June 30, 2007
King crocodile dies
Earlier this week, Majzoub al-Khalifa, the Sudanese government's chief adviser on Darfur, died in a car crash in the north of the country.
By all accounts, he was quite an imposing figure.
Known for his gruff manner, he was energetic, large of stature and said to be one of [President Omer Al-Bashir's] close inner circle. Sometimes called a "thug" by his critics, he was blunt and to the point in his diplomatic dealingswas how Reuters put it.
He is large and intimidating, a relentless and exhausting adversary. Earlier in his career he led pay negotiations on behalf of the doctors' union, and it was easy to imagine him wearing down health ministry officials with his meticulously researched arguments, his intimidating interruptions and his insistence that any compromise was ‘not acceptable, at all, at all'. Majzoub had files on every member of every delegation; every piece of gossip reached his ears. His underlings swarmed around him as though he were a king crocodile, and his mirthless smile and black gimlet eyes were faintly reptilian.
was how Alex de Waal described him in his excellent LRB article on the Darfur peace negotiations.
When a man like that dies in a car crash, thoughts automatically turn to conspiracy theory. If this had happened to a similarly powerful figure in rumour-loving Ethiopia, people would already be talking about his assassination as a matter of established fact. How, after all, could such a controversial figure be killed by accident?
I don't know enough about the Sudanese scene yet to know what people are saying in private. All I can say is that my tiny collection of well informed 'sources' seem satisfied with the accident explanation. When you see the driving here in Khartoum - as chaotic as Addis Ababa but ten times faster - you can perhaps understand why.
Posted by aheavens at June 30, 2007 6:06 AM