Expecting Chad to arrest Sudan's President Bashir ignores the region's realpolitik and undermines work by African mediators

It is evident that the international criminal court will only be as effective as African countries want it to be. But does the ICC know that?

African co-operation is extremely important to the ICC, and yet its officials do not seem to take African sensibilities into account when making pronouncements about pursuing culprits. The most damnable of those indicted by the ICC in Africa, is, of course, the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir.

Bashir and his "janjaweed" marauders have committed unmentionable crimes in Darfur ?€“ and southern Sudan ?€“ that need to be punished. But without African co-operation, it can't be done. This is because realpolitik operates in Africa as much as it does anywhere else.

Just before Bashir travelled to the Sahara-Sahel summit that has been going on in Chad, the ICC drew attention to his case by adding genocide to the charges levelled against Bashir. And two of the ICC's stalwart champions in Africa, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, issued statements calling on Chad to arrest Bashir if he visited Chad.?€€

This was bad timing. Drought and other difficulties are the current concerns of many of the countries in the region, and to "obsessively" hijack their agenda and replace it with that of the ICC is hardly diplomatic.

In any case, Chad is not the only country that has signed the Rome statute that established the ICC. Sudan, too, has signed it. It has not, however, ratified the treaty it. But for argument's sake, had Sudan ratified the treaty, would it be expected that Bashir should arrest himself and hand himself in to the ICC?

Taking an attitude to inter-African relations that is purely legalistic and almost theoretical, is quite naive. Certainly, as far as Chad and Sudan are concerned, ignoring their dynamic internal political realities and calling on them to observe a "higher loyalty" to international law ?€“ in the form of the ICC treaty ?€“ is an exercise in futility.

The two countries have actually been fighting each other "by proxy" ?€“ through dissidents from each other's countries ?€“ for years.

Things came to a climax in February 2008 when thousands of fighters from the Chad dissident group, United Front for Democracy and Change (who were closely allied to the Sudanese government) fought their way into the Chad capital, N'Djamena, arriving in 300 vehicles and spreading through the city.

These dissidents laid siege to the palace of Chad's president, Idriss Déby, and took the Chadian state radio off the air. Déby's survival was only assured by the 1,400 French troops stationed in Chad, though he claimed unconvincingly that it was all the work of his own troops.

Three months later, Chad repaid Sudan the compliment by sponsoring (but denying it had done so) an attack by rebels against Sudan that rocked the suburbs of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. Sudan immediately cut off diplomatic ties with Chad. That Bashir now feels able to visit Chad is the result of patient work by African mediators, and calling on Chad to arrest Bashir, as a matter of form, is like slapping them in the face. Each flare up of conflict between the two countries and their proxies costs many lives. Do the ICC and its allies not care about that?

Indeed, the African Union (AU), taking account of the incessant bloodshed, has called on African countries not to ruin the precarious peace in the region by acceding to the ICC's call and arresting Bashir.

The climate of opinion in Africa against the ICC will worsen if the ICC calls the British supermodel Naomi Campbell to give evidence at the Hague about a diamond that Charles Taylor is alleged to have given to her.

The allegation came from the actress Mia Farrow and the ICC will be reduced to a media circus if the two women are cross-examined by each other's counsel. The none-too-placid Campbell could provide the media with a series of "expletives deleted" that would only enhance the ICC's discomfiture ?€“ in the eyes of black people, at any rate.

?€? This article was amended on 29 July 2010. In the original, the International Criminal Court was said to be trying the former Liberian leader Charles Taylor. This reference has been deleted, as his trial is at the Special Court for Sierra Leone established by the United Nations and Sierra Leone.

When Eggers met Achak Deng seven years ago neither of them could have predicted that they would end up building a school together

The sound of the generator clicking on at 9pm in Marial Bai secondary school, south Sudan, is a noise that students know well. In a region with no electricity or running water and battered by more than two decades of civil war, the three hours of generated power allow a little more time to prepare for the next morning's physics exam. The young men and women pick up their notebooks to study through the night. They are here tonight thanks to the generator, but mostly thanks to two particular friends, who value action over debate.

Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng had been in the US for a year when, in 2002, he told Mary Williams, daughter of Jane Fonda and founder of the Lost Boys Foundation, that he wanted to tell the real story of south Sudan's "Lost Boys" in a book. When she recommended the American writer Dave Eggers to assist, her logic seemed clear: Eggers had gained literary recognition through publishing a memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, that chronicled life after the death of both of his parents within a five-week period, and Valentino had not seen his parents since he was nine years old. "She said he will understand you better than any other writer," says Achak Deng.

