---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Ashworth <[email protected]> Date: Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 6:28 PM Subject: [sudan-john-ashworth] Fw: Mr. Smile and the militias To: Group <[email protected]>
Mr. Smile and the militias Africa Confidential Vol 52 No 7 - 1 April 2011, p 8 After years of regime denials, Presidential Advisor Mustafa Osman Ismail effectively admitted this week that the National Congress Party (NCP) arms militias in Southern Sudan. ‘We cannot tolerate that the South started to host Darfur rebels,’ he told an on- the-record seminar at London’s Chatham House on 28 March. ‘If you continue to support the Darfur rebels from the South, you should expect the same,’ he responded to a barrage of questions from Southerners from three parties and including two diplomats. ‘We will not support a single rebel in the South unless the South support rebels in the North.’ The problem with this claim is that the NCP has armed anti-Sudan People’s Liberation Movement fighters since at least 1991, when Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon and Lam Akol Ajawin broke with the SPLM and the NCP was still the National Islamic Front. Darfuris launched an organised response to government attacks only in 2001. It looked like typical NCP forward planning, anticipating international criticism following the SPLM’s claims this month that it has documents proving NCP destabilisation attempts. The NCP says the papers are forged. SPLM Secretary General Pa’gan Amum Okiech has urged the United Nations to examine them. An American source says they appear genuine. At Chatham House, Mustafa never categorically denied helping Southern rebels. Until then, Mustafa Osman had amply demonstrated why Sudanese call him ‘Mister Smile’. His solemn retinue of ten diplomats, including Ambassador Abdullah el Azrag, laughed on cue as he chuckled his way through his speech. ‘Last time I came here, Zine el Abidine was in Tunis, Mubarak was in Egypt and we don’t know what’s going to happen in the coming few days!’ Introduced as Sudan’s ‘longest serving Foreign Minister’ (1998- 2005) and a man of great ‘strategic clarity’, he ably prepared the ground for the next NCP rebranding. In four years there would be ‘a change of government after a general election under international supervision’. Here, a ripple ran through the assembled Embassy staff but it was only the dramatically mustachioed figure of Ibrahim el Nur arriving. He is a Metropolitan Police advisor and a founder of the Sudan International Defence Group, which tried, with the NCP’s Ibrahim Ghandour, to block the International Criminal Court from trying President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir (AC Vol 51 No 15). In London in January, Ibrahim had been ‘Mr. Reasonable’. Mr. Smile followed suit: ‘The Congress Party is not going to continue for ever.’ The regime hopes to charm the world and facilitate its survival. Mustafa encouraged foreign investment, development aid and debt relief. No one mentioned that the NCP is much criticised at home for its lack of interest in health, education or agriculture and its huge spending on war, Islamist activities and villas in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia. Before that, he focussed on Abyei, predicting resolution within a month, with help from Britain, China, Russia and South African ex-President Thabo Mbeki. He insisted that the border had been settled by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (which is not what fellow Presidential Advisor General Salah Abdullah Mohamed ‘Gosh’ says) and the only hold-up was the SPLM refusing to see that the Missiriya had a right to vote in the referendum. The NCP raised this issue only after the PCA ruling, which it had accepted. With a dentist’s precision, Mustafa made sure he had every questioner’s correct name. These are skills that served him well when he was deputy to Hassan Abdullah el Turabi in the Popular Arab Islamic Conference in the early 1990s. The PAIC brought together international Islamist groups, including that of Usama bin Laden, then resident in Khartoum, and was later seen as the cradle of Al Qaida (AC Vol 41 No 13). END ______________________ John Ashworth Sudan Advisor Sudan Ecumenical Forum [email protected] +254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile) +249 919 695 362 (Sudan mobile) +27 82 853 3556 (South Africa mobile) +44 750 304 1790 (UK/international) +88 216 4334 0735 (Thuraya satphone) PO Box 52002 - 00200, Nairobi, Kenya This is a personal e-mail address and the contents do not necessarily reflect the views of any organisation -- The content of this message does not necessarily reflect John Ashworth's views. 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