiations will deliver.

Peace processes typically involve powerful men forgiving each other for the wrongs – including wrongs against women – they, or those they command, have committed, says Professor Cheryl Hendricks from the Africa Institute of South Africa. These men distribute power and access to resources among themselves, which serves to consolidate existing power structures.

Women bring a different voice to peace deals. Research shows that agreements with female signatories have more provisions for political, economic and social reform. When women are absent, peace deals tend to be more military-focused.

Considering the difficult transition Sudan will have to navigate to create a government based on human rights, it is essential that political, economic and social reforms are prioritised. And this is where women have a key role.

While the number of women represented during negotiations does not guarantee gender equality, including them gives their rights and interests a fighting chance. If gender priorities are not spelt out at the beginning, and strategically planned and budgeted for, they are unlikely to be recognised over time.

In the same vein, women’s inclusion during the pre-negotiation and negotiation phases paves the way for their inclusion in new institutions and during the implementation phase of the peace agreement. If women are not involved early on, chances are they will not be included in the later stages.

Mali is a case in point. The Algiers Agreement signed in 2015 offered little in terms of inclusivity. The peace process and its related bodies and mechanisms fall short of meeting the 30% quota for Malian women. 

Four years later, the highest committee overseeing implementation, the Agreement Monitoring Committee, which is made up of 39 members from the government and signatory movements, is still composed entirely of men.

Sudan’s peace process provides an opportunity for its women to strengthen and consolidate women’s networks and help forge effective implementation strategies. In Liberia, such networks were instrumental in reviving political will for the disarmament process when it stalled.

Sudanese women should undertake mass action campaigns to push their way into official processes that currently exclude them. The push for inclusivity of women will have to come from civil society and political groups.

Three possible routes could be explored. One would allow an independent delegation of women to participate in the process. A second could involve formal consultative forums to identify key issues from women’s groups which are then communicated to negotiators. Finally, the 11 members of the new transitional government should at a minimum make provision for a quota for women’s representation which ensures women constitute at least 30%, as per international norms.

The collective role of Sudanese women’s organisations thus far has kept the international spotlight on human rights violations. They should continue to play a crucial role, especially in ensuring that the final agreement represents women and marginalised groups.

Monitoring the implementation of the political settlement – including of gender-specific provisions where they exist – is a key activity that local and international communities tend to overlook. In Sudan, women need to be closely involved in monitoring progress on the country’s peace deal.

Regional and international institutions must together exert pressure to ensure women play a meaningful and sustained role in Sudan’s negotiations once they resume. This requires procedures that explicitly allow women to influence decision making, rather than focusing on the numbers of women involved.

There are already woman champions who are the faces of positive transition in Sudan. In the interest of lasting stability, they need a place in the transitional government. DM

Liezelle Kumalo is a researcher and Cassie Roddy-Mullineaux, intern, Peace Operations and Peacebuilding, ISS Pretoria

The women of Sudan's protests 
(Provided by Deutsche Welle) 
The Returnee
The Activist
The Adviser
The silent fighter
The self-determined student
The Optimist

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Monday, August 12, 2019

Film: MEET THE JANJAWEED - Hemedti is positioning himself as paramilitary ruler of Darfur (Alex de Waal)

Note from Sudan Watch Editor:  Here is another great essay by Africa and Sudan expert Dr Alex de Waal.  It is a profile of Mohamed Hamdam Dagolo 'Hemedti' who is positioning himself as paramilitary ruler of Darfur. Yellow highlighting is mine for future reference.  At the end I have posted a link to a film entitled "MEET THE JANJAWEED" referred to by Alex in his essay as a 'television documentary'.  It is a must-see.

Article by Dr Alex de Waal
Dated 03 July 2019
General Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo ‘Hemedti’
General Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo “Hemedti” is the face of Sudan’s violent, political marketplace. 

Hemedti’s career is an object lesson in political entrepreneurship by a specialist in violence; his conduct and (as of now) impunity are the surest indicator that mercenarised politics that have long defined the Sudanese periphery, have been brought home to the capital city. Hemedti’s Rapid Support Force (RSF), a paramilitary led by Darfurian Arabs—and commonly decried as “Janjaweed”—are today the dominant power in Khartoum.

