Excerpts:Arab foreign ministers' inaction.US anti-Sudan conspiracy.Pained
Sudan 30.7.04

+++JORDAN TIMES 30-31 July '04:
"Arab League trio begin talks on call for Iraq protection force"
FROM TEXT:
"The foreign ministers of Algeria, Bahrain and Tunisia were appointed in
May to hold consultations on the situation in Iraq by the ... Arab League."

"[Arab League Secretary General] Musa had previously said that Arab
soldiers could not go to Iraq until US-led forces had left the country."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------:
EXCERPTS:
TUNIS (AFP) - Three Arab foreign ministers began consultations with their
Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari here Thursday over an appeal by Baghdad for
an Arab force to provide protection for a new UN mission to the country.
The foreign ministers of Algeria, Bahrain and Tunisia were appointed in May
to hold consultations on the situation in Iraq by the 22-member Arab League,
whose Secretary General Amr Musa was also attending the closed-door talks.
... A Security Council resolution last month provided for the establishment
of a dedicated international force to provide protection for UN staff in
Iraq.
International UN personnel quit Iraq in the wake of a massive bomb attack at
the UN headquarters in Baghdad last August that claimed 22 lives ... .
...Last week, Allawi called on other Arab countries to send troops to his
country to help protect the UN mission when it resumes work. At a meeting
with ... Mubarak in Cairo, Allawi said: "We asked Egypt to make the
necessary contacts with leaders of some Arab and Islamic countries to
contribute forces to protect the UN mission." Musa had previously said that
Arab soldiers could not go to Iraq until US-led forces had left the country.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the Arab diplomat said the troika was
not authorised to make decisions but would hold simple consultations ahead
of a meeting of the league's ministerial council in September.
[IMRA: Proceeding with deliberate delay.]

+++AL-AHRAM WEEKLY 22-28 July '04:"Editorial:Sudan next?"
QUOTES FROM TEXT:
"Even more alarming ... is the increasing discourse claiming that the
Sudanese governemnt is undertaking options of ethnic
cleansing against the inhabitants of Darfur and especially against
non-Arab tribes.":

"The conflict is not about ethnic cleansing"

"Suspicion in the A|rab world is that the US' eagerness to intervene in
Darfur is an American conspiracy to get control of
Sudanese oil."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------
FULL TEXT::
No observer could possibly deny that conditions in Darfur in western Sudan
are sharply deteriorating. The war-torn region is undeniably experiencing a
humanitarian catastrophe, facilitated by the absence of an effectual central
government.
Even more alarming ... is the increasing discourse claiming that the
Sudanese government is undertaking operations of ethnic cleansing against
the inhabitants of Darfur, and especially against non-Arab tribes. Such
claims are made despite the lack of an international investigative committee
or an official United Nations report addressing the issue of such operations
and the government's role in them.

[IMRA: Amnesty International, other NGOs and UN agents have reported
extensively.]

For decades, the international media ignored Darfur and Sudan. When
attention was drawn to Sudan, the conflict in Darfur was portrayed as one
between Arabs and Africans, a pretext for further perpetuating a negative
image of the Arab and Muslim worlds.

[IMRA: Sudan belongs to the Arab League. It has dsne nothing about the
situation.]

The international pressure now exerted on Sudan will no doubt lead to an
escalation of the conflict. Foreign intervention is on the cards and a
scenario not unlike that now unfolding in Iraq might take place. Rather than
presenting a practicable plan to salvage the situation from a humanitarian
perspective, Western powers now want the international community to impose
sanctions on, and eventually perhaps even wage war, on Sudan.

The Janjaweed militiamen, armed with Russian-made G3 kalashnikovs, hail from
both Arab and non-Arab tribes. They emerged in response to the drought of
1984, as well as increased poverty and ignorance. They attack villages,
steal cattle and set fire to the villagers' huts.

[IMRA: The sanctions proposal has been eliminated.]

The most disturbing aspect of the conflict is that the drought gave rise to
friction between nomadic Arab and non-Arab settled agriculturalists, with
the result that the various tribes acquired weapons with which to defend
themselves and formed militias. Strangely enough these militias later turned
against the tribes to which they belonged, creating a large, irregular army
that occupied an isolated mountainous area. From there they started waging
their attacks, and before too long declared a rebellion.

