Sudan feeling the heat on the appointment of a Janjaweed leader

By Wasil Ali

January 21, 2008 (ANKARA) — The Sudanese president Omar Hassan Al-Bashir defended his choice of a Musa Hilal a notorious Janjaweed leader, as government adviser last week.

Al-Bashir is on a 3-day visit to Turkey to meet with President Abdullah Gul and will discuss bilateral relations and joint issues and explore means to boost joint politic and economic cooperation ties.

“Mr. Hilal himself is a Sudanese citizen. He has a very influential personality in Darfur. He has contributed greatly to stability and security in the region,” Bashir told a joint news conference with Turkish President Abdullah Gul.

Last Wednesday Al-Bashir issued a decree appointing Musa Hilal, leader of the Darfurian Arab Mahameed clan, as an adviser for the ministry of federal government.

Officials at the Sudanese presidency denied the reports initially before confirming the appointment of Hilal later.

The leader of Arab tribes in Darfur told Miraya FM last week that he will assume his new responsibilities soon after the oath taking ceremonies.

Hilal has been named by numerous eyewitnesses in Darfur as leading terror campaign against the African tribes in the war ravaged region.

The tribal leader denied any wrongdoings and told Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a videotaped interview in 2005, that he only recruited militias on behalf of Sudan’s central government.

The 46 years old was jailed by the Sudanese authorities in 1998 for leading armed robbery of the central bank in the city of Nyala in Darfur. However the First Vice president Ali Osman Taha secured his release in 2002 for unknown reasons.

The United States, the European Union and rights groups are unhappy with Bashir’s visit, though Turkey insists it will press home the West’s message that Sudan needs to work towards resolving the Darfur crisis.

The Turkish Daily News quoting unidentified officials said that Ankara has ignored repeated requests by Al-Bashir to visit in the past. The driving force behind this position was “the Foreign Ministry bureaucrats, who managed to convince Gul when he was foreign minister to ignore the Sudanese leader’s requests to visit Turkey”.

According to the newspaper former Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer “had stuck to the ministry line and refused to accept al-Bashir’s request to visit Turkey”.

“Al-Bashir’s visit marks a clear departure from Turkey’s general stance of avoiding high-level contacts with Sudanese officials” the newspaper said.

Gul, who looked uncomfortable during the news conference, said he had urged Bashir and other parties to seek a peaceful end to the conflict in Darfur.

A Turkish diplomat told Reuters Bashir had told Gul during their private talks that Hilal had been appointed to his new post in order to “engage him in the peace efforts”.

The Sudanese president denied that Hilal was involved in any wrongdoings in Darfur and alluded to rebels being behind the massacres in the war ravaged region.

“In Sudan we don’t think the claims against Hilal are true. We absolutely do not believe them. The people who really commit murders in Darfur are receiving help from Europe and others.”

However Professor Eric Reeves an expert on Sudan dismissed Al-Bashir’s testimony clearing Hilal from Darfur war crimes.

“We have countless witnesses that put him [Hilal] in command at the scene of many of the worst atrocity crimes in the Darfur genocide” Reeves said.

“”Field Marshal Al-Bashir’s suggestion that such an appointment is justified simply because Musa Hilal is a Sudanese citizen could not be more vacuous. Hundreds of thousands of Darfuris, who were also Sudanese civilians, have died in the genocide in which Musa Hilal has played such a prominent role” he added.

Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program, speaking to Sudan Tribune echoed Reeves’ call.

“There is no doubt Hilal is a Sudanese citizen. However the man has been placed on a travel ban and asset freeze by the UN Security Council for human rights violations. I don’t think that even Sudan’s supporters such as China would like to see Hilal nominated for any post” Dicker said.

“What president Bashir can expect is a lot of concerns and questions as well as disappointment for endorsing an individual being investigated by the International Criminal Court” he added.

Reeves suggested that Hilal’s appointment was to pacify the Arab tribes in Darfur. The rebel groups drawn mainly from the African tribes of Fur and Zaghawa in Darfur have been reporting a mass wave of defection by Arab tribes and joining their ranks.

“The Sudanese officials are prepared to undertake any expedient act in order to halt the defection of Arab militia forces in Darfur, and prepared also to make the most vicious appeals to Arab sentiment in the region” he said.

Last month Andrew Natsios, the special envoy of U.S. President George W. Bush, speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that Abdel-Wahid Al-Nur, leader of Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) is “in discussion and maybe in alliance” with Mohamed Ali Hamiditi who is the leader of a powerful Janjaweed group.

Al-Nur confirmed the alliance saying that this “is not a new phenomenon. We had many members of Arab militias join the ranks of the SLM as recent as April after they realized Khartoum manipulations. The defection of Hamiditi is the culmination of this trend”.

Mubarak al-Fadil, leader of the Umma Reform and Renewal told Sudan Tribune in an interview that Hamiditi defected from the government along with his 20,000 heavily armed supporters.

The opposition leader said that Hamiditi felt that the “government abandoned him after they accepted the peacekeeping force as well as the fact that they are not paying them as they are used to”. Al-Fadil added that the Sudanese government used the air force against Hamiditi in South Kordofan to quell his rebellion.

International experts estimate 200,000 people have died in the conflict, which Washington calls genocide, a term European governments are reluctant to use. The Sudan government says 9,000 people have been killed.

(ST)

Some informtion for this report are provided by Reuters