During the peaceful democracy protests in Khartoum, demonstrators chanted “we are all Darfur” as a rebuttal to regime propaganda, trying to portray them as rebels from the far periphery. During the crackdown of June 3, in which well over 100 protesters were killed, armed men wearing RSF uniforms chanted “You used to chant the whole country is Darfur. Now we brought Darfur to you, to Khartoum.”

“Hemedti” is the diminutive, endearing name for ‘little Mohamed’, which Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo has ironically kept because of his fresh-faced, youthful looks. For a moment, in the days after the April 11 overthrow of President Omar al Bashir, some of the young democracy protesters camped in the streets around the Ministry of Defense embraced him as the army’s new look.

Hemedti’s grandfather, Dagolo, was the head of a subclan of the Mahariya Rizeigat Arab tribe that roamed across the pastures of Chad and Darfur. 

Young men from the camel-herding Mahariya—landless and marginalised in both countries—became a core element of the Arab militia that fought in the vanguard of Khartoum’s counterinsurgency in Darfur. 

Hemedti is from the farthest of Sudan’s far peripheries, an outsider to the Khartoum political establishment.

Hemedti is a school dropout turned trader, without formal education or military staff college—the title ‘General’ was awarded on account of his proficiency in fighting and bargaining. He was a commander in the Janjaweed brigade in Southern Darfur at the height of the 2003-05 war, proving his mettle on the battlefield.

In 2007-08—the year of a widespread but inchoate rebellion by many of the Janjaweed against their patrons, Hemedti was a prominent mutineer. 

He led his forces into the bush, promising to fight Khartoum “until Judgment Day,” shot down an army helicopter, negotiated for an alliance with the Darfurian rebels, and threatened to storm the city of Nyala. 

Hemedti then cut a deal with the government, settling for a price that included payment of his troops’ unpaid salaries, compensation to the wounded and to the families of those killed, promotion to general, and a handsome cash payment. A television documentary captures his parallel negotiations with the Darfur rebels and his own government, his charm and concern for his troops—and the fact that he enlisted Arabs and non-Arabs alike in his ranks.

After returning to the Khartoum payroll, Hemedti proved his loyalty. Pres. al-Bashir became fond of him, sometimes appearing to treat him like the son he had never had. Al-Bashir reportedly called him “Hamayti”—my protector.

Hemedti has ably used his commercial acumen, military prowess—and the fact that the Sudanese establishment consistently underestimates him—to build his militia into a force more powerful than the waning Sudanese state.

On returning to the government fold, Hemedti’s troops constituted a brigade of the “Border Guards” headed by Musa Hilal, the leader of the Janjaweed. But he soon became a rival to his commander, and al-Bashir constituted his forces as a separate force in 2013, initially to fight the rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-North in the Nuba Mountains. The new Rapid Support Forces (RSF) came off second best. 


Following the March 2015 Saudi-Emirati military intervention in Yemen, the director of al-Bashir’s office, Taha Hussein, cut a deal with Riyadh to deploy Sudanese troops in Yemen. One of the commanders of the operation as Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (current chair of the TMC). But most of the fighters were Hemedti’s RSF. This brought hard cash direct into Hemedti’s pocket.

And in November 2017, when his arch-rival Hilal rebelled and was captured, Hemedti’s forces took control of the artisanal gold mines in Jebel Amer in Darfur—Sudan’s single largest source of export revenues. Suddenly, Hemedti had his hands on the country’s two most lucrative sources of hard currency.

Hemedti is adopting a model of state mercenarism familiar to those who follow the politics of the Sahara. 
President Idriss Déby of Chad rents out his special forces for counter-insurgencies on the French or U.S. payroll in much the same manner. Hemedti has recently hired the services of the Canadian lobbying firm Dickens & Madson, which has previous contracts with Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe and Libyan militia commander Khalifa Haftar, with the explicit aim, among other things, of obtaining U.S. recognition and Russian funding. Expect to see RSF troops deployed to Libya any day soon.

