IJCentral: International Justice Central

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan’s security service accused staff at a radio station which focuses on Darfur of working for rebels in the region and for the International Criminal Court, which is seeking the arrest of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

Reports in state media on Saturday marked the first official confirmation of a crackdown on the Netherlands-registered Radio Dabanga, whose Khartoum office was raided last week.

“Radio Dabanga was working against Sudan, focused on inciting hatred among the people and aborting the peace process,” the Sudanese Media Center quoted a source in the National Security and Intelligence Services as saying.

“Most of the staff are working for Darfur’s armed groups or for the ICC,” the source added.

Sudan tightly controls radio and television, and refused to allow U.N. radio station Miraya to broadcast in the north of the country. The Darfur peacekeeping mission, UNAMID, has also been not been given permission to begin broadcasts in the region.

Radio Dabanga is one of the few sources of in-depth news on Darfur still on the air. Last week 13 staff at Dabanga and pro-democracy group HAND were arrested along with another prominent Darfuri journalist working for the independent al-Sahafa paper.

No was immediately available for comment at Radio Dabanga.

The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Bashir in 2009 for war crimes in Darfur and added genocide to the indictment this year. Bashir rejects the charges.

The United Nations estimates about 300,000 people have died in a humanitarian crisis when 2 million people fled a counter-insurgency campaign to squat in miserable camps surrounding Darfur’s towns. Sudan blames Western media for exaggerating the conflict and puts the death toll at 10,000.

Neither Radio Dabanga nor HAND has legal status in Sudan. After the ICC arrest warrant was issued several rights activists in Sudan said they were arrested and tortured while others fled the country fearing for their lives. Khartoum expelled 13 aid groups, accusing them of working for the ICC.

Washington criticized Khartoum for the arrests, and rights groups have said Sudan is using a referendum due in January on whether the south of the country should secede as a cover for the crackdown on Darfur.

Fighting between Darfur rebels and the army reignited last week after a lull caused by heavy rains.

The Darfur rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said it had fought with Sudan’s army in North Darfur on Saturday.

“Yesterday ... JEM clashed with SAF in North Darfur,” senior JEM commander Suleiman Sandal told Reuters on Sunday. “The army was moving to take control of the water sources in the region and we got this information and attacked them,” he added.

Three JEM fighters died and 13 were injured, he said, while the army suffered many losses and retreated. The army was not immediately available to comment but has confirmed clashes in the past week with JEM in South Darfur and North Kordofan, a region neighboring Darfur.

(Reporting by Opheera McDoom; editing by David Stamp)

source: Reuters

Evidently we are happy to work with Sudan’s Islamist regime as long as it restricts itself to killing its own people

It is hardly news when the red carpet is rolled out for an African trade delegation visiting London. But it is unprecedented when the delegation is led by officials whose president is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide against his own citizens.

Since a coup brought him to power in 1989, Sudan’s President, Omar Bashir, has been ethnically cleansing Africa’s largest country of those who disagree with his Islamist ideology. Now Bashir’s regime wants closer economic ties with Britain. It is also pressuring Washington to drop economic sanctions and remove Sudan from the list of states sponsoring terror. And it wants its debt cancelled.

Why are the UK and US governments even considering the wish list of a man indicted for genocide? Because Bashir’s good behaviour is required as Sudan goes through momentous changes. Next January a controversial referendum is likely to split Sudan in two, giving the country’s main economic asset, its oil, to the new South Sudan.

As the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office prioritise trade above all else, apparently there is no longer room for the protection of human rights. More than trade is at stake, however. The CIA looks to Sudan for intelligence on terrorist safe havens in nearby Somalia and Yemen, ignoring the inconvenient fact that Bashir’s regime shares a core philosophy with the Islamist militias it is supposed to be monitoring.

Many Sudanese are risking their lives to create a pluralist society, but the international community is sanctioning the actions of Bashir’s genocidal government. The UK must use its influence to hold Khartoum to the many yet-to-be enforced human rights measures in the peace deals and international conventions to which the regime is committed. Sudan’s version of political Islam despises free speech, independent thought, Jews, women, gays and, of course, moderate Islam. But evidently we are happy to work with Islamists if they restrict themselves to killing their own people.

Rebecca Tinsley is chair of Waging Peace.

source: The Independent

Team Obama has just offered Sudan’s genocidal tyrant one last olive branch. A hickory switch might work better.

This past Tuesday, when the punditocracy was raptly focused on the electoral results in Delaware and New Hampshire, the U.S. State Department quietly issued a policy statement on Sudan that offered the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir a path to escape sanctions and restore normal relations with the United States.

Why no fanfare? Perhaps an administration highly sensitive to accusations of equivocation in the face of evil was reluctant to call attention to a policy that emphasized carrots rather than sticks—or rather, to use the splendidly mangled metaphor of one administration official, offered to the regime in Khartoum “a carrot painted with a finer degree of granularity.” Bashir, who has been indicted on genocide charges by the International Criminal Court, doesn’t deserve a carrot. But the Obama administration has rightly concluded that absent strong inducements, deserved or not, from the United States and other key actors, the regime in Khartoum could well plunge Sudan back into a horrendous civil war.

In January 2005, the regime and the breakaway government of the south put an end to almost 40 years of war by signing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The CPA gave southerners the right to choose independence or greater autonomy within Sudan. The referendum in which they will make that choice is scheduled for Jan. 10, 2011, and no one doubts that voters will overwhelmingly choose the former—if the referendum is held, and conducted honestly. But Khartoum appears to have no intention of permitting that. Oil has turned Sudan into a boom economy, and 80 percent of the country’s oil is located in the south. Moreover, the regime fears—with good reason—that granting independence to the South would embolden other regional insurgencies.

Suliman Baldo, a Sudanese scholar with the International Center on Transitional Justice, says that the Bashir government has been orchestrating a domestic media campaign to promote the fiction that all Sudanese seek national unity—and thus that a vote for independence is intrinsically illegitimate. Baldo and others fear that if Khartoum blocks or refuses to recognize the election, provoking the government of the South to unilaterally declare independence, the decades-long civil war that led to the deaths of two million people will resume.

