Sudan’s war criminal: Lessons on how to get away with murder

The 4th of March is considered a landmark date for the victims of Darfur Genocide in Sudan. It marks the beginning of the long awaited hope for justice. The light of hope was first sparked by the United Nations Security Council resolution 1593 of 2005, which decided to refer the case of the war crimes in Darfur to be investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC). On 4th March 2009 the ICC issued the first arrest warrant against a sitting president. The warrant was for the arrest of Omer al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, accused of committing war crimes that amount to genocide against the people of Darfur. As a result, the victims of al-Bashir’s crimes in Darfur and other regions in Sudan felt hopeful. They thought, for a while at least, that they were not standing alone facing one of the world's most murderous regimes in our modern times.

Unfortunately, eight years later the hopes and dreams of the people of Darfur are being shattered. More sadly, that the same international institutions which defended the rights of Darfurians before have allowed the killers to get away with their murders and war crimes. In 2010 the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC added a new list of charges against al-Bashir and members of his government. One of those charges condemns Omer al-Bashir as the worst war criminal of the 21st century and accuses him of committing crimes against humanity.

Al-Bashir became the president of the unfortunate country of Sudan in 1989, following a military coup backed by the Sudanese version of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamic militarized regime imposed Sharia laws on the whole country, and waged Jihadi wars on the African, non-Muslim and non-Arab groups in Sudan. The war in Darfur was the last in a chain of non-stop military attacks against the regions inhabited by the African ethnicities of Sudan. The period from 1990 to 1995 witnessed a Jihadi campaign in South Sudan and Nuba Mountains in the middle-western part of Sudan. More than 5 million South Sudanese were forced to flee their villages and became internally and externally displaced. Another half-a-million Nuba people were driven out of their homes to live in closed camps.

According to human rights organizations and the United Nations, more than one million people were killed in South Sudan in the early 1990s. Another one hundred thousands were killed in Nuba Mountains during the Jihad campaigns. By the early 2000s the international community started to put pressure on the Sudanese regime and forced the government to sit down for peace talks. Five years later in 2005, the Sudanese government was persuaded by the America and European countries to sign the Comprehensive Peace Agreement with the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement, which was fighting against the Sudanese regime in Southern Sudan and Nuba Mountains.

The Sudanese regime was not less active on the regional and international level. It had been playing a leading role in supporting terrorist and radical Islamic movements since seizing power in 1989. The most wanted men in the world, from Bin Laden to the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, all found refuge in Sudan in the early 1990s. This led the United States to label the Khartoum regime as one of the terrorist supporting states. In 1997 the Clinton administration officially placed Sudan on the list of the terrorism supporting states, and imposed heavy economic and military sanctions on Sudan.

After the war in Darfur started in 2003, the Bush administration started looking at ways to impose more sanctions on Sudan to limit the regime’s ability to commit more crimes in the region. New economic sanctions were imposed on Sudan in 2007 in addition to the previous ones.

The peace agreement with the Southern Sudanese in 2005 was part of the deal between the regime and the USA with other European countries, where the regime agreed to sign for peace under the US promises to lift the sanctions. But the continued atrocities in Darfur prevented the implementation of this deal, or at least that is what appeared to the observers. More likely, the American administration wanted to delay the lifting of the sanctions to make sure that the Sudanese regime implemented the peace agreement, including a smooth referendum and potential separation of South Sudan.

The Sudanese regime went with the flow and implemented the referendum and facilitated the separation of South Sudan. On 9 July 2011 the South Sudanese celebrated their independence, but on the other side a new war erupted in Nuba Mountains, the twin region of South Sudan which was not given the same right to self-determination in the 2005 peace agreement.

In Darfur the war has never stopped, after the peace agreement in 2005 or after the ICC arrest warrant was issued. During the last 15 years the atrocities in Darfur have continued and nothing has been able to relieve the pain of the people there. Since 2011, the people of Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile regions have joined this endless misery. 1.2 million people are affected by the war, while another half-a-million live in a man-made famine, as the Sudanese regime denies them humanitarian relief. On the other hand, the international community remains silent and almost helpless in the face of the growing atrocities committed by Omer al-Bashir and his regime. A third of the country's population live under conditions of continuous insecurity because of their own state.

After the separation of the South, the Sudanese regime announced the rest of Sudan to be a pure Islamic and Arabized state. As a result the Arab countries, especially in the Gulf region, became more interested in Sudan. The 30-year-old dictatorship of al-Bashir survived the Arab Spring, mainly because the country was at war with its people for decades. Therefore Sudan did not needed the Arab Spring to turn the country into a failed state or to divide its peoples and start a civil war, simply because it had all of that going on already. Surprisingly, Sudan emerged as stable country in comparison with the mess in the region, in Libya, Yemen or Syria. The 30 years’ experience of managing state-driven wars, and committing war crimes and genocide made the Sudanese regime an expert and the hero of these tragic times. The emergence of ISIS and the war with Iranian supporters in Yemen and Syria, also made Sudan an important intelligence partner for the Gulf countries and the west. This new partnership is built on the fact that the Sudanese regime was the closest friend of Iran in the region for 25 years.

The well-trained killers of the Sudanese army were taken to fight in Yemen, as a part of an Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia and UAE against the Huothi. This new coalition bought the Sudanese regime a new life, as the Gulf money started pouring into the empty government accounts. But the best deal the war criminals of Sudan made was to push the Gulf countries to urge the United States to lift the sanctions on the regime.

On the other hand, the Sudanese regime rallied African countries to renounce the ICC demands to arrest Bashir. They succeeded in marketing the idea that the ICC is targeting African leaders, and accused it of discrimination against Africans. Omer Al-Bashir’s famous visit to South Africa was the most remarkable incident that proved the impotence of the ICC arrest warrant.  When President Zuma conspired with the Sudanese security and refused to arrest Bashir and allowed the man to leave the country, the South African government broke the dreams of finding justice for thousands of al-Bashir’s victims.

The Sudanese war criminal made a major victory on December 2016 when the Obama administration decided to conditionally lift the sanctions against the Sudanese regime. This decision was justified mainly by the regime’s cooperation in the war on terrorism. The Trump administration was given the chance to reverse the decision if Sudan did not stop the war on its people. But what the Obama administration’s decision did was far more than just sanction lifting; it is actually a permit for the Sudanese war criminals to remain in power. It’s evident that they are able to play the international system and get away with their crimes and mass murders and genocide without punishment.

The people of Sudan and especially in Darfur are losing their hope in the international system of justice. This lost hopes and shattered dreams will eventually create more desperation, which means more wars and violence in Sudan. If this neglect of the need for justice for the people of Sudan continues, the international community will be responsible of setting free one of the most murderous criminals of our time.

* Osman Naway is Sudanese American human rights activist and blogger. Twitter: @OsmanNawayPost.

* THE VIEWS OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORIAL TEAM

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