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SUDAN: Rights Group Seeks Sanctions Against Top Officials

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 12 2005 (IPS) - Amid growing frustration over the continuing violence against the African population in Darfur, a major U.S. human rights group called Monday for the imposition of diplomatic and other sanctions against Sudanese President Omar El Bashir and other senior Khartoum officials for their role in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The appeal by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) to the U.N. Security Council came in the form of an 83-page report, “Entrenching Impunity: Government Responsibility for International Crimes in Darfur”, that detailed the relationship of more than a dozen senior officials both to the government-backed Arab militias (Janjaweed), which have carried out most of the violence, and Khartoum’s armed forces.

“Nine months ago, the (U.N.) Security Council set up a Sanctions Committee to penalise individuals responsible for abuses in Darfur, but it has yet to act against anyone,” said Peter Takirambudde, HRW’s Africa director. “If the Security Council wants to see real progress in Darfur, it must act now.”

The report came on the eve of a series of reports to the Council on the Darfur situation that are scheduled this month, including one by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which was mandated by the Council earlier this year to investigate allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It was immediately rejected by the Sudanese government. “This report is highly politicised,” a foreign ministry spokesman in Khartoum said Monday afternoon. “This report is ridiculous; it is baseless; it depends on the propaganda and campaigns of the rebel groups.”

The report also comes amid growing calls to “re-hat” the nearly 7,000-troop African Union (AU) monitoring force (AMIS) in Sudan’s westernmost region as a U.N. peacekeeping operation with a stronger mandate to protect civilians against attacks and take armed action in order to fulfill that mission.

As many as 400,000 people – the vast majority of whom were members of several African ethnicities – are believed to have died since early 2003 when the government, which has armed and equipped the Janjaweed, launched a massive, scorched-earth counter-insurgency campaign against two rebel groups in the region. The violence has also displaced an estimated two million people.

While HRW and some other rights groups have described the violence as “ethnic cleansing”, U.S. President George W. Bush, as well as the U.S. Congress and other non-governmental groups, has referred to it as “genocide”.

Despite the implications of the word, however, the Bush administration has disappointed rights and Africa activists by not pushing the U.N. Security Council to take a more aggressive approach against Khartoum. Administration officials have said they are limited in what they can do amid fears that China, which has major oil investments in Sudan, and Russia, a major arms supplier, will veto stronger measures.

But some activists claim that the administration has decided that other U.S. interests in Sudan could be sacrificed if it pushes for tougher sanctions against Khartoum. “The U.S. is placing more importance on collaboration with Sudan in the so-called war on terror than on stopping genocide,” charged Salih Booker, director of Africa Action, a grassroots lobby group.

In fact, one of the top leaders named by the HRW report as responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Gen. Salah Abdallah Ghosh, the director of security and military intelligence, was flown here secretly last spring courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for talks with his U.S. counterparts.

Nonetheless, Khartoum’s defiance of U.S. and U.N. demands to stop the violence, disarm the Janjaweed, and facilitate the return of the displaced to their homes and assure their protection has clearly spurred frustration both here and at U.N. headquarters.

The result, according to Booker, is a growing consensus among activist groups, Africa specialists, such as those in the influential Council on Foreign Relations, and within the administration for beefing up AMIS with a stronger mandate and transforming it into a U.N. force with more firepower.

Earlier this month, the U.N. sent a joint mission of U.S., European Union (EU), and U.N. specialists to assess the situation and make recommendations, while NATO leaders have discussed constituting a “bridging” force that could bolster AMIS until a bigger U.N. force could be fully deployed to the France-sized region.

Thus far, however, the AU, which has been unable to supply the full complement of 12,000 troops for AMIS that was authorised by the Security Council, has not made such a request. With Khartoum scheduled to host the AU summit next month and the possibility that Bashir may replace Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo as AU president, there is growing concern that without a more aggressive push by the U.S. and its NATO allies, the “re-hatting” option may become more difficult.

“Having the AU summit in Khartoum is bad enough, but giving President Bashir – who should be investigated for war crimes – the AU chair would be a travesty,” said Takirambudde.

Based on Sudanese government documents, hundreds of interviews with eyewitnesses, and media and other secondary sources, the new report argues that Bashir and other senior government officials, regional administration officials, military commanders, and militia chiefs should be investigated for war crimes and crimes against humanity, either as a matter of criminal responsibility or command responsibility.

It details the process, replicated across Darfur, in which militia leaders collaborated with regional administrators and military commanders to coordinate and carry out attacks on rural villages and towns where civilians were explicit targets. One former soldier cited in the report told HRW that when he protested to his commander he was told, “You have to attack the civilians.”

Both troops and militia members, according to the report, were told in advance of such attacks by officials and military commanders that they would be permitted to take land, livestock, and other civilian property.

The report also charges that Khartoum has repeatedly defied the U.N.’s demand that it disarm the militias. Instead, the government has “incorporated them into security, police and military forces”, and that it “continues to implement policies that permit continuing attacks on civilians, and perpetuate a climate of fear and intimidation through structural and institutional abuse”.

The government has failed to follow through on repeated pledges to prosecute those responsible for attacks. “Despite several initiatives, including a national inquiry into the crimes, numerous committees established to investigate rape and other crimes, and a national tribunal to try the perpetrators of crimes in Darfur, not a single mid- or high-level civilian official, military commander or militia leader has been suspended from duty, investigated or prosecuted,” HRW said.