The Obama administration has responded to this apocalyptic prospect with a belated, but very concentrated, diplomatic surge. Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Advisor James Jones have spoken with Salva Kiir, the southern leader, and Ali Osman Taha, Sudan’s vice president, urging them to make progress on the terms laid out in the CPA, which they have so far failed to do. President Obama announced last week that he would personally attend a U.N. Security Council session on Sudan chaired by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during the upcoming General Assembly meeting; that in turn has persuaded other heads of state, as well as Kiir and Taha, to attend. The administration has beefed up its diplomatic representation in Sudan, in part by naming Princeton Lyman, a veteran diplomat with long experience in Africa, to work with the two sides. And last weekend Scott Gration, Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, went to Khartoum to deliver the administration’s new offer.

That offer is at the heart of the strategy document released earlier this week. Gration presented the regime with four ascending “stages” of granularized carrot. The administration will immediately change the rules governing the export of agricultural equipment to Sudan, now tightly controlled by sanctions. “Previously there had been an assumption of no,” a White House official explained to me. “Now we’re going to shift to an assumption of yes.” This is, in effect, a gift for showing up—no strings attached. If the regime permits the referendum to proceed and respects the outcome, the White House will lift further trade restrictions (though not on the all-important oil sector). If Khartoum also reaches agreement on key North-South issues, including the drawing of boundaries and sharing of oil revenue, Washington will appoint an ambassador (the last ambassador, Timothy Michael Carney, was withdrawn in 1996 after Sudan was declared a state sponsor of terrorism). Only, however, if Khartoum also resolves the Darfur conflict does the administration promise to seek full normalization and the lifting of sanctions.

Administration officials present the package as an “intensification” of existing diplomacy, but that is slightly disingenuous. After long, and reportedly heated, arguments inside the White House over the proper balance between carrot and stick, officials have produced a document that is highly specific about inducements and carefully vague about threats. Despite veiled references to “accountability,” the statement is silent on the ICC indictments. And after much discussion over whether it’s acceptable, or effective, to address the North-South conflict separately from Darfur, the administration plan will allow Khartoum to profit from compliance on North-South issues, though Bashir wins the jackpot only for restoring peace to Darfur.

Some, though not all, members of the advocacy community are appalled at the decision to, quite literally, let the regime get away with murder. John Norris, a Sudan expert at the Center for American Progress and former head of the Enough Project, calls the package “unseemly.” Norris points out that in 2005 Western diplomats made a calculated decision to bless the North-South peace agreement even as the regime perpetrated mass slaughter in Darfur. Indeed, from the very beginnings of the killings in Darfur, in 2003, Bashir responded to pressure from the West by threatening to scuttle negotiations over ending the civil war. “Once again,” Norris says, “you’ve got a bunch of diplomats saying that this current situation is so serious that we need to ignore all this other stuff.”

So there is both a moral case and a strategic case against offering Khartoum goodies in exchange for behaving itself on the referendum. But if the derailing of the referendum really would lead to mass killing (and some experts I spoke to are skeptical on this score), then it’s patent that the moral imperative is to give Bashir incentives to behave himself, and to leave the issue of just deserts to a future date. The only real question is effectiveness. A number of studies (pdf) have concluded that marginalizing Darfur to get the CPA signed was a disastrous mistake that sent Bashir a signal that he could do as he wished with the people of Darfur. Why is it correct now?

Gration was foolish enough to say earlier this year that what remained in Darfur, seven years after the killing broke out, was only “the remnants of genocide.” He was quickly forced to retract the comment in the face of outrage from activists. But he was right. Civilians in Darfur still live in a state of terror, and millions remain displaced; but much of the killing now pits rebel groups, or Arab tribesmen, against one another. On the other hand, the steadily rising levels of violence in the South, much of it probably instigated by Bashir and his colleagues, could explode into the kind of mass ethnic reprisals provoked by the partition of India and Pakistan in 1948. As a State Department official puts it delicately, “There is a sense of urgency on both Darfur and the CPA, but there is a growing sense of immediacy on North-South issues.” The situation in 2005 was the exact opposite.

That said, Bashir must be made to feel that there is a powerful, and imminent, “or else.” So far, the Obama team has hesitated to make threats. Gration in particular has been far too willing in the past to accept the regime’s bona fides, as if unaware of the bland reassurances and bald-faced lies that frustrated his predecessors. Even now, he and his team may be putting too much stock in the influence of “moderates” inside the ruling National Congress Party, whom Western officials have been banking on—fruitlessly—for years. Bashir is likely to “accept” the State Department’s proposal, and then add onerous conditions of his own. A White House official insists that the administration is prepared for that eventuality, and adds that the ability to marshal an international response in case of rejection is “a very important part of the thinking” that went into the new offer. As with Iran, that is, the regime’s rebuff of what is seen as a fair offer will help the United States build the case for tougher sanctions than those Sudan now faces.

Will Bashir be suitably impressed by that prospect? Over the years, he has blithely ignored Security Council resolutions, sanctions, threats of prosecution, and global public opprobrium. He has learned all too well how to exploit the weakness of international diplomacy. Now he holds a lit match over a vast bonfire. Perhaps he fears the consequences of flicking it on to the pyre, but the irresolute response of years past have ensured it’s his choice—and his alone.

source: Foreign Policy

September 16, 2010 (KHARTOUM) – A meeting of the Arab league foreign ministers today endorsed a resolution reaffirming its position in rejecting the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against the Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir for war crimes and genocide allegedly committed in Darfur.

An Arab Ministerial Committee on the affairs of the Sudan expressed solidarity with Sudan and face of the ICC’s decisions and called annulling the warrants noting that Sudan is not a member of this Court.

The committee which is comprised of Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Libya, Qatar, Sudan, UAE, Oman and Syria slammed “attempts to politicize the principles of international justice and used in the erosion of State sovereignty , unity and stability”.

The ICC’s first-ever warrant against a sitting head of state was issued for Bashir in March 2009 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The second was issued in July 2010 on charges of genocide.

The United Nations says up to 300,000 people have died since conflict broke out in Darfur in 2003, when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Bashir’s Arab-dominated regime for a greater share of resources and power.

(ST)

KHARTOUM, Sudan - A referendum on whether oil-rich southern Sudan breaks away to become Africa’s newest nation is scheduled to take place in less than four months. But with negotiations between north and south stalled over border demarcation, and preparations for the vote lagging perilously behind, the likelihood of the referendum proceeding as planned appears slim.