But when Eggers and Achak Deng first met in Atlanta seven years ago, neither realised they were about to embark on a lasting friendship that would span continents, cultures and wars, and would even lead to the building of a school. 

"I went to Atlanta to meet with Val and Mary, not really expecting to undertake a four-year project," recalls Eggers, who is based in San Francisco. "But Val and I got along so well, and his story seemed so urgent, that I felt I would at least try to do it justice."   

Achak Deng was one of an estimated group of 27,000 young southern Sudanese boys who were forced to leave their homes, families and villages during the 22-year Sudanese civil war, which killed more than 2 million Sudanese and displaced 4 million more. Chased out of their villages by government-armed Arab militias from north Sudan, the unaccompanied children ?€“ largely boys ?€“ walked for months across their country. They were named "Lost Boys" by aid workers, who likened their appearance to the orphans in JM Barrie's Peter Pan.

"The connotation in the US implied that we were lost and that we didn't know anything, that we had no nation, no families, that we were unruly," says Achak Deng today, looking out over his school in the dusty terrain of Marial Bai, south Sudan. "But I never considered myself lost, not a single day, even when I would see a fellow countryman dead, I knew that I was doing something that would be tangible in the future, if I was to survive." 

Twenty-three years after the nine-year-old Achak Deng played under the bottom of his tree and saw the Northern army advance, he appears anything but lost. In fact, while Eggers immortalised his story in his 2006 best-selling novel, What Is The What, which Barack Obama advised every one of his White House aides to read, the real beneficiaries of the transatlantic friendship are the 260 Sudanese students now enrolled in their region's first functioning secondary school, built thanks to Eggers and Achak Deng.

Things have changed since 2003, when there were estimated to be only 500 remaining inhabitants in Marial Bai, and when Eggers accompanied Achak Deng on his first trip back home in 17 years. As the first "Lost Boy" to return to South Sudan, Achak Deng boarded three planes with Eggers and travelled into Marial Bai on a noisy cargo flight, packed to the rafters with bicycles, medicines and grain.

When they landed, Achak Deng was able to hug his own aged parents on the airstrip. "It made me realise I had been lucky, because although I had to go from one refugee camp to another or from one country to another, I had escaped, and many people hadn't. It helped me visualise things like this school, projects that I could build, how I could use my experience, and life and friendships in America in a way that could help transform this community." For Achak Deng, that trip was also a defining moment between him and Eggers. "He flew into Sudan at a time when westerners were not allowed to come here, so already I had seen him put himself at risk. Whatever it would take, I knew it was a point of trust then, not just a book."

While Eggers and Achak Deng always knew they would use the money from What Is The What to help rebuild Achak Deng's hometown, it was not until the pair returned to Marial Bai in 2007 that the need for a secondary school became clear. While 48% of children are now officially enrolled at primary school, only 3% attend any secondary education in south Sudan. In Northern Bahr el Ghazal state, where Marial Bai resides, only 0.3% of 14- to 17-year-olds attended secondary school last year.

"We went back to his town, after the book came out, and told the elders that there would be money coming to a new foundation, and that Val planned to build a school," explains Eggers. "Then we listened for a week or so in countless meetings. What we learned was that they needed a secondary school above all. Thus we learned a lot by listening first ?€“ something I always recommend, but which some NGOs don't necessarily do." During that trip, Achak Deng was ceded some land outside of Marial Bai's main marketplace for his school. "There was a ceremony to bless the land and the whole community came out," says Eggers.

According to the most recent census, 51% of south Sudan's population are under 17 years of age, yet there are only 10 government-run secondary schools nationwide. While Marial Bai secondary school is built out of locally made bricks, other construction materials, such as timber, iron and cement, had to be purchased in Uganda and brought over by lorries, bikes and boats. The aim was to hire local teachers, but in some states as few as 2% of teachers have had any training, making it difficult to recruit staff for the school.

Yet, for a man who spent 13 years in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, such problems were merely obstacles to be overcome. And a year ago, after 10 months' construction, the school opened its doors. Despite being 150 miles from the nearest paved road, the Marial Bai secondary school had 85 students, 12 of whom were girls, who had made it through the screening exam. They started their classes before the school was even fitted with windows and doors.

"I believe a person who spent a minute in the class is better than someone who never did," says Achak Deng. "I also believe everything is possible, and it's just the determination and faith people put in it. I know we didn't have bulldozers, or big carriers, or even professional teachers at the time, but we could not wait and wait and wait until someone else came in and decided there was a school here. No, we needed to build it ourselves."

