NCP regime poised for Darfur Referendum willy-nilly coinciding with new escalation of killing spree
By Mahmoud A. Suleiman
The flaws in the NCP decision of carrying out Administrative Referendum in Darfur regardless of the attrition proxy civil wars it continues waging against the unarmed noncombatant citizens will be exposed in this article. With the facts at hand all in detail, time is overdue for action taking; condemnation statements fell on deaf dumb ears and have not taken us forward one iota. The Sudanese opposition components need today before tomorrow to move into action because dwelling in the past and ruminating the pains, licking the wounds and complaining will not help the country’s issues and crises of its people, but more damage. The political and armed opposition components need putting their differences aside for the sake of Lifting the country out of the dark abyss after finishing off the putschist authoritarian criminal regime who shops in the name of the Islamic faith which disowns all the hypocrisy of the gang led by the dictator Omer Bashir and his entourage.
The regime of the National Islamic Front (NIF) came to Sudan at the cunning of history and the moment of a wasted time to stifle the breath of the great people of the giant Homeland Sudan in Darfur. Therefore, the failure came walking on feet protected by tanks of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), unfortunately on 30th June 1989 and beyond the Lost Time. Moreover, the regime wasted the entire state budget on its security devices. NIF came chanting deceptive religious slogans that say “we are out for the worship of God and not for the transitory world and it is a Cultural Project with Apostolic Orientation. They aimed at building a police state for the country, pave the way for Omer al-Bashir and his family and NCP to loot, and steal all the bounties of the country and its resources. Furthermore, the economy collapsed because of the corruption of the ruling regime. The indebtedness of Sudan to the global financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank and other financial institutions amounted to $ 45 billion US dollars and an annual budget deficit of more than $ 5 billion. Sadly that Omar al-Bashir and his regime has demolished the great Sudanese army for fear of coups, and replace it by tribal militias of Janjaweed, bandits and gangs of armed robbery and fleeing expatriate mercenaries from neighboring African countries. Thus, the people of Sudan have to spend their entire budget on a failed army that does not fight a war against an aggressive foreign country, nor against neighbour who usurped the land of Sudan. The NCP President Omer al-Bashir got rid of a committed National Sudan Armed Force (SAF) because of his fear of the danger the national army could pose to his continuation in power. This is a regime that spent more than a quarter of a century to kill children, women and elderly people in Eastern Sudan, region of Darfur, Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan, Ingessana in southern Blue Nile, people of Nubia in Kajbar and Amrey and burning villages and raping women! !! For these reasons the Sudanese people became convinced that such an army is not worthy to honoured, and they would rather prefer to be in a state without an army to spend its budget on education, health, electricity and water services for the welfare of the poverty stricken majority citizens to live honorable enhanced life.
Corruption and waste of public money reached the summit
Corruption under (NIF/NCP) regime reached its peak. According to the daily Newspaper which the spy agent (NISS) instantly closed said that the President of the Islamism regime Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir granted as a free gift a brand new Land Cruiser 2016 model car with –price of one billion and a half pounds – to every one of the army officers in his former batch colleagues in the Military Academy; the act of corrupted bribery!
The systematic plots woven and cultivated by the regime of the NCP, one after the other, against the people of Sudan in the Darfur region represented in the following manner and at this pace as a continuation of the previous genocidal crimes and other series of atrocities:
Chain of events, which affected the Darfur region and its people, included
1) The massacre of the citizens of El Geneina town and villages around
2) By the decision to dismantle the IDP camps the Muslim Brotherhood Movement (MBM) regime led by the genocidal criminal Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir tries to bamboozle the international community that the problem of the IDPs camps in Darfur has ended by the return of the residents to their homes voluntarily! In conformity with the plan, an influential official of the ruling regime announced the intentions of his government to dismantle all IDP camps during 2016. He gave two options for the displaced citizens; accepting resettlement or return to their original areas in a period of 50 days from his announcement. He further reiterated his government’s commitment to take all necessary measures and do the needful to achieve this goal, stressing that “the year 2016 will see the end of displacement in Darfur. http://www.sudanjem.org/2016/01/walking-the-talk-or-fleeing-the-scene/
3) Scorched earth campaign in the areas of Jebel Marra
4) The systematic targeting of Darfur students in Sudanese universities with murder, arbitrary arrest and expulsion from boarding student accommodation by students affiliated to the National Congress Party (NCP) and by the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS).