Meanwhile, with the routine deployment of paramilitaries to do the actual fighting in Sudan’s wars at home and abroad, the Sudanese army has become akin to a vanity project: the proud owner of extravagant real estate in Khartoum, with impressive tanks, artillery and aircraft, but few battle-hardened infantry units. 

Other forces have stepped into this security arena, including the operational units of the National Intelligence and Security Services, and paramilitaries such as special police units—and the RSF. When the democracy demonstrators surrounded the Ministry of Defense on April 6, demanding that al-Bashir must go, Hemedti was one of the security cabal whom al-Bashir convened to decide how best to break this unarmed siege. Hemedti was caught on video arguing for the use of force, though he later claimed it was his brother speaking, not him. But on the morning of April 11, he joined the army generals in deposing al-Bashir, rather than massacring the protesters. For that he won a moment of celebrity.

Unnoticed by the eyes of the media, which are focused on Khartoum, the RSF has been taking over the camps of the UN-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) as that peacekeeping operation scales down. Hemedti is positioning himself as the de facto paramilitary ruler of Darfur. (That takeover was ordered to be halted after UN protests.) [ http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article67678 ]

Since revolution day, unlike the army generals who have been cautious, even timid, and the leaders of the democracy protests, who have been painstakingly consultative, Hemedti has acted boldly and decisively. He saw that state power was lying in the streets of Khartoum to be seized by whoever had the audacity to take it. Hemedti took it: he realised that after decades of eviscerating political institutions, power in the capital functioned no differently to in lawless Darfur.

As negotiations between the generals and the democracy protesters dragged on, Hemedti repeatedly threatened to clear the streets by force—and several times, his soldiers opened fire, killing or wounding one or two.

Then, after al-Burhan and Hemedti visited Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt, the TMC appears to have decided that it could impose military rule without facing anything more than empty protests from the international community. On June 3, Hemedti’s RSF brought his Janjaweed methods to Khartoum. His forces rampaged through the city, beginning with the camps of the protesters, burning the tents, often with people inside. More than 100 were killed. Many were raped. Many were chased through the streets, hunted down in their neighborhoods. They rampaged through the university campus. The RSF fighters terrorised Khartoum.

Hemedti denies this, and avers that an independent investigation will exonerate him. And indeed, most close observers think that it is possible that he intended a limited attack, and that elements from the ousted intelligence services of the former regime took the opportunity to escalate the violence, tarnish Hemedti’s reputation and divide him from the generals in the Transitional Military Council.

Whatever the true story, Hemedti is a specialist in violence and should have seen it coming; he can’t complain if his own methods are used against him.

On 29 June, the TMC accepted to negotiate on the basis of a power-sharing formula proposed by the Ethiopian mediation. But the same day, the RSF broke up a press conference by the AFC, and the following day—30 June, the African Union deadline for a handover of power to a civilian authority—broke up the democracy forces “millions march” with tear gas and live bullets, killing seven.

But there’s also a twist to the story. Every ruler in Sudan, with one notable exception, has hailed from the “Awlad al Balad”—the heartlands of Khartoum and the neighboring towns on the Nile. The exception is deputy and successor to the Mahdi, the Khalifa Abdullahi “al-Ta’aishi” who was a Darfurian Arab, whose armies provided the majority of the force that conquered Khartoum in 1885. The riverian elites remember the Khalifa’s rule (1885-98) as a tyranny. They are terrified it may return. Hemedti is the face of that nightmare, the first non-establishment ruler in Sudan for 120 years.

The other side of this coin is that Hemedti has opened negotiations with the armed rebels in Darfur and the Nuba Mountains, and he may have the clout and the credibility to cut a deal with them. Despite the grievances against Hemedti’s paramilitaries, the Darfur rebels still recognise that he is a Darfurian, and they have something in common with this outsider to the Sudanese establishment.

When the Sudanese regime sowed the wind of the Janjaweed in Darfur in 2003, they did not expect to reap the whirlwind in their own capital city. In fact the seeds had been sown much earlier, when previous governments adopted the war strategy in southern Sudan and southern Kordofan of setting local people against one another, rather than sending units of the regular army—manned by the sons of the riverain establishment—into peril. Hemedti is that whirlwind. Immediately, he is the boomerang of Janjaweedism that has returned to strike Khartoum. But his ascendancy is also, indirectly, the revenge of the historically marginalised. The slogan “we are all Darfur” must be more than an expression of solidarity with the victims of the Janjaweed, but also a far-reaching restructuring of Sudan to address the causes of the recurrent wars in the peripheries.

