Can the culprits of Darfur resolve the crisis of Lebanon?

By Mahgoub El-Tigani

Dec 17, 2006 — Dr. Umro Musa is a renowned diplomat who earned a lifetime career in Arab and international diplomacy as an ambassador, minister of foreign affairs, and secretary general of the Arab League for two consecutive terms of office.

Attending the complex political crises in Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, and Iraq, Musa is understandably a competent conflict resolution expert. After all, Egypt, Musa homeland, is a key East-West mediating state that has consistently played a leading role in the political affairs of the Arab and Islamic worlds, including long-term diplomatic efforts to resolve regional and international disputes.

Applying peaceful methods and soft diplomacy strategies, Dr. Musa managed, albeit with modest success, to sooth out some of the violent situations in Somalia and Palestine between different competing groups. Often times, the Arab First Diplomat called for cease-fire and/or follow-up talks between the Iraqi religious factions; and he maintained a neutral position in the burning power striving between the Hizb-Allah-led Syria/Iran allies in Lebanon and their antithetical foes, the Lebanese pro-West nationalist groups.

Musa experience in the Sudanese arena was relatively more successful compared to the other states: his close relations with leading figures of both government and opposition parties, especially Mohamed Osman al-Merghani leader of the Democratic Unionist Party; Sadiq al-Mahdi, the prominent leader of the Umma Party; and the NDA diplomacy expert Farouq Abu Eissa, the former Arab Lawyers Secretary General, among other Sudanese politicians, enabled the AL to play a positive role in the difficult negotiations between the opposition and the government parties to sign the Cairo Agreement (June 2005).

The Cairo Agreement has predictably resulted in a low-profile incompetent participation by the NDA in the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled National Congress Party (NCP) /Sudan Liberation Movement (SPLM) coalition Government of National Unity (GONU). The NCP-led Government of Sudan (GoS), however, has been widely blamed for the failure of the Cairo Agreement, in addition to the unresolved failures of the GoS to implement in good faith and efficient performance the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with the SPLM-led Government of South Sudan.

Under the leadership of Dr. Umro Musa, the Arab League marketed a policy of “much committees, little results;” a workable strategy to keep the AL functioning against chronic disputes between the Arab civil societies and the ruling regimes of the region that would tolerate only soft handling by the AL mediating body in all major disputes. In the light of the failing agreements between Arab rulers and the disenfranchised opposition, the First Arab Diplomat has been repeatedly compelled, despite meticulous reservations, to offer occasional public announcements with eloquent press statements in clear avoidance of political confrontation with any Member State.

The AL “non-confrontational” diplomacy, however, has been destined to water down the hard core agenda of the region without pressing on the authoritative regimes to come to terms with the democratic opposition; or increasing the civil society and minorities’ participation in national decision-making; or exposing state businesses to transparent parliamentary censor; or improving relations with the International Community on the basis of the United Nations Charter and the international human rights norms.

This Arab “manageable” policy was equally destined to promote negative views, as needs be, on the historically-related Western powers to the Arab and Islamic worlds whose leverage over the instruments of international legitimacy was taken for granted as a constant target of blame for all failures of the Arab rulers, even those of them who maintain contemporary preferable status of economic and military alliances with the West.

It is true the Israeli-Arab’s half-of-a century’s conflict exhibited Western consistency in support of Israel versus the Arab revolutionaries and other liberal movements. It is equally true, however, that except for a few instances, the Western think-tanks and media campaigns failed to capture the urgent need to provide democratic forums for the disputing parties on equal footing to resolve the conflicts in their minimum national levels, to say nothing about the geopolitical and strategic levels.

Exclusionary policies and practices have definitely failed to ensure the permanent peace among nations of the region to the detriment of the whole world. The inter-faith, race, and democratization dialogues, however, comprise global concerns to develop better governance traditions and structures. Endorsing Arab nationalism and other non-compromising ideologies, the AL failed to handle these issues with respect to the ethnically, religiously, and ideologically diverse nations of the League, including Sudan, Iraq, and Somalia, etc.

The AL will probably achieve little success in the future concerning these dialogues without effective participation by the International Community, in general, and the West, in particular. It is hoped, however, that Umro Musa, whose term of office as a minister of foreign affairs, witnessed the sustainable success of President Mubarak in expanding Egypt’s compromising policies in the region, as well as Egypt’s strengthened economic relations and political ties with the International Community and the West would devote his second term of office to boost these lively agenda to help improve the political and economic advancement of the region.

