Is Judgment Day near for Omar al-Bashir?

[Im The Truth]

Is Judgment Day near for Omar al-Bashir?
Kwesi Kwaa Prah
2009-04-30, Issue 430
PZN - Is Judgment Day near for Omar al-Bashir?

In response to Mahmood Mamdani's article 'Beware of human rights fundamentalism', Kwesi Kwaa Prah questions Mamdani's grasp of history. Taking issue with Mamdani's contention that 'Arabs never constituted a single racial group' in Sudan, Prah argues for the people of Southern Sudan's self-rule and a halt to the 'Arabisation' of Africans.

Mahmood Mamdani’s recent article Beware of human rights fundamentalism substantively goes through the reasoning the author has repeatedly made over the past few years regarding the Darfur imbroglio. This time he is offering gratuitous advice to former South African President Thabo Mbeki about the arguments he should make to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and interested parties on how to deal with the African Union's (AU) call for him to negotiate a postponement of the ICC’s indictment of Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir.

Leading a panel and mandated by the AU, Mbeki has started work on a possible African-led resolution of the crisis in Darfur. The panel has been advised by AU members to call for a year’s deferment of the process of the ICC war crimes indictments against Sudan’s president. The eight-member panel includes three former African heads of state: South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, Burundi's Pierre Buyoya and Nigeria’s General Abdusalam Abubakar.

During the opening session of the exercise at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa various delegates argued that the ICC indictments against President al-Bashir will in effect undermine attempts to arrange peace in Darfur. The suggestion is that deferring the ICC indictments will allow time for African-led peace efforts in Darfur to take firm shape. Mbeki argued that the AU charter claims primary authority over African peace and security issues: 'The African Union has taken the clear and unequivocal decision the continent must act not only to end war and violent conflict in Africa, but also to ensure that where war does anyway break out, all belligerents must know that war crimes, crimes against humanity and other abuses will be punished resolutely, and that a culture of impunity will not be permitted to take root and entrench itself.'

There are certainly legions of problems with the self-appointment of the ICC to sit in judgment on all of us when we are neither all in agreement with the terms of the mandate or the moral credentials of the powers that be. These are general considerations. Its use cannot be ruled out however. Slobadan Milosevic, Charles Taylor and Thomas Lubanga are clear cases in point. In the specific instance of President Omar al-Bashir and his genocidal project in Darfur, is judgment day is near?

Taking a page from the book of the South African settlement which brought apartheid to a close, Mamdani’s plea on behalf of al-Bashir is that, 'The rationale was simple: where there was no victor, one would need the cooperation of the very leaders who would otherwise be charged with war crimes to end the fighting and initiate political reforms. The essence of Kempton Park can be summed up in a single phrase: forgive but do not forget. Forgive all past crimes – in plain words, immunity from prosecution – provided both sides agree to change the rules to assure political justice for the living.' In other words, the recommended course of action should be based more on political expediency than justice. There are many who would swallow this suggestion, in spite of the bad taste it leaves in the mouth. Some will also argue that in light of the history of Arab–African agreements from time immemorial in the Sudan, the peace, if it is so loosely structured, will degenerate into a 'practico-inert'. We must remember that the Kempton Park meetings formally ended apartheid. Will al-Bashir end his brutal and genocidal policies in Darfur? Kicking out humanitarian NGOs does not speak well for magnanimity and reconciliation. As Abel Alier, the Southern Sudanese former vice-president under Muhammad Ja'far Numeiri, put the case in his book with the same title, there have been 'too many agreements dishonored'.

