Omar Al-Bashir and Africa's Longest War

by Paul Moorcraft

  When al-Bashir came to power, relations had already deteriorated as Chad was supporting the SPLM. In May 1990 a column of Chadian soldiers raided El Fasher to rescue wounded colleagues held in a local hospital. This set a precedent for the fashion for daring long-range raids using columns of 4x4s, often driving cross-country. Chadian forces continued to strike across their border in pursuit of Chadian (and Darfuri) rebels operating out of Darfur. When a stage of the civil war ended with Idriss Déby’s final defeat of his opponent, Hissène Habré, in December 1990, al-Bashir visited Chad for talks to improve bilateral ties. Déby, however, declared a ‘state of belligerence’ with Sudan in December 2005. That was resolved, but diplomatic relations were broken off twice in 2006. This was because Sudan was arming, training and equipping Chadian rebels based in Darfur, southern Chad and the Central African Republic. One of Sudan’s favourite Chadian rebel chieftains was Abbogro Nour Abdulkarim, a charismatic young tribal leader born in Gereida, eastern Chad in 1971. He led or participated in a number of diverse political fronts and fighting units. He was, however, a man of action rather than a talker. He was in the vanguard of a daring long-range advance on the Chadian capital, N’Djamena, in April 2006. The rebels captured parts of the city, but failed to seize the presidential palace because of the last-minute intercession of French troops. Abdelkarim was later made minister of defence in the peace deal that followed. Undeterred, after three attempts on his life, he quit his government post and, in 2008, led another major invasion from the south that also reached the capital, but failed to displace Déby. Tanks and French gunships and Mirage F1s were too much for the Chadian rebels. Thereafter, Abdelkarim went into exile, although still supported by Libya. Gaddafi was backing a number of sides in the Chadian civil war. I interviewed Abdelkarim twice while he was in exile in Paris and Dubai. Highly articulate, he proclaimed his ideals of social democracy in elegant French.4

  Al-Bashir signed a number of peace agreements with Chad’s leader, Idriss Déby, usually soon overtaken by local fighting. The core of the deals promised not to support rebel movements in their respective territories. Déby was a Zaghawa himself and had close kinship ties with the Zaghawa leaders in the Darfur rebel movement. The Saudis were significant players too, because they were alleged to be paying for one of the main anti-Déby groups in the south of Chad.

  In Darfur, the crisis deepened. Another Sudanese splinter, of the Sudan Liberation Movement, was blamed for attacks on, and car-jacking of, Oxfam aid workers; the charity threatened to pull out of Gereida which succoured over 130,000 refugees. Starvation and sickness were causing more deaths than military action. Now that Chinese diplomacy had softened, European Darfur lobbies helped to precipitate British and French diplomacy to boost the AU-UN hybrid force that could effectively police a ceasefire and ensure that aid agencies could operate. The Security Council finally approved, in July 2007, Resolution 1769 that stated that UNAMID was to take over from AMIS, the AU force, by the end of the year. The number was supposed to be nearly 27,000 troops and police.

  At the beginning of 2008 four times as many UN troops, police and military observers were based in Africa than there had been in all UN peacekeeping operations around the world for the ten years previously. Africa took up 65 per cent of UN deployed troops, including three of the four biggest missions. Sudan had two large missions: UNAMID in Darfur and around 10,000 troops in the south (UNMIS), following the Naivasha accord. Next door was the troubled UN mission in the Congo. Darfur pushed worldwide deployment to 90,000. This was mainly internal security work, not the classic border operations (an exception was the UNMEE mission separating Eritreans and Ethiopians). The EU also set a precedent with a small military mission in Chad and in the CAR, although this was second nature to the French Foreign Legion. At the same time, an AU force was mandated to operate in the chaos that was Somalia. And the AU even became involved in an amphibious assault on a secessionist island of the Comores in March 2008. All the optimistic talk of a so-called African renaissance was an ironic contrast with the numerous international peacekeepers busy in some but not all of the messy wars on the continent. The recent ‘First World War in Africa’– in the Congo – had killed perhaps as many as five million people.

