SLM Al-Nur to U.S. Booth: ’Negotiations by Khartoum are illusory’
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ATTN: U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan; Ambassador Donald Booth
by Abdul Wahid al-Nur
Sir,
Your calumnious editorial scapegoating me as the primary obstacle to
peace in Darfur is so glaringly devoid of truth, morality or fairness
that it becomes a caricature of itself, presenting so false a
narrative. It does injury to the eye and history to read your slander
but it is most of all blood libel to 600,000 dead Darfuris, the vast
bulk of them civilians, killed in a deliberate genocide, under a state
policy of ethnic cleansing, scorched earth, criminal neglect, death
and torture endured by my people.
I therefore must personally condemn and repudiate your tragi-farcical
communique in the harshest possible terms not only for its mendacity
but ultimately for what verges on criminal incitement in encouraging
the Sudanese regime to perpetrate more atrocities. That you issued
your missive when incontrovertible evidence has emerged of Sudanese
regime use of chemical weapons in Darfur, and you are silent on this
point, eviscerates the honest broker persona you portrayed yourself as
and leaves you ethically bereft.
Eight years ago, then presidential hopeful Barak Obama at least paid
lip service to ending Darfur’s suffering and expressed what seemed at
the time, heartfelt empathy, just as George Bush Jr., had earlier
first correctly decried the slaughter of my people as genocide but in
this the new era of President-elect Trump, it seems the concept of
“post-truth” also applies to the US State Department and you too
Ambassador Booth in your cynical moral flexibility towards Sudan and
Darfur in particular.
Never would I have imagined to see a senior US Diplomat publicly
playing apologist for a hardline Islamist dictatorship linked to
multiple terror groups, led by the sole sitting president on earth,
Omar al Bashir, indicted by the International Criminal Court for
Crimes Against Humanity. It is a sinister page turning, Washington
softly providing Khartoum carte blanche in an active genocide. You
have done nothing less than this, de facto exculpated and legitimized
ongoing state terrorism by Sudan against it’s own population. Will you
thus admit to the true purpose of your visible efforts to rehabilitate
the regime, to which the fate of the Darfuri people is readily
sacrificed, where we are subordinate and judged expendable to your
aims?
Your bid to enlist Khartoum as an ally against Salafist extremism,
while ignoring its own brutal authoritarianism, criminal conduct,
enduring linkages and sponsorship of Islamist extremism is as
myopically doomed to failure as US humanitarian policy on Darfur is
self-evidently, a hollow and un-kept promise, now only more flagrant a
betrayal of the democratic principles you a vow to defend, you’ve
traded for the expedient Realpolitik you’re peddling. You’ve not only
conflated the victim with the victimizer, you have placed us in
reverse categories, where those under the bombs are cast as villains
and those that drop them are reasonable. The Dystopia is not of our
making, it is yours.
You present me as the principal obstacle to peace, as though I were
inexplicably and irrationally stubborn in rejecting what are
ostensibly, sincere, government peace overtures. You paint me further
as someone removed from the struggle of his people, as an aloof
figure, suggesting subtly that I have somehow also lost the pulse of
my people, as if you knew them better and can more readily speak to
their aspirations, heartbreak or indignation than I or the Sudan
Liberation Movement can? Shall we walk together in one of the
Displaced People’s camps or clamber to a cliff top position to visit
SLM fighters or speak to those sheltering from the bombs in the caves?
I will show you then if my people still recognize me but I doubt they
will have kind words for you.
I live and breathe only to deliver my people from the hell they daily
endure to grant them a brighter, more just future where they may live
in peace and security. To do so there is no aspect of my existence
that isn’t consecrated to this cause. I was born on the soil of
Darfur. I bear wounds borne in battle for defending Darfur. My life
belongs to Darfur, if needs be, my death too. How dare you attempt to
judge me or my people when you do not inhabit our skin or our
condition? Yours is the worst possible, faux paternalism and we
discard it as a matter of principle for it has the whiff of
neo-colonialism. We do not fight because we relish it. We are weary of
war and fight only because we are left with no equitable or palatable
alternatives. We fight for sheer survival to save ourselves from
extermination. We fight alone, largely unheard, unseen, a forgotten,
disposable people.
Please elucidate Ambassador Booth how it is possible to enter into a
peace dialogue or negotiations in good faith when the relentless
brutalization of my people is unceasing? Disingenuously, you admit at
the end of your bizarre missive, that I may have cause to distrust the
regime for over a decade of genocidal violence against my people.
