Crushing defeat for NCP regime in the battle for ending UNAMID Mandate
By Mahmoud A. Suleiman
This article comes against the background of the coincidence of occurrence of two events that left far reaching implications on the issue of the people of Darfur. The two events include the escape of the National Congress Party (NCP) regime’s president from Johannesburg while his arrest was ‘just around the corner’, whereas the other event centred on the UNSC and AU resolution for continuation of the Mandate of the UNAMID without change until June 2016. The two events have left a bitter political taste on the regime despite the dance concerts at the reception of al-Bashir who came on the run from Pretoria by his chanting supporters.
A sweeping crushing defeat for the ruling regime of the NCP at the hands of the African Union (AU) and the UN Security Council (UNSC) on a resolution to extend the mandate of the joint mission of the United Nations and the African Union for Darfur, UNAMID, until June 2016. Political analysts thought by all accounts, the defeat of the NCP regime before the UNSC overwhelming.
The Khartoum government has been pressing for the withdrawal of the joint mission in Darfur since the Mission’s request to investigate the rape of more than two hundred women and young girls in the village of Tabet in North Darfur by the government army in late October 2014.
For its part, the Council for Peace and Security of the AU announced the need to extend the mandate of the joint mission UNAMID in Darfur because of the deteriorating humanitarian and security situation and the escalation of violence and abuses in Darfur. Furthermore, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed in his periodic report to the UN Security Council (UNSC) that the period between 26 February to 15 May 2015 there has been no tangible progress in Darfur to justify the UNAMID withdrawal and he recommend that the Security Council to renew the mandate of UNAMID mission in Sudan for a new year ending in June 2016 without any change.
On her part, the US Ambassador to the UNSC Samantha Power, Said in a statement on June 19, 2015 that now is not the time to abandon Darfur now is not the time to withdraw UN peacekeeping force and said now is not the time to abandon the people of Darfur.
Furthermore, Power said member states that have an impact on Khartoum should exploit this effect and urged the government to allow an increase in access for humanitarian aid workers and to allow UNAMID to initiate its mandate to protect civilians.
Moreover, Ms. Power called for the enforcing the UN sanctions and the arms embargo on the Khartoum regime and called for a comprehensive political solution to begin and to real cessation for military operations. She also added saying that the UN Security Council (UNSC) should not think of any withdrawal or termination of the work of the UNAMID in Darfur prematurely.
These developments have raised the ire of the ruling regime of the National Congress Party (NCP) and began blaming the United States (US) that it did not give consideration the concessions made by the National Congress government and giving a list of the alleged positive steps such as allowing the secession of the South of Sudan, cooperation in the fight against terrorism and to open a dialogue with the opposition, and the holding of presidential elections with broad popular participation and political parties along with defeating the insurgency! As the saying goes, if you feel no shame, then do whatever you want!
Without feeling ashamed the MCP entity boasted proudly of their reckless policies which missed unity of the country and tore the social fabric and waged civil wars of attrition that ravaged the country. They are proud for their abject failures in rule of law, good governance which replaced by corruption and crimes of genocide.
Among the deadly plots of the infamous National Islamic Front (NIF) from which spawn the ruling regime of the NCP, was dividing the people of Darfur on ethnic lines, into Arabs and Zurga – means Africans – with a view to tear and disintegrate the social fabric that has kept the bonds of affection and tolerance between tribes and ethnic groups in Darfur through the generations and ages.
The latter plan of the (NCP) regime was the straw that broke the camel’s back and hit the people of Darfur in the kill off before anything and everything. And this was followed by the formation of militia recruited from school dropouts bandits and the illiterate individuals among the ethnic Arab camel herders of the North Darfur and others from the neighboring countries such as Chad, Mali, Central African Republic (CAR) and from as far as Mauritania and others. Following that they have been supplied with munition and arms and trained on ways to murder and burning of villages and farms and damaging water sources and the destruction of livelihoods and finally displace and evacuate the land of its indigenous population and occupy the evacuated land instead of its inhabitants. A hellish malignant plan the long-term effects remained bitter over the Darfur crisis.
