Darfur

It’s a pretty good debate and both of them make great points but I tend to agree with De Waal on more though.

Yeah, that crisis. Silva Kiir, the SPLM’s boss went to the United States and met President Bush. The visit apparently wasn’t coordinated with other partners in the “unity” government aka al-Bashir’s NCP which got the NCP rather pissed off. Following that, Omar al-Bashir engaged in very inflammatory rhetoric to score some political points.

Addressing a mass rally this morning at the Wad-Medani Stadium (capital of Al-Jazeera State), some 200 miles south of Khartoum, celebrating the 18th anniversary of the Popular Defence Forces (PDF), President al-Bashir ordered to the PDF to open its camps and mobilize troops and get prepared for any eventuality.

“Now we order the PDF, the legitimate son of the people, to open their camps and gather the Mujahideen [Holy warriors] not to wage war but it is obvious that we should be ready.”

Southerners are angry and the temprature is high. Meanwhile it doesn’t look like we’ll have productive Darfur peace talks soon. There’s some ongoing string pulling by the SPLM occuring behind the scenes as this article indicates:

A war could also disrupt the oil supplies on which Khartoum relies to fight on its other war fronts.

It’s not lost on Southerners that Khartoum can’t go the war road. Nor is it lost on them that the Arabs are stalling over the peace agreement. The Arabs, the Southerners say, want to resolve the Darfur war quickly, which would free them to fight another war with the South, rather than implement the peace agreement.

As I’ve mentioned previously, the SPLM and Darfurian rebels are strategizing together. Keeping the NCP pressured by Darfur’s chaos is good for the SPLM.

… And with the oil supplies possibly disrupted in the south, the NCP regime would not have the resources to buy political loyalty and fend off the Islamists in Khartoum, who are possibly baying for President al Bashir’s blood, annoyed that he has sold out to the US.

And that my dear friends and readers is the situation at the moment. Meanwhile, al-Bashir is promising the world that there will be no return to war. Seriously, if the UN airdrops hundreds of thousands of Xanax and Prozac pills on Sudan, our problems might actually get settled. As for those Islamists and their best friend Dr. Hassan al-Turabi, I’d pick Omar al-Bashir over them on any given day.

And its reasons. I love the guy. He’s so entertaining in presidential debates. Oh and he has very unique views on Darfur too.

I cannot believe I missed this five months old New York Times article. Remember the open letter I wrote to the Save Darfur Coalition criticizing their strategies (while praising their efforts to raise awareness)? (They haven’t replied by the way). Or how about this and this? Well, let’s have a look at the article:

Even as advocacy groups attained the seeming triumph of President Bush’s new sanctions against Sudan, the organization that helped bring the conflict in Darfur to the world’s attention is in upheaval, firing its executive director, reorganizing its board and rethinking its strategies.

… Sam Worthington, the president and chief executive of InterAction, a coalition of aid groups, complained to Mr. Rubenstein by e-mail that Save Darfur’s advertising was confusing the public and damaging the relief effort.

“I am deeply concerned by the inability of Save Darfur to be informed by the realities on the ground and to understand the consequences of your proposed actions,” Mr. Worthington wrote.

He noted that contrary to assertions in its initial ads, Save Darfur did not represent any of the organizations working in Darfur, and he accused it of “misstating facts.” He said its endorsement of plans that included a no-flight zone and the use of multilateral forces “could easily result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of individuals.”

Another aid group, Action Against Hunger, said in a statement last week that a forced intervention by United Nations troops without the approval of the Sudanese government “could have disastrous consequences that risk triggering a further escalation of violence while jeopardizing the provision of vital humanitarian assistance to millions of people.”

Sweeeeeeeet!

Told ya!

Via Rob Crilly:

Several of my journalist pals made the trip up to Sirte, Libya, for the Darfur peace talks. They reckoned there were about 120 journalists or so. And three rebels.

I’ve said the following in this article I wrote before two weeks and which was published a few days ago:

The situation is becoming more complex. Darfur, Nubia, up in the far north and the derailed implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Al-Bashir’s NCP and the Southern SPLM must not be regarded as three separate issues requiring different solutions. The root problems are essentially the same in all cases – lack of wealth and power sharing.

Now read this by Peter Schumann who worked for the UN in Sudan:

One of the last activities I was involved with was facilitating to strengthen the political relationship between the SPLM and the ‘Darfur Rebels’–we had two very important meetings in Juba, pre and post Abuja. Surprisingly (?) the UN–AU Mediation was not amused about the growing linkage between these two political groupings, it seemed that they saw this initiative more as a threat to their approach to form a common platform in Darfur, ignoring to a large extent the role of the SPLM.

