From bad to worse in Sudan. From the Daily Star via KurdishMedia.com, with thanks to Andy:
The appointment, a month ago, of Interior Minister General Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein as Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s special representative in Darfur passed without comment outside Sudan. This was a mistake, especially at a time when the Sudanese government was coming under pressure to take meaningful action to halt the destruction of Darfur by the country’s armed forces and its proxy Janjaweed militia.
Although Hussein was never in the public eye in the same way as other regime figures, his hard-line credentials are right up there with the best of them – “shadow head” of the army at the time of the 1989 coup that brought the National Islamic Front to power; after the coup, secretary to the Revolution Command Council that suspended the 1985 constitution, abrogated press freedom, disbanded all political parties and trade unions, and endorsed ethnic militias as a weapon of war. …
With the Hussein plan, if it is implemented, the government of Sudan would complete its redrawing of the ethnic map of Darfur. African farmers burned out of the countryside by the army and the Janjaweed would be herded into unnatural concentrations where they would exist as a slave underclass under permanent threat of arms. Reports from inside Darfur already indicate that Arabs from Sudan and neighboring countries are being moved into areas that have been emptied of their original, African inhabitants. …
Hussein’s resettlement plan drew no immediate criticism. It was par for the course in a week in which Annan and US Secretary of State Colin Powell both visited Sudan and refrained from publicly condemning an array of abuses they themselves witnessed – shots fired at students trying to deliver a petition on Darfur; whips used against civilians seeking Powell’s ear in one displaced camp, the forcible evacuation of another on the eve of a visit by Annan. …
The US has given Khartoum a list of Janjaweed leaders it believes are responsible for war crimes. Without immediate, significant action to disarm and withdraw the Janjaweed, Washington should follow up with a list of government leaders – most importantly, those behind the country’s militia policy and military intelligence. At the UN, it must twist arms, expend diplomatic capital, do whatever it takes to get support for measures including investigations into war crimes, the deployment of an international monitoring and protection force, a ban on arms sales to Sudan and sanctions on Sudan’s oil exports.
What we have seen so far has been little more than a game of bluff. And Khartoum has yet to blink.