At UN, Sudan Accuses France of Drafting Chadian Letter, Origin of Rebels Disputed

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/chad1sudan050809.html

UNITED NATIONS, May 8 -- As rebels seek to overthrown Chadian President Deby, who himself took power by force, Chad's Ambassador to the UN Ahmad Allam-mi wrote a letter to the Security Council requesting an emergency meeting. Friday morning as the meeting began, Sudan's Ambassador to the UN told the Press that Chad's letter was “written in the French mission.” Inner City Press asked France's Jean-Maurice Ripert for his response to the charge. “I don't even answer,” Ripert said. “I think this is an insult to the Chadian government.” Video here, from Minute 4:40.

Inside the Council, France was pushing to include in the draft Presidential Statement a line that the rebels originated from inside Sudan. On the other side, Sudan's supporters were saying this should not be included. Sudan's Ambassador asked the Press, “What about Omdurman?” He was referring to the Justice and Equality Movement's drive last year from Chad all the way to the suburbs of Khartoum.

Friday at noon, the meeting broke up, to be continued at 3 o'clock. Over a lunch with selected journalists, the French mission said that the afternoon meeting might only take place if “the experts” worked out a compromise.

But the bells rang and the meeting started Friday afternoon. Some predicted it extending to Saturday.

Monday in the Council, Russia's center piece event of the month is slated, a ministerial meeting on the Middle East. They have managed to push back discussions of the UN's report on Gaza until Tuesday, and to confine discussion of the carnage in Sri Lanka to outside the Council chamber, most likely in the basement.

The round and round fighting between Chad and The Sudan is on the Council's agenda, and can therefore give rise to day long meetings about a single phrase. We will continue to follow these issues -- watch this space.

Update of 3:51 p.m. -- a deputy Ambassador, exiting the Council, tells Inner City Press "they are going to say the rebels came from 'outside' of Chad." Another compromise...

Update of 4:14 p.m. -- a five minute break has been taken, and an old draft given to the press, with the phrase “Chadian armed groups [receiving support and coming from the other side of the border, in Sudan]. But that was “rev 3;” inside, they are already up to “Rev. 5.” The Libyans, it's said, can't go further than their instructions, and their instructors are in South Africa for the Jacob Zuma festivities. Now there's talk of Monday...

Update of 5:20 p.m. -- it's done, the Council agreed on a compromise statement “condemn[ing] the renewed military incursions in eastern Chad of Chadian armed groups, coming from outside.” Coming from where? So far, no one has come to the stakeout to explain. US Deputy Permanent Representative Alejandro Wolff has done in to speak with Russia's Vitaly Churkin, this month's Council president, presumably about the Monday meeting on the Middle East.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/chad1sudan050809.html

At UN, Indictment of Bashir Denounced by S. Africa, France Says "It's Not Too Late"

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/icc1bashir071608.html

UNITED NATIONS, July 16 -- The indictment of Sudan's president for genocide dominated discussion outside the Security Council Wednesday morning, when the peacekeeping mission in Darfur, UNAMID, was on the agenda. South Africa's Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said "we're concerned by the indictment," especially while "rebels run free without measures against them."

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's own report on UNAMID notes "child soldiers among the Justice and Equality Movement combatants in Omdurman" and claimed that "my office is pressing for the release of the children detained by the Government." The children have been held for more than two months, and it is UNICEF, if anyone, which is trying to get them released. In response to Inner City Press' last request, UNICEF provided an update about volleyballs for the child soldiers.

Ambassador Kumalo was asked, "What about Article sixteen" of the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute, which provides that the Council can by vote request a one year suspension of ICC proceedings. "I'm not that educated," Kumalo joked. He pointed to Sudan's Ambassador, who had emerged from the Security Council, and suggested that he be asked the question.

"Article sixteen itself is not enough," he said. He spoke cryptically about stopping the ICC proceeding, which he said has made Omar Al-Bashir more popular in Sudan, "by the Rome Stature or out of the books." How else could it be stopped? He said he had just finished discussions with China's Ambassador Wang, who on July 11 told Inner City Press that the move by ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo to indict Al-Bashir is not helpful.

But any resolution to suspend ICC proceeding would require the vote, or at least abstention, of the U.S., France and UK. While on July 15 U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad declined to comment on the issue, French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said of Al-Bashir, "it is not too late" to cooperate with the ICC, by turning over previous indictees Ali Kushayb and Ahmad Harun. Ocampo's charges against Bashir are not limited to non-cooperation. Is the implicit offer to suspend substantive charges of war crimes in exchange for turning in two underlings? This would turn prosecutorial strategy on its head. The assumption was that Ocampo indicted Harun to see if he would flip on Bashir. Is Bashir now being offered a suspension of proceedings against him if he'll only turn in Harun?