Interesting changes are already under way: Iraq and the Gulf States, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates exercised democratic elections that have not yet produced substantial liberality in the conservative structures of these states; but the elections did lay a firm anchorage for a stable large-scale campaigning perhaps in next rounds of national elections to increase the candidacy of liberal groups and to strengthen the large population of women in parliamentary activity to allow deeper transformations of the conservative structures of these nations towards higher standards of civil politics.

Apart from these auspicious indicators, the sudden show-up of Mr. Mustafa Ismail Osman, the foreign affairs presidential adviser of the Sudanese President Omer al-Bashir, side-by-side with the Arab League Secretary General Umro Musa generated confusion about the AL diplomatic efforts to bring the Lebanese competing parties to national consensus.

For one, the foreign affairs adviser represents the Government of Sudan (GoS), which is the top worst internationally condemned culprit in the tragic scourge of the Darfur Crisis. Correctly, Dr. Murtada al-Ghali of Al-Ayyam Journal (Khartoum, December 2006) addressed his column to the presidential adviser asking: Is our Homelands’ conflict yet settled, or is the Darfur’s crisis already resolved to involve presidential advisers in Lebanon?!

Not only that the GoS has been virtually ethically remote from any credible reconciliatory role in the ongoing escalated conflicts of the African and Arab regions as far as Algeria, across Chad, Western Sudan and Central Africa, up to Somaliland and the Horn: the Brotherhood-controlled partisan regime is equally ethnically, ideologically, culturally, and politically disqualified to play a positive role in the complex dilemma of Lebanon, the war-trodden Somalia, or the other nations in conflict.

Ethically, the GoS NIF/NCP ruling party continues to genocide the innocent Sudanese Africans of Darfur on selective ethnic and ideological grounds. As announced by Mr. Mukhtar, another presidential adviser of al-Bashir, in a T.V. program prepared on Darfur by the al-Jezira Channel, “the Arab population of Darfur covers the whole region.”

This ethno-racial emphasis on a non-existing Arab population majority was aimed to exaggerate the Arab presence in Darfur, notwithstanding well-established Sudan Census (1950ies, 70ies, and 80ies) data on the socio- demographic characteristics and the ethnic composition of the region’s population. The presidential adviser’s statement implied further the GoS partisan policy to rationalize the ongoing strikes of army troops and militias against the non-Arab civilians in North Darfur, which Mr. Jan Pronk, the former UN Representative in Sudan, previously criticized and the United Nations most recently condemned, together with the African Union.

Ideologically, the GoS NIF/National Congress ruling party is a Muslim Brotherhood-controlled group that has been organically linked with the armed struggles of the Brotherhood in and outside Sudan. The GoS NIF/NCP maintained historical relations with the al-Qaida in the 1990s. They have been offering unrelenting support by top state managers to Jihadist groups in North Africa and the Horn of Africa via the Turabi Arab Islamic Popular Conference, in addition to uncensored government diplomatic, military training, and financial support.

Earlier, the NDA continuous appeals to the International Community to stop the Brotherhood militant rulers from their serious abuses of the state and the lands of Sudan were not heeded until the occurrence of an assassination attempt on the life of the President of Egypt in Addis Ababa (June 1995) triggered anti-terrorism decisions versus the GoS by the UN Security Council, together with several ineffective measures by the world to curb the NIF/NCP reckless adventures.

The GoS maintains strong security training and other technical relations with Iran, added to strong arm sales in exchanges with China oil investments to intimidate Darfur and the other regions of Sudan, as well as neighboring nations including Chad and Central Africa.

It was hoped China would refrain from such sales in response to bitter Sudanese criticisms and international concerns. The visit by the minister of defense to Beijing prior to the Chinese-African Summit, nonetheless, testified to the continuity of unchanged oil-arms politics. As such, the top presidential foreign affairs adviser of GoS should be the last diplomat in the AL to join the peaceful efforts of Secretary General Musa to resolve the deeply divided Lebanon.

