October 2006

The Sudanese military command is angry with Jan Pronk and is accusing him of committing an act of war against them.

A few days ago, Jan Pronk published a post on his blog speaking of heavy losses in the Sudanese Armed Forces’ side. The post gives a clear impression that the Darfur rebels are winning and inflicting heavy damage on the SAF.

First, the SAF has lost two major battles, last month in Umm Sidir and this week in Karakaya. The losses seem to have been very high. Reports speak about hundreds of casualties in each of the two battles, many wounded soldiers and many taken as prisoner. The morale in the Government army in North Darfur has gone down. Some generals have been sacked; soldiers have refused fighting.

The SAF command is accusing him of spreading propaganda that aids the rebels’ cause against them. They’ve declared him to be a danger to national security and are demanding that he gets deported. I doubt they’ll actually deport him and I think their words are mere empty threats. The UN’s mission in Sudan is huge and ranges from humanitarian work to peace keeping in the south. Somebody has to watch over all those things and this somebody is Jan Pronk.

UPDATE: Crap, I was wrong. These people have got to be kidding me. Who the hell is going to take over the UN operation in Sudan? Jan Pronk has been told to leave. He has 3 days to do so! 

Black Kush blogged an interesting post about the various conspiracies surrounding John Garang’s death in the mysterious helicopter crash that killed him.

Read it all here. He says the Sudanese government does indeed support the Janjaweed directly. It’s quite possible he’s making up some things but I don’t doubt him. I have an inclination to believe what he says based on the fact that I know well what the NCP is capable of. Here are excerpts of the interview with ex-fighter “Ali”.
(hat tip: Sudan Watch & Jewels in the Jungle)

I’m speechless. I’m happy. I’m hopeful.

Hamas official: is violence a Palestinian “disease”?

A senior figure in Hamas, the Islamist group that heads the Palestinian government, published an article on Tuesday condemning internal violence and questioning whether it had become a “Palestinian disease.”

…”Has violence become a culture implanted in our bodies and our flesh?” he asked in the sharply worded article, published in the widely read Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam.

“We have surrendered to it until it has become the master and is obeyed everywhere — in the house, the neighborhood, the family, the clan, the faction and the university.”

…In August, he criticized Palestinian militant groups fighting Israel, saying they were not doing the cause of Palestinian independence any good by launching attacks at moments when it appeared progress was being made.

This is very significant. As much as I hated Israel’s brutal war against Lebanon and continue to hate its policies of collective punishment against innocent Palestinians, I must definitely say that I hate the stupidity of Hamas and Fatah. Almost all people in the region have a tendency to blame Israel for everything that goes bad. Darfur gets screwed up, blame those damn Zionists. Palestinians start fighting amongst themselves; blame those damn “dividing & controlling” piggy apes Jews. Someone you know gets diagnosed with cancer, blame those damn filthy Jews. You step on a banana peel and slip, blame those damn Israelis. Your friend gets severe gastric and starts farting 24/7, blame those damn Israeli Jews. The truth however is that Palestinians are not blameless.

(Hat tip: Big Pharaoh)

This is what the headline of this Arabic article says. What I found weird is that it heavily quotes an article entitled “The Goals of the American Adminstration in the Middle East” written by some military analyst called Joseph Alsob in the French newspaper called Lomond (did I spell it right?). Joseph says that there is a secret agreement between the Darfur rebels, American intelligence and the Israeli Mossad. According to him, there’s a plan to invade Sudan under the pretext of what’s happening in Darfur which he says will be the excuse this time instead of WMDs. He says after the invasion takes place, the United States will bring down the Khartoum government and replace it with a friendlier one. Following that, the US is supposed to start sucking oil and stealing uranium but wait there’s more. The US will also divert some of the Nile’s water to Israel using high capacity pipes!  Joseph then goes to conclude that Sudan’s invasion will be the first step towards colonizing Egypt and here’s the best part. The pretext of invading Egypt will be liberating the oppressed Coptic Christians! I’m telling you people this article is amazing. You see this is exactly why Israel gave back the whole of gigantic Sinai to Egypt.

