Sudan: Bashir's "final solution" in action

Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir has made abundantly clear his intentions for the remainder of the country after South Sudanese independence became official: a plan of cultural and linguistic Arabization, and the imposition of Sharia. Bashir is already wanted by the International Criminal Court for genocide, and the U.N. says he has now unleashed a “devastating” campaign against the Nuba people in what is now the south of Sudan.

Despite his past crimes, he has been defended and protected not only by the African Union, which has its own vested interests in not setting a precedent for African rulers to be tried, but the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (until recently, the Organization of the Islamic Conference).

We hear time and again of Islam’s supposed egalitarianism on the matter of race, as Muhammad once patronizingly said, “You should listen to and obey, your ruler even if he was an Ethiopian (black) slave whose head looks like a raisin” (Sahih Bukhari 9.89.256). Those claims, used heavily in Islamic proselytizing, ring hollow as an “Arab” leader (more below) again slaughters darker-skinned Africans with impunity, while the OIC and Arab League look the other way.

“UN mission accuses Sudan of shelling and torturing civilians in Nuba war,” by Julie Flint for the Guardian, July 16:

The full horror of the campaign of violence that the government in Khartoum has unleashed against the black African Nuba people of Sudan has been laid bare in two confidential reports by the UN peacekeeping force that the Observer has obtained.

The accounts of “devastating” daily aerial bombardment of civilians, “indiscriminate shelling” of crowded civilian areas, summary executions and deliberate targeting of dark-skinned people are contained in a 19-page report requested by the UN security council. A second report details how “active obstruction by state authorities (in South Kordofan) has completely undermined the ability of the peacekeeping force, UN Mission in Sudan (Unmis), to fulfil the most basic requirements of its mandate” in the Nuba region.

In any North American town, Bashir could easily be described as a black man. If not for the gravity of his crimes, his self-hatred of his African ancestry would be comical, reminiscent of Dave Chapelle’s black Klansman.

The report says the humanitarian assistance and protection provided by Unmis have become “inconsequential” as it prepares to leave Sudan, at Khartoum’s insistence, by 31 July. Unmis officials say privately that they have been “deaf and blind” in South Kordofan ever since war broke out on 5 June and cannot even estimate how many people have been killed and displaced by the fighting – widely perceived as a first step towards President Omar al-Bashir’s stated goal of suppressing ethnic and cultural diversity in favour of a rigid Arab-Islamic regime, following South Sudan’s decision to separate from the North.

The UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Valerie Amos, said on Friday that 1.4 million people were affected by what she called “skirmishes” in South Kordofan, which borders the now independent Republic of South Sudan, and by Khartoum’s refusal to grant “unhindered access” to them. Causing fury among hard-pressed colleagues on the ground, who have been crying out for much stronger support from the security council, she appeared to cast doubt on their reporting, saying: “We do not know whether there is any truth to the grave allegations of extra-judicial killings, mass graves and other violations in South Kordofan.”

The Nuba Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) – formerly allied with the South, but now seeking a northern alliance to overthrow the Bashir government – claims that more than 400,000 people have been displaced and 3,000 killed or disappeared. One Unmis staffer, quoted in one of the documents seen by the Observer, reported seeing the bodies of approximately 150 Nuba lying in pools of blood in just one of the many army barracks in the state capital, Kadugli.

Khartoum and the SPLA have accused each other of starting the fighting, after a ceasefire that began in 2002. Unmis’s report for the security council, prepared by its human rights section, notes that the SPLM/A refused to accept the results of disputed state elections in May, but says there is no evidence that it initiated military operations. Rather, it says, the fighting may have been triggered by an ultimatum for Nuba fighters to move to South Sudan by 1 June – an order that was tantamount to “disenfranchising them of their citizenship”, given the promise of partition in July.

The report suggests that the “especially egregious” crimes committed by government forces justify referral to the international criminal court. It argues that “the international community cannot afford to remain silent in the face of such deliberate attacks by the government of Sudan against its own people”.

Deploring the “gross contempt” and “violent and unlawful acts” of government forces towards Unmis – including execution of a staff member, assaults, arbitrary arrests and detentions, and ill treatment “amounting to torture” – the report says: “Condemnation is insufficient… The international community must hold the government of Sudan accountable for its conduct and insist that it arrest and bring to justice those responsible.”….

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