Those militia called the Janjaweed, which unleashed by the (NCP) regime and led by the two of the of the armed robbery Lords and proxy warmongers, Musa Hilal Abdullah and Mohammed Hamdan Dogolo- aka Hamedti are two rivals of each other and belong to two Northern Darfur Nomadic Arab tribes, Um Jallool – now calls itself Mahameed -and Mahariya – now calling itself Northern Rizeigat respectively. Musa Hilal has been appointed by the (NCP) regime as a Presidential Advisor for the Federal system. Whereas Hamedti has been appointed as a General leader for the notorious Rapid Support Force (RSF) affiliated to the regime’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS), the official government Spy Agency that has replaced the Sudanese official army, once named Sudan Armed Force (SF). Those two militias have wreaked havoc in the land to the citizens of the Darfur region and destroyed everything that the Darfur region used to boast and feeling proud about.
The people of Darfur are asking in supplication Almighty God to make the plots hatched by the regime of the NCP to bounce slaughter Omar al-Bashir and his entourage and boomerang on them and their militias, mercenaries and the morally cowardice terrorists and the obsequious hired hirelings .
The people of Darfur, who are known for valor, courage and generosity and good manners and piety, have suffered humiliation, cold-blooded murders and displacement at the hands of scum untouchable folk.
The regime of the NCP by exercising its racial discrimination policy and civil wars by proxy and systematic planned starvation and displacement of the indigenous population and housing foreigners imported in their lands for the purpose of demographic change. This plan of the regime has forced some people of Darfur to seriously thinking to consider the need to claim the right of self-determination. It is noteworthy that the (NCP) Islamism regime has deprived the people of Darfur, a real regional rule, and denied them fair sharing of wealth, power and equal citizenship rights.
Moreover, the peace agreements that negotiated by the people of Darfur with the government of Omar al-Bashir went unheeded because the regime reneged the negotiated agreements.
It was reported that one of the influential members in National Congress Party (NCP) regime, said that the people of Darfur do not look like the people of Khartoum and let them separate from us as did the Southerners and relieved us from the burdens! In spite of this seemed an isolated quasi-anecdotal incident, much more insulting abusive remarks made by the head of the regime, Omar al-Bashir against the people of Darfur. Omer al-Bashir had encouraged crimes of rape in Darfur by a provocative speech attributed to him as saying that if Darfurian woman is raped by a man from the Arab tribe Ja’aleen, she (Darfurian woman) should feel proud, because she has been raped by a supremacist race in Sudan”! The racist tribalist Omer al-Bashir keeps boasting that he descended from that particular tribe as part of his feelings of inferiority complex that remains haunting him.
It is ironic that the supporters of the NCP regime considering the escape of Omar al-Bashir from Johannesburg avoiding arrest and extradition of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a victory by the supporters of the despotic entity who were dancing joyfully amid blaring music and heritage songs.
the question which poses itself is as from where the victory the supporters of the autocratic dictator Omer al-Bashir talk about came and making them dance in jubilation given the circumstances surrounded the flee of their master of grace in fear and horror escaping arrest by the Pretoria Court and handing him over to the ICC? However, Omar al-Bashir’s visit to South Africa to attend the African Union (AU) summit was in favour of the people of Darfur because it revived the issue a new in spite of the escape of the criminal al-Bashir and fleeing the Pretoria court order without being able to arrested.
When a war criminal, cowardly escapes from being arrested for handing him over to the ICC to face the predicaments of his atrocious crimes in Darfur does not represent a victory by any measure. To say the least, conversely what happened to Omar al-Bashir in South Africa was a sweeping unprecedented defeat. Unless it designated as victories attributed to the legendary figure, Don Quixote who was fighting windmills in the famous legend.
Making a mythological figure out of a criminal fugitive from international justice, hunted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his arrest for the reprehensible crimes he has perpetrated against fellow citizens in one of the regions of the homeland, Sudan is. Humility is a virtue of the godly individuals an absurdity.
Thank God, the joint decision of the UNSC and the Au Council for Peace and Security to extend the Mandate of the UNAMID in Darfur without any changes has locked the way for the evil plan Omer al-Bashir. The original plans aimed at dismantling the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps in Darfur forcibly and the result will be displacement of the camp residents into the middle of nowhere, in the so-called ‘model villages’ and housing the proxy foreigners in the Hawakir of the indigenous population with a sinister plot for changing the Darfuri demography. The UNSC decision has dashed the hopes of the criminal fugitive from the International justice.
One may conclude by quoting Benazir Bhutto who said:” Military dictatorship is born from the power of the gun, and so it undermines the concept of the rule of law and gives birth to a culture of might, a culture of weapons, violence and intolerance”.
Dr. Mahmoud A. Suleiman is an author, columnist and a blogger. His blog is http://thussudan.wordpress.com/