5) Omar al-Bashir government’s attempts to expel the joint mission of the United Nations and the African Union (UNAMID) in Darfur to provide the opportunity for the militias and mercenaries of the regime of the NCP to exterminate or forcefully remove the displaced population from the IDP camps, thinking that this would bamboozle the world that the issue of Darfur has been addressed and ended!
6) The plan for imposition of an alleged administrative referendum to Darfur to undermine the region and causing fragmentation of the social fabric of the people of Darfur and dividing the communities on ethnic lines in order to apply the principle of divide and rule, and sow discord among the components of society and stir up tribal warfare.
7) Recruitment of the notorious Janjaweed militias, codenamed rapid support forces (RSF) and mercenary from neighboring countries to occupy and colonize Darfur
8) Continuous shelling and aerial bombardment of areas of citizens’ housing by war aviation that result into the destruction of water sources and the killing of cattle and burning farms and houses
9) Use the most humiliating crime of mass gang rape as a war weapon against young girls and women sometimes in front of their relatives who are threatened and forced to watch the crime as it is going on; mass rape crime in the village of Tabit in north Darfur against more than 200 women and girls by army soldiers in October 2014. Rape in Tabit remains the most egregious example of the horror.
10) Sanctity of killing innocent humans went unheeded in the NCP ruled Sudan
The NCP regime which claims of applying Islamic Sharia in Sudan, in clear contradiction, has legitimized to its security apparatus National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) to use live ammunition to shoot to kill innocent civilians in the West Darfur City of Geneina in complete disregard to the sanctity of Spilling the blood of innocent civilians formed of children, women and infirm elderly who were protesting peacefully against the government allied Janjaweed militias. The militias attacked their villages, killed people, looted property and burnt homes. When the NISS opened fire at them, the civilians were trying to take refuge at the headquarters of the state government building. The Janjaweed militia that attacked the villages of Moly and the surroundings and killed the civilians is allied to the (NCP) regime and is known as the Rapid Support Force (RSF). Thus, the regime of the NCP made the sanctity of killing the innocent unheeded.
In order not to forget the facts, it is pertinent to delve to Darfur’s role in the founding of the modern state of Sudan in the following:
1) The year 2016 marked the hundredth Anniversary of the martyrdom of Sultan of Darfur Ali Dinar who was assassinated by the colonial invaders in 1916 and the annexation of the Sultanate of Darfur to the State of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan
2) Sultan Tairab of Darfur ruled from 1752 to 1787 and his soldiers entered the city of Omdurman chasing Musabbaat Army
3) Fung Sultanate lasted from 1504 to 1821 when the Turkish colonialism came in the period from 1821 to 1886 and followed by the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium colonialism
4) Sultanate of Darfur lasted from 1650 to 1916
5) Sultanate of Darfur was not subject to the rule of the Turks during the period 1650-1916
6) Statistics show that more than three million people in the Darfur region have become either internally displaced people or refugees in the neighbouring countries. This figure is more than the population of the region in the northern Sudan extending from the city of Shendi to Halfa!
Divide and Rule Doctrine hit the Sudanese in the Kill off
The biggest problem for the Sudanese people in dealing with the NCP regime is that we tend to not realize that the (NCP) regime is trying to deal with all the component of the people of Sudan as individuals and not as one unit. The regime takes head on the Southern Sudan, Darfur, Eastern Sudan, Nuba Mountains, South Blue Nile and then Kajbar and Amry of Nubia to impose forcibly river dams without the feeling of intense pain of the others. Therefore, all of us, the Sudanese, are in dire need of unity and to feel the pain of each other before our fateful turn comes true with the Muslim Brotherhood Movement (MBM) entity. Let us stand steadfast together to confront the common enemy with the view to oust it and rid the whole Sudan of their evils. Moreover, let us join our ranks together and do not remain silent when one part of the Sudanese nation suffers burning under the grip of the bloodstained fists of the (NCP) despotic regime. With solidarity, at the end of the day, the people of Sudan in Darfur would not be suffering alone.
