What is Sudan’s Defence Minister up to?
By Peter Lokarlo Marsu
April 3, 2007 — Certainly Lt-general, Abdelrahman Mohamed Hussein, Sudan’s Army Chief does not conceal or restrain his loathsome and hostile conduct towards the SPLA and GoSS, albeit the lucid stipulation in the CPA that provides for a separate and autonomous army and government in South Sudan. The general has yet to discern between being discomfiture to the entire country and becoming a responsible stakeholder in Sudan’s post-war political dispensation.
The unsavoury general is plainly eschewed in favour of financing local warlords in South Sudan; he fascinatingly had some while ago chided the SPLA for disarming the militia forces in South Sudan, the forces of doom that the NCP maintains as independent armies to be used in concert with the Uganda’s LRA bandits for destabilising the government in Juba.
While serving as the country’s minister of interior, Abdelrahman Hussein had ordered a contingent of his ill-famed police force to pillage the residence of the Catholic priests at Comboni college in Khartoum for no apparent cause other than his chronic anti-Christian sentiment and mind-set. The callous general had likewise committed series of appalling blunders and Human Rights abuses, ranging from organising ethnic cleansing in Darfur, the East and South Sudan, to covert cold blood mass murders of political opponents across the board. In his tenure of office as the Minister of Interior, Abdelrahman Mohamed Hussein was on record for demolishing the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) settlements including Churches located on the outskirts of Khartoum, and forcing thousands into the vast desert to cope with unprecedented sufferings and deaths resulting from lack of the basic necessities of life. The general’s grostique violations of Human Rights and his stewardship of the national Congress party’s obnoxious policies would certainly disqualify him from continuing to hold Sudan’s Defence Ministry.
In fact it would be pretty disappointing and a huge surprise and disservice to the expectant Sudanese if the villainous general fails to show up on the next list of the ICC’s indictees for prosecution in The Hague for crimes against humanity. An interesting question would be like, “What did Ahmed Mohamed Haroun, (the ICC indicted Sudanese current Secretary of State for Humanitarian Affairs) do in Darfur that Abderahman Hussein and others have not done?”
In his recent visit to Iran, the general was impressed by the level of sophistication in his host’s arms industry and did not mask his desire to acquire those arms for use in Darfur and conceivably South Sudan.
Castigating the American government for contemplating to train and prop up the South Sudan army is tantamount to whirlwind chase. South Sudan will always keep its credible and deterrent army, whether in a United Sudan or in an Independent Republic of South Sudan.
* The author is based in Australia, he can be reached at [email protected]