Analysts fear that any delay could trigger a return to the decades-long civil war that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 2 million people, primarily southerners.

Sudan’s Islamist government, headed by President Omar al-Bashir, appears reluctant to let go of oil fields that have helped it survive U.S. economic sanctions first imposed in the 1990s after Sudan was designated a state sponsor of terrorism. The loss of territory in resource-rich southern Sudan would have grave economic consequences for the north, analysts say.

According to Fouad Hikmat, the International Crisis Group’s special adviser on Sudan, the government says the referendum cannot take place until agreements are reached on issues related to its economic future.

“If these negotiations fail for whatever reasons, the referendum will be in jeopardy,” Hikmat said.

Earlier this month, the Obama administration boosted its efforts to mitigate the looming crisis, dispatching veteran diplomat Princeton Lyman to join U.S. special envoy Scott Gration in Sudan.

The U.S. government has long been committed to the right of self-determination for the predominantly animist and Christian population of southern Sudan.

In 2001, pushed by an advocacy coalition led by U.S. evangelical and African-American churches, former President George W. Bush made bringing peace to the region a foreign policy priority. His administration helped secure a 2005 peace agreement, which established a power-sharing government that was supposed to lead Sudan from dictatorship to democracy. After a six-year interim period of semi-autonomous-rule, the south was to vote in 2011 on whether to remain part of Sudan or secede.

But with international attention on a separate crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, and relations between north and south marked by mistrust, the benchmarks set out in the agreement fell behind schedule. In April, a national election that had been delayed twice, and that most opposition parties boycotted, handed Bashir—who had been indicted by the International Criminal Court - an electoral victory.

The ruling National Congress Party now says the referendum cannot take place until the border has been demarcated. But members of an 18-person Technical Border Committee representing both sides have been unable to reach a final agreement on the boundary.

Battle over resources

Stretching from the Central African Republic in the west to Ethiopia in the east, the 1,200-mile border region between north and south is among the most resource-rich and ethnically diverse areas of Sudan. Predominantly Arab pastoralists from north of the border who journey southward each year to graze their livestock fear that demarcation will prevent their seasonal movement.

The border committee has agreed on about 80 percent of the border, the Sudanese minister of cabinet affairs, Luka Biong, said in an interview in Khartoum. But the parties have reached an impasse regarding five areas where the majority of Sudan’s oil wealth lies, he said.

One of the contested areas encompasses the Heglig oil fields outside the border town of Abyei, where tensions between resident southern Ngok Dinka farmers and northern Misserya pastoralists are particularly high.

“Heglig belongs to the south. It is in Unity State,” said Edward Lino, a Ngok Dinka and former administrator of the Abyei area.

Gen. Babo Nimer, brother of the paramount chief of the Misserya people, was equally adamant: “Heglig belongs to Kordofan, to the north. Full stop.”

Oil exploration in Sudan began in the 1970s. According to a 2010 survey by BP, Sudan is the third-largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, currently producing 490,000 barrels per day. The Sudanese minister of petroleum, Lual Deng, said that more than 80 percent of Sudan’s current oil reserves lie in the south.

Under the peace accord, the parties agreed to split the proceeds from the oil fields until the 2011 referendum. According to figures published by the Sudanese government, oil revenue accounted for about $2.8 billion of its budget last year and an estimated 60 percent of this year’s budget.

Deng, one of the few southerners with a ministerial position in the post-election government, said he fears that an immediate budget cut for the north would ignite a war. “In order to avoid conflict, we could look to a phase-out arrangement whereby you provide the north some [oil] until they get an alternative,” he said.

The pipeline to export southern oil currently cuts through the north, and the south has not begun construction on a pipeline that would avoid that route. But an interim agreement could help both north and south, Deng said.

“We can have a win-win,” he said.

Delay in vote preparations

On the logistical front, officials say that planning for the referendum is far behind schedule.

“We have not started,” the referendum commission’s head, Mohamed Ibrahim Khalil, 85, said in his dilapidated law office in downtown Khartoum.

Khalil was appointed only in July because the north and south had been unable to agree on the composition of the commission. The secretary general of the commission, responsible for its budget, was appointed this month.

In the short time left before the referendum, the commission must organize voter registration across southern Sudan, a vast area desperately lacking in basic infrastructure. Khalil said that in addition to overseeing voter registration in south Sudan, his commission must ensure that voting centers are established in all areas where more than 20,000 southern Sudanese reside.

During the war years, those who could flee the fighting did. Many headed to the relative safety of northern Sudan. Others relocated to countries around the world, including more than 150,000 in the United States. The commission must ensure all of these people get the chance to vote.

Khalil said preparation for the vote does not fit in the remaining time frame. But rather than push for a delay, he said that for now at least, his role is to make it work.

Hamilton is a special correspondent in Sudan on a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

source: The Washington Post

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan arrived in Kenya on Friday to participate in a ceremony inaugurating the country’s newly minted constitution, flouting international demands for his arrest on genocide charges.

Mr. Bashir faces two arrest warrants: one issued in July by the International Criminal Court in The Hague on three counts of genocide and one from March 2009 for war crimes and crime against humanity. In theory the warrants could be enforced by any of the court’s member countries, which include Kenya.

The charges relate to the conflict in the western Darfur region of Sudan, where an estimated 300,000 people have died and more than two million have been uprooted by almost a decade of fighting between the government and rebels. Mr. Bashir denies the charges.

News reports said Mr. Bashir was escorted into Uhuru Park in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, by the minister of tourism, Najib Balala, to attend the ceremony marking the adoption of the new constitution, supposed to hasten democratic reform in Kenya, a nation generally depicted as pro-Western.

The role of the international court is particularly sensitive in Kenya because last April its judges authorized formal criminal investigations of the political leaders who organized the violence that convulsed the country after its disputed election in 2007.

Kenya’s political leaders had earlier refused to set up a special tribunal to prosecute those responsible for the killings, saying Kenya’s existing courts could handle the cases.

Under the Rome Statute establishing the court in 2002, which Kenya has ratified, member states are supposed to cooperate with the court, which has no means of enforcing its warrants. Nonetheless, Mr. Bashir traveled last month to Chad — also a member state of the international court — without being arrested.

The African Union, the continent’s main representative group, has criticized the warrant and urged that it be suspended.