Objectives for Darfur Referendum
The alleged Administrative Referendum aims at the removal of the indigenous population of the Darfur Region from their Hawakeer to become IDPs or refugees or Diaspora and replaced by the NCP allied mercenaries and militias from the neighboring countries in place aiming at complete demographic change. It is a forged right intended for a falsehood. Thus, the (NCP) regime as usual tends to reproduce itself through the spurious ongoing evil plots for the distraction of the components of the opposition and the Sudanese people by running sagas as the Wathba national dialogue process and the alleged Administrative Referendum for Darfur.
Dialogue is a Value
Dialogue is a value and a way to bridge the gap between human beings and access to participants make peaceful coexistence possible. Dialogue is a Value and fruitful in stop wars and conflicts. Dialogue is also Value and tool for addressing the causes their eruption. Nevertheless, the ruling regime of the NCP as usual, takes the ideas of others and then trying them out of their content and context with a view to throw them away, wrap and dodge to win time in power and mislead the international and regional community. The Sudanese issue is not resolved, but the Sudanese people. The international community does not want the overthrow of the (NCP) regime.
Responsibility to Protect
The atrocities happening to the children, women, the elderly and other vulnerable civilian populations in Darfur and carried out systematically by the National Congress Party (NCP) regime in Sudan is Global issue and humanitarian problem. The international community of the United Nation Security Council (UNSC) needs to pay attention to this continuing ethnic cleansing and genocide against the civilians in the Darfur region. The Responsibility to Product (RTP) becomes onus upon the UNSC today before tomorrow.
The vulnerable group of the civilian population are subjected to all kinds of crimes by the official army of Omer al-Bashir and his so-called Rapid Support Force ( RSF) Janjaweed militia and mercenaries. They use the most humiliating crime of mass gang rape as a war weapon against young girls and women sometimes in front of their relatives who are threatened and forced to watch the crime as it is going on.
The insistence of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement (MBM) regime and its pressed demand to hold an administrative referendum in Darfur in April 2016 is a warning signal for deceit. The regime claims it as a constitutional duty. We know for fact that the (NCP) regime itself has continued breaching the 2005 Constitution repeatedly and before that, it breached the Transitional Constitution of the Sudan of the democratic Constituent Assembly by the fateful military coup it carried out on June 30, 1989 and overthrew the democratically elected government of the Republic of Sudan. Thus, the shameless unconstitutional (MBM) regime tries to claim legitimacy for its illegal alleged administrative referendum as a constitutional justification without batting an eyelid. The genocidal criminal, fugitive from the international justice, Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir and his criminal entourage and the ilk have to understand that all the components of the Sudanese people in Darfur and other regions have categorically announced their refusal of a referendum in the Darfur region. The Sudanese people know well that the purpose for conducting referendum remains conspicuous. Accordingly, the people of Sudan in general and those in Darfur in particular will stand steadfast opposed to the referendum and would struggle to foil it by all the available means. The people of Sudan in the Darfur region, who continued suffering the woes of wars of attrition, ethnic cleansing, genocide and other heinous crimes will not rest their mind until this conspiracy for demographic change brought to its demise. Moreover, their mind will not rest until they stop the plot to rob the soil of the homeland of ancestors and the plot of fragmentation of the social fabric of indigenous people in order to bring in foreign mercenaries and militias into the Hawakeer of people of Sudan in the Darfur region.
