Genocide in Darfur: International focus on Al-Bashir is too narrow
By Eric Reeves
December 18, 2008 — Darfur’s vast and complex catastrophe has increasingly come to be perceived through the narrow lens of an impending ruling by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges brought against Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir. In July, ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo
provided evidence to a three judge panel that al-Bashir was guilty of
crimes against humanity and genocide throughout the region. A ruling is
widely expected in the very near term, which could result in an arrest
warrant for a sitting head of state, a matter of no small interest.
But despite Moreno-Ocampo’s finding that al-Bashir used the entire state
apparatus to conduct genocide in Darfur, he has chosen not to name some
other members of the regime who bear major responsibility for the
atrocities that have been perpetrated on a massive scale since 2002, and
indeed earlier. Moreno-Ocampo’s focus is perplexingly singular, and
obliges us to bear in mind that Sudan is not ruled by an elected or
representative government of legitimate officials. The National Islamic
Front (NIF), disingenuously re-named the National Congress party, is a
brutal regime that came to power by military coup in 1989 and for 20
years has steadily arrogated to itself virtually all national wealth and
power. And the most powerful men within this regime are just as guilty
as al-Bashir of the crimes in Darfur that Moreno-Ocampo has, with a
mandate from the UN security council, investigated for almost four
years.
Two of these men in particular are likely to vie for the role of head of
state should it become politically expedient to remove al-Bashir, who is
fast losing support for his intransigent position in dealing with the
ICC, both within Sudan as well as internationally, even within the Arab
League. The first is Ali Osman Taha, currently the second
vice-president, and the other is Nafie Ali Nafie, who has dramatically
increased his power in recent years as presidential adviser. Notably,
what both men have in common is their personal responsibility for
handling the Darfur file – Taha beginning in 2004 and Nafie beginning in
2007. They, even more than al-Bashir, have set the regime on its present
course of continuing genocide by attrition.
Both Taha and Nafie are already competing for support from other members
of the NIF inner circle, as well as the army, which remains a powerful
political force. What this highlights is that al-Bashir is not, and has
never been, entirely in control of the regime apparatus. The decision in
1999 to sideline the powerful Islamist ideologue Hassan al-Turabi, for
example, is widely known to have been a collective NIF decision by an
inner gang of 10. Similarly, if al-Bashir faces an arrest warrant for
genocide and is deposed or forced to resign – not by popular pressure or
moral scruple, but by political calculation guided by the most ruthless
survivalism – what we will see emerge is not a new regime, but merely a
reconfiguration.
What are the implications for Darfur? As Human Rights Watch has
documented
[http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2005/12/08/entrenching-impunity],
command-and-control for military attacks on civilians in the region,
including control of the Janjaweed militia, is strongly hierarchical,
both militarily and politically. This ensures that whoever might replace
al-Bashir will have the same role, if perhaps not as field marshal,
which is al-Bashir’s other title.
What will ensue if either Taha or Nafie assumes the presidency? It may
be expedient to create the impression that al-Bashir’s removal somehow
fundamentally changed governance in Sudan, when in factbe reconstituted with nearly the same cast of major actors. As part of
yet another charm campaign, the regime may temporarily slow its
relentless war of attrition against humanitarian workers and operations
in Darfur. The UN/African Union peacekeeping force, so ineffectual to
date, may see some expedited deployment, though not enough to change the
fundamentally untenable security dynamic in Darfur. And engagement with
whatever peace forum seems most accommodating may elicit from Khartoum
the appearance of a new diplomatic approach.
But there will be no fundamental change in outlook or ambition. Those
responsible for genocidal destruction in Darfur – including not only
Nafie and Taha, but Saleh Abdallah “Gosh” (head of security), Abdel
Rahim Hussein (defense minister and former minister of the interior) and
Major General Ismat Zain al-Din (director of military operations) – will
simply recalibrate what is possible in the changed international
political, economic and diplomatic circumstances.
The chances for a credible peace process would increase significantly if
these changed circumstances included a real threat of punitive economic
sanctions targeting the regime, a broadly enforced travel ban on all
senior members of the NIF, a robustly enhanced peacekeeping force,
European monetary sanctions paralleling those imposed by the US and
intense pressure on China to use its leverage with Khartoum. But of
course all of this has been true for years, and the international
community has responded by signing agreements with the regime that are
never honoured and making pusillanimous proposals that fail to address
the needs of Darfur’s victims.
Grimly, there is little reason to suppose that even the indictment of
al-Bashir for genocide would be the occasion for the kinds of action
that will sustain and protect the 4.7 million civilians affected by this
conflict, and who remain at the mercy of Khartoum’s cabal of
génocidaires.
* Eric Reeves is author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide. He can be reached at [email protected]. www.sudanreeves.org