Sudan’s envoy to the UN, a carbon copy of Iraq Al Sahaf

By Peter Lokarlo Marsu

January 13, 2008 — Khartoum’s latest diplomatic faux pas is basically an ordinary episode in the long string of blunders being committed by the country’s rulers.

Humour had it that when Sadam Hussein was already standing on the trap door of the gallows, after refusing to wear the hood over his problematic head, seconds ahead of his execution, Al-Sahaf attempted one desperate appeal to the Americans, adding to his classic droll show, saying, “you have captured the wrong man, I assure you, this is not Sadam Hussein, I demand for his immediate release without pre-conditions”.

This hilarity depicts the culture or ethos of standard denials widely and forlornly practiced among Sudanese leaders and diplomats. Today Khartoum’s rulers have characteristically outdone and outmoded Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi former Minister of Information, in the government of Sadam Hussein, who stunned and sent ecstasy to the whole Arab World that American forces in Iraq were already surrounded and awaiting final annihilation, while in fact American tanks were already rolling in the streets of Baghdad restoring order after the defeat of the Iraqi Army.

In the World of mendacity and twirls, Khartoum conceivably excels all the other countries in the region and there is hardly any shortage of ambassadors of disinformation and falsehood serving the country. Last week Abdelmahmoud Mohamad, Sudan’s Representative to the United Nations had the audacity to tell the world that his ostracized government in Khartoum had nothing to do with the savage and unprovoked attack on the UNAMID force in Darfur, making a clown of his personality as well as ridiculing the government of Omar Al Bashir. He instead accused the Justice and Equality Movement’s freedom fighters of being responsible for the assault.

“They were not the government. Why we would do something like that? I can assure you that Sudan government forces did not do that at all. We have no relationship whatsoever with that attack.” Observed Al Sahaf of Khartoum on 10 January 2008.

Minutes later, Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein, another charlatan and NCP’s firebrand, who heads Sudan’s Defence Ministry, hastily contradicted the Ambassador, admitting that indeed Sudan Armed Forces did launch the attack on the UNAID Peace-Keeping convoy in Darfur, hence pulling the rug under Abdelmahmoud Mohamad and revealing the duplicity in Sudan’s politics of denials.

Sudan’s Ministry of foreign Affairs has not lagged behind either; it has long and consistently denied any genocide in Darfur or South Sudan before the signing of the CPA. The National Congress Party has recently started conducting proxy or surrogate war in South Sudan’s Bahr El Ghazal Region, through the so-called Islamic Holy Warriors, (Mujaheedin) and other militia forces including the NCP’s regular army in disguise that Khartoum is heavily relying upon in the current skirmishes and any forthcoming military confrontation with South Sudan. Yet disreputable and untrustworthy NCP has more often painted a different and false and counterfeit picture to the outside world, maintaining that South Sudan army was fighting the tribal militia forces. Albeit Khartoum’s lunatic counterfactual art of deception might appeal to the outside world the veracity is always bound to show up.

* Peter Lokarlo Marsu is based in Australia, he can be reached at [email protected]