Proof for rejection of Darfur referendum
The evidence for the attitude of the Sudanese people to reject the decision to hold the alleged Administrative Referendum the Darfur region is the thundering demonstrations that swept the world’s cities with the participation of all segments of the people of Sudan, condemning the decision of the criminal regime of the National Congress Party (NCP). The demonstrations held in front of the embassies of Sudan and consulates. Furthermore, it is a clear message from the people of Sudan sent to the symbols of the regime and their genocidal criminal Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir who remains on the run fugitive from international justice that they rejected the referendum outright.
Anything short of that they remain ready for scarifying hearts and souls. The termites may try the stone as the saying goes! This represents an ultimatum that there is no excuse for those warned. On Saturday 23 January 2016 thousands of Sudanese demonstrated through the streets of the city of London. They chanted slogans against the regime led by the Génocidaire Omer al-Bashir and demanding to stop the genocide in Darfur, Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan and the Blue Nile and the arrest of those indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
In solidarity with the the issue, many human rights activists joined the demonstration demanding to stop the gross violations taking place in Sudan against unarmed civilians. The demonstrators repeated slogans condemning genocide, repression, looting of properties and brutality against the Sudanese people by Bashir’s regime and demanded the arrest of Omar al-Bashir and his regime entourage and bringing them to trial. The fugitives from the ICC indictment include Omar al-Bashir, Ahmad Harun, Abdul Rahim Mohammed Hussein and Ali Abdelrahman Kushayb.
Referendum Debated
If we accept the controversy over administrative referendum that mentioned in the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (DDPD) , which was boycotted by the main Darfur armed movements, the current dire conditions of the population in Darfur while the warfare continues unabated, access to the results representative of the unanimous opinion of the majority become farfetched and the credibility of the results of the ballots would be mooted.
The main Objective behind the scenes of NCP for the Darfur Referendum
Are the reasons for the insistence of the ruling regime of the National Congress Party (NCP) to proceed with the administrative referendum in spite of the dire conditions on the ground and against all odds are for making unity unattractive and even repulsive for the people of Darfur to the point of forcing them to resort to request the right to self-determination? A rather dimensional Question demanding an answer to it! If so, let us delve into the question as to whether the people of Darfur are ready to leave their country of origin Sudan to join some other soil?
No to the Demand for Self-Determination Right
Darfur is the part and parcel of the Origin of Sudan
According to the ideological set of the gangsters in the National Congress Party (NCP) regime they wish that the people of Darfur demand the right of self-determination as it did the people of southern Sudan before to get rid of the citizens of Sudan of African descent. Nevertheless and to the disappointment of the regime, the people of Sudan in Darfur would say in a loud voice that they are the Sudan and the asset of it who have been maintained the sovereignty on the borders of Sudan, where the Sudan was governed by the Sultanate of Darfur and the Sultanate of Fungi. It is pertinent to note that the Sultan of Darfur Tairab had arrived in his war with the Musabbaat up to the outskirts of Sudan’s border with Egypt. This remained the true part of the history of Sudan, which is neglected deliberately by the Arabism elites. Those elites attempted to confine the history of existence of Sudan, in Isolation from the foregoing facts by referring it ‘to the entry of the Arabs’ as if there were no people in the land of Sudan before the alleged planned entry of the Arabs! It was an outright falsification of history, which the Arabism elites tried to teach schoolchildren in Sudan since childhood to wash their brains until they reach maturity for alienation away from the origin of their identity and from their historic background heritage. Thus, the term Sudanese remains the identity of the citizens residing within the geographical land referred to SUDAN and none of other words, neither Arabism and nor Africanism can accommodate the population of Sudan on a single identity. As said by the Inspiring leader late Dr. John Garang Mabior.
The Citizens in Sudan’s Darfur region will remain in the land of their ancestors and their ancestors Sudan in spite of those racists who made the unity of Sudan repulsive and unattractive to our compatriots, the Sudanese citizens from the southern part of Sudan. Sadly, they left with that dear part of ancestral land to form their nascent state of South Sudan. As far as the people of the remaining Sudan in Darfur, they would remain as Sudanese whether they are in the IDP camps inside the country, in refugee camps in the neighboring Chad or in the middle of nowhere in the Diaspora . They would like to see the back of the supremacist racist elements leaving Sudan to join their alleged countries of origin. But there is considerable doubt that it would welcome and receive them as equal citizens of the indigenous population in the country that are trying falsely to belong to!
