Thanks for the overview and assessment of the ICC’s indictment of President al-Bashir. My question relates to the report of MSF and your seemingly over reliance on it to back up your points. There are a number of reports that were submitted to the ICC on which they based their order for indictment against President al-Bashir. Most notably was the report by Lyal Sunga of the UN-commissioned group of experts, that studied the wide scope of horrors committed in Darfur, including mortality rates for both adults and children.

I personally believe that the indictment was to throw light on the conflict in Darfur as the international community had placed the crisis on the back burner and felt that the less said about it the better, so as not to upset anybody, least of all the outside influencers to the crisis. The ability to relight the Darfur flame by seeking the indictment was a brave move by the ICC.

I would welcome the opportunity to chat with you in the near future regarding a project that my organization, the International Alliance For Human Rights has undertaken to enhance global awareness of the crisis in Darfur.

Please feel free to contact when you get a chance.

Thanks again and I am a great admirer of your work.

Dave

Great piece! what i would like to know is what do you think will be the ramification of the charges framed against bahir, do you not think it will have negative impact on the already shrunk humanitarian space for the internatinoal agencies?

You and I, however, have nothing in common. Thanks for your comment—but no thanks: I don’t want to be damned with your faint praise—after years of abuse/criticism by your government and its stooges—and completely reject your depiction of the conflict in Darfur.

1. The Sudan government has not arrested or convicted anyone with responsibility for the ‘gross violations of human rights and humanitarian law’ committed in Darfur, in the words of the UN Commission of Inquiry.

2. ‘It stood a spectator.’ While its own citizens were slaughtered? I am not sure which is more shocking: accepting the war in Darfur as a spectator sport, or your own inability to be shocked by this.

3. Not systematic? Not planned? As Imam Izhaq Abdalla of told me in Dar Masalit in February 2004: ‘The Arabs have camels. The government has planes.’ And while we are speaking of him, here’s some of the rest of what this gentle old man had to say:

‘The Janjaweed and army are attacking all the houses in this area, so all the people have come to Chad. They are attacking to mosques too. Some mosques have been burned. In other places, they have killed people in the mosque – this happened at Sandikoro in September 2003. They even killed the imam. They came to Sandikoro from Geneina, attacked the village and burned it and the mosque. It was about 9 a.m. Many people were killed this day. They found the imam in the mosque after prayers and burned him alive. They tore the Qorans and defecated on them. They are not good Moslems. In Kondoli, they killed the imam, the 2nd imam and the muezzin during prayers. The imam’s name was Abrahim Durra. In Turjo, they killed the imam outside the village. He heard they were coming and left the village. His name was el-Hajj Dahia.’

4. Some criminal elements in Darfur may in the short term benefit from the conflict. The vast majority of ‘rebels’ do not. The actions of the government you represent have destroyed their land and livelihoods, decimated their families and attacked their (and your) religion.

5. As for Ahmed Haroun and the plane incident, or non-incident, I think it would have been a mistake, for reasons not specific to Darfur, to intercept a plane carrying pilgrims to the Haj. That concern aside, good luck to the ICC—whatever mode of transport it chooses.

Kindly plough your propaganda in someone else’s furrow—not in mine. This is the second time you have picked up on something I have written and distorted it for your own purposes. It is the first time I have responded. I shall not bother to respond again.

Khalid al Mubarak is press counsellor at the Sudan Embassy in London.