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ASSIST News Service (ANS) - PO Box 2126, Garden Grove, CA 92842-2126 USA
E-mail: danjuma1@aol.com, Web Site: www.assistnews.net

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

KHARTOUM'S RESPONSIBILITY FOR MASS EXECUTIONS
Halting Genocide in Darfur, Preserving the North-South Peace Agreement: Both Require Removal of Khartoum's National Islamic Front from Power

By Michael Ireland
Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS (ANS) -- As the UN Security Council and political leadership continue to prove wholly inadequate to the crisis in Darfur, as humanitarian capacity slips further behind rapidly expanding humanitarian need, and as the international community badly fumbles over how to respond to massive genocidal destruction, the Khartoum regime's remorseless engine of human death and suffering continues to function with terrifying efficiency, writes Eric Reeves of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, who is an expert on Sudan.

“Though most of the 2,000 who now die daily are succumbing to disease and the effects of starvation (and most of these invisibly), a recent and extraordinarily revealing report from the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions gives us a much clearer view of Khartoum's direct involvement in violent mass human destruction,” Reeves says.

Reeves says UN Special Rapporteur Asma Jahangir “minces no words” in her final report or in her public comments: “It is beyond doubt that the Government of the Sudan is responsible for extrajudicial and summary executions of large numbers of people over the last several months in the Darfur region, as well as in the Shilook [also Shilluk] Kingdom in Upper Nile State [southern Sudan],'' said Asma Jahangir, the U.N. investigator on executions, in a report based on a 13-day visit to the region in June." (Associated Press, August 6, 2004)

"Jahangir said there was 'overwhelming evidence' that the killing was carried out 'in a coordinated manner by the armed forces of the government and government-backed militias. They appear to be carried out in a systematic manner,'' (Associated Press, August 6, 2004), Reeves said.

Reeves says that Jahangir also takes a larger view of the consequences for Darfur of what a previous UN human rights investigative team called a “reign of terror":

"'The current humanitarian disaster unfolding in Darfur, for which the government is largely responsible, has put millions of civilians at risk, and it is very likely that many will die in the months to come as a result of starvation and disease,' said Jahangir, a Pakistani lawyer." (Associated Press, August 6, 2004)

Reeves says her account of attacks on the African civilian populations of Darfur has a ghastly familiarity, echoing as it does so many other human rights reports on Darfur:

"[Jahangir said] the most often heard report was of villages being surrounded by military vehicles accompanied by Arab militia riding horses. The local population was plundered, looted, tortured, raped and often shot at in a random manner; however, adult men seemed often to be specifically targeted. Before leaving, the Arab militia would burn down the villages. In some cases, helicopters or Antonov airplanes were used to bomb or attack the villages or to provide cover for ground operations, including operations carried out by Arab militia." (Associated Press, August 6, 2004)

Says Reeves: “Though Jahangir suggested that the Khartoum regime ‘appeared oblivious to the dramatic and disastrous proportions and the magnitude,’ we may be sure that in this case appearances are deceiving: Khartoum is fully aware of the proportions of its genocidal assault on the African tribal populations of Darfur, and its actions are clearly fully governed by an intent to destroy these people. The systematic and widespread military actions and military coordination that Jahangir and many others have described are unmistakably the deliberate policies of Khartoum. Intent can be inferred with certainty from the countless actions that make up Khartoum's sustained military strategy in Darfur.”

Moreover, Reeves writes, this inference has been indisputably confirmed in a recent Human Rights Watch report:

"Human Rights Watch said it had obtained confidential documents from the civilian administration in Darfur that implicate high-ranking government officials in a policy of militia support. 'It's absurd to distinguish between the Sudanese government forces and the militias---they are one,' said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Africa Division. 'These documents show that militia activity has not just been condoned, it's been specifically supported by Sudan government officials.'" ("Darfur Documents Confirm Government Policy of Militia Support," July 20, 2004; http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2004/07/20/darfur9095.htm).

