Sudan Government Supporters Defend President Against Darfur War Crimes | Voice of America - English
Supporters of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir continue to rally around him following claims by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court that he's guilty of war crimes in Darfur. Luis Moreno-Ocampo says Mr. al-Bashir orchestrated crimes against humanity, including genocide, against black ethnic groups in the region. The United Nations says at least three hundred thousand people have died so far and two and a half million have been forced from their homes in Darfur.
Thesummary of the case against Mr. al-Bashir contains this paragraph: "Theevidence establishes reasonable grounds to believe that al-Bashir intends todestroy in substantial part the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups as such.Forces and agents controlled by al-Bashir attacked civilians and towns andvillages inhabited by the targeted groups, committed killings, rapes, tortureand destroying means of livelihood." Ocampo has asked the ICCjudges to issue a warrant for the arrest of the Sudanese leader, and they'reexpected to announce their decision on whether or not to indict him within twoor three months. Even as Mr.al-Bashir's supporters rally around him and the African Union calls for thecharges against him to be suspended, international human rights activistscontinue to express elation at the possibility of the president being called toaccount for his alleged crimes. Omer Ismail, policy advisor for the Enough Project andfounder of the Darfur Peace and Development NGO, calls the ICC action "the wayto go" and says "all evidence points to high-level involvement" in theatrocities. But Dr. Eltigani Salah Fidail, Sudan's minister ofinternational cooperation, who's originally from El-Fasher in Darfur, says theroots of the crisis in his homeland are to be found in "geography and history,not in the office of the president." While Fidail acknowledges that the state has largelyfailed to develop Darfur, he attributes the problem more to natural disastersand even the international community for not providing enough aid for theongoing humanitarian catastrophe. The minister says when drought in Darfur intensified inthe 1990s, the government of Sudan was "unable to cope with the disaster, andthe international community failed to provide the technical and financialsupport to contain the consequences. The pressure on the scarce resourcesbecame more and more acute and triggered a number of problems." One of these problems, according to Dr. Bakri Osman Saeed,a senior member of Sudan's ruling National Congress Party (NCP), was the riseof several militias in Darfur, including the janjaweed. Activists blame thisgroup for many of the gross human rights abuses in Darfur, and Ocampo holdsPresident al-Bashir responsible for organizing, funding and instructing thejanjaweed. Government authorities, though, insist that the militiasin Darfur are independent and not under state control. Fidail says the groupsrose to "protect their own interests," including access to water sources andgrazing for their animals. He adds that "banditry and poaching" are to blamefor much of the violence and have been rife in the region since the "earlydays" of Khartoum's war in southern Sudan against the Sudan People's LiberationArmy (SPLA). "The government at the time was mobilizing its resourcesand energy to face the growing threat from the SPLA and its allies. All thesefactors led to some kind of security vacuum in the area," Fidail states. As a result of "intertribal conflict," he says, the peopleof Darfur "retreated to their ethnic or tribal groups to seek protectionthrough the semi-organized armed groups. Small arms flooded the area, and(were) made available at a low price by roaming Chadian rebels." Fidail adds that "tribal polarization" has become "verystrong" in Darfur and a "culture of violence has contaminated the whole area.Groups loyal to their ethnic roots started to fear and hate each other. It's avery sad reality." Theminister contends that the "elite" of each warring "tribe" in Darfur "fannedthe flames of the tribal hatred, and other actors joined the course" until thesituation was so bad that Mr. al-Bashir's government could no longer containit. Fidailalso partly blames Sudanese opposition parties. "Politicalparties who were not happy with the NCP tried to make life difficult for itthrough the manipulation of different groups loyal to them. The neighboringcountries (such as Chad and Central African Republic) contributed to thiscomplex situation" by supporting anti-Khartoum rebels in Darfur. Ismaildismisses Fidail's contentions. "Thesecomments just continue the pattern of the Sudan government blaming everyone butthemselves for what is happening in Darfur," the activist says. "The minister saysthe climate, tribal arguments, ethnic