A year on, one of the biggest challenges Achak Deng faces is encouraging families to allow their girls to attend. According to a 2006 survey, only 2.5% of women aged between 15 and 24 in south Sudan are literate, compared to 56.4% of women in the north. Girls in south Sudan are still more likely to die in childbirth than they are to finish primary school.

Yet armed with knowledge of the community, Achak Deng took to the road to make sure that more than the current 22 girls can attend his school. After visiting families all over his state, he built two female dormitories so that at least 100 women can stay at the school and be free from the responsibilities they have at home. Female students like 17-year-old Aquiliana Adhel Majok, whose mother sent her to be educated in Kenya during the war. Aquiliana is happy to be one of the first girls to board at the school.

"This is the best school in south Sudan and we are all very, very proud to be here," says Aquiliana, who returned to Marial Bai last year from Kenya. "In Sudan, so many girls used to go to primary school, but then they give up, get married, and stay at home. Whenever other girls see us female students in uniform at the market, they wish they could go to secondary school as well, so they could learn."

For Eggers, the school in Sudan is "a life-changing thing". Reflecting on its first year, he says: "Before it was built, there were few options for those who graduated from primary schools. And there were almost no opportunities at all for young girls. But now students are coming from hundreds of miles around to attend the school, and this is an essential development to the rebuilding of south Sudan."

Citing his friend's "single-mindedness" as crucial to the school's success, he adds: "We see things in a very similar way, and that is why we've been close partners for so long. I think it comes down to the fact that both of us are more bricks-and-mortar people than theory people. We didn't spend years designing the school in the US, with theories and abstract ideas. We agreed that the better idea would be to focus on what the people of Marial Bai needed, and then get started right away."

Now, with three Kenyan teachers and five Sudanese teachers, who have returned home after a decade of displacement, Marial Bai secondary school is attracting praise from across the country. Just five months before the planned referendum on south Sudan's independence from the north, the government of south Sudan has already expressed an interest in Achak Deng taking on a more national role.

While Marial Bai is still in desperate need of funding, Eggers is certain that it will succeed. He has promised to help Achak Deng "whenever or wherever he needs me". But, he adds: "I don't think he needs me very often. I think with his knowledge and his ability to get things done, there's no limit to the impact he can have in south Sudan."

The school's website is at ValentinoAchakDeng.org

To order a copy of What is the What for £8.99 with free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846

By increasing business with Sudan, the UK would be rewarding a country whose head of state is still wanted for war crimes

The new UK government has made it clear that an important priority of its foreign policy will be to promote British trade and investment abroad. But recent remarks in Sudan by the Africa minister, Henry Bellingham, raise concerns that, by blindly pursuing commercial interests, the UK runs the risk of undermining international efforts to protect human rights and promote justice for serious abuses.

Trade is not only generally good for Britain. It can also benefit the UK's trading partners, because in the right circumstances trade stimulates wealth and economic development, which in turn can support another objective of UK foreign policy ?€“ poverty reduction. But trade with countries that are run by abusive and corrupt governments does not necessarily benefit the people of those countries. By consolidating the wealth and centralising the power of repressive leaders, trade can perpetuate and entrench the abuse and impunity that impede democratisation and development.

Sudan is a good example. Over the past 15 years, research by Human Rights Watch and others has shown how exploitation of Sudan's oil resources has fomented armed conflict and serious human rights abuses. In the late 1990s, an international outcry against abuses tied to the development of oil resources led to the withdrawal of Talisman Energy from a lucrative oil project in Sudan, and to the United States further extending a broad range of sanctions on Sudan.

Since then the ruling National Congress party has consolidated its domination of most industrial and commercial interests. Some of its development and industrial projects, such as the dam construction projects that led to forced displacements in northern Sudan, have clear human rights implications. There is little to indicate that Sudan's oil bonanza has been used for the benefit of Sudan's people.

Furthermore, the government has committed horrendous abuses against civilians in the course of its military operations against rebels in Darfur. In 2005 the United Nations security council ?€“ of which the UK is a permanent member ?€“ referred Sudan to the international criminal court (ICC) with the aim of achieving justice for the crimes committed in Darfur. But five years later the Sudanese government continues to thumb its nose at the court, which has issued an arrest warrant against the Sudanese president, a current governor in Sudan and a militia leader for atrocities committed in Darfur.

In 2007, the Bush administration broadened its sanctions against Sudan, and those sanctions remain in place. In contrast, during his visit to Sudan in July, Bellingham suggested that the UK was now looking to balance human rights concerns with a desire to increase business with Sudan.