  Even Darfur’s tragedy paled in comparison, but Hollywood seemed little interested in the original heart of darkness in the Congo. Meanwhile, foreign diplomats tried to resuscitate the Darfur peace efforts at Arusha, Tanzania, in August 2007. Most of the top Darfuri rebels came, except for Abdul Walid al-Nur, who represented a large part of the Fur people through his SLA splinter. Western diplomats bemoaned the fact that Darfur had not produced its own version of John Garang – one powerful leader who could speak for most of the insurgents. The senior leaders, especially the military boss of JEM, Khalil Ibrahim, did attend. Harangued by foreign diplomats, the fractious Darfuris reached a joint set of proposals regarding power sharing, security and humanitarian needs that were not that much different from previous peace arrangements. One difference was the increasing demand for independence, now championed by JEM, which threatened to go the whole hog if Khartoum did not grant effective autonomy on the Juba model. While the predominantly African leaders were parleying, many of the armed Arab militias fell out among themselves over grazing rights, especially in the Bulbul River valley. It was assumed they were grabbing land before the arrival of a big and effective UN force that might curb their annual feuds.

  On 30 September 2007 heavily armed JEM forces overran an AMIS base at Haskanita, in North Darfur, killing ten peacekeepers and injuring many more. The seven Nigerians killed were later found to have malfunctioning rifles; they had not been cleaned and had not been zeroed since leaving Nigeria. Soldiers from Mali, Senegal and Botswana were also killed. The rebels returned shortly afterwards to loot and met only limited resistance. The biggest loss of life for the AU, it was the final blow to their confidence and morale (and low reputation among Darfuris).

  The next ‘breakthrough’ peace talks were scheduled for the end of October 2007 in Sirte, Libya, under the aegis of Gaddafi. Many of the more potent fighting groups did not attend, so the talks were re-branded as ‘advanced consultations’ to save face. Even the Darfuri rebels realized that their endless splintering was undermining their cause. Some groups, seeking cash and kudos, did a bit of banditry and village-burning and then called themselves this or that liberation front to be invited to some travel and accommodation at posh hotels. The behaviour of some attendees at peace talks matched people just let out of prison. At the Abuja talks, for example, one hotel recorded 8,000 visits by prostitutes – they had to be signed in. The nocturnal activity may well have affected the delegates’ political acuity in the long diplomatic sessions. Even a number of genuine long-term insurgents, especially those who had been in exile in Europe, were dubbed ‘hotel guerrillas’ because they had lost touch with their fighting cadres in the desert.

  Six factions of the SLM coalesced with other groups and the official JEM to work as two groups apparently to negotiate with Khartoum. Instead, in May 2008, the Darfurian resistance movement staged the most dramatic action of the war. It was of course a long-range commando raid. It was a return to the first success of the war, the raid on El-Fasher, and it was partly a revenge for Khartoum’s backing for two invasions of the Chadian capital. So, according to the rebels’ thinking, only a major strike on Khartoum was proportionate.

  Around 1,200 JEM troops in a convoy of 130 all-terrain vehicles drove through nearly 600 miles of bush and scrub to reach Omdurman on 10 May 2008. Until then many residents of the three towns had tried to ignore what was happening in Darfur; now fighting returned to the streets of the capital for the first time since 1976. Intelligence had completely missed the convoy. One of the first to react was a Russian helicopter pilot, working as an instructor for the Sudanese air force. The pilot positioned his Mi-24 gunship to strafe the column, but was shot down by a heavy-calibre machine gun on one of the technicals. The chopper was brought down and the pilot kil
led. The Russians did their best to keep this incident a secret, but failed. The JEM convoy split up to take the Arba’een military base and nearby police HQ, and then moved to seize the TV and radio buildings in Omdurman. The army responded with artillery, tanks and gunships, but much of the resistance was organized by NISS officers, some distrustful of the army’s loyalties. They managed to stop the rebels just short of the parliament building, alongside the Nile, and before they could cross the bridge to Khartoum proper. JEM was supposed to be making for the presidential compound to overthrow al-Bashir. The government said that its forces had killed or captured all the rebels by the end of the first day, though locals reported some fighting the next day. Later, JEM asserted that forty-five of their men had been killed, while the government claimed double that number. Khartoum admitted that ninety-three of its soldiers and twelve policemen had been killed as well as thirty civilians. The government immediately rounded up the usual suspects, including Hassan al-Turabi, but they released him the same day, citing lack of hard evidence of complicity (although he later said the JEM invasion was a ‘positive’ move). Over 100 captured JEM fighters were tried for treason and sentenced to death, although al-Bashir pardoned and freed a small number of JEM child soldiers.