The conflict is not about ethnic cleansing.

[IMRA: The effects are.]

Due to the weakness of the Sudanese security apparatus, the Janjaweed have
become more powerful than the Sudanese police forces. Even the Sudanese
army, exhausted by war in the south, is unable to confront the Janjaweed .
The decision of the United States Congress to impose sanctions will
negatively impact the Sudanese people throughout the country and can,
therefore, only be seen as a form of collective punishment. Suspicion in the
Arab world is that the US' eagerness to intervene in Darfur is an American
conspiracy to gain control of Sudanese oil.

[IMRA: The ever conspiracy-dreaming Arab world. So why doesn't the Arab
world speak and act to solve the problem? A significant by-product may be
that Afro-Americans, some of whom are sympathetic with and identify with
Palestinians, will turn against the Arab world.]

+++HAARETZ 30 July '04" No refuge in Sudan"
"America's threatened sanctions on Sudan over the desperate plight of the
refugees are due to pressures stemming from November's election. Meanwhile,
the Arab nations keep silent."
By Zvi Bar'el

QUOTES FROM TEXT:
"at the Journalists' Association House in Beirut, Amnesty International
made public its report on the situation of the refugees in Darfur"

" ' We have reported only two cases of rape' "

" 'an invention of the West that set up the Abu Ghreib Prison in Iraq.' "

"Bush is even prepared to send in a military force in order to stop the
attacks on civilians in Darfur."

"The Africans of Darfur have succeeded in enlisting to their aid the
African-American lobby in the United States"

"In this whole affair, one voice has not been heard:the voice of the Arab
states and the Arab League."

"but at the meeting of the Arab League in May of this year not a single
voice of protest was heard against the Sudanese policy"

"The only [Arab] voice that has been heard thus far is that of a research
organization in Abu Dhabi, which has directly accused the Arab League of
impotence"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------
EXCERPTS:
The grim ... Kofi Annan, who decided to remain in his car and not come out
to meet his hosts, blended well into the landscape around him. At the
beginning of the month Annan visited a displaced persons' camp in the Darfur
province in the Sudan in order to examine close up the situation of some of
the million and a half displaced persons. ...part of the seasonal
demonstration of the international organization's interest in the Sudan's
troubles. But Omar Hassan al Bashir's government had other plans. The
displaced persons had been expelled from the camp in time, so that they
would not be able to tell the honored guest about what has happened to them.

A few day later, at the Journalists' Association House in Beirut, Amnesty
International made public its special report on the situation of the
refugees in Darfur. This is a report full of shocking details about rape as
a political weapon, about abductions of women and children who are made into
sex slaves, about the wholesale killing of approximately 30,000 men and
women during a year and a half, about raids on the refugee camps and about
hunger and a desperate shortage of medicine and water.

In the hall sat the A-list of the Lebanese and Arab press and on the stage
sat the Sudanese ambassador to Lebanon, who was supposed to have responded
to the charges in the report. "We have recorded only two cases of rape,"
said the ambassador. "These are things that happen in every war."
Persecution? Shooting? Killing? "This is an invention of the West. The same
West that set up the Abu Ghreib Prison in Iraq." The journalists applauded.

Julie Flint, the author of the Amnesty report, later published a scathing
article in English-language Beirut newspaper The Daily Star, in which she
explained why Amnesty decided, as stated in the report itself, to make a
point of releasing the report in an Arab country "because northern Sudan is
part of the Arab- Islamic world, and the government and government-supported
militias which are committing horrific human rights violations in Darfur
have benefited from the support or silence of Middle Eastern countries."

Her ire was directed in particular at "a gaggle of well-upholstered ladies
in the front row of the audience, all past the age of traveling to war zones
and apparently represented Lebanese ... NGOs." These were among the people
who applauded every time the Sudanese ambassador accused the Untied States
of a policy that is designed to cast blame on Sudan because it is
well-suited to the imperialist policy of Washington, London and Israel to
divide up the states of the Middle East.

