Sudan's genocidal president

By Nat Hentoff
December 24, 2007 
The Washington Times
Source: http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071224/EDITORIAL07/646762510/-1/NATION05&template=printart

We are very close to the Dec. 31 deadline set by the U.N. Security Council for the United Nations-African Union force of 21,000 troops and technical support to, at last, enter the devastation in Darfur to begin to end the genocide. That deadline is far from being met. 

The reason: Sudan's genocidal president, Lt. Gen. Omar Bashir who agreed to let the rescuers into his sovereign nation is, as usual, breaking his word. He insists on banning certain countries from being part of the U.N.-African Union force, and he won't grant landing rights to aircraft transporting necessary support or open the port of Sudan. 

Moreover, should the mission ever actually get into his blood-soaked Darfur, he demands the right to shut down its communications while he continues his own military operations, including his monstrous Arab militia, the Janjaweed. 

Furthermore, Gen. Bashir, a master of creating chaos by design, will not allow the combined force to conduct night flights. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, finally learning that his one-on-one negotiations with this insidious general are futile, complained to The New York Times (Dec. 7) that without the permission to operate the nighttime planes, we may not be able to operate, particularly in cases of emergency, including medical evacuations. But that, Mr. secretary-general, is precisely Gen. Bashir's intention. 

And Mr. Ban is also discovering that Gen. Bashir is not the only obstructionist to bringing even minimal hope to the survivors in Darfur as the death toll and violence rise. He has appealed to countries purportedly concerned about the atrocities for 24 helicopters. But, as of Dec. 7, he said, I have not been able to get even one single helicopter commitment... Without effective additional mobility capacity, he told Warren Hodge of The New York Times, we will not be able to protect the civilians and even our own soldiers. Expressing surprise that the Western democracies can't or won't deliver the 24 helicopters, including six attack helicopters, Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, the commander of the joint force, plaintively told Reuters: I thought with all the suffering... that the people would have lined up. Meanwhile, the impotent U.N. Security Council, watching the failure of another of its many resolutions directing Gen. Bashir to please, sir, be nice, was recently told by the U.N. undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, John Holmes, that not only have 280,000 black Africans had to run from violence in Darfur this year, but also the attacks on humanitarian workers have reached unprecedented levels. That results of course, in more of them leaving. 

These extraordinarily committed and courageous providers of food, medical aid and other essential support will not, however, volunteer to become martyrs to the scourge of unadulterated evil that Gen. Bashir and his accomplices are lustily sustaining. 

The general's Himmler-like subordinates are also ending access, Mr. Holmes reported, to sections of Darfur where there are tens of thousands of civilians in severe need. The other general who represents what is left of international civilization, Gen. Agwai of the U.N.-African Union mission, said: It was stated that by the end of August we would know all the troop contribution countries (apart from the invisible helicopters). Today we're in December. We don't know (all of the countries) so you can see how many months we are behind. 

When months turn into years, Gen. Bashir may well echo what Joseph Stalin was heard to say with satisfaction while he was going through a list of the Russians he was, for various reasons, sending to be executed: Who is going to remember all this riffraff in 10 or 20 years time? No one. At the point the final solution has been accomplished in Darfur, how many around the world will take the time to mourn, however briefly? Oh, there will be some memorial ceremonies here and there. But I very much doubt that anyone will once more — after the Nazi Holocaust, Rwanda, the Belgian Congo and other disappearances of masses of mutilated corpses around the world — have the nerve to say, Never again. Is there anything left that can be done? The only answer, as has been evident for a long time, is again underlined by the premier compiler of the record of this return of the Dark Ages: Eric Reeves. 

The key, he now tells us again, is China, which has unrivaled leverage (with Gen. Bashir). There is no chance that Khartoum (capital of Sudan) will be moved by other actors... Civil society must play the key role of demanding that China, vulnerably exposed host of the 2008 Olympic Games be pushed hard to use its massive influence on Khartoum to change the regime's behavior. Next week: An international campaign involved in accomplishing this in the terribly short time left.