The general in his labyrinth or should I say denial?
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By Azaz Elshami*
I am writing this article in response to the interview of the Sudanese
President with Kevin Sieff of the Washington Post published on
December 23, 2014
First of all, I should congratulate Kevin Sieff not only for having
the opportunity to meet with our bloodthirsty President , but also for
escaping the fate hovering over most journalists in Sudan i.e.
detention and intimidation. I hope he makes it safe after all; you
cannot trust the Sudanese government, that I know for certain.
It was one of those days when you run a quick search for Sudan in
English news. And there in the middle of photos of camps’ refugees
suffering malnutrition, there was the President’s interview. The
interview had no titled other than the self-explanatory one that says
is it an interview. It is online edition welcomes the reader with a
photo of the Sudanese President, Omer Al-Bashir, smiling sheepishly
with wandering eyes that are not directed at the camera. I went back
to photo after reading the interview and I reckon that his evasive
look suits the fallacy he had told in the interview.
What is intriguing about this interview is that the President bluntly
told sated lies and artlessly twisted facts. He was deeply indulged in
self-victimization and blamed all his victims for their own misery. It
was the Southerners Sudanese who did not fulfil their end of the CPA
agreement, the Darfurian refugees who like the easy life in camps and
do not want return to their intact homes, Rapid Support Forces
existence is a military necessity and a product of asymmetric conflict
with fluid rebels, and finally Sep 2013 demonstrators were terrorists
and the government was forced to react.
The President’s words were translated by a translator, to whom we are
thankful for sugarcoating any jingoistic sentiments the president
would had surely blared in answering questions about conflicts and the
Sudan-South Sudan relations. I must admit that I admired how much the
President tried not to use his usual slur he generously offers in
Sudanese media. But I wished if he had shared his genius conclusion he
recently claimed that Sudan Call is orchestrated by the CIA and
Mossad, who are instigating Sudanese political oppositions’ dissention
form the government-sponsored national dialogue. Although the
President assured the interviewer of the oppositions’ soon return to
the government national dialogue, he failed to mentioned that his
security forces detained two significant signatories of Sudan Call,
Chairman of the opposition National Consensus Forces Faruq Abu Issa
Abu Issa and Amin Makki Madani .
So, let’s take a look at the black comedy play our president staged on
Washington Post pages:
Nonsense # 1: UNAMID Is Not Needed, Darfur is Safe Now
My nonsense tally is not in order of the questions the President had
answered but rather based on relevance to current affairs. Therefore,
I will start with the answers he gave in the third question about
demanding the depart of United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur
(UNAMID). Sudan has taken a habit in disrespecting the international
community every time it feels cornered. It was first UNAMID Human
Rights Office in Khartoum, and then expelled two senior U.N. officials
on Dec 24, one day after the Washington Post interview was published.
As for the claims that UNAMID is incapable of providing protection,
Mr. President seems to act as if he is not an integral part of the
conflict that necessitated the presence of UNAMID. Albeit our
criticism of UNAMID performance, we cannot turn a blind eye to the
governance lack of respect of the UNAMID’s mandate or its rule. The
government decision to evict UNAMID is part of its ongoing attitude
towards conflicts. Prolonging them.
Mr. President yet gave a false statement about the peace process in
the region and claimed that the peaceful areas in Darfur are
expanding. The President, who expressed his concerns about the
Internally Displaced People IDPs, did not know that they are not only
hundreds of thousands. As of December 2013, and according to the UN,
there are 2.9 million IDPs in Sudan. Mr. President, please check your
facts.
And Mr. President cannot actually understand that IDPs are not
migrating birds and their transition from IDP camps to their villages
is not a picnic or enjoyable road trip. Those IDPs, whom the President
accused of loving ‘easy life in camps’ and aid dependent, actually
have no place to return to, and their villages are burnt down with no
sign of any public services. Many refugees in Chad, had taken then
step voluntarily to return, as they did in 2012, only to lose once
again what they had hoped for: peace, and they went back to Chad in
influx that the international community still dealing with its
ramifications. Let’s assume that today all IDPs repatriated to their
homes, and for the sake of the argument we will hypothetically assume
that their houses are still standing. How easy it is for war survivals
to return to normal life? what about the trauma? what about the
economic well-being and rebuilding? What guaranties that catalysts for
the past conflicts are now resolved? For one, the governance style has
not change.
The President lightheartedly said “they went back and it was safe and
they farmed their lands.” I wish life was that simple Mr. President.
