Arabs rally to Sudan as world condemns it over Darfur
By MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press Writer
CAIRO, Egypt, July 27, 2004 (AP) — Some Arabs have rallied to the Sudanese government, denying it is responsible for what the U.S. Congress has called a campaign of genocide against Africans in the western region of Darfur.
Even those who criticize Sudan’s authoritarian regime say the West is mishandling the Darfur issue at a time when Arabs are fearful that the United States plans to follow its invasion of Iraq with an attempt to remake the region.
The United Nations was expected to vote this week on a resolution drafted by the United States likely to include a direct threat of sanctions against the Sudanese government if it doesn’t rein in Arab militias known as Janjaweed accused of killing thousands to put down a rebellion in Darfur. The 25-nation European Union also is pushing to threaten the Sudanese government with U.N. sanctions. The African Union has pressed Sudan to “neutralize” the Janjaweed and others involved in massive human rights violations.
Amid the international outcry over the killing of up to 30,000 people and displacement of an estimated 2.2 million in Darfur over the past 15 months, the Arab League has remained largely silent. The main regional group traditionally does not criticize one of its own. Sudan is among the league’s 22 members.
“The Arab League doesn’t accept the imposition of sanctions, especially in Sudan, because it will serve no purpose. On the contrary, it will complicated the situation,” league spokesman Hossam Zaki told The Associated Press Tuesday. “More time must be given to Sudanese government to carry out its promises and it must be given the chance.”
Asked whether the Sudanese government should be held responsible, Zaki instead pointed the finger at unnamed “foreign parties” trying to destabilize the country.
Arab heavyweight Egypt also has criticized talk of sanctions and called on the world to give Sudan more time and help to restore peace in Darfur. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met with his Sudanese counterpart Omar el-Bashir in Cairo earlier this month.
An Arab League fact-finding team that visited Darfur in May concluded that alliances between Arab militia and the Sudanese government troops led to “the militia committing violations of human rights.” The team called for an independent investigation, but its findings and recommendations were not widely circulated.
The Darfur violence is unrelated to a longer-standing rebellion in southern Sudan.
El-Bashir denies claims his government backs the Janjaweed and bristles at what he calls outside interference. The Arab-dominated Sudanese government says it needs time to carry out agreements with the United Nations and the African Union to disarm rebel groups and improve the humanitarian situation in Darfur.
Helmi Sharawy, head of the Research Center for African Studies, an independent Cairo think tank, is among many who see an international conspiracy against Arabs in the outcry over Darfur.
The United States and the West “want to drag the world into a new Iraq in Sudan over the same greedy causes of dominating oil or the uranium in the Sudanese desert,” Sharawy told the AP.
In Jordan, the Muslim Brotherhood has speculated rightwing Christians in the United States are trying to use the Darfur issue to justify the division of Sudan,leading to the “fragmentation” of the Arab and Muslim world.
But Mustafa Kamel el-Sayyed, head of Cairo University Research Center for Underdeveloped Countries, said such thinking keeps Arabs from dealing “well with their own problems.”
“Arabs just hope that the problem of Darfur will go away … however the problem is not going away,” he said.
Not all Arabs have been silent on Darfur. Tuesday, the newly formed Forum for Democratic Reform in the Arab Region accused the Sudanese government of ethnic cleansing and compared other Arabs’ attitudes to past unwillingness to condemn or even acknowledge deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s brutal rule.
The forum of Egyptian and other Arab intellectuals also condemned “the American support of and the European tolerance toward the brutal Israeli actions against Palestinian civilians.”