Culturally, decades before the 1989’s Brotherhood repressive rule, the Sudanese state and society had formerly known, practiced, and actively contributed to the democratization and liberalization of Africa, the Arab region, and the Islamic world. Although ruled by dictatorial military regimes for most of its independence age since January 1st, 1956, Sudan is a country that experienced substantial democratic systems in both governance and the social life activities – ahead of a majority present-time Arab and Muslim states.

In 1965, for example, the country elected Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim as the first parliamentarian woman in the whole region – a distinguished leader of the Sudanese Women’s Union, the subsequent recipient of the United Nations Human Rights Prize in the early 1990s.

Despite fierce attacks on the democratic unions and political parties of the country by succeeding anti-democratic authoritative regimes, the persecuted political parties and civil society groups have been persistently struggling in varying way in and outside Sudan to restore democratic rule. As far as democracy is concerned, these are the Sudanese who deserve full moral and political support from the AL, AU, EU, the US and the UN, rather than the GoS NIF/NCP anti-democratic regime.

It is unacceptable for a government that seized political power by military coup (or a ruling party that conspired under cover with anti-democratic army officers to destroy the democratic traditions of a nation, as the Muslim Brotherhood sinfully committed in Sudan) to participate as high-level delegates in the AL reconciliation efforts in Lebanon whose political culture has been largely founded on the rejection and the deep contempt of the political conspiracies and the external pressures that topple legitimate systems of rule.

With the GoS escalated crimes against humanity in Darfur and the GoS militias’ blood-shedding of the CPA in South Sudan, the al-Bashir presidency of the Arab Summit has already exhausted the AL soft diplomacy:

Juxtaposing the presidential adviser of the pariah regime with the AL top envoy to help Lebanon work out a democratic resolution to its national dispute, the Arab First Diplomat Umro Musa has surprisingly taken an unmarketable high risk decision. That is because the Lebanese situation needs diplomatic mediators with high standards of democracy culture(s), humanitarian dedication to national crisis, and commitment to international norms. These are credentials neither the GoS, nor the NIF/NCP or their presidential advisers genuinely possess.

The GoS struggles to find a place for al-Bashir Brotherhood advisers within the AL-sponsored endeavor to resolve the Lebanon-Syria/Iran conflict are indirectly related to the GoS partisan relations with the Muslim Brotherhood radical movement in the Arab and Islamic worlds on the one hand, and the GoS ruling party’s hysterical phobia of the International Criminal Court that promises top Sudanese (as well as non-Sudanese) Muslim Brotherhood killers of Darfur with possible trials, perhaps soon after the killers of Prime Minister Al-Hariri would be prosecuted and put to trial in Lebanon.

The silence of Mr. Mustafa Ismail Osman about the Sudanese role in the AL endeavor is already spoken out with his GoS rejection of the international resolutions of the Darfur’s Crisis. The GoS political concerns, which Syria and Iran (as well as China’s oil politics) support both ideologically and politically, will have little or no bearing at all on the Lebanese immediate agenda that yearn for the establishment of a long-term national stable reconciliation between all parties to the conflict based on a political culture of democratic parliamentary rule, which constitutes none of the GoS “radical” concerns.

Contrary to the GoS “externally” miscalculated plans and anti-nationalist programs, Sudan needs a fresh principled implementation of the CPA that the United Nations, IGAD, Western powers, the African Union, and the AL have been supporting the People of Sudan to accomplish.

The GoS and its GONU would do well to the country and its people (not to mention the Lebanese people and government, or the Arab First Diplomat Musa and the Arab League) if they move the state’s top concerns to reconcile the political crises in Darfur and the other regions of Sudan.

GONU is required by the CPA and the Sudan Interim Constitution to invest in the energies of the State (which the GoS has been corrupting and wasting for the sake of the Brotherhood partisan plans) to enhance peace, human rights, democracy, and peace in Sudan.

GONU must immediately initiate and develop an open democratic dialogue with the Sudanese civil society and opposition parties towards the convening of an All-Sudanese constitutional conference that alone will straighten out the country’s governance on firm grounds.

In so doing, the GONU and the Sudanese civil society and opposition parties should maintain the closest cooperation possible with the International Community, in general, and the Western powers, in particular, to achieve the compliance of GoS with the United Nations resolutions, the African Union decisions, and the Arab League’s coordinative efforts.

* The author is a member of the Sudanese Writers’ Union. He can be reached at [email protected].