The readiness of President Mwai Kibaki to receive Mr. Bashir drew strong criticism from Human Rights Watch, a rights advocacy group based in New York.

“Kenya will forever tarnish the celebration of its long-awaited constitution if it welcomes an international fugitive to the festivities,” said Elise Keppler, senior counsel in the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch in a statement on Thursday. “Even worse, hosting al-Bashir would throw into question Kenya’s commitment to cooperate with the I.C.C. in its Kenyan investigation.”

“Whether Kenya allows a suspected war criminal into Kenya is a test of the government’s commitment to a new chapter in ensuring justice for atrocities,” Ms. Keppler said. “The Kenyan government should stand with victims, not those accused of horrible crimes, by barring al-Bashir from Kenya or arresting him.”

The international warrants for his arrest have largely restricted Mr. Bashir’s travels to friendly countries in Africa and the Middle East that have resisted Western pressure to do the court’s bidding.

The celebration of Kenya’s new constitution, written to alleviate longstanding problems hindering good government for years, came after voters approved the document with overwhelming enthusiasm in a referendum earlier this month. It has been billed a potential turning point Kenya’s postcolonial history, addressing issues that have haunted the country since independence from Britain in 1963.

The constitution was drawn up after disputed elections in 2007 led to ethnically driven clashes that killed more than 1,000 people.

source: New York Times

KHARTOUM — Darfur’s rebel Justice and Equality Movement said Tuesday it was locked in fresh fighting with Sudan’s army, a day after the International Criminal Court charged President Omar al-Beshir with genocide.

“Early this morning… 60 four-wheel drive vehicles of Sudan’s army and militia obstructed JEM patrols near Kuma, North Darfur, JEM spokesman Ali Alwafi told AFP.

“The genocidal forces lost the battle and fled to Kuma. Our forces pursued them into the town and destroyed their military camp and captured 34 well-equipped vehicles,” he said.

The United Nations and African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur, or UNAMID, said it was aware of reports that clashes had broken out between JEM and the Sudanese army.

“UNAMID has received as-yet unconfirmed reports of clashes between government forces and the Justice and Equality Movement in North Darfur. Verification missions are planned to confirm these reports,” it said.

The Sudanese army could not be reached to confirm or deny the reports.

On Monday, the army reported clashes involving JEM, one of the most militarised groups in Darfur, and its soldiers in the strategic Adula region between South Darfur, North Darfur and nearby North Kordofan province.

The fighting came as the International Criminal Court announced it has decided to add genocide to the charges against Beshir, who is already wanted since March 2009 for war crimes and crimes against humanity over his role in Darfur’s war.

Darfur, an arid desert region the size of France, has been gripped by a civil war since 2003 that has killed 300,000 people and displaced another 2.7 million, according to UN figures. Khartoum says 10,000 people have died.

source: AFP

The International Criminal Court’s judges on Monday charged Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir with orchestrating a bloody campaign of genocide against Darfur’s three main ethnic groups, the first time the Hague-based court has accused a sitting head of state of committing the most egregious international crime.

The three-judge pretrial chamber issued a formal arrest warrant for Bashir—the second time it has done so—on three counts of genocide. They include the crime of targeted mass killing, the causing of serious bodily or mental harm to members of a target group, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction. “There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. al-Bashir acted with specific intent to destroy in part the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups,” the judges concluded.

The decision provided a degree of vindication to the United States, which has stood largely alone in characterizing the killing in Darfur as genocide. It also gave a boost to the court’s Argentine prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, whose pursuit of the Sudanese leader has generated intense opposition from other African and Arab leaders. Moreno-Ocampo suffered a setback this month when his case against another alleged war criminal, the Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga, was suspended for a second time.

Sudan’s U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, dismissed Monday’s ruling as a politically motivated effort to undercut prospects for peace in Sudan and vowed never to surrender Bashir. “We condemn this in this strongest terms; it will only harden our resolve,” he said in an interview. “This court’s objective is to destroy chances for peace in Sudan; we’re not going to be bothered by it.”

Moreno-Ocampo said he welcomed the decision, which essentially reverses a previous ruling by the pretrial chamber to reject the genocide charges. He said the new ruling honors the victims of the mass killing in Darfur, a vast region in western Sudan. It may impose new obligations on states that have signed the Genocide Convention, including the United States, to cooperate with the court in its effort to arrest Bashir, Moreno-Ocampo added.

The court issued a previous arrest warrant against Bashir in March 2009, on seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Sudan, which has never ratified the treaty establishing the criminal court, has refused to surrender Bashir, who was reelected this year in a U.N.-backed election to a five-year term.

The violence in Darfur began in early 2003 when two rebel groups took up arms against Sudan’s Islamic government, citing a legacy of bias against Darfur’s ethnic tribes. In response, Khartoum organized local Arab militias, the Janjaweed, to help crush the resistance and its followers. The United Nations estimates that as many as 300,000 civilians died as a result of violence or hardships brought on by the forced displacement of nearly 2 million Darfurians.

source: The Washington Post

March 17, 2010 (JUBA) – The Ugandan rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) are planning to carry out attacks in Southern Sudan during the April elections, says the spokesman of the Southern Sudan army.

Maj. Gen. Kuol Deim Kuol said the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) has confirmed that LRA has planned for massive attacks in Western Equatoria state and Greater Bahr el Ghazal region to coincide with the elections in the region.

Speaking to the UN-sponsored Miraya FM radio based in Juba, Kuol accused the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) of supporting the LRA to destabilize Southern Sudan.

He said the SPLA forces are ready to repel such attacks and provide security to the people during the elections.

Kuol also echoed the recent statement by the Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni that LRA forces are based in Darfur region.

He added that LRA forces have already been spotted in areas of Western Bahr el Ghazal state in their preparation for the attacks.

Earlier Sudan Armed Forces denied the claim that the LRA forces are based in Darfur, describing it as “baseless.”

LRA’s leader, Joseph Kony, had been supported by SAF during the war time and his forces were established or roaming in the three states of Eastern, Central and Western Equatoria before the signing of the CPA that ended the North-South civil war in 2005.

In 2006, the Government of Southern Sudan and Uganda agreed on the initiative to talk peace with the rebels in an effort to end the more than twenty years of conflict which began in 1986.

