Life of a Fugitive President Omar al-Bashir

By Steve Paterno

March 18, 2009 — Nothing is more demeaning and humiliating than turning a once powerful president into the most wanted international criminal. A recent issuance of arrest warrant against Omar al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court (ICC) has reduced al-Bashir into nothing, but a fugitive confined within his little world. Al-Bashir has officially joined the cabal of the infamous international fugitives; the likes of Osama Bin Laden who is relentlessly on the run in a tribal-mountainous regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Joseph Kony who opted to hide among the animals in the jungles of equatorial rainforest.

For al-Bashir, lack simply ran out, the old tricks faded away, and the world order has drastically changed, unfavorably toward him. Born in 1944, al-Bashir perilous life started in small village of Hosh Bannaga in Northern Sudan. His family later moved into the capital Khartoum where he completed his secondary school. To supplement for a living, al-Bashir found comfort by securing himself a place in a military college. As a commission officer, al-Bashir witnessed deployments in various places, including serving in a contingent with Egyptian military where they suffered a humiliating defeat at the mercy of Israeli armed forces at the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

This seemingly treacherous path led al-Bashir all the way up and in 1989, at the rank of a Colonel, al-Bashir with the help of a radical Islamic movement staged a bloodless coup. Slowly and gradually, al-Bashir positioned himself to assert his leadership role in capturing the helm of power. From obscurity into a mere leader of the military coup plotters, he ascended into power, declared himself president and the sole ruler in Khartoum. Initially, many thought he would not last any year that followed.
Faced with a mounting war from the South Sudan by the Sudan People Liberation Army (SPLA), al-Bashir embarked in militarization of his regime. His effort in turn paid off as he heavily exploited on the split among SPLA ranks and files of 1990s. As a result, the once powerful and militarily successful SPLA soldiers were forced into defensive positions. Al-Bashir’s Khartoum troops and sponsored militia managed to recapture the major towns held under SPLA control. The SPLA were pushed where they strategically positioned along the borders.

Emphasis on Islamization, Arabization and military conscription were employed in full swing as a tool for mobilizing a full support from the population for al-Bashir’s war agenda. By thousands, the old and young, men and women, all joined various branches of Khartoum military to support the cause. They went on to slaughter their victims in the South Sudan by millions, starved many millions more, and displaced even scores of millions. Al-Bashir could not ask for more than what he got during those years of military victories. He was at his best.

Viewing himself as invincible, given his military might, al-Bashir dared to agitate all of his neighboring countries. He strained relationship with almost all his neighbors by aggressively fueling internal unrests within those countries. He has no friendly neighbors and never bothered to make any friend.
In the midst of his successes, al-Bashir caught the attention of the world by allying with the most notorious global terrorists among them were Osama Bin Laden and Carlos the Jackal. He hosted these well-known terrorists and used terrorism as tactics to advance his cause abroad. He mounted tough diplomatic activities and the used oil exploitation to win few powerful friends like China and Russia. The regime then maneuvered its way through the diplomatic corridors to sustain power long enough and beyond the imaginations of its lifespan. Within the regime circles, al-Bashir eliminated rivals by killing, imprisoning or rendering them politically irrelevant. Some of those rivals were tricked into airplanes and then blown up into pieces. Others were simply shot to death. Even the smartest of the rivals, Hassan al-Turabi, al-Bashir’s own mentor, got outwitted in the game. Now, Turabi is either confined within his own house and at most within the residential area or languishes in prison.

To continue with the long war efforts, the regime turned into reviving the economy through oil explorations and exploitations. The oil flows bought new weapons, lured in the investors, ushered in relative development centered in Khartoum, and significantly contributed to economic growth for the regime.

Realizing that the war in South Sudan drew international anxiety, was progressively more costly and could not be won militarily, al-Bashir accepted an internationally brokered peace deal with the warring party, the SPLA—the peace deal was signed in 2005. It turned out that this agreement is cheap, with a price tag of only two billion US dollars a year, which al-Bashir can easily afford with no problems. In this agreement, al-Bashir figured out and concluded that the onetime fierce SPLA fighters will be absorbed in, bribed, set-up at each other, and manipulated so that they cause no threats to his regime.

As another war front opened in Sudan’s Western region of Darfur in 2003, al-Bashir thought also of another ingenious way of settling that war cheaply. He mobilizes the Janjaweed Arab militias on the sentiment of Arab supremacy to rein in against the Africans in Darfur region. With airpower support and logistics from Khartoum, the Janjaweed launched one of the most horrific scorch-earth campaigns of the twenty first century in Darfur; massacring hundreds of thousands, burning down strings of villages, poisoning water wells and uprooting millions of the inhabitants from their traditional settings in the region.

Al-Bashir genocidal campaign in Darfur drew the furor of international outcry and condemnation. Ignoring the international community, al-Bashir went on doing about his business. However, in 2005, having had enough of al-Bashir bullying tactics, the international community in the body of the United National Security Council, referred the issue of conflict in Darfur to the ICC to investigate if possible war crime, crime against humanity and genocide are committed. In its investigation, which is still active, the ICC is able to indict three members of al-Bashir’s regime, including al-Bashir himself for having committed multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

Today, al-Bashir seats in Khartoum as an international war criminal and one of the most wanted international fugitive. Though he is still the president, he is already a prisoner within his sphere. His travelling ability is limited and his survival is shortened. As a matter of security precaution, and to avoid being intercepted along his travel routes, his men are contemplating flying him to an Arab-friendly country, escorted by the entire Khartoum fighter jets fleet. Nevertheless, they could not figure out his sleeping arrangement once he arrives the final destination. For now, all of his trips abroad are cancelled and anything to do with his outings is to remain confidential. Behaving like many previous dictators, in their last minutes of power and glory, al-Bashir is growing more agitated and paranoid. He speaks only in a tone of threats against whoever he believes are collaborators of ICC. His suspicion of everyone, even his close associates, for being supporters of ICC, are getting more prevalent. The ICC, which al-Bashir mocked as insignificant and equated it to just a “mosquito buzz,” after all, is taking a toll on him and may terminate his live at any moment.

At age 65, al-Bashir is already tumbling and showing signs of a rapidly aging man. His voice chokes and at times cringes. The throat roars and contracts as he tries to speak. The two decades of misrule is finally crumbling on top of him. He is having his fate decided to him in a most inconceivable way, by those for so long he considered his victims, the people of Darfur. Omar, a boy who once grew in a desert running around freely after the camels and donkeys may as well spend the remaining of his old age at a tiny cell in some foreign land, completely confined. Perhaps it is not yet time to write the final words in the last sentences of al-Bashir’s obituary, but no one can know for sure since al-Bashir is the one to do that by himself. One is tempted though to conclude…he was the president for two decades and he will surely not be missed by many people.

Steve Paterno is the author of The Rev. Fr. Saturnino Lohure, A Romain Catholic Priest Turned Rebel. He can be reached at [email protected]