Comment Sudan
Since 2003 when reports started leaking about the genocide in Darfur, the subject of Sudan became more central for the major players on the world stage.
These revelations shook the world’s conscience into addressing the horror of what is being perpetrated there. Mindful of the events in 1994 in Rwanda, the international community should refuse to accept another such massacre and further violations of international law. The values of civilised people, promoted and embraced by the many concerned organisations lobbying on these issues, and the humanity of the Darfuri people is capturing the attention of the world. At a time when obstacles to the Peace Agreement are highlighting its weaknesses and lack of momentum, this focus is vital to prevent disaster for Darfur.
Remarkable developments, in the form of the charges against the Sudanese president for crimes against humanity, holding him accountable for his violations of international law, and the subsequent 2008 and 2010 indictments by the International Court have been met with obstruction and denial by the Khartoum regime. Current challenges include the conflicts occurring within the ruling party and the need to maintain pressure to force the president to face the charges of the ICC.
Powers within the ruling party do not conceal their hostility to one another. It is said that Vice President Ali Osman would seek to take advantage of the power vacuum created, should President al-Bashir be unable to retain his activities of state. His continued presence in power would preserve the internal balance of the party, while keeping the International Criminal Court at bay and safeguarding Khartoum’s reluctance to enter any real negotiations on these issues. Certainly the president has not overlooked this point and has pushed dissenting aides closer to the vice president on sensitive issues like Darfur and following up the Peace Agreement.
News is leaked from time to time about a deal on dropping the charges against the president in exchange for concessions in relation to Darfur, Abyei, terrorism and the Peace Agreement. Officially, however, this is denied in Washington, Paris and London, where it is stated that there will never be any bargaining on the subject of the International Court’s charges. This does not prevent negotiators from raising the subject whenever the opportunity arises.
There is an interest under international Law for the president to appear before the court, but the Security Council, under the Charter of Rome, has postponed any decision to arrest him for a year. This decision has specifically raised the appetite of many countries to pressure Khartoum but Khartoum thinks it can negotiate indefinitely for the “innocence of the president”, clearly a sign that it wants an elite to pay the price politically. Once the international community accepts the principle of bargaining this will turn the subject of justice into one loosely bound by the determinants of political wrangling and fall short of the provisions intended by the founders of the Charter of international justice which was intended to constrain the excessive use of violence by the institution of the state.
There is no doubt that state-perpetrated violence in Darfur has led millions to be displaced or killed. This has been proved through government reports and even committees mandated by the government itself. However, the state is failing to hold accountable those who have committed these atrocities. Because of the inadequacy of the local judiciary to play its role, we have been forced to turn to the international community to provide justice. We all remember 2 years ago when the Attorney-General tried to hold the Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, Ahmad Haroun accountable with the result being that he was excluded from the cabinet.
In August last year an open dialogue was welcomed in the court in Kampala, Uganda, proving the importance of international justice and any developments cannot be imagined without a trial of the President.
For the sake of its credibility, international law must not allow the President to be exempt from political actions. The National Congress Party must respond to the pressure for justice even if this results in a split. This will be the only way that we can move forward.
By Tajeldin Abdalla ADAM - A Sudanese journalist from Darfur, Taj has a special interest in topics relating to human rights, justice and humanitarian relief.
Darfur’s refugees in eastern Chad spoke about their fears that the Sudanese authorities are working with their Chadian counterparts to repatriate them despite lack of security and peace in the battered region. They say rapprochement between the two countries and signature of the Doha Peace Agreement between one rebel faction - Liberation and Justice Movement LJM - and the government of Sudan would give the latter the upper hand to push them home against their will. The UN estimates the number of Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad to be about 250 000 to 300 000, most of whom fled in the peak of the government counter insurgency campaign in Darfur between 2003 and 2004.
The UN peacekeeping force in Chad known as MINURCAT left the country last year after the government of President Idriss Deby refused to extend its expired mandate. Chad’s decision came at the backdrop of its improved bilateral relations with neighbouring Sudan after years of estrangement and hostile trading of accusations of supporting rebels opposed to the regimes in both countries. But the two sides have decided to end their differences since early 2010 and moved swiftly forward to deploy joint forces to patrol border areas and implement a security protocol they have signed.