"We feel the government of Sudan should co-operate with the court on the existing arrest warrants," Bellingham said. "But on the other hand we don't have an argument with the Sudanese people and it would quite perverse and wrong for us to not encourage trade because trade equals wealth."

Of course the UK should not seek to punish the Sudanese people simply because President Omar al-Bashir and others are wanted by the ICC. But is it right or sensible, even in the current straitened economic circumstances, for the UK to make a deliberate push to advance business ties with a country whose head of state is wanted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide? Given the economic and political realities in Sudan, such an effort is more likely to line the pockets of leaders implicated in rights violations than to benefit ordinary people in Sudan.

The UK government needs to think carefully about the message it is sending to the Sudanese government. Bashir and his cronies will take a lot of comfort from the fact that the UK, hitherto one of the staunchest supporters of the ICC, is now calling for increased commercial ties with Sudan. Khartoum will be especially gratified because the UN security council has also failed to respond to a decision by ICC judges last May that Sudan is in clear violation of its obligation to co-operate with the court.

Britain should explain what kind of business it wants to pursue in Sudan and what kind of guarantees it has in place to ensure that increased trade there will not benefit war criminals. The UK should also spell out its plans to increase pressure on Sudan to co-operate with the ICC. Unless the UK can be clear on these points, it will be hard to avoid the conclusion that by pushing for greater trading ties with Sudan, the UK is tolerating, perhaps even rewarding, those who are evading justice for heinous crimes.

If the UK is seeking to boost its trading ties with Sudan, which country is next on its list? Zimbabwe? Burma? North Korea? Iran? They are looking for trade and investment, too.

Security forces' tactics only prove the weakness of governments and show the people's will has still not been suppressed

The Sudanese National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) is carrying out "a brutal campaign of arbitrary detentions, torture and mental and physical intimidation against opponents and critics of the government", Amnesty International said in a report last month.

For anyone who imagines that the amn (security forces) ?€“ who were a ubiquitous part of life in Khartoum in the years after the 1989 military coup ?€“ have been scaled down now that the government has established itself more firmly, this report, with its harrowing details of kidnappings and incarcerations in "ghost houses", comes as a stark reminder that the campaign of intimidation continues.

The NISS, the report says:

"Retains the core functions it had in the first few years following the 1989 coup. More than 20 years later, the NISS still dominates many areas of life in Sudan and benefits from extensive powers of arrest and detention under the national security acts of 1999 and 2010."

Its activity peaks during times of political instability or turbulence. Arbitrary arrests are often more a litmus test of the government's sense of insecurity at the time, as opposed to a sign that there has been any increased activity (even of a non-political nature). In June, doctors in Khartoum were attacked during a peaceful gathering to protest over pay and work conditions. Public order laws are invoked to encompass everything from what is deemed to be socially inappropriate (see Lubna Hussein's trousers and recent arrests of fashion-show organisers) to what is perceived to be a security threat.

Extra-military bodies of this kind also abound in other Arab countries in different guises. Their legal standing is always ambiguous, since they are not necessarily a part of the local or national police force, nor the military, but a hybrid that has fewer restrictions and more impunity. The amn, or mukhabarat (intelligence), cover everything from public order to national security.

Like Napoleon's dogs in Animal Farm, the glorified thugs that form the lower ranks patrol neighbourhoods and arbitrarily persecute and impound sometimes on a whim, and other times with strict instructions from above. Their mandate is so generous, their remit so unregulated that incidents of abuse are common, with members acting out their own personal agenda.

Not only ambiguous in nature, they are abundant in number, with only slightly varying job descriptions. The state is so bloated, and there are so many different types of security concerns, that these bodies develop to handle them on an ad hoc basis and then flourish. It's a scattergun approach. Anything from the publication of a book of poems to student union elections can be seen as a threat to the government.

They range from the official formal outfits such as the powerful and omnipresent mukhabarat in Egypt and Jordan, to the more makeshift organisations such as the mutawwa (the "volunteers" of the religious police in Saudi Arabia) who haul errant members of the public into trucks for misdemeanours as minor as flamboyant haircuts.

In Egypt, in a resourceful example of security outsourcing, local men masquerading as concerned citizens in inner city neighbourhoods are recruited to snoop, spy and sometimes aggressively quash agitators.

It is no wonder then that confusion reigns. In Yemen last month, a journalist was abducted in the street by armed men and the police began an investigation. Amid speculation that he had been kidnapped by a local tribe with al-Qaida connections, it emerged that he had, in fact, been snatched by the government's political security organisation, who had not bothered to inform the police.