After two years of successful Southern Sudan-mediated talks in Juba that resulted to relative peace in northern Uganda, nearly two million people displaced by the conflict in northern Uganda were able to leave IDP camps and returned to their villages.

However, after concluding the talks by signing several protocols between Uganda government and the rebels including the timetable for implementation of the agreement, Joseph Kony in the last minute refused to sign the compiled Final Peace Agreement document with President Museveni, citing ICC’s arrest warrant for his indictment as an obstacle.

Southern Sudan’s Vice President, Dr. Riek Machar, who was the Chief Mediator in the negotiations between the two parties had to shuttle between Juba and Sudan-DR Congo border looking for Joseph Kony in the wild jungles of thick forests in that region to find him for face-to-face talks in order to convince him to sign, but to no avail.

Kony has since then instead continued with the cross-border international rebellion which affects Southern Sudan, DR Congo, Central Africa Republic and the native country, Uganda.

source: Sudan Tribune

Fouad Hikmat of the Crisis Group says the National Congress Party’s control of the electoral commission and lack of representation for Darfur could be problematic

Campaigning for Sudan’s first multi-party election in 24 years is underway after kicking off over the weekend.

Twelve candidates are running for president in the April 11 election, including longtime leader Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur.
Fouad Hikmat, the International Crisis Group’s advisor on the African Union and Sudan, said while the April elections are important for Sudan’s democratic transformation, the outcome could be problematic for a number reasons.

“Very clearly Darfur is not being able to play a role in this election, and therefore I will see that the solution for Darfur after this election is going to be problematic,” he said.

Another problem, Hikmat said, is the fact that President Bashir’s National Congress (NCP) controls the national electoral commission.

“There is a lot of accusation that the environment is not free and fair given that the National Congress Party is controlling the National Electoral Commission and it will bring about a majority of a government that has been part of the conflict in Darfur. And therefore the election might not bring stability. On the contrary it might bring a sort of a continuation of violence and grievances after the election,” Hikmat said.

Hikmat said President Bashir would like to win the election to send a message to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“Specifically Bashir, he’s being accused by the ICC, and that’s why it is extremely important for him to win the elections to give a message that if I was a person that committed crimes against humanity, my people wouldn’t have chosen me,” Hikmat said.

However, Hikmat said President Bashir would be making a false assumption about his legitimacy following the election.

“If he regains his legitimacy based on those grounds, then he would have got an argument to some an extent, although that argument whatever it is, it is not going to wave away a judicial process, and that is the process of the International Criminal Court,” he said.

Hikmat said Bashir could also use the results of the election to legitimize himself over his political opponents, including the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).

“For the SPLM, it is very concerned that the re-legitimization of the NCP which is not based on a fair and free election, might jeopardize the implementation of the remaining provisions of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement,” Hikmat said.

He also said a re-legitimized President Bashir could also have repercussion for Darfur rebel groups.

“As far as the Darfur rebel groups, they think that the re-legitimization of Bashir, given that he is going to argue that look I have been re-elected and therefore what happened in Darfur is not true and might give a sort of legitimate grounding for Bashir to continue not finding a settlement to the Darfur problem,” he said.

Hikmat said if this happens, it would mean that the violence in Darfur would continue because the grievances and root causes would not have been resolved,” he said.

He said if the April election happens in an atmosphere of illegitimacy, the new government and institutions which will be developed to continue the negotiations might not be acceptable by Darfurians, specifically the internally displaced.

At their last meeting in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, African leaders reiterated their request for the United Nations to invoke Article 16 which allows the UN Security Council to suspend the ICC prosecutions for a period of 12 months so as to give peace a chance in Darfur.

Hikmat said the African Union’s Panel on Darfur led by former South African President Thabo Mbeki, recognizing the lack of an independent legal system in Sudan has recommended the establishment of a hybrid court system in Darfur.

“As far as the ICC (is concerned), that is up to the Sudanese to deal if they could reach a peaceful agreement somewhere in the future for a truce and reconciliation. But still that will not wave the request of the ICC which is to bring Bashir and other culprits into the process for international judicial accountability,” Hikmat said.

source:  VOA News

Western Equatoria, Sudan – “Tell them about our suffering here,” said the Bishop of Yambio of the Sudanese Episcopal Church. “The LRA is killing, raping and looting in our communities and the world does not know about it,” he added.

Bishop Peter’s words came at the end of a meeting I had with Episcopalian pastors from various Western Equatorian districts in South Sudan. Packed in the All Saints Church in Yambio, the capital of Western Equatoria State, or WES, I heard many hours-worth of testimony from people who had been victims of the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, most of them in the past two months.

The village of Yubu, for instance, which is 4 km away from Yambio, was attacked at the end of September. Many people were abducted, some were released but at least six were killed. The remnants of their bodies were collected only a few days before my visit. These events have become common in WES. A report by the U.N. coordination agency estimated 202 LRA related deaths and 131 abductions in September alone.

LRA attacks on the civilian population have been particularly brutal and frequent in and around Ezo, a town close to Sudan’s border with Congo, where the LRA attackers are coming from. As a result, many people have been internally displaced, moving to areas as far as Yambio – a 7 to 10 day trek on foot – trying to escape the LRA.

The displaced people I spoke to in Yambio described how the LRA had destroyed most of their villages around Ezo in search of food. Stories of killings, rape, and looting are again, all too common. There are at least 1,500 displaced people around Yambio living in squalid conditions without much help. An estimated 25,000 people in WES are displaced and most are thought to have fled LRA attacks.

The number of refugees from Congo and Central African Republic are also on the rise. The refugee camp of Makpandu, 45 km northeast of Yambio town, currently houses over 2,500 refugees, and at least 50 people arrive each week, according to the U.N. refugee agency. At least 3,000 refugees are stuck in Ezo town where food distribution is rare due to LRA attacks, but relocation of these refugees to the Makpandu site is on hold until the security situation improves.

In the meantime, LRA attacks in Western Equatoria continue. On October 7, the LRA attacked the village of Nimba near Yambio town. Two women were mutilated and killed.

The attacks have prompted more displacement, misery, and hunger. Food supplies for the local population and the displaced are dwindling because of the looting and destruction. On Wednesday, Governor Jemma Nunu Kumba of Western Equatoria appealed on Radio Miraya FM for swift humanitarian aid to the people of WES. The governor’s plea echoed the words of the director of the Sudanese Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Committee in our meeting: “We had never had people dying of starvation in Western Equatoria until the LRA came.”

