WATANI International
11 January 2009
Islamists and Arab nationalists have rejected the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur. Opposition to the warrant was based on the grounds that it violated the national sovereignty of an independent state. The question that begs an answer, however, is “what is the truth about the Darfur crisis?”
Heartbreaking tragedy
This is indeed a tragedy affecting six million people. The conflict between rebel factions in Darfur—the Sudanese Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement—and the Janjaweed militias supported by Sudanese forces started in 2003. The Janjaweed and Sudanese forces have been involved in systematic ethnic cleansing against Darfur’s African population. Tens of thousands were killed; scores of villages were razed; thousands of women were raped; and some two million people fled to neighbouring countries. According to US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Sudanese government left the Janjaweed free-handed to inflict vengeance on the African people of Darfur. Moreover they obstructed the work of relief agencies which sought to transfer aid to three million people in the region.
In September 2005, human rights organisations in the Arab world voiced their concern over the aggravated humanitarian crisis in Darfur. A statement issued by 31 Arab human rights organisations lashed out at the Sudanese government for violating the cease-fire agreement it signed with the two rebel groups in the Chadian capital, N’djamena. They called upon the UN Security Council to form an international fact-finding committee to investigate human rights violations, and urged the Sudanese government to alleviate the restrictions imposed on human rights activists and release political prisoners in relation to the Darfur issue. The statement called for referring those responsible for killing civilians to court.
Arab versus African
The Darfur region of western Sudan is inhabited by two groups of tribes: African agriculturalists and Arab pastoralists. Disputes and clashes between the two groups erupt more often than not at times of drought, when the Arabs attack villages of the Africans to seize their land. The Janjaweed takes its name from highwaymen belonging to an Arab tribe who attacked and wreaked havoc on African villages in Darfur in 1985. In 1987, a coalition of 37 Arab tribes was formed. It should be mentioned that both groups are Muslim.
A flagrant bias towards the Arabs can be traced in the Arab media, while values of modernity and equality are put aside. Prominent Egyptian Islamist writer Fahmi Huweidi, for instance, wrote in an article: “We should not expect others to defend the rights or dignity that we ourselves have relinquished. But we should not forget that there is something fishy about public conscience in these [Western] societies when it comes to issues concerning Arabs and Muslims. Incidents in Darfur and Rwanda shook these societies, while those in Palestine and Chechnya did not ring a bell there.”
The problem with Huweidi’s argument is that it ignores the fact that African victims in Darfur are Muslims.
Blatant duality
Not only did the Sudanese government decline to abide by international resolutions, but it also asked the troops of the African Union to leave Darfur and declared Jihad against the ‘infidel’ UN. The Sudanese government refused to hand over leaders of the Arab tribes who bore responsibility for the war crimes in Darfur. Not surprisingly, other Arab regimes stood behind Bashir in his pursuit to protect his associates, however grave the crimes they had committed.
The Arab media applauded when the Serbian leader Slobidan Milosevic was tried before an international court although he was defending the integrity of his country. Why did the Arabs keep silent when some European newspapers revealed that many of the photographs aired to show crimes against Bosnians were fabricated? Why did Arab governments hail the trial of the Serbian president and condemn the International Criminal Court’s warrant against the Sudanese president? I believe that the fear that such measures could be expanded to reach other rulers in the region stands behind such a stance. As for the Arab League, it seeks to protect Arab regimes in detriment to their people.
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