Omar al-Bashir
Parade Magazine 2006, The World’s 10 Worst Dictators
1) Omar al-Bashir, Sudan. Age 62. In power since 1989. Last year’s rank: 1
Since February 2003, Bashir’s campaign of ethnic and religious persecution has killed at least 180,000 civilians in Darfur in western Sudan and driven 2 million people from their homes. The good news is that Bashir’s army and the Janjaweed militia that he supports have all but stopped burning down villages in Darfur. The bad news is why they’ve stopped: There are few villages left to burn. The attacks now are aimed at refugee camps. While the media have called these actions “a humanitarian tragedy,” Bashir himself has escaped major condemnation. In 2005, Bashir signed a peace agreement with the largest rebel group in non-Islamic southern Sudan and allowed its leader, John Garang, to become the nation’s vice president. But Garang died in July in a helicopter crash, and Bashir’s troops still occupy the south.
Read more about Omar al-Bashir
Even the most loathsome tyrants are occasionally admired for their charm, their guile or perhaps their intellect. The same cannot be said for Sudan’s Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir who heads one of Africa’s biggest and potentially richest nations. Part blowhard, part thug, al-Bashir is a graduate of the ‘Idi Amin School of Dictators’.
When General al-Bashir seized power in a sudden military coup on 30 June 1989 there were nagging doubts about his ability to take charge of the mammoth war-torn nation. A youthful 42 at the time, he had been one of the key figures in the Sudanese military assault on black southerners.
Sudan is a country divided between mostly Muslim Arabs in the north and Christian or animist black Africans in the south. The southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) launched its drive for secular democracy and self-determination in 1983. Since then, the Government (even before al-Bashir became leader) has conducted an all-out war against southern dissidents. Amnesty International estimates ~ million people have died in the carnage while 4.5 million have become internal exiles and another 4.5 million have fled the country.
AI-Bashir was an eager, early player in this mayhem. He was born into a peasant family in the small village of Hosh Bannaga, 150 kilometres north of the capital Khartoum. As a young man he later joined the army and quickly vaulted to the top of the command structure. He studied at military college in Cairo where he also became a crack paratrooper, later serving with the Egyptian army in the 1973 war against Israel. Back in Sudan, al-Bashir led a series of successful assaults on the SPLA in the early 19805 and soon was appointed General - scant 20 years after leaving military college.
Al-Bashir toppled Sadeq al-Mahdi’s democratically elected government in 1989 -’to save the country from rotten political parties’ as he said later. With the backing of Hassan al-Turabi, the fundamentalist leader of the National Islamic Front (NIF), the General immediately took steps to ‘islamicize’ the state. Al-Bashir dissolved parliament, banned all political parties and shut down the press. He also stepped up scorched-earth campaign in the south while courting his fundamentalist supporters. All opponents were dismissed as ‘agents imperialism and Zionism’.
Like his fellow Middle-Eastern demogogues, al Bashir loves nothing better than a good anti-Semitic rant. He . once claimed that ‘Jews control all decision-making centres in the US. The Secretary of State, the Defence Secretary, the National Security Advisor and the CIA are all [controlled by] Jews’. In March 1991 al-Bashir reinstated strict Islamic . religious law (sharia), pleasing al-Turabi who was appointed speaker of the country’s jerry-rigged parliament.
But not for long. Jealous of the influential cleric’s growing power in the NIF, al-Bashir declared a state of emergency in December 1999 and ousted al-Turabi from the party.
He followed this with showcase elections a year later which he won easily. Not that difficult a feat given that all major opposition parties were in hiding and SPLA-controlled areas in the south didn’t take part at all.
Meanwhile, both international outrage and the death toll in the civil war continues to mount. The General’s regime has been buoyed by infusions of cash from the petroleum industry which has refused to bow to international pressure and continues to pump oil along a 2,200 kilometre pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Al-Bashir shrugs off UN sanctions and the loss of World Bank aid, secure in his new-found oil wealth. Sudan, he crows, has entered ‘a new stage. We have learned to rely on ourselves.’
