Alex Dewaal and Bashir Nobel Price
By Hafiz Ismail Mohamed
What Alex Dewaal said in Tana Forum on Impact of Illicit Financial Flows on Peace and security in Africa is not surprising I knew Alex for long time since 2008 /09 he changed his stand totally and decided to support the National Congress Party (NCP) regime unreservedly.
But for him to applaud Bashir for managing the Sudanese economy to the extent that he nominated him for Nobel price, is so insulting to our minds, the main failure of Al Bashir and his regime is their failure to run the economy and the impact of that on people lives, Bashir run one of the most corrupt regimes in the world. Alex was surprised because Bashir run the country with less the one billion US dollar the issue is not how much is the size of the economy it is about how you managed it until 1977 Sudanese economy used to be run in surplus , in 1980s even after the IMF introduced its structural adjustment Programme the inflow of foreign currencies from commodities export and Sudanese expatriate remittance was higher them 3 billion US Dollars the value of the national currency in June 1989 was 1 US $ equal SGD 12 , now 1US $ equal 14,000 , the GDP used to be high than 3 billion US dollars and the total government budget use to be over 1 billion before Al Bashir took power by military coup in 1989. The proceed of the sale of Al Gazira Scheme cotton per year used to be over 350 million dollar Alex well aware that Bashir regime managed to destroy the economy through adopting wrong policies and making corruption the norm through their Tamkin (empowerment) policy. Alex himself fully aware of the misuse of around 60 billion US dollars the proceed of the sale of oil in 1999-2010, he spoke about that many times and introduce the terminology ‘(dollarization of political landscape) describing the regime patronage system.
He wrote a lot against the regime in 2004 a famous article in London Book Review under the title (Counterinsurgency in Cheap) accusing the regime leaders of been Genocidal by force of Habit) he co-authors the book Darfur a Short History for a Long War and when he met Nafia he changed some of the stories in the second edition to appease him. He used to support the International Criminal Court (ICC) after the UNSC referred Darfur Case to it in 2005, but when Ocampo told the UNSC in his briefing in 2008 that he will indict president Alex wrote an open letter against that and supporting Bashir and after the indictment he wrote 120-page case in favour of Bashir and against the ICC.
We knew he changed his stands from the regime in 2008/09 because he used to believe there was a lucrative business in Sudan and he can get share of the cake by supporting the regime, actually he wasn’t only supporting the regime but he fight everyone who used to have different views from him , he done that with me when we were working together in Justice Africa London he used to write fabricated stories and lies about ne to the board of directors and not copying me and I was the managing director of the organisation at that time ,he falsely accused me of misusing funds , luckily I managed to get all those emails and faced him with all his lies, he even went further and post a paid advert in some Sudanese newspaper accusing me of corruption as he believe as white man ( Khowaja with his colonial mind-set ) Sudanese elites will believe him as he pledged to destroy me and close Justice Africa Sudan but I responded to him in very strong way and exposed his corruption and forced him to shut his mouth.
If he thinks by becoming spin doctor to the regime again that will help him again this regime run out of everything.
The author is the director of Justice Africa for Rights and development (JARD) can be reached at: [email protected]