KHARTOUM'S REFUSAL OF AFRICAN UNION PEACEKEEPERS

Reeves says: “ The National Islamic Front regime so potently indicted here by UN Special Rapporteur Jahangir and Human Rights Watch nonetheless presently enjoys a 30-day window of opportunity, courtesy of a weak and finally inconsequential UN resolution (see August 6, 2004 analysis of the UN resolution by this writer; available upon request). Just as troublingly, Khartoum is now strenuously resisting the deployment of any African Union (AU) troops that might have a peacekeeping mandate: the regime will only permit forces with a mandate to protect the small contingent of AU cease-fire monitors, a military task that obviously does not require the 2,000 troops the AU recently authorized to respond to the Darfur crisis,”(Reuters, August 7, 2004).

Interior Minister Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein (the particularly brutal member of the NIF regime responsible for "Darfur policy") declared very recently: “’We will not agree to the presence of any foreign forces, whatever their nationality,' Sudanese Interior Minister Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein said in an interview with London's Asharq al-Awsat newspaper published on Friday." (Reuters, August 6, 2004).

Reeves writes: “The insidiously deceptive Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail indicated the basis on which Khartoum would block any truly meaningful African Union force, one able to protect civilians: ‘We have to make a distinction between three categories. The presence of observers, the presence of protection forces for those observers and the presence of peacekeeping forces,' Ismail told reporters in Khartoum when asked whether Sudan would accept African peacekeepers. 'We don't have a problem with either the first or the second categories. As far as the third category is concerned...this is the responsibility of the Sudanese forces.'" (Reuters, August 7, 2004)

Reeves asks: “Why is Khartoum so eager to keep out a meaningful African Union “peacekeeping force? Why in the face of massive insecurity, directly threatening many hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians, as well as humanitarian assistance and access, is Khartoum so insistent that no significant troop presence be permitted?

His answer: “Because the genocide is not complete and Khartoum is determined to complete a task well begun; moreover, the regime is determined to obliterate as much evidence of these crimes as possible. The primary goal is precisely to prevent and eliminate all international presence in Darfur.”

Reeves says no matter that UN Special Rapporteur Jahangir is all too accurate in her global assessment of the crisis deriving from Khartoum's policies: "'The current humanitarian disaster unfolding in Darfur, for which the government is largely responsible, has put millions of civilians at risk, and it is very likely that many will die in the months to come as a result of starvation and disease.'" (Associated Press, August 6,
2004).

In fact, Jahangir's figure here of "millions of civilians at risk" is very likely suggestive of current realities, Reeves says.

He writes: “Evidence continues to accumulate that perhaps as many as 1 million people have not yet been included in figures for Internally Displaced Persons and refugees. The overall level of destruction of African villages is extraordinary -- well over 50 percent by most estimates, which in turn have been confirmed by partial satellite photographic coverage and analysis of the Darfur region.”

He concludes: “The current UN total for Internally Displaced Persons and refugees is approximately 1.5 million. But this doesn't begin to account for those who must have been displaced, given the high level of village destruction and a total African tribal population that may be very roughly estimated at 4 million. We may in fact be seeing a gross underestimation by the UN and other international actors of the sort that defined the crisis in eastern Congo in 1996-97.

“Humanitarian intervention in Darfur cannot wait for an end to UN dithering, but must commence immediately; Sudan as a whole cannot endure further rule by the National Islamic Front.”

Eric Reeves
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063
413-585-3326
ereeves@smith.edu

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** Michael Ireland is an international British freelance journalist. A former reporter with a London newspaper, Michael is the Chief Correspondent for ASSIST News Service of Garden Grove, CA. Michael immigrated to the United States in 1982 and became a US citizen in Sept., 1995. He is married with two children. Michael has also been a frequent contributor to UCB Europe, a British Christian radio station.

** You may republish this story with proper attribution.