The people of Sudan in Darfur would not allow and have not complied with the plots of the totalitarian regime who always tried imposing its misleading racist criminal divisive wedge between the components of the Sudanese citizens who accept each other without discrimination based on color, ethnic, gender, belief, language, the cultural background, political party or regional affiliation.
In the wake of the current accelerating tragic events planned and orchestrated by the National Congress Party (NCP) regime that claims the monopoly of the Islamic religion against the people of Sudan in the Darfur region, seem unprecedented. The genocidal ruling regime of the NCP resumed committing the reprehensible crimes especially in sync with the sixtieth Anniversary of the Independence of Sudan by the First of January 2016 and the passage of the Centenary since the British Colonials annexed the Sultanate of Greater Darfur The invading British troops killed Sultan Ali Dinar – and is the last sultan of the Sultanate of Darfur on the sixth of November 1916 to the New Sudan. The renewed crimes perpetrated by the NCP regime in the Western State of the Darfur Region were meant for specific purposes, particularly in this pivotal time referred to above. The Sixty years of Independence represented an abject failure of the national Sudanese state and the absence of a national project that transforms and transmits Sudan to state for all its citizens. The result is a current massacre like the massacre in El Geneina in West Darfur State and conspiracy to dismantle IDP camps and impose a scorched earth policy in Central Darfur With view to forge results of the so-called Administrative R referendum of Darfur aimed for demographic change.
The components of the Sudanese people, know very well for fact the underlying cause for the hatred and the obstinate determination of the despotic racist regime of the NCP to retaliate from the Sudanese people in the Darfur Region for demanding their legitimate rights of equitable sharing of the National power and wealth as citizens and for their alleged support of armed resistance by the Darfur rebel movements after the National Congress Party (NCP) government refused to negotiate with those who do not carry weapons and the result was the Deluge of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes that led to the indictment by the International Criminal Court ((ICC) and the conviction of the criminal, Omer Hassan Ahmed Bashir, President of the regime who remains at large, fugitive from international justice. Darkest Chapter in the Sudanese History is the era of the reign of the political Islamism of the National Congress Party (NCP) led by the genocidal criminal fugitive from the international justice, Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, the International Criminal Court (ICC) indictee. We do not expect the shadow to be straight when the wooden pole of the shadow itself is serpentine and crooked.
Retaliatory spirit prevails
And out of the retaliatory Spirit, the National Congress Party (NCP) gang allowed for the Janjaweed militias and mercenaries extermination of the people of Darfur and evacuated them from their Hawakeer and execute the alleged administrative referendum the results of which are known in advance. They then falsely claims that the people of Darfur are in favor of the end of the Darfur region forever to be ground forfeit for foreigners from neighboring countries mercenaries who had occupied a wide swath of indigenous lands in preparation for achieving the long awaited goal of demographic change and the end of the Darfur issue under the carpet.
All the evidence on the ground confirms the impossibility of a credible administrative referendum in Darfur in the conditions imposed by the regime of the NCP for remaining for more lean years in power. Many had already written in the past two weeks about the brutal massacres, which affected unarmed the civilian citizens in the West Darfur State by the Janjaweed militias affiliated to the National Congress Party (NCP) regime under the sight and earshot of the Authorities of the West Darfur state, without batting an eyelid, where it was playing the role of the Dump –devil; So to speak. Evidence of the situation in Darfur in general does not enable the regime hold the alleged referendum with any credibility just like its predecessors of the fraudulent previously rigged ballots. Ballot rigging has become synonymous with the reign of the genocidal criminal Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, the fugitive from international justice par excellence.