IDPs returnees, if we were to shake a magical wand and return them to
their homes, won’t find the ability to farm or the sense of security
to do so. And farming takes more than a man and fertile soil.
Nonsense #2: September 2013: We Only Killed 80 People, Not 200
As for September 2013, the President blamed the victims, as usual.
First, he dehumanized the victims and shortened them to numbers, by
referring to them as “number of people who died.” “Who died”? They
were killed. Using "died" suggests that they died of natural causes
not police intentional "shoot to kill" conduct. He was so fixated on
the correcting the number more than answering the way in which those
number were counted as causalities. When finally he decided to answer
the question of their dead circumstance, he claimed that the 80 people
who ’died’, died of their clashes with the police. This what the
president is promoting in his self-victimization campaign: Unarmed
people lost their mind and clashed with heavily armed police. They
attacked the police therefore they deserves to meet their demise for
trying. I am relieved he did not say they were high or stoned to
justify his allegations. The interesting thing is that he pictured the
demonstration as a scene in a si-fi movie. Demonstrators attack police
stations and courts. All courts mind you in Khartoum. But only 80
died? how many courts and police stations do you have in your capital
Mr. President? The President went on claiming that the “people who
died” killed people and destroyed property with no mention of number
of victims as he was very meticulous about the number of demonstrators
“who died.”
Another fascinating analogy the President made is comparing Sudan with
the U.S. The funnier analogy was describing the demonstrators as
terrorists, who are Qaeda ally, which is quite interesting if we
reflect on the reasons that put Sudan on U.S. sanctions list in the
first place.
Nonsense # 3: Sudan-South Sudan Conflict is Patrimonial
Answering a question about the impact of the American sanctions on
Sudan, the president answered another question he heard in his head.
The question specifically asked about the impact of U.S. sanctions on
Sudanese people and Sudan’s economy. The answer had no mentioned of
Sudan people or their economic well-being for the matter.
Al-Bashir claimed that lifting sanctions was contingent to ending war
with the South, which he thinks had been delivered. Nevertheless, the
president got touched by a historical fairy and said that the conflict
actually, which he just claimed ending it with diligence and willing
to compromise, tracks back to the mists of time for which he blamed
the British Colonization. First of all Mr. President, Sudan-South
Sudan conflict might had been inherited from colonization, but all
consecutive governments reproduce the same tactics of exclusions. The
two decades wars during your reign were international and ideological.
The South war and the ramifications of the Comprehensive Peace
Agreement (CPA), and its ramifications in form of the South Sudan
independence in 2011, fulfilled the Sudanese government’s quest for
“purging” the country from all aspects of diversity, in race or
religion. Evidently, you, Mr. President, wanted the secession to
happen. Demanding lifting sanctions in return for what in fact serves
your ideological goals, is dishonest and distortion of truth.
Nonsense # 4: We delivered peace, therefore, we should be rewarded
Answering the same question about the sanction, the president went on
in lamentation about how the U.S. had tricked them into signing many
agreements to end conflicts with the promise of lifting the sanctions.
I am not sure if the president has a PR person or someone sensible to
advise him on how to portray himself. All I know is that argument made
him sound like a toddler mad at his teacher for denying him his perks
for not cleaning his desk. It is your desk. You made it dirty. Take
reasonability. Hello?! Mr. President, you shouldn’t need an incentive
to end conflicts you have started and fueled for years. Period. Get
over yourself. Conflict in Darfur had been, and still is, a pressuring
card for the Sudanese regime. It is money-generating conflict in which
the governments keep reselling to different stakeholders for different
prices. So, Mr. President, please!
Nonsense # 5: When Revenge Is Actually not a Revenge at All
Ironically, the question got answered in the most unexpected way Do we
remember the question about the sanctions’ impact on Sudan’s people
and the country’s economy that the president turned it into tears bond
on unfulfilled promises? Here what I would call the masterpiece:
"And, of course, we need to see very clearly the loss incurred on the
United States by the economic influence of china. It is a loss. That’s
why we say the sanctions hurt us. But they also hurt the United
States."
Amazing! Right? How does the president think that he made the U.S.
tastes it is own poison and inflicted any economic losses on the
American by establishing partnership with the largest foreign holder
of U.S. debt i.e. China, which owns more about $1.2 trillion of U.S.
debt.
There is much more to this interview than what an op-ed could handle.
But I hope the facts are checked and people get to hear the many sides
to the story.
*Azaz Elshami is a Sudanese blogger and activist. She can be reached
at [email protected] or on Twitter @3ozaz
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