rivalries, the SPLA, Chadian rebels, theChad government, the CAR, rebel groups are to blame for all the killing ?everyone is to blame, just not al-Bashir. It's very hard to swallow." Ismailcontinues: "Just to say this Darfur thing became too big for the government tocontrol is a very lame excuse. They did not even try to stop any violencethere. In fact, they are the one's who caused all the killings ? either byturning a blind eye to the janjaweed's murderous actions or by bombing andattacking the villages with their very own forces." Dr.Gerard Prunier, an internationally respected political consultant on EastAfrican affairs based in Addis Ababa, says when he listens to those who defendMr. al-Bashir, he gets the impression that "it's all a question of naturalcatastrophe, it comes down from heaven or drought" when in reality, Darfur is a"human-made conflict." Prunier says it should now be left up to the ICC to decidewhether or not it was President al-Bashir who planned and executed it. Dr.Mudawi El-Turabi, the chairman of Sudan's Parliamentary Defense and SecuritySubcommittee, says neighboring Chad must shoulder a large part of the blame forthe problem. "Thecrisis in Darfur is?. a regional problem, and it also involves the use ofmultiple proxies. A number of Sudan's neighbors are involved, including Chad?.And according to a recent study, the conflict is characterized by cross-borderactivities by the combatants with fluid loyalties." El-Turabi says rather than the janjaweed "exporting"conflict to eastern Chad, as activists say, the reverse is true, and rebelssupported by N'Djamena are attacking Sudan government forces in Darfur. "Theproblem of Darfur was caused (by) the Chadian wars in Darfur; we just foundthat in 2005 the proliferation of small arms in Darfur raised up toone-point-five million small pieces of guns in a population of four to fivemillion," he says. El-Turabi is convinced that not enough attention is beingpaid to the "political crisis" in Chad itself as a key underlying cause of theviolence in Darfur. Instead, he maintains, the spotlight is now on one man:President al-Bashir. El-Turabi says, "The chronic conflict between the Chadiangovernment" and political groups in Sudan's neighbor who feel they have noother alternative than to take up arms against the administration of PresidentIdriss Deby, means that "this (Darfur) crisis is rooted in the failure ofdemocratization in Chad." Buta spokesman for the Chad government, Nurane Bashir, denies that N'Djamena issupporting rebels against Khartoum. "TheSudanese government wants (Darfur) to be a proxy war," he says, because they'reincreasingly eager to divert attention away from themselves, especially in thelight of the ICC charges against their leader. Heexplains, "The conflict in Darfur (is) no longer a Darfurian problem, it's aninternational problem. It's related to human rights, it's labeled as genocide.So the consequences of such a label will be enormous?. Khartoum wants to (say)this issue is not the janjaweed supported by Sudanese government, trained andfunded by Sudanese government, rather that it's a regional, tribal conflict, adispute of land and grass and? water resources?. This is the purpose of tryingto label the conflict as a proxy war?." Dr. Bakri Saeed says the internationalspotlight on Mr. Al-Bashir and a "government gone mad" in Darfur "suits the minds of some politicians, who obviously have aninterest in bringing the government down." The gist of Saeed's argument,which is shared by others in Khartoum, is that the ICC action and internationalcondemnation of the Sudan government as a result of the Darfur situation isless about ending the violence there and gaining justice for the victims andmore about a quest for "regime change" in Sudan. They say "the West" is using the ICC to overthrow President al-Bashirin order to put in place a more "Western-friendly" government. "When I talk to my colleaguesand friends in the government (in Khartoum), it's what they tell me; that thisis the objective of these people, they keep accusing the government (of variouscrimes that) it didn't do, because their final objective is to change the Islamistregime in Sudan," says Saeed. Omer Ismail responds, "This is what we expect from theSudan government, that they will use any international actions againstal-Bashir to show that he is being victimized, that he is a victim ofinternational interference and therefore deserves protection from the ArabLeague, from the AU, from whoever is for Western hegemony?." But Mr. al-Bashir's supporters insist that the way to peace in Darfur lies not in warcrimes charges against the president, but through negotiations between theconflicting parties. With a view to national elections in Sudan in 2009, theymaintain that ICC action against Mr. Al-Bashir will disrupt the entire country at potentially the most important juncture in its history.