The administrative Referendum, which the ruling regime of the NCP intends to conduct in Darfur in April 2016, is a false endeavor for falsification of the will of the Sudanese citizens in Darfur. Besides the illegitimacy of the plan, it is not the right time to hold a referendum. The Darfur region at the present is devoid of the original population as a result of wars imposed on them and made them either internally displaced in IDP camps or refugee camps in neighboring African countries or asylum seekers in the Diaspora. Omer al-Bashir has interspersed the region by dividing it into five states based on tribal lines of the population to sow sedition and discord and ethnic strife. The second important goal of the regime is the imposition of demographic change in Darfur through the process of substitution and the replacement. Housing the arrival mercenaries from neighboring countries in the Hawakeer of the natives remains the gall. Thus, the alleged Administrative Referendum for Darfur planned by the National Congress Party regime in April 2016 is nothing but falsification of the will of the Sudanese citizens in the Darfur region. Resistance of this plot by the NCP genocidal criminal has become the duty of every Sudanese citizen, whether inside the homeland or abroad.
The components of the Sudanese people, know very well for fact the underlying cause for the hatred and the obstinate determination of the despotic racist regime of the NCP to retaliate from the Sudanese people in the Darfur Region. The marginalised people of Sudan in Darfur demanded their legitimate rights of equitable for sharing of the National power and wealth as citizens and they supported the armed resistance by the Darfur rebel movements after the National Congress Party (NCP) government refused to negotiate with those who do not carry weapons. Consequently, the (NCP) created the Deluge of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes that led to the indictment by the International Criminal Court ((ICC) and the conviction of the criminal, Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, President of the regime who remains at large, fugitive from international justice. The past 26 years represent the Darkest Chapter in the Sudanese History is the era of the reign of the political Islamism of the National Congress Party (NCP). Therefore, the people in Darfur do not expect the shadow to be straight when the wooden pole of the shadow itself is serpentine and crooked! The situation in Sudan in general and Darfur in particular has become unconducive to negotiate with Omer al-Bashir and his entourage in the (NCP) regime. It has become the duty of every Sudanese citizen, whether inside the country or abroad to join ranks with the view to oust the regime by all the available means.
Let us not deceive ourselves. Omer al-Bashir is in need to be on the run. As we all know, previous marathon so-called peace negotiations abjectly failed. Peace negotiations started from N’Djamena and Abéché in Chad passed by Abuja in Nigeria and ended in Doha in Qatar without tangible beneficial effect to the Darfur refugees and the Displaced Persons. The main reason centred around Bashir’s fear of the possibility of his arrest and extradition to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the event of a sustainable peace in Darfur achieved. For this reason, any work aimed for striking a credible peace deal with the (NCP) Bashir would aggravate the situation in Darfur and causing more suffering to the civilians and exacerbate crises in all parts of Sudan.
Omar al-Bashir would do all in his power to avoid arrest and extradition to the ICC. He would try his utmost to abrogate any agreements that expected to lead to sustainable peace in Darfur. Accordingly, he would do all he could to aggravate the situation in Darfur to continue suffering and exacerbate crises. Furthermore, he will hire the receivables from the Darfur region to sow rift between the communities with resultant tribal warfare. Omer al-Bashir does not hesitate to betray his fundamentalist terrorist Muslim Brothers (MB) who fled their original home countries and sought refuge from his regime to provide classified intelligence about them to other interested countries in lieu of political support at the international institutions. Omer al-Bashir does not hesitate to get the country involved in regional wars of no interest to Sudan in return for payments to him to enable him to ignite civil wars in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and Southern Blue Nile. The repression of the peaceful demonstrations protesting against the removal of subsidies on basic commodities such as that in September 2013 in Khartoum is a model.
Anyone who thinks that Omer al-Bashir wants sustainable peace to Darfur and wants to stop the war will be kidding or cheating himself or living with Alice in Wonderland or in Cloud Cuckoo land as the saying goes! We need taking action, challenging the policy of referendum and stop the implementation of it.
George Papandreou, the 182nd Prime Minister of Greece has been quoted as said: “If we had a consensus, we would not have to go to a referendum”.
Mahmoud A. Suleiman is an author, columnist and a blogger. His blog is http://thussudan.wordpress.com/