The tragedy of the Sudanese marginalised is that the man who is posing as their champion is the ruthless leader of a band of vagabonds, who has been supremely skillful in playing the transnational military marketplace.

“Hemedti” is employee of the month as the representative of that inhuman logic of paramilitary mercenary politics.

Note: The CRP blogs gives the views of the author, not the position of the Conflict Research Programme, the London School of Economics and Political Science, or the UK Government.

This blog post was originally published by the World Peace Foundation; our partners on the Conflict Research Programme.

About the author
Alex de Waal is the Research Programme Director for the Conflict Research Programme and Director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University.

VIDEO 
Title: Sudan: Meet the Janjaweed
7 years ago 7.3K views
This report comes from Darfur, where the team secured unprecedented access to a key Arab armed group accused of being part of the infamous Janjaweed militia  
SUDAN WATCH UPDATE - Tue 13 Aug 2019 11:09:  This film report made at least seven years ago comes from Darfur where the UK TV Channel 4 News team secured unprecedented access to a key Arab armed group accused of being part of the infamous Janjaweed militia.
Title: Sudan: Meet the Janjaweed 
Producer: Channel 4, Unreported World, Andrew Carter, Nima Elbagir – reporter Nima Elbagir meets an Arab militia accused of being an important element of the Janjaweed, blamed for the atrocities in Darfur. Note, Nima Elbagir is a sister of Yousra Elbagir @YousraElbagir, another great journalist. An amazing pair.

Verified account@YousraElbagir

To visit the film click here: https://dai.ly/xtxd8n


Further Reading

1,000 of Sudan RSF fighters deployed to warlord Haftar's Libya offensive
REPORTEDLY, four thousand members of Sudan’s notorious RSF militia are thought to be deployed to protect Haftar’s oil resources during the offensive on Libya's capital Tripoli.
Sudan Watch - Thursday, August 01, 2019

Sudan militia chief Hemeti hires Canadian lobbying group for $6m to influence US, Russia, Saudia Arabia, UN, AU, Libya in favour of TMC
Article from The Financial Times.com
Sudan Watch - Tuesday, July 02, 2019
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

US David Hale meets TMC al-Burhan, FFC and other groups - US keeps Sudan on terrorism sponsor list

Article written by Reuters
Dated 08 August 2019
Sudan stays on terrorism sponsor list

The United States still needs to resolve longstanding issues with Sudan before removing it from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, a senior State Department official said.

Earlier this week, Sudan’s military rulers and the main opposition coalition initialled a constitutional declaration paving the way for a transitional government, leading to calls from international mediators for the country to be removed from the US list.

The designation as a state sponsor of terrorism makes Sudan ineligible for debt relief and financing from lenders like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Removal from the list potentially opens the door for foreign investment.

“There’s a number of things we’re looking forward to engaging with a civilian-led government,” Under Secretary for Political Affairs David Hale said when asked about the issue in Khartoum.

These included human rights, religious freedom and counter-terrorism efforts, as well as “promoting internal peace, political stability and economic recovery in Sudan”, he said.

The US government suspended discussions on normalising relations with Sudan in April after the overthrow of President Omar al-Bashir. Hale said the suspension remained.

The US government added Sudan to its list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1993 over allegations that then-President Bashir’s Islamist government was supporting terrorism.

Hale met General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of Sudan’s Transitional Military Council, as well as members of the Forces for Freedom and Change, the main opposition coalition, and other civil society groups.

“We discussed the importance of a thorough and independent investigation into the violence that has claimed numerous lives, according to credible reports, since the former regime was deposed,” Hale said.

Dozens of demonstrators were killed in crackdowns on protests in Khartoum and other cities following Bashir’s overthrow.

Hale paid tribute to the role of women in the revolution and hoped they would play a meaningful part in the transition to a civilian government.

“America is fully committed to helping Sudan transition to a civilian-led government that reflects the will of the people,” Hale said.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)