And see, www.innercitypress.com/icc1bashir071608.html

On Darfur, Mia Farrow Pans Ban, Calls for UN Action, Says JEM and Chad's Acts Less Important

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un1miadarfur061308.html

UNITED NATIONS, June 13 -- Last week in Darfur, next to the cafeteria in the UN's El Fasher camp, Emilia Casella of the World Food Program told Inner City Press that WFP is delivering "forty two percent less calories per day" to those displaced by violence, because its trucks are being hijacked. Seventy-six trucks have been hijacked, of which 50 are still missing. Thirty-six drivers have not been heard from since their hijacking, Ms. Casella said. She said that the Sudanese government should be protecting the trucks from "bandits."

Just around the corner but out of the media spotlight, Inner City Press was approached by a group of UN peacekeepers from the Gambia. One, giving only his first name Toure for fear of retaliation, said that they were frustrated at not being allow to go outside the camp and provide protection. His colleagues loudly agreed, one clutching a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

On June 12 in front of the Security Council chamber in New York, Inner City Press asked UN humanitarian chief John Holmes if consideration is being given to using what peacekeepers are there to protect the trucks and food, and if the Sudanese government has thrown up any obstacles to this. Holmes said it is being considered, and that Sudan is not blocking it, to his knowledge. Video here. On June 13 Inner City Press ask the UN spokesperson where this "consideration" stands, but did not get an answer. Video here.

Mia Farrow that day held a small breakfast meeting with the Press, in a hotel restaurant high across from the UN. While at times going off the record, she spoke at length around Darfur, which she compared to Rwanda, site of genocide in 1994. Inner City Press asked her, should the UN peacekeepers that are already in Darfur be protecting the WFP's trucks? Of course, she said. "They should protect every humanitarian convoy."

Inner City Press asked, "how would you assess Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's performance on the Darfur issue?"

"What performance?" Mia Farrow shot back. While she asked for off the record treatment of her assessment of, for example, U.S. envoy Richard Williamson and South Sudan president Salva Kiir, when compared to John Garang, she made no such request regarding Ban Ki-moon. "We have to demand more from the UN," she said.

One UN system official for whom Ms. Farrow had praised was International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo. She disagreed with analyses, such as by Alex de Waal, that Ocampo's indictments and statements may make peace in Darfur harder to come by. "He knows too much," Ms. Farrow said. "He's bogged down."

Similarly, when Inner City Press asked for her view of the assault on Khartoum by the Justice and Equality Movement, Ms. Farrow said that to focus on that was to miss the point. You have to step back, she said. This is a government that is killing its own people. She repeatedly opposed any "moral equivalence" between the Sudanese government and the rebels. "You want to root for the best rebels," she said, after calling JEM's attack, stopped at Omdurman, an "error" not reflective of most rebel groups.

Ms. Farrow, who is a UNICEF ambassador, confirmed that UNICEF has visited child soldiers the Sudanese captures from the JEM forces in Omdurman. She was asked, shouldn't JEM and perhaps Chad or other backers be prosecuted for recruiting child soldiers?

"I think they're all doing it," she said. She said she's "seen children in the Chadian Army not more than twelve years old."

Again she was asked whether she would support sanctions or other measures against child soldier recruiters in the Chadian or JEM side, if nothing else that to show balance, something demanded, the questioner said, by the Russians in order to support actions on Sudan.

No, Ms. Farrow said. You have to look at the reasons the rebels form. But what if Chad is funding them? To this Ms. Farrow did not answer. They will have an announcement next week, at the meeting on Darfur arranged by the U.S. Mission to the UN. Watch this site.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/un1miadarfur061308.html

In Sudan, UN Security Council Doesn't Know of Child Soldiers, Split on International Criminal Court

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press in Africa
www.innercitypress.com/unsc3khartoum060408.html

KHARTOUM, June 4 -- The Sudanese government has published the photographs of 18 children, who it says were recruited into and participated in the assault on Omdurman on May 10. The issue was raised today to the UN Security Council delegation in Khartoum by Nafie Al Nafie, advisor to President Omar Al Bashir. Afterwards Inner City Press asked UK Ambassador John Sawers, the co-head of the delegation, what the Council and the wider UN are going to do about the issue. "We don't have proof of that," he said, "but it is quite right that UN agencies... should investigate this case now."

But the case has been known for more than three weeks. On Wednesday, the UN in Khartoum offered the press, in a written flier, "the opportunity to meet and talk with a number of child soldiers arrested during the attack on the Sudanese capital."

Arguably, presentation of those captured, particularly children, would violate the Geneva Conventions. That the Sudanese government would offer up this "opportunity" is perhaps understandable. But the propriety of the UN passing along the opportunity, and arranging to accompany and presumably translate on the trip to the captive children in El Gaily, an hour from Khartoum, raises the question of whether it is possible for the UN to violate the Geneva Conventions, as a matter of customary international law.

In Omdurman, Inner City Press asked Sudanese Major Jamal, who narrated a tour including bloody uniforms and pictures of detainees, what will happen with the children. He mentioned capacity building -- a classic UN buzzword -- and rehabilitation. Only after that, he said, might the children be returned to their parents, some of whom are alleged to be in Chad.