Peter confirms what we already knew, namely that behind the scenes, the SPLM and Darfur’s rebels are talking together and strategizing.

The timing of the SPLM’s withdrawal from the Government of National “Unity” is telling. In case you didn’t notice, it was close to the scheduled Darfur peace talks in Libya (which not surprisingly were a failure, given the fact that key rebel figures didn’t attend. I suspect the SPLM might have had something to do with it).

Anyways, Peter’s outlook on the future of Sudan is far from pleasant:

The next couple of months will in all likelihood see a deterioration of the security situation in Southern Sudan and in Darfur. The CPA will continue be dishonoured in particular and all provisions related to the key Naivasha principles, in particular the right for self determination, with an escalation of military conflict focusing on the oil fields in Sector III. The deployment of UNAMID will focus on the military-security dimension and will result in the well know tussles with Khartoum over import of equipment and granting of visas and travel permits. All this will keep the UN and AU bureaucracies very preoccupied–do not underestimate the challenges to build a large scale integrated Mission under hostile conditions! Khartoum has mastered the art to divide and rule the UN bureaucracy, with the AU on board it will be even easier to divert attention from a political programme in support of forces in Sudan who want change, lasting and honest change to a system of governance which does not thrive on marginalization and instability but which guarantees the survival and well being of all Sudanese.

And what does Alex De Waal have to say?

I cannot agree more that the focus must now be on the CPA and a single solution for the whole of Sudan. The opportunity for a separate Darfur agreement was missed last year and I believe it is unlikely that it will recur soon.

Increasingly issues facing Darfur and South Sudan are inseparable and so are those of other parts of Sudan. They’re not the disease. They’re all merely symptoms of it. The disease is something else.

Use your imagination!

What the…

Haaretz reporter Ben Lynfield says:

48 African refugees missing since deported by IDF

Concern is growing about the well-being of the 48 African refugees, most of them Sudanese, who have been unaccounted for since they were detained by Egyptian security forces more than two months ago after being deported by the IDF to Sinai.

WHAT? Did he just say “concern is growing”? And he’s actually reporting this in an Israeli newspaper? As if the Jews care. No, not just any Jews. No, not those ones that made out with Ahmadinejad during his “Jews Suck” conference. No, not them. Me talking about Israeli Jews. HELLO! Jews are inherently evil remember?

Them? Good?

Nooooooooooooooooo! Impossible!

… Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said repeatedly that he has assurances from Mubarak that deportees would not be mistreated or sent back to Sudan, where they could face life imprisonment or the death penalty for having been in Israel.

Screw them both! No mistreatment in Egypt?

Raaaaaaaaaaaaaight!

… An Egyptian legal source said Friday that a Sudanese couple among the detained refugees had been released from detention by Egyptian authorities after the husband was tortured during an interrogation centering on why he had gone to Israel.

“They poured boiling water on his body and took the man and blindfolded his eyes and said ‘if you don’t tell us the real reason you went there we will shoot you’.”said the legal source.

Ooooooooo, surprise of the century!

… We know that they have been detained for no good reason. There should be no punishment for an attempt to find a safer place or a place where they would enjoy their rights.” She said

Is she CRAZY? Hell yeah, there must be a punishment. We must judge those refugee buggers from the comforts of our air-conditioned rooms. It’s our duty. This is Israel we’re talking about. It’s not a freaking joke.

Understood?

…

Sigh! Lord have mercy!

Remember this post I wrote a few days ago?

The majority of my blogging when I first started was aimed at explaining the complexities and correcting the inaccuracies, the most famous ones being the whole “Arabs Vs Africans” and “rebels: good, government: bad” narratives.

Well, JMac (someone who understands well what Darur is about) just wrote a review about a documentary on Darfur called The Devil Came on Horseback which she recently watched (and which I haven’t watched yet)

I’ll preface by saying that I appreciate all that Brian Steidle did while in Sudan and the fact that he was interested enough in what was going on there, to volunteer to work with the AU. But so many things in the film didn’t sit right with me.

… he introduces the 2 major rebel groups (there are now at least 10), and actually says something to the effect of “these groups are fighting for their rights under a repressive government, this is why they fight.” If you knew little about the situation in Darfur, you’d walk away from this film thinking those groups were somehow heroes in all this. RUBISH. Again, there is no “good” or “bad” guys here, toting guns around. They are all BAD GUYS.

Read the whole review here.

I wasn’t surprised at all about what the movie portrayed according to JMac’s account. It’s unfortunately the same simplistic narrative spiced up with the “if the US government sees these photos, they’ll send troops and end this right now” type of very heartening but dangerously naive thinking all too commonly associated with the Darfur cause in America.