From Enough Project

The big takeaway for me from the trip to Darfur this weekend was that the Special Envoy is facing a communications breakdown.

In a situation like Darfur, where the IDPs in the camps are so networked into the global media and advocacy organizations this messaging problem is no superficial matter - it has a substantive impact on Gration’s work. For example, I would say he spent 85% of his first day in Darfur having to repeat three messages:

1) I never said Sudan should be lifted from state sponsors of terror;

2) I never said sanctions should be lifted from Khartoum;

3) I never said IDPs have to leave the camps now.

And at the end of all that, my sense is that the IDPs still didn’t believe him (in two of the sessions they clapped when he said [ I’m paraphrasing] - I never said IDPs have to leave the camps now and I believe you should only leave the camps voluntarily and when conditions are such that you can do so with your human rights ensured and with dignity. But in one of those same sessions, I had women tell me privately afterwards that they do not accept his apology, do not believe him, and want him to resign.)

In short, while it was vital for him to come to Darfur now and try to correct this, it will take much more than one short stop at a few locations around El Fasher for the IDPs to rebuild any sense of trust in him.

After the trip I went back and read over Gration’s testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He is right that he never said he thought Sudan should be removed from the State Sponsors of Terror list. But it’s also true that he didn’t say they shouldn’t be removed from it. He didn’t say that sanctions should be removed from Khartoum specifically - but he did talk about needing to reconsider the approach to sanctions in order to assist people in the south and Darfur. On the topic of returns, he never said people should be forced to return. What he talked about was ensuring “displaced people, persons, can return to homes when they want to and where they want to.” I wonder if part of this problem is due to the fact that a man who has spent the majority of his career in the Air force has been put into this environment where not only everything he says, but also everything he does not say, is scrutinized to the -enth degree.

This trip gave the IDPs a chance to vent their anger, but Gration telling them that he did not actually say what they think he said is not enough because they are now too skeptical of him to absorb his efforts at clarification. There is a huge disconnect between him and the IDPs that needs to be fixed. This is especially the case if he wants to pursue his laudable approach of putting civil society at the front and center of any solution - a place they have never been over the course of the past 6 years of Darfur policy.

http://bechamilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/img_28301-300x225.jpg
Women weaving baskets at Abu Shok

I wonder if the way forward might involve assigning him a Deputy to manage relations with the IDPs. His job is plenty large enough that you could assign him ten additional people and they would all have work to keep them busy 24/7.  Not only is he dealing with Darfur, but also North-South, the proxy war between Chad and Sudan, the role of neighbors like Egypt and Libya - and that’s even before you get onto the elections and the referendum. Something along the lines of assigning a Deputy to go and spend the bulk of his or her time on the ground in Darfur could be the kind of circuit breaker that is helpful at this point . . .

U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration has been uncharacteristically quiet this week since he returned from his latest trip to Sudan, which included stops in the South, Darfur, and Khartoum, among others. No word yet on his blog or in official State Department releases about how the trip went.

We are particularly interested to hear about the special envoy’s visit with displaced people living in camps in the Darfur region, since General Gration has tended to downplay the humanitarian challenges in the region. Those suggestions were, naturally, not well received among Darfur’s displaced population.

The full story about the visit should be coming out later this week. In the meantime, author Bec Hamilton, who accompanied Special Envoy Gration on the trip, spoke to Public Radio International about the meetings in the camps. Bec, who is writing a book about U.S. policy toward Sudan and the role of the advocacy community, attended the meetings in Abu Shouk and Zam Zam camps as “a fly on the wall to see the special envoy in action,” and she had some interesting insights to share with PRI. Sounds like Special Envoy Gration had to spend a significant amount of time (Bec estimates 85 percent of the first of two days) doing damage control.

Listen to Bec’s interview here.

originally posted @ Enough Project

U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan retired Maj. General Scott Gration briefed bloggers at a round table Friday claiming there was overall “agreement on the overall broad framework on what we call incentives and pressures.” Asked about the SudanNow campaign he said “if anybody wants to come and help us, come on down.”

He also said he did not rule out meeting with Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. “I’ve not met with Bashir, nor do I have plans to meet with him. But I’m not ruling it out if we have to do it to move the process forward., Gration told bloggers.

Gration claimed “the president is totally behind me and is very interested.”

Enough Project Co-founder John Prendergast told ForeignPolicy.com:

[I]f the U.S. collapsed under the weight of perceived expediency and sold its moral authority for some belief that meeting the big man, the strong man, would actually be dispositive in moving the peace process forward, I think it would be a tragic mistake. It would undermine what leverage the United States has, which is rooted in part in moral authority and in part in its advocacy for those victims and survivors of the wars in Southern Sudan and Darfur.”

[We believe that U.S. policy, implemented by Gration, is] heading into dangerous territory in both Darfur and in the North-South process…[On the North-South issue,] a dangerous mistake that’s being made is to allow the U.S. government to be part of a process that includes the [ruling] National Congress Party, [Southern] SPLM, and United States talking about renegotiating elements of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. This allows us to be perceived as willing to renegotiate certains things that have already been agreed upon…instead of renegotiating things that are hard, we need to demand strict implementation [of the peace process] and work to build a multilateral coalition that is willing to impose consequences for non-implemention.”

For more reports on the Gration briefing go here.

originally posted @ Enough Project

Two weeks ago at El Fasher airport in Darfur, I watched Sudanese soldiers load up an Antonov bomber, in full view of the U.N. plane I was seated inside. The recent headline-making comments of the outgoing U.N.-African Union force commander, Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, that the war in Darfur is “over,” therefore strike me as overly optimistic. They bring to mind George W. Bush’s similarly premature message of “mission accomplished” in Iraq, which was displayed on a banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003 behind the president’s podium. As with Iraq, there is a long way to go before anyone involved in Darfur should be congratulating themselves.

Deaths from direct violence in Darfur have decreased significantly from what they were at the height of the conflict in 2003 and 2004, and most aid workers on the ground describe the fighting as having stagnated. But the comments of General Agwai are still misleading. There is no compelling reason to believe that the present situation constitutes a permanent cessation of the war, as opposed to a temporary lull in fighting.

In general, a war is declared over when one side has defeated the other, or if warring parties agree to a peace. Neither scenario exists in Darfur. Although the rebel groups are fractured to the point that almost none of them are likely to threaten the government in the short term (the Justice and Equality Movement being the exception), they have not given up. And the so-called Darfur Peace Agreement, signed by the government and just one of the rebel groups back in 2006, has still not been implemented.

The current “calm but tense” situation may be the byproduct of factors that are fluid, rather than a reflection of any fundamental shift in the situation. Right now it is the rainy season, which makes it difficult for any group to attack by land because Darfur’s dirt roads turn to mud. The Sudanese government is also trying to put on its best face while it waits for the outcome of the Obama administration’s policy review, which is expected in a few weeks, in the hope that the dovish approach of the U.S. envoy, Scott Gration, will win the day. As these and other factors change, we may still see the resumption of hostilities.

Put these considerations together and the foundations of General Agwai’s claim look precarious at best. Moreover, even if the passage of time shows the commander’s assessment to be correct, his comments are small comfort to the 2.7 million Darfuris who remain stranded in displaced-persons camps because it is too dangerous for them to return home. Imagine if, after Hurricane Katrina, U.S. officials issued press statements saying, “The hurricane is over.” They would have been correct, but they would have been missed the point. In the wake of Katrina, New Orleans’ communities were destroyed, the social fabric was ruptured, the city faced a collapse of medical services, and there was breakdown of law and order. In addition, everyone inside the city knew that unless the levees were rebuilt, a new hurricane could wreck the exact same havoc. So too in the case of Darfur.

Many critical humanitarian services that Darfuri civilians relied on have been cut back or halted since the Sudanese government expelled key aid agencies after the president was indicted by the International Criminal Court in March this year. For women and girls, the situation is particularly dire. The organizations expelled were the ones that provided medical care, and psychosocial and legal services to women and girls who had been raped-something that happens with depressing regularity whenever they try to leave the outskirts of the camps.

The men in refugee camps who have visited their villages report that not only does the situation remain insecure, but oftentimes their lands have been occupied by Arab groups from Mali, Niger, and Chad. In short, even when the war ends, much remains to be done before there is peace and security in Darfur

The U.N.-AU force was not deployed to stop a war. However, a large part of its mandate is to protect civilians. With the collapse of law and order, and pervasive insecurity from armed militias throughout Sudan’s western region, those civilians are stuck in camps, bereft of the dignity their self-sufficiency once brought them. They live daily with the knowledge that should those with guns and bombers decide to resume hostilities again, there is very little to stop them. Mission accomplished? Not yet.

Hamilton is the author of the forthcoming book The Promise of Engagement, an investigation into the impact of citizen advocacy on Darfur policy and the situation on the ground in Sudan. She is an Open Society fellow and a visiting fellow at the National Security Archives.

This is recent post from our friend Bec Hamilton after recently returning from a month in Sudan.

Hi everyone

As many of you know I spent August in Sudan. Unfortunately this blog was a casualty of my time there - with the GOS having blocked this site inside Sudan I couldn’t access even the back-end of it to post updates. In many ways it was a blessing in disguise, both because I was so busy with interviews, and because I would have been too paranoid on the security front to write freely anyway.

On the outskirts of Kalma camp, South Darfur

I have so much to share, I’m at a bit of a loss where to start. . .

In Khartoum I did over 30 interviews, almost all of multi-hour length with people including (leader of the Janjaweed), Minni Minawi ( the one rebel who signed the DPA), Lam Akol (Sudan’s foreign minister for most of the period I am
writing on), Hassan al Turabi (hand behind the Bashir coup in 1989), Dr Ghazi (now head of the Darfur file),Rodolphe Adada (outgoing Head on UN-AU in Darfur)  - in addition to many others in government and civil society. I also caught up briefly with Scott Gration before he headed to Juba. I attended the second court appearance of Lubna Hussein - the journalist who faces flogging for the “crime” of wearing trousers, and got sprayed with tear gas following a football match.

After 16 days of being told by External Information, “come back tomorrow”, and right at the point I had decided I needed to head back to Nairobi because didn’t have enough money left to stay in Khartoum any longer, I was given a travel permit to go to Darfur the next day.

Cookers of recycled USAID tins: Sudanese ingenuity at El Fasher market

In El Fasher and then in Nyala I did interviews with all aspects of UNAMID, the few aid workers who were not too scared to speak, and of course with the people I care about most - the IDPs themselves. I also experienced the all-encompassing warmth of close-knit Darfur family life, staying at the home of a Darfuri friend. From 7 months to 70 years, we had grandmother, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters, all living together. We ate dinner off one plate together each evening and slept under the bright stars of the Darfur sky each night. I’m not sure I have ever felt so much love concentrated in one place.

At 4am on Saturday August 22, I was woken by the street band of drummers, serving as an alarm to wake everyone up for sahur (meal before sun rises and fasting starts), on the first day of Ramadan. Like so many I met, I hoped that the holy month of Ramadan would bring peace in Darfur.

In the coming week, I’m likely to be posting a mish-mash of things - from photos, to ‘travelogues’ that I wrote up while practicing the fine Sudanese art of waiting (waiting, waiting), and summaries of the key issues raised in my interviews. As always, time in Sudan puts me through emotions of despair and hope, rage and joy, like no other place on earth seems to be capable of.

Thanks for your continuing readership,

Bec

Today’s New York Times report that the U.S. Justice Department is advising pursuit of prisoner-abuse cases and allegations of torture is a welcome development and a hopeful step in the restoration of respect for the rule of law in our country. The recommendation made to Attorney General Eric Holder by the Office of Professional Responsibility includes cases in Afghanistan that had been closed by the Bush administration - might these be some of the same cases that are being examined by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC)?  Attorney General Holder is making a bold and necessary move, and it will be fascinating to see how far the findings will lead up the chain of command of the Bush administration - perhaps to the “Decider” himself?

