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The ICC’s Sudan Warrant
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against the Sudan's president Omar al-Beshir for alleged war-crimes in Darfur.
I have not followed the process towards, but my impression is that it was manipulated by several interested groups and nations and not driven by clean judicial reasoning.
As Sudan will reject the courts demand the issue will go to the UN security council. Several of UNNSC's members do not recognize the ICC's powers for the crimes their chief of states initiated and initiate. But they will likely have the hypocrisy to pressure Sudan and to eventually interfere with violent measures.
The conflict in Darfur is between pastoral nomads and resident farmers in an area with increasing desertification. Such conflicts are natural and very hard to solve. Usually the less strong party will have to move away.
That there are significant yet unexplored oil-fields below Darfur's desert seems to be the main reason why there is an international interest in this case at all. Similar conflicts, partly with higher casualties, in Africa and elsewhere simply get ignored.
That may well be the better alternative for all people involved.
The non-governmental aid groups ordered out of Darfur by President al-Bashir on March 4 were Oxfam, CARE, MSF-Holland, Mercy Corps, Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the International Rescue Committee, Action Contre la Faim, Solidarites and CHF International.
Of course, the western media is all over the expulsion of any big ‘humanitarian’ moneymaker from Darfur—the moral outrage is so thick you can almost wipe it. The NGOs and the press that peddles their images of suffering babes complain that hundreds of thousands of innocent refugees will now be subjected to massive unassisted suffering—as opposed to the assisted suffering they previously faced—but never asks with any serious and honest zeal, why and how the displaced persons and refugees came to be displaced or homeless to begin with. Neither do they ask about all the money, intelligence sharing, deal making, and collaboration with private or governmental military agencies.
Large ‘humanitarian’ NGOs (and ‘conservation’ NGOs) operate as de facto multinational corporations revolving around massive private profits and human suffering. In places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Darfur these NGOs also provide infrastructure, logistical and intelligence collaboration that supports U.S. military and government agendas in the region. Most are aligned with big foundations, corporate sponsors and USAID—itself a close and long-time partner for interventions with AFRICOM and the Pentagon.
Refugees and displaced populations are strategic tools of statecraft and foreign policy just as ‘humanitarian’ NGOs consistently use food as a weapon and populations as human shields. The history of the U.S. covert war in South Sudan is rich with examples of the SPLA and its ‘humanitarian’ partners, especially Christian ‘charities’, committing such war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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The former Clinton officials most heavily focused on the destabilization of Sudan include: Susan Rice, Madeleine Albright, Roger Winter, Prudence Bushnell, Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, Anthony Lake and John Prendergast. Carr Center for Human Rights co-founder Samantha Power, now on the Obama National Security Council, has helped to whitewash clandestine U.S. involvement in Sudan.
John Prendergast has continued to peddle disinformation disguised as policy and human rights concerns through the International Crisis Group (ICG), and through its many clone organizations like ENOUGH, ONE and RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO. Prendergast has been a pivotal agent behind the hi-jacking of U.S. public concern and action through the disingenuous (and discredited) SAVE DARFUR movement.
Other notable agents of disinformation on Sudan include Alex de Waal and Smith College Professor Eric Reeves. It is through these and other conduits to the corporate U.S. media that the story of ‘genocide’ in Sudan is cast as an Africa-Arab affair devoid of western interests.
In 1992, human rights researchers Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal established the London-based NGO African Rights. In August 1995, African Rights published Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance, one of many pivotal ‘human rights’ reports that falsely represented events in Rwanda, set the stage for victor’s justice at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, and began the process of dehumanizing millions of Hutu people and protecting the true terrorists: Yoweri Museveni, Paul Kagame, the Rwandan Patriotic Army, and their western backers.
de waal in the democracy now discussion linked in #16
JUAN GONZALEZ: And Alex de Waal, what about the criticism raised by some that these international tribunals seem always to target weak or marginalized governments and don’t go after, for example, the Indonesian atrocities in Timor or the American atrocities in the Iraq war and its war on terror?
ALEX DE WAAL: Well, I think this is something that the International Criminal Court needs to be very careful about, because in the initial days when it was set up, African governments, African peoples were great enthusiasts for the ICC, and more than half of the nations that became the first signatories to the Rome Statute that set up the court were from Africa. Three of the first four cases were referred by Africans.
But Africa is now beginning to have serious second thoughts about the court, and the African Union is strongly objecting to this arrest warrant. And, of course, a lot of this comes down to sheer self-interest. They don’t want the court looking too closely at what they, themselves, are doing. But part of it is a sense that the court is—has double standards and that there’s a neocolonial enterprise afoot. Personally, I don’t see much evidence for that, but the perception of it, I think, is very important. And I think that if the court is really to have credibility, and particularly in Africa, it needs to do a lot more work to work to support local national processes of justice and to be much more sensitive to the demands of Africans, that it works with them rather than being seen as some sort of alien imposition from outside.
back to khs
The pivotal intelligence asset working on the ground in Sudan to destabilize and overthrow the Government of Sudan (GoS) is Roger Winter..