Not quite. There would be no oil money to grease the war machine without the co-operation of a consortium of foreign oil companies led, shamefully, by Canada’s Talisman Energy. Arms imports have skyrocketed with the new oil money - as has Government bombing of southern civilians. President al Bashir has openly declared his intention of using petrodollars to win the war. One press report noted that ‘troops backed by tanks, helicopter gunships and aerial bombardments are torturing, slaughtering and burning men, women and children in a drive to evict all non-Arabs from oil-producing areas.’ To add to Sudan’s misery, food shortages, rooted in war and exacerbated by drought, are widespread and a deadly, biblical-style famine now threatens millions.
But never mind. Omar al-Bashir seems unperturbed. While he was bombing his fellow Sudanese citizens in the south he decided to honour his own success. On the tenth anniversary of the coup that brought him to power he decorated himself with a national medal.
A Boomtown Ignores Reek of War
A Boomtown Ignores Reek of War
By Craig Timberg
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Khartoum, Sudan - If you’re sipping a cappuccino at a coffeehouse in the glistening new Afra Mall here in Sudan’s bustling capital, the helicopter gunships and Janjaweed attacks and sprawling, squalid camps for Darfur’s millions of displaced people seem much farther than a two-hour airplane flight away. Late-model Toyotas and Hyundais buzz outside on the (mostly) paved streets. The construction business is so blazingly hot that shops are moving into the first floors of buildings as work continues on the as-yet-unbuilt upper stories.
The Afra Mall features a bowling alley, a movie theater, a gym, jewelry stores and a boutique specializing in Italian shirts. You can buy Ping-Pong paddles, MP3 players and an electric shaver that oozes skin lotion. Khartoum feels on the move — not exactly how one would imagine the home of a government embarked on a bombing campaign against civilians unlucky enough to live in a neglected, restive region.
The reasons for this capital’s surging prosperity are simple: oil and peace. The oil began to flow in the late 1990s, and by now the wealth is spilling out across Khartoum. And the peace — not in Darfur yet, but in the longer and more consuming civil war in the south — came last year in a deal that freed up Sudan’s national energy for better things. Investment from China, Turkey and the Arab world is flowing in. Sudanese expats are returning, often with new skills and sensibilities. Gross domestic product has shot up, more than doubling from 2000 to 2005.
What might Khartoum be like if an honorable peace ever came to Darfur?
Khartoum’s leaders already dream of turning their city of several million people into the next Dubai. But the reek of Darfur — a place synonymous with allegations of genocide and war crimes — infuses Sudan’s international image. How can any government consider warming relations with Khartoum when demonstrators are marching on capitals worldwide to protest what’s happening there?
The international tension over Darfur also contributes to Sudan’s police-state mentality, the other critical barrier to Khartoum’s emergence as a business crossroads. Governments under pressure — and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has repeatedly vowed to wage war against a U.N. peacekeeping force if it attempts to deploy to Darfur — make for paranoid governments. Who would want to spend a holiday at Khartoum’s Hilton knowing that their phone calls and e-mails are monitored by the secret police? By the time I left Sudan recently after three weeks of reporting, I had absorbed enough of the national anxiety over surveillance to largely stop using my phones and the Internet. And no question, it really darkens the mood of a place.
One man working (rather profitably) toward a more inviting Khartoum is Osama Daoud Latif, a second-generation Sudanese businessman with bushy eyebrows, a mild voice and impeccable English honed during years of living in Britain. He doesn’t wear the long white robes and knit cap common to Sudanese men, but instead sports an orange-and-white plaid shirt that could have been made by Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger.
Latif is the owner of the Ozone cafe, a trendy new shop here, which he built last year on a weed-choked traffic circle near his home. His company also owns a giant flour mill, a dairy, a car importer and Sudan’s Coca-Cola distributorship, which explains why standing outside of Ozone, tall as a tree, is a replica of a familiar brown-and-red bottle.
At the new international baccalaureate school built by Latif’s company, the children don’t chant Koranic verses. Instead, they sing that homage to Western capitalism, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.” (Even the Pepsi distributor sends his son there, Latif says, with a smile verging on smugness.)