Prosecuting heads of state is always a tricky business fraught with political peril, as the ICC issuance of an arrest warrant for Sudan’s President al-Bashir clearly demonstrates.  But it’s good to bear in mind the most recent example of a successful prosecution of a head of state, that of ex-President Alberto Fujimori of Peru, convicted to 25 years in prison for committing human rights crimes while in office.  It was an arduous 17-year process for the victims, but they persisted during the dark years of the zenith of Fujimori’s power in the 90s, dogging him after he fled to Japan in 2000, and getting him extradited to Peru after he landed in Chile in 2005 to try to stage a political comeback.  His extradition to a prison in Peru was followed by loud and violent protests from Fujimori’s supporters, including the desecration of the Eye That Cries, a memorial to the 70,000 victims of Peru’s 20-year battle with Shining Path, but the trial went forward nonetheless.  It’s surprising that the trial of Fujimori has received so little attention from the international press - it marks a historical milestone not only for Peru but for the ongoing struggle to establish an effective international justice system, and it should be celebrated!  An excellent must-read book on the subject is Prosecuting Heads of State, an overview of efforts to bring rogue leaders to account which reveals some surprises, like the fact that since 1990 at least 67 former heads of state have been formally prosecuted for serious human rights violations or economic crimes committed during their administration. You can read the introduction to the book or order it at the website of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ).

I urge you to read Justice Richard Goldstone’s wonderful and concise overview of the state of international justice, published on the Op-Ed page of today’s New York Times. It provides an encouraging assessment of the remarkable progress that has been made on the international justice front, a reminder that all the efforts to cultivate international respect for the rule of law, spearheaded by a “mature global network of human rights organizations”, are bearing fruit and reining in the culture of impunity enjoyed by the most powerful violators of human rights.  Perpetrators of mass atrocities used to living by the rule of force and negotiating amnesties and personal benefits in exchange for peace are finding out that that route to retirement is no longer open for them - Charles Taylor is a stark example.  And the arrogance of Fujimori’s ploy to return to Peru for a presidential run, even though he was a fugitive from justice, led to his landmark trial that ended in a conviction and 25-year sentence for human rights violations.

Justice Goldstone is right to remind us all about the progress made in the quest for a world where justice and human dignity prevail.  Human rights activists and concerned citizens, often feeling beleaguered and powerless in the face of myriad conflicts, unbridled violence, and oppressive regimes, need to see that if we persevere there is light at the end of the tunnel.  Justice Goldstone was just awarded the MacArthur Award for International Justice, a well deserved recognition of his incredible career and accomplishments in advancing international justice, a list too long to enumerate in this post.  Skylight Pictures made a short film that honors Justice Goldstone’s role in the creation of an effective international justice system - it was shown at the MacArthur-sponsored award ceremony in The Hague on May 25, and you can see it here.

Now we have to get down to the business of bringing accountability for the abuses of rule of law and human dignity perpetrated during the Bush administration - No One Above the Law! And that includes President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan…

What was the UN Security Council (UNSC) thinking when it issued Resolution 1593 in 2005, referring the ongoing situation in Darfur to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC)?  Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo took the case, conducted a 20-month investigation, came back with evidence, and requested arrest warrants - he did his job, in accordance with the justice mandate of the ICC.  At briefings he has subsequently given every 6 months, he has updated the UNSC on the progress of the investigation.  After obtaining arrest warrants from the ICC judges for Sudanese government Minister Ahmad Haroun, Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb, and President Omar al-Bashir, he has consistently urged the UNSC and the international community represented at the UN, to execute the warrants. Instead the UNSC has balked at following through, and the African Union and the Arab League have rallied to support al-Bashir. 

Now there is even the possibility that the Obama administration might consider appeasing al-Bashir, a disgraceful approach if it happens (I suspect that Obama’s desire for dialogue with Iran, with its ties to Sudan, would have something to do with a rapprochement with al-Bashir).  So what did the UNSC and the international community expect when they asked the Prosecutor to investigate?  Did they have any plan for what to do if he came back with evidence of crimes against humanity?  They don’t seem to have thought that far ahead, or simply issued Resolution 1593 for political expediency.  But now they must act - we as global citizens must pressure our leaders to uphold the rule of law.  If you live in the U.S., write to your congressperson and President Obama and let them know you want the ICC warrants to be acted upon!  And citizens around the world, IJCentral members, send an email to your Minister of Foreign Affairs urging them to support global rule of law!

At a recent post-screening discussion of documentary film “The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court”, a Darfuri journalist said that amongst Darfuris, the surprise is not that the ICC issued an arrest warrant for President al-Bashir charging him with crimes against humanity in Darfur, or that al-Bashir expelled 13 humanitarian groups from the Darfur Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. The real surprise for Darfuris was that humanitarian organizations and the international community seemed taken by surprise by al-Bashir’s actions after the warrant was issued. As the Darfuri journalist, Tajeldin Abdalla Adam from Radio Dabanga said, ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo publicly requested the warrants; al-Bashir publicly said he would retaliate; so why wasn’t the international community making preparations to respond to this and to preemptively pressure the Sudanese regime to curtail its actions? Al-Bashir and his National Congress Party have been at it for 20 years, presiding over the tragedy of southern Sudan (2 million victims), arming and giving safe haven to the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army of Uganda (20,000 victims, 1.5 million displaced), and now Darfur (200,000 victims, over 2 million displaced). How long are we supposed to wait? It is time for the international community to definitively isolate President al-Bashir, and make it clear to any of his potential successors that the rogue state tactics of the National Congress Party regime will no longer be tolerated.

This Just in!

OSI Fellow and author Bec Hamilton has just announced via Enough Project’s website that she will be giving people a unique opportunity to ask questions about Darfur Policy to the policy makers themselves. She is currently in The Hague and will be interviewing former U.N. Special Representative on Sudan Jan Pronk and current ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo.  By submitting questions to her website you can have an opportunity to have your questions be answered on record.  Here is a bit of the post:

“Sitting talking with the former head of U.N. Peacekeeping in New York last week, it struck me that there are many citizen advocates out there who would relish the opportunity to quiz some of these people on Darfur policy, so I thought of one way to try and share the opportunity…

I recently set up a website where I will post upcoming interviews with people who are willing to take questions on the record from you. I’m in The Hague right now, and two of the people I have just spoken with agreed to take your questions: The former U.N. Special Representative on Sudan Jan Pronk and the ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo. If you would like to ask either of them a question about Darfur policy – past, present or future – go to the “Submit a Question” tab on the website.”

Take this opportunity and make yourself heard!