  A JEM spokesman said that ‘it might have lost the Khartoum battle and pulled out in dignity, but it has not lost the war’. Khartoum once more broke off diplomatic ties with Chad, but there was no hiding the intelligence failure and the political humiliation of a major raid on the capital. According to US intelligence, the army was now largely commanded by the NISS. Only 4,000 trusted elite army paratroopers were left in the capital.

  JEM had brought the war to the three towns. The 2003 raid on El Fasher and the 2008 brazen assault on Khartoum bookmarked the Darfur war. Low-level insurgency and banditry continued as well as a humanitarian crisis. From now on – and until the time of writing – Darfur’s war was mentioned in the international media only when peace talks, usually in Doha, failed – again. In 2009 General Martin Agwai, the Nigerian head of UNAMID, said that the ‘real war’ was effectively over. Nevertheless, playing to domestic lobbies, President Obama promised more forceful action in Darfur during his presidential campaign, especially as only 15,000 of the projected 26,000 UN troops were in place. Obama again raised the issue of no-fly zones.

  Al-Bashir worked once more on the diplomatic route. He invited the Chadian president to visit Khartoum in February 2010. Déby pledged to stop aiding JEM and both countries set up joint military border patrols. In December 2010 the renamed coalition of the ‘Liberation and Justice Movement’ made progress with the Sudanese government representatives in Doha. Part of the discussion was about installing a Darfurian vice president. As the talks continued into 2011, compensation for victims and trials for those accused of human rights abuses were discussed. A long-term issue was the anger at Khartoum’s previous arbitrary separation of Darfur into three states; the government was not keen to accept a unified Darfur with a single vice president. That smacked too much of the southern deal which, in early 2011, was speeding towards independence. Another Darfur peace agreement (of sorts) was signed on 14 July with some of the senior rebel leaders. Yet real peace did not come. The IDP camps became even more permanent and donors’ conferences came and went. Banditry and general lawlessness rather than armed revolution were the issues. ‘It’s now a Wild West,’ said Amin Mekki Madani, a leading NGO-ista. ‘Only those with money and weapons survive.’ The few banks and many stores were targets, not national liberation.

  The low-level war peaked again when SLA and JEM units captured a town in North Kordofan, thus extending the spread of the fighting. In North Darfur Arab tribal warfare intensified. After hundreds were killed the Rezeigat and Beni Hussein tribes signed a peace deal, as did the Missiriya and Salamat clans. The introduction of so much modern weaponry meant that minor disputes could soon heat up into pitched battles. This happened between the Maalia and Rezeigat over a dispute about stolen cattle. Land disputes caused heavy fighting between Arab groups in the south of Darfur, again.

  The overall civilian death toll in Darfur has been much debated. The government figure of less than 10,000 killed in the fighting in the first few years is far too low. Eric Reeves’s claim that over 450,000 were killed in the first three years is far too high. Far more died from disease and malnutrition (and natural causes) than combat, cross-fire or atrocities, while millions have been displaced. The issue of genocide has also been much debated. In March 2005 the Security Council formally referred Darfur to the ICC. In April 2007 the ICC issued arrest warrants for two Sudanese citizens, but Khartoum, not a final signatory of the ICC treaty, said the Court had no jurisdiction and would not surrender the two men to The Hague. On 14 July 2008 the ICC prosecutor filed ten charges of war crimes against the Sudanese president. Was the ICC intervention helpful in containing the war or did it prolong the crisis in Darfur – and Sudan?

  Chapter 9

  The ICC and Sudan

  The indictments

  No one thought that the ICC would actually indict President al-Bashir for war crimes. It would be the first example of a sitting head of state being arraigned. The US lobbies had generated so much celebrity attention to bringing peace to Darfur, so why indict the president and derail the DPA and probably the CPA? It would be pressing the nuclear button. In a Western analogy, it would be like arresting Martin McGuinness during the negotiations that were about to end the thirty-year Northern Ireland civil war, the longest insurgency in Europe. In Khartoum the gossip coalesced around whether rivals might use the ICC as a justification for another palace coup. Even if he survived, how would a proud president react? Would he feel backed into a corner and strike out, or would he try to appease his enemies in the West?

  Al-Turabi of course could not resist an intervention. He called on the president to surrender to the ICC, while holding al-Bashir responsible for the war crimes in Darfur. The president’s patience finally snapped with his persistent tormentor. The Iman was sent back to Kober prison and then shifted to the more austere prison in Port Sudan.

  In New York the UN Security Council had referred the Darfur issue to the ICC in The Hague. China and Russia had not vetoed the move. In September 2004 a UN commission of enquiry was set up. The following January it reported on serious human rights abuses, but found no evidence of genocide. Khartoum also created its own enquiry into allegations of war crimes. The man driving the ICC on Sudan was Luis Moreno Ocampo, an Argentinian judge with a flair for publicity. He had once hosted a popular legal show on Argentinian TV As the ICC’s chief prosecutor, it was his responsibility to decide if there was a case to answer. He never visited Darfur himself, although ICC teams were sent three times to Khartoum. They rarely left the Hilton, although for once Sudan’s famed hospitality did not extend fully to the ICC visitors. On 27 April 2007 arrest warrants were issued for Ahmed Haroun, the former minister of humanitarian affairs, and ‘Ali Kushayb’, a militia leader. President al-Bashir responded by saying that he would never hand over any Sudanese to the Court, even those Darfuris who had taken up arms against him. The media speculated about others who might be charged. There was talk of up to fifty or even eighty names in sealed indictments. British and American intelligence made sure that Saleh Gosh and Ali Othman Taha were excluded from any lists. It was a payback for all their security co-operation.

  At a press conference in The Hague on 14 July 2008, Ocampo accused the president of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide (and also incidentally of corruption, by salting away $9 billion in European banks). Ocampo emphasized genocidal intent and a formal plan to exterminate the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes. Many experts on Darfur were shocked by the intemperance of language and fact displayed by Ocampo. As Alex de Waal said: ‘In the absence of law and evidence, we have the theatrics.’ In November 2008 three rebel leaders were also indicted for the attack on the AU base at Haskanita. On 4 March 2009 an arrest warrant was issued for al-Bashir. The warrant had left o
ut, on this occasion, charges of genocide. Later, he was charged with that crime as well.

  How did the president react personally? Probably the most accurate account came from a senior government official, who confided in me at the time, deploying his good command of American vernacular: ‘The Boss went apeshit.’ The official presidential response was slightly more measured on the reaction to the warrant: ‘It is not worth the ink it is written with – they can eat it.’ The president’s family later told me he was ‘hurt and angry’, although his second wife, Widad, insisted on being diplomatic: ‘I would prefer “upset” as a description.’ That was no doubt an understatement. The president later told me that he considered the indictment ‘a political issue and double standards because there are obvious crimes, like Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, but they do not find their way to the ICC.’

  In the heat of anger, al-Bashir ordered thirteen major NGOs to quit Darfur, blaming them for providing inaccurate and defamatory data to the ICC. They were accused of being ‘spies for foreign agencies’. Thousands of aid workers had to leave almost immediately, but not before the Sudanese Humanitarian Affairs Council, staffed by more intelligence than aid experts, ensured that the local employees were paid six months’ severance pay, and much of the NGO data and electronic equipment were handed over. Roughly 6,500 – 40 per cent of Western aid workers – had to quit, sometimes abandoning patients in clinics and hospitals. It was a hammer blow to the humanitarian programme in Darfur. Publicly, the Sudanese health authorities announced that local agencies such as the Red Crescent and Khartoum’s doctors could easily replace the expelled foreigners. Behind the scenes, Sudanese officials, caught off-guard by the president’s sudden statement, told me that they ‘were tearing their hair out’, as they just did not have anywhere near the number of skilled personnel to replace the departing experts at such short notice. Eventually, many of the famous charities and NGOS were allowed to return, sometimes re-badged. But the ICC intervention had caused much disruption both to the humanitarian and peace effort. And because the ICC was so inter-related to the UN, the role of the UN-led forces in the country also hung in the balance. It was once more a classic example of the law of unintended consequences. Presumably, George Clooney or Mia Farrow had not foreseen the diplomatic results of their full-throated advocacy.