You know I’ve been thinking. Let’s just assume pious caring Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s NCP gives consent for a transfer of the AU mission in Darfur to the UN. Do you really think the ranting Western nations will actually contribute troops given the fact that al-Qaeda and Sudanese Islamists said they will declare Jihad against them? Do you really think they’ll want to risk their domestic security thanks to dickheads living amongst them who believe the propaganda saying that Darfur has no problems and that the West is making up and exagerting its claims to wage another CrUSAde in order to get to the oil and uranium in Darfur? Do you really think with the war in Iraq and NATO stretched and begging for more soldiers in Afghanistan, troops will actually make it into Darfur? I DON’T. At least not for now. Bush bla bla bla. Blair and the EU bla bla bla. Arab countries and the OIC super BLA BLA BLA. I’m getting so pissed off with this, all of it. I just hope these 2 guys can make a miracle happen. They’re all I trust right now at this very moment and I certainly hope this report is right because if it is… it’s damn good news. AND if they succeed… not just succeed to get the rebels to sign but succeed to get them to actually stick to the agreement and stop fighting then… then you can forget answering the questions I asked above.

UPDATE: Sudan says ready for talks with Darfur non-signatories

Yup, another great plan to disarm the Janjaweed has been announced by the Sudanese Nasrallah aka Omar Hassam al-Bashir. The Janjaweed won’t be needed to slaughter protect the Darfurians anymore from the nasty evil piggy apes Jewish organizations planning to invade Sudan. Mighty Bashir achieved a diplomatic victory against the CrUSAders. He continues chanting “leave us alone you devils… leave us!”. Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong or else you shall fear our “wrath”. Pffffffffffffff. *spit. Whatever!

Someone posted a nice comment which I will translate.

“مسرحية سيئة الاخراج يقوم بها المؤتمر الوطنى للمرة الثانية يمكن ان يكون هنالك تغير فى الابطال ”

“This is a horribly directed play being carried out by the NCP for the second time. Maybe there should be a change of heroes.” 

Gee, ya think?!

Something positive might be cooking. I’m not sure but I’m going to be optimistic about this one. I mean hey, the peace agreement with the eastern rebels has been finalized. I’m so tired of being depressed over this. I need to be hopefull. I need to be. We need to be. Let’s all pray for peace in Darfur. If you don’t believe in God then… I don’t know, you could probably take a “sip” or a “puff” for the innocent victims of this ugly conflict. Cheers to you all. Love ya and take care. Blogging to resume in 2 days time.

I’m glad pressure is being stepped up on Bush from within the Republican party to do more about the worsening condition in Iraq. Told be told, Iraqi leaders aren’t doing a good job either. Anyways, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said something that really caught my attention:

“The American people are not going to continue to support, sustain a policy that puts American troops in the middle of a civil war,” Hagel said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

He called what’s happening a civil war. Everytime Bush gets asked about that one, he refuses to admit what’s happening in Iraq is a civil war. Maybe behind closed doors he’s admiting it and scratching his head in worry.

See what Healing Iraq has to say about the situation in his country. It’s freaky, very depressing and disgusting. Big Pharaoh also makes a more disgusting observation about the death threat letters from Sunnis to Shias and vice versa.

The most bizzare thing about these letter is that they all start with “In the name of God the merciful the compasionate”!

Ya, I know, as if Allah is going to be happy with them. You all know how hard I try to keep myself from cursing on this blog but I swear to God, even if I started to, no words in the “street English dictionary” will be deserving enough for describing the FUBAR filthy sub-human animals killing each other and innocent people in Iraq.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a turtle, it’s… the OICeeeee! After sitting around and doing almost nothing besides giving “spiritual support” (whatever the hell that means), the OIC is finally stepping up to help fix the Darfur situation.

Disgusting!