US intervention could (and I strongly suspect will) stop the killing - but only momentarily. After that, the conflict will only get worse. Why? Two main reasons. Strong nationalistic sentiments and jihad (you can read more here).

Towards the end of the review JMac asked a very good question:

(I am still trying to learn how to be an effective advocate. Perhaps repeating simple phrases about a complex situation IS the best way to be effective?)

I’ve come across unique opinions saying the main reason the American people didn’t care about Congo as much as they care about Darfur now is because the marketing was bad. A simple “black and white” narrative is apparently much more effective to market than an accurate yet complex one.

Many consider it a dilemma. I don’t. Uninformed opinions have the potential to develop into an effective lobbying force demanding horrible solutions as we are currently witnessing.

The current dominant Darfur narrative needs some “tweaking”. Maintaining its emotional impact is easy. A picture speaks a thousand words.

Done. It’s not difficult.

On a related note, what I find funny and so ironic about the Darfur cause in America is that most of those calling for US intervention in Darfur are the same people calling for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq!

Here’s why:

General Martin Luther Agwai, commander of the African Union Mission in Sudan, gave an interview to the BBC’s Orla Guerin a week or so ago.

… what has got the Khartoum government hot and bothered a week later?

… his choice of military heroes included Ariel Sharon

Wonderful! The man who got a mere slap on his wrist for the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

There are hundreds of blog on Darfur out there in the blogosphere. Most are unfortunately parroting the same crap they read or hear in the media. There are many inaccuracies floating around (too many). The majority of my blogging when I first started was aimed at explaining the complexities and correcting the inaccuracies, the most famous ones being the whole “Arabs Vs Africans” and “rebels: good, government: bad” narratives. Early and long time readers of this blog know that it’s “Bad Vs Worse”.

(For the sake of new readers, I’ll dig up all the important posts I wrote regarding the aforementioned and I’ll arrange them in the “Best of this Blog” section.)

Anyways, today I want to bring your attention to two excellent blogs which don’t contain the usual and annoying inaccuracies you see elsewhere.

Andrew Heavens, a journalist, has been writing a nice series of short posts at his blog. He’s now based in Sudan. Rob Crilly is also a journalist who travels to Sudan quite often. In fact he just returned from Darfur back to Nairobi recently. They’ve got some good stuff and by going through their posts, one can observe they have a deep understanding of what’s happening.

See what Rob Crilly has to say in his post “Shades of Gray“:

Every time I visit Sudan or write about the conflict in Darfur, I am struck by the same feelings of inadequacy. By and large the crisis there is badly reported.

… Nevermind the fact that everyone in Darfur is black and African, and the term Arab is often used by tribes to signal that they are nomads and aspire to some sort of “higher” social status. If the rest of that analysis was true, it was maybe only true for a month or so in 2004. Things are very different now. “Arabs” have joined the rebels and the government has its own “black, Africans”.

… I also met a former rebel commander in El Fasher. He had quit the movement two years earlier after becoming frustrated at the leadership’s preference for using civilian villages as bases. “They seemed to want to use civilian suffering caused by government and Janjaweed attacks in their PR campaign,” he told me in the offices of the human rights organisation where he now works.

… The rebels have a reasonable argument that their province has been marginalised for decades. My point is that there is more to a thinking, sensible, reasoned analysis than simply believing that it’s a case of good guys against bad guys.

Told ya!

Other good blogs you may check are Sudan Watch, Jan Pronk’s blog and especially SSRC Blogs where Alex De Waal writes. Oh and obviously this one.

Apparently it was a nasty attack (the nastiest so far). The reasons? Well, if you ask me I’ll tell you the same ones most of the time: looting weapons and equipment. The AU condemns it and so does the US. Yaaay!

Bleh. Big deal. Great timing too. Negotiations are still going and so far? Nothing substantial.

Oh dear.

CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden will release a new message soon declaring war on Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, al-Qaida announced Thursday.

… Speakers in the video promised more fighting in Afghanistan, North Africa and Sudan’s Darfur region.

Why isn’t this stinking butcher named Bin Laden dead yet? Someone please drop a bomb on his head. Pretty please with a cherry on top.

Here are some quick linkies:

- Omar al-Bashir to visit the Vatican. More PR stunts?

- US envoy to Sudan says Darfur peace in sight. I hope so.

- Police bust Israeli Neo-Nazi ring. Call it “WTFish article of the day”.

Sorry, this week and the next are going to be very hectic. I’ve got many tests to sit for and many assignments to submit, so please bear with me. If you have a topic in mind that you’d like me to write about then don’t hesitate to drop a comment.