His dreams are still more grand. Along with the Khartoum state government, Latif’s company is attempting to build what amounts to a new city — complete with its own water system, electric generation and zoning rules — on 160 acres where the Blue and White Nile Rivers merge to begin their journey north to Egypt. Called Almogran (Arabic for “where the rivers meet”), the $4 billion project is designed to include luxury hotels, corporate headquarters, office towers, entertainment, parks and a massive residential section with houses overlooking the wide and beautiful White Nile.
“You cannot create Dubai,” Latif says. “You can create a new Khartoum.”
The commercial sections of the project are selling, Latif says, but the main barriers to realizing his vision — not just for Almogran but also for Khartoum — are the war in Darfur and Sudan’s tight government restrictions on speech, politics and personal behavior.
Latif maintains that Sudan’s Big Brotherish tendencies have eased somewhat, but in Khartoum I found mostly fear, both of the secret police and of extremist Muslim groups. During my time in Sudan, an allegedly blasphemous newspaper editor was beheaded, several other newspapers were closed and a Canadian television crew was roughed up, many here believed, by the secret police.
The situation in Darfur seems, if anything, more intractable. Both the government and the rebels have moved into a more intense phase of fighting. A peace deal worked out in May is dead. As Khartoum springs to life, Darfur descends even deeper into hell.
In Khartoum, it’s safe to walk outside at midnight; in Darfur, girls who leave camps in search of firewood in the middle of the day are raped. In Khartoum, the wide streets boast new traffic lights and concrete overpasses; in Darfur, there is one major road through an area the size of Texas. In Khartoum, the city is abuzz with money and deals; in Darfur, people are so poor that only international aid groups are keeping millions from starvation. In Khartoum, there is hope; in Darfur, despair.
Sudanese in Khartoum often say that the death and destruction in Darfur is not so unusual. Angola, Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe (to name just a few) have endured massive human tragedies fueled by conflict over the past couple of decades. Measured against them, perhaps Darfur is not so shocking. But measured against Khartoum, it surely is. What Latif has realized, and the leaders of Sudan’s government apparently have not, is that however different Khartoum and Darfur may be, their fates are intertwined.
“There is no future,” Latif says, “without settlement in Darfur.”
Sudan leader: No U.N. troops for Darfur
Sudan leader: No U.N. troops for Darfur
By Audra Ang, Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 3, 2006
Beijing - Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said Friday that his government will not relent on its rejection of U.N. peacekeeping troops for Darfur.
Al-Bashir, in Beijing for a landmark summit between Chinese and African leaders, said allowing U.N. troops into Darfur would lead to a greater number of deaths, likening it to the peacekeeping situation in
Iraq.
“We refuse to accept the entry of U.N. peacekeepers into Sudan because the impact of our refusal is better than the impact of our acceptance,” al-Bashir said, speaking in Arabic at a news conference. “We dare not think of what the consequences would be of them being there.”
Hu Jintao, who urged Sudan to step up its diplomacy on Darfur.
Members of Darfur’s ethnic African tribes took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in 2003, accusing it of decades of neglect and discrimination.
Al-Bashir’s government has been accused of unleashing brutal militiamen known as janjaweed, who are widely alleged to have destroyed hundreds of villages, killing the inhabitants, raping women and stealing livestock.
At least 200,000 people have died and more than 2.5 million people have been displaced.
The U.N. has authorized 20,000 troops to replace an under-equipped force of 7,000 African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, but al-Bashir’s government has rejected the U.N. force, saying they would be “neocolonialists.” Last month, it expelled the U.N.’s Sudan envoy.
“We were using traditional methods and measures to resolve the conflict,” al-Bashir said. “The cause of the crisis is the interference from external powers … mainly the United States.”
President Bush has called the atrocities in Sudan “genocide” and warned the government last week that it must move soon to resolve the Darfur conflict.
“Sudan must understand that we’re … earnest and serious about their necessity to step up and work with the international community,” the president said after meeting with Andrew Natsios, the United States’ special envoy to Sudan.
Violence has been escalating recently in the region. The U.N. said large-scale militia attacks last week on civilian settlements caused scores of deaths — including children younger than 12 — and forced thousands to flee.
In the run-up to the China-Africa summit, activists are hoping that Beijing will use its growing economic clout with Africa to improve human rights. New York-based Human Rights Watch said China was supporting African governments responsible for some of the continent’s worst human rights violations and particularly cited Sudan and Zimbabwe.