Washington and the European Union are indeed threatening Sudan with
sanctions if it does not solve "the Darfur problem." ... Bush is even
prepared to send in a military force in order to stop the attacks on
civilians in Darfur. ... these apparent threats have not impressed Omar
Bashir, the leader of Sudan who came into power in a military coup in 1989.

"If Washington sends a military force, it will have to fight alone in this
desert. We will not cooperate with it," said Bashir, without forgetting to
warn of "the new imperialist danger that could turn Sudan into the third
Muslim state, after Afghanistan and Iraq, that America wants to control."
However, at the same time Bashir does not want to lose the $336 million that
the United States promised as aid to his country following the signing of
the peace agreement with the rebels in the south led by John Garang.
Therefore Bashir asked none other than Libya this week to mediate on the
question of Darfur.
. . .

. With the help of the government, the Arab nomads established armed
militias called Janjaweed ...who attacked the African communities with the
aim of casting them off their lands. The method of action was using terror
against the inhabitants, burning their villages, killing their animals,
poisoning wells and taking control of the territory.

The Sudanese government has denied any connection to the Janjaweed, but some
of them who were captured in Chad, into which they have infiltrated in order
to continue their attacks on the refugees from Sudan, reported in their
interrogations that they had received arms and equipment from the Sudanese
government.

Control through local militias, which are not regular military forces, has
been a familiar method in Sudan, the government of which does not trust its
army. And during the past year and a half Darfur has provide reasons for
worry for Bashir's government. The peace treaty that was signed this year
between the government and Garang's rebels in the south did set conditions
for the division of the profits from the oil fields that are located in the
south and currently produce about 250,000 barrels a day. The treaty
establishes a transitional period of six years, at the end of which the
inhabitants of the south will decide whether to integrate into Sudan or to
establish an autonomous region. However, the treaty and the division of the
authority and the resources did not include the Darfur province, where the
inhabitants also want to receive a piece of the profits and the government's
budget and to this end have established two political movements to conduct
the struggle for their rights.

These movements, the Sudanese Liberation Organization and the Justice and
Equality Movement, have become, according to the Sudanese government, the
political home front of the opposition in Sudan led by the cleric Hassan al
Turabi, who has been arrested in the meanwhile. Turabi, who was the
strongman in Sudan and in fact the spiritual leader of the military
revolution and the person who established Sudan as a theocracy, is now
perceived as a political threat that is endangering Bashir's regime, and
therefore everyone who is suspected of identifying with him is a danger that
must be destroyed. Thus the Africans of Darfur have also become part of this
political threat.

Bashir's problem is that the conflict in Darfur is perceived as an ethnic
conflict between Arabs and Africans and not as a political conflict. The
Africans of Darfur have succeeded in enlisting to their aid the
African-American lobby in the United States, which is applying pressure to
Congress to lean on President Bush.

[IMRA: Perhaps this was delayed because the Black Congressional Caucus is
critical of the US in Iraq and did not want to be pressing for
direct US military action.]
It is possible that if this were not an election year in the United States,
what is happening in Darfur would have become just another horrible picture
... .

. . .
Washington too understands that re-imposing sanctions on Sudan would mean
serious harm to millions of people as well as a real chance that the
Sudanese government would freeze the peace agreement that was signed with
the south, an agreement that the United States sees as an essential
interest.

In this whole affair, one voice has not been heard: the voice of the Arab
states and the Arab League.

[IMRA: The Arab League continues in the UN to press for delays.]

A delegation from the Arab league set out on a "fact-finding" mission to
Darfur and came back with a report of acts of killing and torture, but at
the meeting of the Arab League in May of this year not a single voice of
protest was heard against the Sudanese policy and no decision for action was
taken. The Arab League has sent a shipment of food and medicine and has done
nothing more than that. The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has
also remained mute until now about what is happening in Darfur. The
only[Arab] voice that has been heard thus far is that of a research
organization in Abu Dhabi, which has directly accused the Arab League of
impotence like that which it has evinced in Iraq.

Dr. Joseph Lerner, Co-Director IMRA