Mamdani argues that, '[W]hen the justices of the ICC granted the prosecutor's application for a warrant to arrest the president of Sudan, they were not issuing a verdict of guilty. The justices were not meant to assess the facts put before them by the prosecutor, but to ask a different question: if those facts were assumed to be true, would the president of Sudan have a case to answer? Unlike court, which took the facts for granted at the pre-trial stage, we need to ask: to what extent are these facts true? And, to the extent they are true, are they the whole truth?' He then proceeds to present supposed historical facts, but which are in fact of impeachable standing. Mamdani writes that, 'The racialisation of identities in Darfur had its roots in the British colonial period. As early as the late 1920s, the British tried to organise two confederations in Darfur: one "Arab", the other "Zurga" or black.' This is incorrect. Zurga is Arabic for blacks (plural) in Darfur. Its singular version Azarek means blue. 'Green Arabs' is another term used to describe the black but slightly lighter Arabs mainly of the Reizigat and Messariya ethnic groups. In the south, blacks are described as Aswad (blue) or Sudd. All these racially-loaded words are Arabic in origin, not English. They existed long before Darfur was incorporated into the Sudan in 1916. The British simply built on usages which were societally current.

To suggest that 'Arabs never constituted a single racial group. Contemporary scholarship has shown that the Arab tribes of Sudan were not migrants from the Middle East but indigenous groups that became Arabs starting in the 18th century' is misleading. Regarding the people of Darfur, P.M. Holt and M.W. Daly, in their A History of the Sudan write that, 'The Arabization of the Northern Sudan resulted from the penetration of the region by tribes who had already migrated from Arabia to Upper Egypt… the Fur… [a]lthough surrounded by a flood of immigrant Arab tribes, … succeeded in establishing a dynastic Muslim state which was not finally extinguished until 1916.' In Darfur, as in other areas of Sudan, Arab and African cannot always be physically recognised. Most people are black, Arab or African. The difference is cultural and ethnic not racial, in much the same way as Jew and Arab, Pakistani and Indian, Protestant and Catholic in Ireland, and Japanese and Chinese are not visible differences. In Darfur both Arabs and Africans are overwhelmingly Muslims, but many Arabs regard the Africanist cultural influences in the Islam of the Africans as tainted. Furthermore, Africans have their own languages and do not have Arabic as a home-language or mother-tongue.

Much of the contestation is admittedly over resources. However, the use of rape, pillage, looting and scorched-earth policies to uproot the African ethnicities is now known to the whole world. The idea of lightening the colour of Africans through rape is common. Depopulated areas are then systematically resettled with Arab ethnicities, even non-Sudanese. The Sudan Tribune of 7 May 2008 reported that, 'There are around 120,000 of them who came from Niger to Wadi Saleh. This also occurred in north, west and south of Zalingi. They are building new villages for them in these areas. This is a serious matter. Khartoum clearly is continuing its policies of repopulating Darfur with tribes from other countries.' This is only the tip of the iceberg.

In the Wall Street Journal of 18 June 2008, Abdel Wahid al-Nur, leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), argued that, 'We must prevail to preserve the unity of Sudan. In a truly democratic and secular Sudan, neither the South, nor Darfur, nor any other region would be tempted to secede… We must prevail to stabilize the region and spread democracy. We must prevail to help Sudan return to its natural, legitimate geopolitical place – which is the African continent and not the Arab or Muslim world. At the same time, we must forge new alliances, no longer based upon race or religion, but upon shared values of freedom and democracy.' The sagacious course of action to right the wrongs wreaked on the people of Darfur is to give them back their dignity and a chance to shape and control their destiny. They must have regional autonomy and self-rule along the lines of the South and the Beja country. Most importantly the Arabisation of Africans must stop.

* Kwesi Kwaa Prah is the director of the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) based in Cape Town, South Africa.

[Mordecai_7]

If Bashir is'nt indicted, the U.S. intends to use force. There is a rising consensus among policy-makers that nothing changed in Kosovo until force was used. This outlook is receiving credit as concerns Sudan, i.e., the Bashir government. Offensive Deterrence/Regime Change. So, yes, I'd say Bashir's days are numbered, one way or the other.

[Im The Truth]

One way or the other. I don't know who will take power but I know one thing this is one of the wars in the soon to be new cold war with China and the US as the main players.

[Mordecai_7]

Could be.... China is getting stronger. The joke in the U.S. Navy used to be that if China wanted to invade Taiwan, they would have to swim to do it. But the PRC is building a large amphibious fleet and improving technologically. When their systems reach parity with the U.S. then that's when the real trouble is going to start.