So what other than offering tours and interviews is the UN actually doing, more than three weeks after a state in which it has not one but two large peacekeeping missions announced it captured child soldiers? We will continue to pursue this issue, including with UNICEF headquarters in New York.

Meanwhile regarding the International Criminal Court indictments, Amb. Sawers said that "a significant number of members of the Council raised their concerns" about "the absence of Sudanese government cooperation" with the ICC. "We had an unsatisfactory response" in which Nafie Al Nafie argued that because Sudan is not a party to the Court, therefore it is not responsible to cooperate. Sawers said the resolution is binding and compliance is required.

But Chinese Ambassador Liu, when asked, said that "Darfur is very complicated" and that the issues have to be addressed together in a "coherent and comprehensive way." Some took this to imply that the indictments might be traded away, as some say is happening in slow motion with Northern Uganda indictee Joseph Kony.


French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert jumped in to say that "on behalf of France, and as a member of the European Union," additional measures might be needed against those who are not cooperating with the court. Amb. Ripert heard but did not answer Inner City Press' question to the assemble Council members about Chad's involvement in the attack on Omdurman. Ambassador Sawers said there's another version that "we'll hear in N'jamena." We aim to have more on this from there.

Footnote: The Council's next stop, however, after a Wednesday night reception by the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will be El Fasher in Darfur. Regarding UNAMID's deployment, Amb. Sawers said that the commitment has been confirmed, that contingents from Nepal and Thailand will be allowed, after deployments by troops from Egypt and Ethiopia. Remembering what the Council heard from nearly all interlocutors in Djibouti, one wag suggested that if the Ethiopian troops moved or were moved from Somalia to Darfur, something might be accomplished. We'll see.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/unsc3khartoum060408.html

Sudan Trumpets Museum of May 10 Justice and Equality Movement Attack, Omdurman as Evidence for ICC Indictment of Chad

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press in Africa
www.innercitypress.com/unsc1omdurman060408.html

OMDURMAN, June 4 -- There are piles of pickup trucks with rocket launchers on the back heaped burned-out in Khalifa Square in Omdurman, a five minute drive from the Presidential Place in Khartoum. The Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, part of the "state apparatus" which the International Criminal Court says is complicit with war crimes in Darfur, has produced a 60-page picture book entitled "The Aggression of Chad government on Omdurman, 10 May 2008."

Sudanese Major Jamal told Inner City Press that the vehicles and weapons, including equipment for Katyusha rockets and even poison darts, belonged to the Justice and Equality Movement and were purchased for them by Chad. He pointed to a picture of armed fighters on a pickup in front of a mosque, which he identified as the Sheikh Dawoud Adbullah Komba Mosque in Chad. They came from Chad, he said, and they fired on mosques and stores and civilians. As the square is ringed by pictures of President Omar al-Bashir, the intended meaning of the briefing could not have been clearer: Sudan is a victim of aggression, by an outside force which itself recruits child soldiers in violations of the laws of war. Why aren't JEM and the Chadian government being indicted by the ICC?

Khalifa Square, resonating with history for example of Ali Mahdi who fought the British and others, has been turned into a theme part, a sort of Mad Max militia museum. Major Jamal first read a speech standing at a lectern in a tent, and then answered questions while giving a tour of exhibits around the three sides of the square. First there were the vehicles. The leaders of JEM, he said, drove in cars which still have roofs. Lower-level fighters were in vehicles without windows or tops, many with rocket launchers mounted on the back. He said the government captured 90-some such vehicles, out of a total of 300 or more which attacked.

How such a convoy could have driven in from Chad or Darfur without being spotted and confronted, at least with Sudan's attack helicopters, remains unclear. The exhibit makes much of the range of Sudanese forces which stopped the incursion at Omdurman. But sources tell Inner City Press that the Army was slow to react, and most of the fighting was by police and security forces, some in civilian dress but wielding sub-machine guns. Regarding who funded the attack, alongside Chad sources point the finger north, to a member of the Security Council. We will have more on this.

Major Jamal showed sacks of powder he said was sorghum flour brought by the insurgents. He showed what he said were captured identity papers, including a work permit for World Vision. He showed a uniform with a incongruously new-looking "Tchad" patch sewn on the sleeve. He showed a passport that appeared to even have an exit visa in it ("Sortie"). Given that Sudan charges $151 for a visa to visit the country, at least if one comes from New York, one of Maj. Jamal's interlocutors joked that high visa fees may have been relevant to the attack.

The exhibit includes gruesome photographs of charred bodies, blood-splattered houses, and at least 18 vacant-eyed child soldiers.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was eager to present these children to the press, but they are one hour from Khartoum, and the time proposed conflicted with a press conference by members of the UN Security Council. These members, who traveled on June 3 to Juba in South Sudan and each signed the book of condolences and tribute to fallen leader John Garang, might want to make it their business to check out Omdurman. It is not everyday that dozens of burned out war trucks are piled up in a square under a large photograph of Ban Ki-moon. We will have more on this.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/unsc1omdurman060408.html