“China insists that it will not ‘interfere’ in other countries’ domestic affairs, but it also claims to be a great friend of the African people and a responsible major power,” Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch said in a statement. “But that doesn’t square with staying silent while mass killings go on in Darfur.”
UN official says Sudan’s government terrorizing civilians
UN official says Sudan’s government terrorizing civilians
November 18, 2006
Khartoum, Sudan (AP) — The Sudanese army and government-backed militias are committing acts of “inexplicable terror” against civilians, including children, in Darfur, the U.N.’s top humanitarian official said.
The accusations by Jan Egeland, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, came as Sudanese officials indicated they might backtrack from a deal for a mixed U.N. and African peacekeeping force.
Egeland said spiraling violence in the conflict-wracked region of western Sudan is reaching its worst level since fighting erupted more than three years ago.
“The government and its militias are conducting inexplicable terror against civilians,” he told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday just after returning from his final trip to the area before his term ends in December.
“The government is arming Arab militias more than ever before … the angst is that we may be reverting to the same level of violence” as in 2003 when the war in Darfur erupted, he said.
More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced since rebels from ethnic African tribes rose up against the Arab-led central government in the vast arid area of western Sudan. Khartoum is accused of using the janjaweed militias of Arab nomads to retaliate but the government denies backing or arming the janjaweed.
While in Darfur, Egeland visited a government hospital in Geneina where survivors were being treated after an attack last week by government forces and janjaweed that killed 30 people.
“I saw a 2-year-old girl who was shot in the neck at point blank by a janjaweed,” Egeland said. “This is an act of terror.”
The baby’s mother and several eyewitnesses confirmed the attack was jointly conducted by the army and militias, he said.
“Those who continue to attack defenseless civilians will be judged,” Egeland told reporters at a separate news conference. “There will be a time of reckoning.”
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced on Thursday night a multilateral agreement — reached in a gathering of African, Arab, European and U.N. leaders in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa — which could provide for a mixed U.N. and African Union peacekeeping mission for Darfur.
But Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol played down the scope of the agreement. Khartoum has not committed to a “mixed force,” he said. “What was agreed upon is a mixed operation,” he said.
“The role of the United Nations will be to provide support units and technical assistance to the African mission,” Akol told reporters. “There is no way the main fighting force would be a mixed one.”
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has firmly opposed any deployment of U.N. troops in Darfur to replace the 7,000 ill-equipped and poorly funded AU peacekeepers who have been unable to stop the bloodshed.
But other officials have said a combined force would not pose a problem, providing that its leadership and the bulk of its troops were African — a sign that Sudan’s political leadership may be sending mixed messages in order to avoid the appearance of a policy shift in the face of Western pressure.
Still Egeland said he was confident all parties involved would soon reach a final agreement for a beefed-up force.
“I have no reason to disbelieve the sincerity of the Sudanese negotiators in Addis,” he told reporters, adding that he hoped time would not be wasted “wrangling on words.”
Another senior U.N. official in Sudan, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said he feared the new deal could just be a smokescreen for Khartoum to buy time as its militias rampage through Darfur.
U.N. officials and humanitarian workers have said that violence in Darfur has only increased since the government and the main Darfur rebel group signed a peace agreement in May.
“Civilians are being killed as we speak,” Egeland said, warning that the crisis “still has the potential of becoming infinitely worse.”
He said a similar raid in Jebel Moon last month showed that the children were not accidental casualties.
“It is not so-called collateral damage,” Egeland said. “It is the intentional killing of children.”
Separately, the AU said in a statement Saturday it received reports the Sudanese air force twice bombed the Birmaza rebel zone in North Darfur this week. The attacks, conducted jointly with armed militia groups, took a “heavy toll on the civilian population,” the AU said.
The Sudanese government says uniformed fighters belong to regular forces and don’t commit war crimes, while those clad in traditional garb are bandits it does not control. A government investigation said the Jebel Moon killing was committed by “renegade Arab bandits.”
Egeland said aid workers’ ability to carry out their humanitarian mission was “crumbling” because of the violence and underscored the urgent need to beef up the peacekeeping force.