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Winter’s special post at the State Department was created specifically for him and his ‘work’ in Sudan. Why do Sudanese people in South Sudan call Roger Winter ‘commander’?
Roger Winter is the primary conduit for the ongoing covert destabilization of Sudan. His operations are run primarily out of Uganda, with the terrorist government of Yoweri Museveni providing support through the Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) alliance with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).
The SPLA is the de facto backbone of the Sudan Liberation Army, one of the main so-called ‘rebel’ factions involved in Darfur; the SPLA provides military and logistics support to Uganda from the Pentagon through unknown channels, but most likely involving the nearby Pentagon client states of Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Chad and Eritrea.
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Roger Winter was one of the primary architects of the RPA guerrilla war, organized from Washington in 1989, that has led to the loss of more than ten or twelve million lives in the Great Lakes of Africa since 1990. Winter acted as a spokesman for the RPF and their allies, and he appeared as a guest on major U.S. television networks such as PBS and CNN. New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch and Roger Winter made contacts on behalf of the RPA with American media, particularly the Washington Post, New York Times and Time magazine.
Roger Winter moved through Rwanda during the RPA invasion and worked the front lines of the covert war as a key Pentagon and U.S. State Department asset in collaboration with the Kagame RPA operation of terror. From 1990 to 1994, Winter traveled back and forth from the RPA controlled zone to Washington D.C., where he briefed and coordinated activities and support with U.S. military, intelligence and government officials.
Roger Winter is intimate with USAID, and a long-time ally of Susan Rice, former Assistant Secretary of State on African Affairs (1997-2001), Special Assistant to President Clinton (1995-1997), and National Security Council insider (1993-1997). Susan Rice is the Obama Administration’s Ambassador to the United Nations and staunch enemy of Omar al-Bashir.
Roger Winter is also a staunch supporter of U.S. Rep. Donald Payne, one of the leading U.S. Democrats who has pressing for action to “stop genocide” in Darfur, Sudan. Payne sponsored the Darfur Genocide Accountability Act and he was arrested in June 2001, along with John Eibner, director of Christian Solidarity International, for protesting against the GoS.
payne is also the chairman of the (apparently inactive) United States House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health (which held only a handful of hearings since the end of 2007, the last being may 6 2008)
Christian Solidarity International has a very subversive relationship to ‘peace’ and ‘religion’ in Sudan, and they have been one of the frontrunner organizations peddling the accusations of slavery by the al-Bashir government, in particular; a highly contested and controversial issue generally inflated and manipulated by fundamentalist Jewish and Christian NGOs and missionary organizations, like Christian Solidarity International, Samaritan’s Purse, Servant’s Heart, and Freedom Quest International, that operate in Sudan.
“Roger Winter was the chief logistic boss for [RPA] Tutsis as early as mid-1990,” says Ugandan human rights expert Remigius Kintu, “and until their victory in 1994 they were operating from 1717 Massachusetts Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. Roger Winter told a [name deleted] South Sudanese exile at the time [1994]: ‘I have now stabilized Rwanda and will turn my full attention to Sudan’. Winter subsequently closed up shop in Rwanda and based himself in Kampala working on Sudan. A few years later, Darfur exploded and with Winter’s manipulations, Rwanda was the first to send troops into that troubled area. From my sources, the Rwanda Defense Forces [working under the African Union umbrella] have killed civilians and brought in their media experts to pile the blame on Sudanese government troops.”
in one of the threads on the mv faina i had raised the question of whether roger winter could be traced to the weapons shipment destined for south sudan after reading
The appointment of the Former American Envoy for Sudan, Roger Winters, as advisor to GoSS was perhaps a clear signal of the direction SPLM was navigating its policy. As a major partner to political power, SPLM is aware that the American agenda has remained targeting Sudan. The appointment of Winters should have therefore been looked at as a step contrary to national interest which SPLM was mistakenly counted as a party to it, at least during this interim period.
Regrettably some other developments proved that SPLM is merely paying lip service to the slogans it has upheld to enlist the support of the masses in both South and Northern Sudan. Behind the scenes, it has cooked policies which were quite opposed to some of its political leaders rhetoric as evidenced by the scandal of the arms shipment.
Whatever mask SPLM puts on its face, Southern Sudanese in particular are not going to forgive it for spending money on armament while they are suffering the bites of hunger, displacement and refuge. To reap the fruits of peace these are their priorities now. But to Winters and the lobbies behind him, such priorities count little on their agenda.
plenty more to add, but too many obligations away from the computer tonite…
Posted by: b real | Mar 8 2009 6:23 utc | 20
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