Refugee agencies and aid groups warned at the time that the absence of MINURCAT would leave Sudanese refugees unprotected from acts of banditry and attacks.
“Since the normalisation of ties between Chad and Sudan and deployment of troops in the border we started to face many difficulties. There are elements from the Sudanese intelligence and security forces imbedded with the joint forces that are working in collaboration with Chadian officials in order to create an atmosphere of fear and insecurity in and around the camps to pressure us so that we return to Sudan” says one camp leader from Farchana who asked to be named as ‘Haroun’.
The Sudanese government says it has already started “a process of voluntary return for refugees” from eastern Chad. In August this year, the Commander of the Joint Forces, Colonel Fatah Alraheem Abdullah Suleiman, has spoken to Sudan News Agency (SUNA) about coordination of efforts with UNCHR and the government of West Darfur State to repatriate refugees from Chad. “We will also coordinate with the traditional administration and tribal leaders to secure the border and help people to return from Chad” says Colonel Suleiman.
For people like Haroun and other fellow refugees, the Colonel’s version of voluntary return brings them no comfort. “Halima” a female resident from Abu Nabag camp calls on the international community to protect them from the government plan of “forced return”.
“On one occasion we were told by Sudanese and Chadian officials who visited the camp that these camps are no longer safe places and told us to be prepared to go home. They said the situation in Darfur is peaceful but we didn’t believe a word of it. There is no peace in Darfur and there is no place to return to; my village in west Darfur is currently occupied by settlers who are armed with machine guns. Before we speak about voluntary return we want disarmament of militias, compensation, and justice. The international community shouldn’t abandon us. It should confront the Sudanese government’s destructive policies towards refugees and IDPs. I call this forced return, not voluntary”
With the international community now largely focused on events in the Middle East and the famine in Somalia, Darfuri refugees have good reason to worry about undesirable repatriation. The Sudanese government has always considered displaced people’s camps as a marker of the war in Darfur and said repeatedly that it is keen to relocate their occupants elsewhere. West Darfur state governor Jaafar Abdel-Hakam recently held a meeting with the Minister of Interior Ibrahim, Mahmoud Hamid, to discuss the process of “spontaneous returns” of refugees from Chad. He revealed that 4000 families have already crossed into West Darfur as part of the implementation of the outcome of the Doha Forum for Peace in Darfur.
A UNDP worker who spoke on condition of anonymity from west Darfur however, contested the governor’s figures: “we cannot confirm if such a number of people did return from eastern Chad but there are certainly individuals, or call them small groups who decided to come back to benefit from the rainy season. They were encouraged perhaps by the relative calm in some areas. But we must be very cautious about the situation. A lot of work needs to be done to create conditions for voluntary return”.
The Doha Peace Agreement which was signed on July14 this year by the Government of Sudan and LJM remains a partial deal as the rest of the rebel groups rejected it and vowed to carry on fighting. Many internally displaced people and refugees also say the agreement falls short of their aspirations and would only consolidate the NCP’s position in the region.
“It is only the government who benefit from this agreement, they will use it to divide the people of Darfur further; they will make a campaign of propaganda to tell the world that they want peace in Darfur but we will not be fooled by the so called Doha Agreement to return to Darfur” says “Yacoub” from Al Jabal camp.
The UN, AU and other international stakeholders have welcomed the agreement but suggested that it is not inclusive. The UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Herve Ladsous, briefed the Security Council on Tuesday 25 October, saying that the UN and the African Union are developing a new road map for comprehensive peace in Darfur. The US State Department and US Institute for Peace are also holding a workshop on Darfur in November to discuss comprehensive peace in the region.
This week Russia and China vetoed a United Nations resolution that was mildly critical of the Syrian regime’s violent suppression of internal dissent.
It seems an understatement to suggest the international community is inconsistent in its response to massive human rights violations.
We live in a world where more people die at the hands of the tyrants who rule them than in wars between nations. Should the UK engage only when our self-interest coincides with the moral values we espouse? Is it hypocrisy to intervene in oil-rich Libya while averting our eyes from the fate of the brave people of Syria, Burma and Zimbabwe?
Some believe our foreign policy must avoid offending the regrettable regimes with whom we do business. Others argue we should weigh our short-term self-interest against the risk that we will be sucked into something much worse if we do not take preventative action when conflict flares.
What is Britain’s role, post-Gaddafi?
In the summer of 2006 war erupted between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. After 31 days of fighting, and 1200 deaths, there was a UN Security Council resolution, followed three days later by a ceasefire. The modern machinery of diplomacy had worked as it is supposed to. The memory of Rwanda, when the world, including every African nation, looked the other way, began to recede.
Yet, as diplomacy triumphed in Lebanon, the Sudanese government continued to murder its Sudanese citizens with impunity. The case of Darfur is instructive because it illustrates the limits of our sincerity and our attention span.
After eight years, and with 300,000 dead, almost none of the belated UN resolutions on Darfur have been implemented, and the killing continues, largely unreported.
The international community’s failure to give meaning to its sporadic expressions of regret about Darfur has had direct consequences. The Sudanese regime and its proxies are now applying the same undoubtedly successful tactics against unarmed civilians in three states along the border with the new South Sudan. Hundreds of thousands are displaced, and satellite images of fresh mass graves support numerous eyewitness accounts of systematic state sponsored murder.
The Khartoum regime wants to eliminate those whom it believes might challenge it, including citizens it perceives as black Africans rather than Arabs. Just as Stalin killed the kulaks, assuming they were all unreliable, so Khartoum sees enemies everywhere.
Most of Sudan’s non-Arab ethnic groups identify with their co-religionists in South Sudan, and resent the imposition of Sharia. Hence the South may come to the defence of its ethnic brothers, triggering war from Chad to Eritrea, dragging in neighbours, and destabilising a region yearning for peace and prosperity.
As the international community has appeased Khartoum for the sake of a quiet life, it has signalled a lack of political will to solve a local political problem using targeted sanctions before it becomes a long-term regional disaster. In doing so, we have failed to learn the twentieth century’s ghastly lessons.
In the 1930s our diplomats ignored Hitler’s bloodcurdling speeches about the historic imperative to expand the German empire and to solve the ‘Jewish question’. Those who should have known better believed they could ‘handle’ him by rewarding him with Czechoslovakia and Austria, and that good behaviour would inexplicably follow.
The same arrogance about our ability to ‘handle’ bullies persists today, evident over years of pandering to Saddam, Gaddafi and Bashir of Sudan. We also still fail to recognise genocidal ideology for what it is. If history teaches us anything, it is that ignoring a festering sore rarely works. Sooner or later, we end up sending our sons and daughters to die to save our skins.
It is in our long-term interest to have a peaceful and prosperous Africa. So long as war and injustice prevail, millions of African immigrants will risk their lives to come to Europe. While conflict prevents the growth of infrastructure and a stable business climate, we will miss out on commercial opportunities that benefit African citizens as well as UK companies.
UK foreign policy can be shrewd as well as ethical if it is timely: we must work within the UN to enforce the existing resolutions that apply personal financial pressure on the architects of the slaughter in Sudan; the UN must impose a no-fly zone to stop Khartoum’s relentless aerial bombardment of its own citizens; and we must demand humanitarian agencies have access to help the survivors.
Khartoum is desperate to have its debt forgiven, and for the embrace of the IMF and World Bank. All such ‘rewards,’ currently being negotiated by the UK on behalf of the international community, must be contingent on the fulfilment of Sudan’s numerous promises to the UN and the African Union. Without peace and justice, there should be no dividend for Khartoum.
Using our diplomatic and economic leverage for the benefit of those voiceless citizens who are ruled by tyrants has the makings of a foreign policy many of us could be proud of. Not empowering kleptomaniac oppressors in the first place might also pay dividends. It may not be an all-encompassing world view worthy of Bismarck, but it is a start.