Better to have presented this key truth at the outset of any discourse
concerning myself or the SLM’s refusal to engage in the travesty of a
peace dialogue with Khartoum, which has never shown itself to be
sincere. A priori, my actions and those of the SLM are belligerent,
precisely because the regime has to date never abandoned the violent
subjugation to my people. We find it distinctly difficult to speak
when we are routinely, shot, shelled, bombarded, gassed, tortured or
raped.
Even as I write you now, government troops, their partner militias and
death squads do their worst in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile
State. Negotiations by Khartoum are illusory, they serve only to grant
the regime greater leverage in seemingly appearing amenable to
dialogue, while the guns continue to speak for the regime, its true
language. So long as this remains practice, the SLM will not
participate and will continue to boycott any such overtures by
Khartoum.
We will happily confine our fighters to their base camps and observe a
cessation of hostilities, if the regime withdraws its soldiers and
paramilitaries from civilian population centers, if it ceases the
practice of extra-judicial summary executions, the use of torture,
rape en mass and pledges to never make use of chemical weapons again
and submits it’s chemical weapons stockpiles to international
inspection for disposal.
The notion that the SLM impedes joint AU-UN so called peacekeeping
force access to investigate government atrocities is as ludicrous a
premise as stating that the SLM blocks access to humanitarian
supplies, when the SLM has begged the international community to end
the crippling embargo on essential supplies, which the regime uses as
a tool of war to better enable disease and hunger.
Just as the SLM will continue to call for free and open access to the
media and human rights investigators, it will also demand a new
international force to more ably carry out its duty in Darfur, where
it is long overdue to accept that the combined peacekeeping mission in
Darfur is an abject failure. The people of Darfur would be thrilled if
the blue helmets would actually protect them, but when the mission is
starved of the necessary manpower, resources, lacking in a sorely
needed peace enforcement mandate, decisive leadership and repeatedly
shown itself willing to be Khartoum’s pawn, our hopes are not high.
What truly beggars belief is that you contradict your own experience.
Not long ago you met with civil leaders in three IDPs camps, all
relaying their omnipresent fears of being attacked, disappeared,
tortured or killed by government backed militias, paramilitaries,
soldiers or police. You guaranteed their safety for openly meeting
with you. All of them were later arrested and their fates as yet
remain unknown and are unlikely to have been kind. How has this
slipped your memory? We fight for a secular, free and pluralist,
democratic Sudan, where sectarian violence and zealotry of every
variety, in particular religious, racial or tribal chauvinism and
ideological extremism of every stripe will no longer be state policy.
We wish for all Sudanese to live in peaceful coexistence, tolerance
and equanimity and we do draw partial inspiration from your Civil
Rights Movement, your rule of law, democratic process and the
unmatched diversity of your civil society.
Ambassador Booth, the people of Darfur will have Abdul Wahid at the
negotiating table, when it is just and reasonable for me to occupy
such a seat, with the confidence that the human rights, civil rights
and dignity of my people and their right to live will not be casually
violated as I do so. Self-defence is our God given right as is freedom
from wilful stupidity. We will not sacrifice ourselves needlessly when
we already die in droves. When the Sudanese regime has shown itself
able only to mete out death and destruction, as it duplicitously spoke
of peace, your entirely fictive rendition of the reality of Sudan and
Darfur will have no bearing on the actions of the SLM. As it is your
manipulative, counter-intuitive and cynical reproach, casts serious
doubts about your commitment to the well being of the people of Darfur
and your truer intentions. As we refuse to become your unwitting
pawns, our understanding of our reality will remain lucid, unlike your
distorted and utterly false narrative. Americans do not seem to hold
answers for Darfur any longer, not that they ever did.
Sincerely;
*Abdul Wahid Al-Nur, is the Chairman of Sudan Liberation Movement. He
is reachable at: [email protected]
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Kind regards,
The Sudan Tribune editorial team.
29 November 02:56, by Akol Liai Mager
Ustaz Abdul Wahid Mohamed Nur, thank you so much for all the great
work you are doing to liberate your people from the genocidal and
racist regime of NIF led by Omar al-Bashir. It’s clear like the Sun
that Obama’s led US Administration is standing shoulder to shoulder
not with the victims terror acts, but with the Perpetrators of terror
and genocide.
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