The Southern SPLM supports UN troops coming into Darfur (something good) and because of their position, Bashir’s NCP has threatened to cancel the peace deal signed with them that ended the long 20 year civil war between the north and the south (something utterly stupid and arrogant). Southern Sudanese fellow blogger, Black Kush has more on this. She’s certainly right.

The New Yorker has one hell of an article that was posted on the 5th anniversary of 9/11. It’s about a person I have great respect for and admire greatly. It’s about one of my main political role models. It’s about the one and only Sudanese martyr Mahmoud Mohammed Taha. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an unbiased piece of journalism before. I, as a Sudanese political junkie can tell you that the writer, George Packer does an excellent job bringing all the different Sudanese views about Ustaz Taha and the criminals who executed him. The article describes the decay of my country under the Islamists who seized power and brought nothing but cruelty and corruption. It also talks about Prof. Abdullahi Ahmed an-Naim, who was a student of Ustaz Taha. Prof. Ahmed an-Naim fled to the United States after Ustaz Taha was executed. He’s now the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. The picture above is of Ustaz Taha and the one below is Ahmed an-Naim’s.

My father knew him very briefly back in the University of Khartoum. I would love to meet Prof. Ahmed an-Naim one day. I’m very sure we’ll have a pleasant conversation. I can relate to his experiences on so many levels and I can understand very well the mental debate he’s been through. I think I’ll be able to learn a lot from him. His books are great and I recommend reading some of them especially his translation of Ustaz Taha’s “The Second Message of Islam” which contains solutions to the ills and dilemmas of the Muslim world. I’m currently waiting for the latest book Prof. Ahmed an-Naim is working on. It’s entitled “The Future of Sharia”. The following is an excerpt from the New Yorker article.

Naim’s newest project, which he calls a work of advocacy more than of scholarship, is a manuscript called “The Future of Sharia.” Even before its English publication, he has begun to post it on the Web, translated into Persian, Urdu, Bengali, Turkish, Arabic, and Bahasa Indonesia. Its theme is more radical than anything he has written before; although it is based on his long devotion to Taha’s ideas, it goes beyond them and, according to some of Taha’s followers, leaves them behind. “The Future of Sharia” amounts to a kind of secularism: it proposes not a rigid separation of politics and religion, as in Turkey, but, rather, a scheme in which Islam informs political life but cannot be introduced into law by an appeal to any religious authority. Otherwise, Muslims would not be free. “I need a secular state to be a Muslim,” Naim said. “If I don’t have the freedom to disbelieve, I cannot believe.”

His work is interesting and like Ustaz Taha’s work can provide the structural framework for a reformed Islamic political system fit for today’s modern times. Given that the appeal of secularism is not very strong in the Muslim world, these types of scholarly works are important because they provide solid alternatives better than the harsh backward Sharia we see being practiced today in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran. Even though I’ve embraced secularism, I myself continue to have mixed feelings about it. Truth be told, I like millions of other Muslims heavily dislike the “Amsterdam” aspects of Western secularism. My reasons are both religious and cultural. I however, recognize the practicality of secularism given the sad fact that most Muslims can’t agree absolutely on anything except the destruction of Israel. It is at this point that my mental sores start and it is also at this point that the work of people like Mahmoud Mohammed Taha and Prof. Ahmed an-Naim becomes of paramount importance. I believe the West must pay much more attention to their work and examine it criticaly without what I like to call “ethnocentric bias“.

Ahmed an-Naim is certainly a shining star amongst the many bright individuals in the Sudanese Diaspora which fled Sudan and ended up being welcomed by the hospitable West and the oil-rich Arab Gulf States. Please spare 10 minutes of your time to read this excellent article. You won’t regret it.

Carmen has a really cool post on her blog. It brings back so many memories. I’ve always hated it when people judge you for being a bad or good Muslim and give you the whole “you’re condemned to hell” intense speech. Her experience is similar to many I’ve had. I’ve got one word for Carmen. RESPECT!