Time to put an end to impunity in Darfur

  Ahmed Elzobier

When the United Nations Security Council welcomed Sudan as a new UN member on February 6, 1956, it could not have known the troubles ahead. But by the turn of the twenty-first century, the world was taking note of what had become of that seemingly innocent state.

Indeed, on June 11, 2004, 48 years later, the Security Council issued a second Sudan-related resolution (1547) and decided to establish the United Nations Advance Mission in Sudan (UNAMIS) in preparation for one of the biggest tasks in the history of the organization: to oversee implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement and the National Congress Party ending the longest civil war in Africa, in which nearly two million people died and four million were displaced.

Since then, Sudan has been the focus of an additional 24 Security Council resolutions (with many more to come), most of them relating to the newly erupted conflict in Darfur in western Sudan. The ruling party has managed singlehandedly in just a few years to make the whole world wonder about post-colonial Sudan. In this regard it was Al Tayeb Salih, the most famous Sudanese writer, who coined a telling phrase about the leaders of the Islamic military coup back in 1989, when he was genuinely mystified about their attitude and asked, "where do these people come from?"

His question was never answered. Meanwhile, the deeds of the new rulers of Sudan mystify all those who know Sudanese culture. The current vice president, Ali Osman Mohammed Taha (who was also elected last week as the leader of the Islamic Movement in Sudan) was quoted as saying in 1990, "we come to drain the sources of tolerance in Sudanese society". President Omar al-Bashir also has famously been quoted as saying, "we took power by force and whoever wants to take it back, he should use force."

Al-Bashir served at the front with the Egyptian armed forces during the October 1973 Arab-Israel war. However, like most of his colleagues his career was strongly affected by the civil war in Sudan. In the late 1980s, he was stationed in al-Mujlad in southern Kordofan as commanding officer of the eighth brigade before his fateful involvement in the June 30, 1989 military coup.

It seems that the most likely military skills that Bashir and his fellow Sudanese army officers mastered were counter-insurgency techniques, including the deadly tactic of arming civilians to fight alongside the army or on its behalf. This template was extensively used during the civil war in southern Sudan and southern Kordofan. The list of these civilian armies is long, but to name just a few: the Muraheel of southern Kordofan, the White Army of Upper Nile in southern Sudan and the notorious Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda.

Now, if we begin to put the jigsaw puzzle together a pattern emerges: a very disturbing, inhumane and criminal portrait of Sudan's military and political institutions and the dominant ideology in the country. Since the start of the war in Darfur in February 2003 between the Darfur-based Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the government, the same lethal counter-insurgency techniques have been used by the government-armed Arab Janjaweed militia. More than 200,000 have died and over 2.5 million have been displaced. The UN called it the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

After former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's visit to Darfur in June 2004, the Security Council repeatedly requested the government to "disarm the Janjaweed and other armed outlaw groups" and "undertake concrete measures to end impunity in Darfur". These calls were never heeded. No serious disarming policy was implemented, nor were those responsible for the attacks on civilians prosecuted. Khartoum continues to deny the scale and gravity of what is happening to them, as killings, rapes, attacks and acts of intimidation and threats continue.

The United Nations appointed a commission of inquiry in late 2004 to determine whether acts of genocide and war crimes had occurred in the Darfur region. In January 2005, the commission of inquiry found that while the Sudanese government had not conducted a policy of genocide, both its forces and allied Janjaweed militias had carried out "indiscriminate attacks, including killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence, pillaging and forced displacement". The commission of inquiry also concluded that rebel forces in Darfur were responsible for possible war crimes.

The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, opened an investigation into Darfur in 2005 in accordance with UNSCR 1593. The ICC issued arrest warrants for Minister of Humanitarian Affairs Ahmed Haroun and militia commander Ali Kushayb in April 2007, but the Sudanese government has refused to hand over the two men.

On July 14, 2008, Moreno-Ocampo declared that he had "reasonable grounds" to believe that al-Bashir "bears criminal responsibility in relation to ten counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes". The evidence, according to the prosecutor, shows that the Sudanese president "masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa groups, on account of their ethnicity". He applied to the pre-trial judges to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir. Now "the world has the challenge to stop the ongoing crimes in Darfur," stated Moreno-Ocampo in an interview with the Sudan Tribune this week.

The people of Darfur have waited in pain for so long to see an end to their unimaginable suffering. They believed the world when it said, "never again".- Published 14/8/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org

Ahmed Elzobier is director of communications and media at the Darfur Centre for Human Rights and Development in London.