Due to the huge gulf between government and citizens, these security services play a vital role in maintaining the status quo. Indeed, during the few times of political transition in the Arab world (usually due to the death of a monarch or president), where there has been a fleeting vacuum of power, they have stepped in to ensure that the fabric of governance is not rent asunder.

Their role in the meantime is not only to suppress rebellion, but to pre-empt it, by identifying and stifling any intellectual or social activity that, on appearance, may be benign but in a climate of totalitarian control might be the spark that lights the flame of change. By default, anything could open the floodgates: the tiniest crack in the security stronghold might compromise the whole structure as the magnitude of repressed tensions and grievances comes crashing down.

If anything, the omnipresence of security forces in the Arab world does not prove the might of governments, but their weakness. Far from being a depressing phenomenon, it is an indication that the will of the people, even after all these years of targeted crackdowns, is still not suppressed. As long as an uneasy "security" is imposed from above, the agents of fear cannot afford to rest easy.

SOMEONE once said 17 years is the average life of a refugee camp. Not sure if it is true. Kalma camp in South Darfur, western Sudan, is already at least 6 years old. Plans are underway for it to be relocated within South Darfur to Bileel area and southern areas of Nyala to create two new camps, each housing 25,000 - 30,000 IDPs, provided with all basic services. The area of each residence will be 150 - 200 square meters.

More at Blogrunner »

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YESTERDAY [Monday, 23 August 2010], after nearly five days, fighting between the Misseriya and Rizeigat tribes reportedly continued in the Kass region, located approximately 90 kilometers northwest of Nyala, South Darfur. Mediation efforts were attempted by the Deputy Wali (Governor) of South Darfur over the weekend. A UNAMID verification mission is underway to provide an assessment on the situation, including the number of casualties.

Gunshots were heard last night [Monday, 23 August 2010] in one sector of the Kalma internally displaced person (IDP) camp, located on the outskirts of Nyala, South Darfur. A UNAMID patrol immediately proceeded in the direction of the shooting. At the site, four RPGs were found, as well as more than 100 spent cartridges.

A UNAMID verification patrol is scheduled today [Tuesday, 24 August 2010] in the Kass region, located approximately 90 kilometers northwest of Nyala, South Darfur. The exact number of casualties following inter-tribal fighting remains unknown, as only the Misseriya tribe has declared their figures, while Rizeigat casualty figures remain unconfirmed.

A committee has been established at the state level to resolve the renewed conflict between Misseriya and Rizeigat tribes which began on Monday 16 August 2010. The body has since met with the leaders of the two groups and presented them with recommendations to cease the fighting.

UNAMID continues to conduct day and night confidence building patrols within the Kalma IDP camp. Access continues to be granted to humanitarian NGOs for entry into Kalma by the Humanitarian Aid Commission. No new population movements within and out of the camp have been reported. Submersible pumps in the most populated parts of Kalma continue to function.

UNAMID military forces conducted 78 patrols including routine, short-range, long-range, night and humanitarian escort patrols covering 63 villages and IDP camps. UNAMID police advisors conducted 116 patrols in villages and IDP camps.

West Darfur
Yesterday [Monday, 23 August 2010] UNAMID Joint Special Representative, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, concluded a two-day visit to El Geneina and Zalingei, West Darfur where he met with Mission personnel, UN Agencies and the humanitarian community. He was briefed on the security and humanitarian situation in the respective area.

The visit included meetings with local government officials and security committee members, during which he reiterated his call to the government to apprehend those committing criminal acts against UNAMID peacekeepers. Government officials reassured the Mission and international aid workers of their commitment to safety and security. The JSR further stressed the need for UNAMID to adopt more robust patrols in and around the IDP camps.

Professor Gambari also visited Mournei (IDP) camp located about 48 kilometers south of El Geneina.

UNAMID?€™s new Police Commissioner takes up duties
Mr. James Oppong Boanuh of Ghana arrived at the Mission?€™s headquarters in El Fasher, North Darfur, this week to take up his duties as UNAMID?€™s Police Commissioner. He succeeds Mr. Micheal Fryer of South Africa who left in April after serving since the Mission?€™s inception in January 2008.

Ghana is currently the largest police contributing country to UNAMID with a total of 500 police officers.

Senegal adds to Formed Police Units
Yesterday [Monday, 23 August 2010] UNAMID received its second Senegalese Formed Police Unit (FPUs). The units, consisting of 140 personnel, will be deployed in El Geneina, West Darfur. The new arrivals, brings the total number of FPU officers in the Mission to 1,959.

SOURCES: