ANNEX8 ICC-02/05-171-Anx8 15-01-2009 2/11 CB PT
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ICC-02/05-171-Anx8 15-01-2009 1/11 CB PT ANNEX8 ICC-02/05-171-Anx8 15-01-2009 2/11 CB PT Report of Peter K Bechtold I, Peter K. Bechtold, PhD., am responding to a request from representatives of the Federation of Sudanese Trade Unions to offer an expert opinion about the consequences for peace in Sudan, and especially in the Western region ofDarfur, if the International Criminal Court (ICC) proceeds with an indictment of Sudan's current President, LTG Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir (frequently referred to as "Bashir") as currently proposed by an initial submission from the court's prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, in July 2008. I have seen only summaries of Mr. Ocampo's allegations, reported in the media as containing 10 separate charges, such as, most startlingly perhaps, the "deliberate efforts to erase the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa communities", which would constitute "genocide", inter al. I propose to provide some context for understanding the conflict in Darfur by describing the overall geographic, demographic, historical, economic and political factors which have contributed to the Darfur crisis, and to political turmoil in Sudan in general in recent times, before I address the more specific issue ofT CC action and its consequences. My qualifications for offering my commentaries include the fact that I have been a student of Sudan during my entire professional life. A summary CV may be obtained from my website www.drbechtold.com. My interest in Sudan began in 1961, when I met in graduate school a then Senior Inspector and later Director of the Sudan Gezira Board. I also met then America's dean of Sudan scholars, Professor Robert O.Collins with whom I shared university housing during a summer language studies program and who stimulated my interest in that country. By 1963 I had decided to select Sudan as the focus of my doctoral dissertation and began to read extensively about it. My first visit to Sudan came in October 1964 and I stayed on for almost two years conducting dissertation field research. At the time, the country was divided into 9 provinces and, over the years, I managed to visit all 9 at least once. My professional visits to Sudan occurred in 14 different years; the last one in March 2008, when I also had the opportunity to go to Darfur and visit two IDP camps: Salaam and Abu Shok near El Fasher. I was one of only 5 foreigners to observe the March Round-Table Conference on National Reconciliation, especially regarding Southern Sudan in 1965 during which leaders of all Sudanese parties, Northern, Southern, Western and North-Eastern attended and spoke. Also, religious and secular, unionist, federalist, and secessionist leaders spoke. Similarly, I was invited to attend a comparable conference in September 1989, the National Dialogue to which all parties were invited and all came except for the SPLM. I have personally met with leaders of Southern movements, e.g. General Joseph Lagu, Joseph Garang, Clement Mboro ofNyaNya days, also political figures like William Deng (SANU), Bona Malwal, Dunstan Wai, Lam Akol and several times with the SPLM leader Dr. John Garang de Mabior and several of his deputies. ICC-02/05-171-Anx8 15-01-2009 3/11 CB PT Among Western politicians I have met with the former longtime Darfur Governor Ahmed Ibrahim Direige, also the Governor of North Darfur Province in March 2008, the leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM, formerly the Darfur Liberation Front) Abd al-Wahid Muhammad Nur and Dr. El-Tahir A. El-Faki, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), both in Summer 2008. Among Northern leaders I have interviewed one-on-one are President Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, his predecessors LTG Siwar ai-Dhahhab and Isma'il al-Azhari, PMs Sadiq al-Mahdi and M.A. Mahgoub, Islamist leader Dr. Hassan Turabi, Communist leader Abd al-Khaliq Mahgoub, and many others rank and file. During my years in government service I have briefed many United States government officials posted to Sudan, including four ambassadors, several charges d'affaires and one head of the Africa Bureau in the US State Department. I have been an active member of the Sudan Studies Association of America since its founding in the early I980s. I have also served as an officer in SAFE, a small NGO collecting textbooks for shipment to universities in Sudan. My publications that I am able to recollect include: Parliamentary Elections in the Sudan. Ann Arbor, MI, University Microfihns, 1968. Thesis- Princeton University. Politics in the Sudan:Parliamentwy and Military Rule in an Emerging African Nation. New York: Praeger, 197 6. Numerous articles in Africa Today and Middle East Journal; chapters in edited books, bibliographic entries, a major bibliography on the Near East and North Africa with a special section on Sudan; a number of contributions to blogs on Sudan. INTRODUCTION Most Western media accounts of the crisis in Darfur describe deliberate attacks by the Sudan Armed Forces on orders of the "Arab" or "Arab-dominated" government in Khartoum or their "Janjaweed" proxies against defenseless and innocent "African" villagers. They include stories of massive atrocities such as large-scale murder, rape used as a weapon, burning of villages, and forced dislocation from homes to refugee camps for internally displaced persons (IDP). Some insinuate a policy by Khartoum to achieve Arabization through "ethnic cleansing" of existing "African" populations in Darfur. The SLM leader Abd a!-Wahid Muhammad Nur goes further and charges forced Islamization by the "Islamo-Fascist" regime in Khartoum (Wall Street Journal, June 18,2008). Such descriptions are highly misleading; they distort realities on the ground and, sadly, contribute to prolonging the very real conflict and add to the very real suffering of many people in Darfur. To set the record straight, and to assist the Federation of Trade Unions 2 ICC-02/05-171-Anx8 15-01-2009 4/11 CB PT in proposing an effective plan for conflict resolution, I want to provide in summary form the historical, demographic and political context for this very real humanitarian crisis. GEOGRAPHICAL FACTORS After more than 4 decades of studying Sudan intensively I have concluded that understanding anything at all about this fascinating country requires, at a minimum, full awareness of its size, its human and ecological diversity, and its inadequate infrastructure. The tenth largest country on earth, and the largest in Africa at almost one million square miles (2.5 mill sq. km), Sudan contains fewer all-weather roads than most American counties, much less states, at least prior to the year 2000. When l was first in Darfur in 1972 there were less than 5km of pavement in a territory the size of France. Given the extensive rainy season as one moves southward, and the debilitating sandstorms, called haboob, in the North, transportation over land is haphazard at best. This is as true of Darfur as of the entire country. Add to this picture that the Nile River is not navigable for transport except for short distances and by small craft in limited stretches, and that the narrow-gauge, single-track railroad built by the British military more than a century ago is as antiquated as it is inadequate, and the result is a recipe for classical underdevelopment. Indeed, since Sudan acquired its modem identity in the 1820s under Ottoman rule, no government to this day has been able to exercise adequate control beyond a modest perimeter of perhaps 250-300km from the capital Khartoum. Hence, distribution of food from producing to consuming areas, provision of educational and health services, tax collection, and even the recruitment of soldiers has been limited and haphazard. As a result of all this, groups in outlying areas have been left to their own devices, expect little from Khartoum and have minimal loyalty to the central authority. I myself have heard constant complaints about the lack of services from residents in the West, South, East and even the North of the country. (These conditions and complaints have been well-documented in numerous studies and are unchallenged by government officials and politicians). When feelings of marginalization escalated-for understandable reasons or, perhaps, due to local politicians agitating their populations--conflict has erupted. The more remote the region, the more severe the problem. The two most remote regions have been 1. Southern Sudan, especially the Sudd area and 2. Darfur. (One of Europe's foremost experts on Darfur, R.S.O'Fahey, reported that while crisscrossing Darfur on camelback in 1978 for 6 weeks he never once encountered a government official.) In the absence of effective government, conflict resolution was based on customary law--Sulh~arbitration and negotiations among local chiefs. Many anthropological studies as well as Sudan archives, including from colonial times, document the high success rate of these traditional methods. When negotiations failed, armed conflict might return for awhile until the next round of Sulh, under different auspices, perhaps. It is noteworthy in 3 ICC-02/05-171-Anx8 15-01-2009 5/11 CB PT this context that international intervention, with or without the ICC, is unlikely to be accepted and more likely will be resisted (as happened when the British tried to intervene during WWI and the French in neighboring territories, as well as the Libyan activities in the 1980s and 1990s). DEMOGRAPHIC DIVERSITY This situation would be challenging enough if the country and its people were homogeneous. Unfortunately, the opposite is true in Sudan, one of the world's most heterogeneous nations. Serious anthropological research has identified almost 600 different tribal groupings speaking up to 400 different languages and dialects.