PRESS RELEASE

UNAMID Deputy Head of Mission Delivers a Peace Message to the People of Darfur: Encouraged by the Rising Winds of Peace

El Fasher, 21 September 2008 – The Principal Deputy Joint Special Representative of the African Union –United Nations Hybrid Operations in Darfur (PDJSR) Mr. Henry Anyidoho expressed optimism about attainment of peace in Darfur.

Addressing the celebration in Al Fasher of this year’s International Day of Peace which took place at the State Legislative Council Hall, Anyidoho said “I can see the wind of peace blowing in this hall this morning, and I pray that it would take us to our destination”. He added that the sweet voices of students singing for peace in Darfur were a clear testimony of the advancement on the road to peace...

...He later distributed “Peace Balls” to all the schools invited, and also rang the peace bell to make UN commitment to the ideal of world peace heard far and wide, and to remind all that peace is a common desire for people everywhere.

Next stop Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"We must face the possibility of continued turbulence and paralysis in Sudan - a political process marked by constant motion but no forward movement."

There has been lots of "motion" over the last year - everything from rebels racing across hundreds of miles of desert to attack Khartoum to peace envoys zipping across the world holding consultations and conferences. But very little, if anything, that counts as "movement".

Sudan's Catholics turn to Darfur saint

By Andrew Heavens and Skye Wheeler

KHARTOUM/JUBA (Reuters) - In a dusty church in Khartoum's Jeberona camp for displaced persons, the congregation claps and sings beneath a portrait of a smiling woman who has become a focus of hope for a divided country.

Josephine Bakhita, a former slave who died in 1947, has risen from obscurity to become the first saint from Darfur in western Sudan, a region convulsed by war for the past five years.

"I would say she was a gift from God ... an offer from God," said Bishop Daniel Adwok, the Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop of Khartoum. "She has come on time for the conflict here in Sudan."

Something similar happened with Google Earth - at the time Google said it blocked downloads in Sudan saying it couldn't distribute its software in the blacklisted country.

First Google Earth. Now Google Chrome. Sudan's geeks are going to be enraged. Could this be the move that finally brings the Khartoum regime to its knees?

All five men wore beards and traditional white gowns, and a Reuters reporter at the court saw two of them spit in the faces of two Western women journalists before walking into the building with iron shackles on their ankles.

It would have been more informative but less journalistic to say:

All five men wore beards and traditional white gowns, and I saw two of them spit in the faces of my wife and a friend before walking into the building with iron shackles on their ankles.

8.30am – Shooting begins after Sudanese forces enter camp, saying they are searching for weapons and suspects.

8.57am – Journalists receive first of many text messages from Darfur rebel Sudan Liberation Army faction left by Ahmed Abdel Shafie.

Hey, Over 100 GOS (Government of Sudan) vehicles surrounded Kalma camp this morning n prevented IDPs (internally displaced people) from leaving the camp from going on with their biz. Please call Abdelshafi 4 quick reaction.

Within the next hour other rebel groups and displaced people inside camp also phone in their updates, claiming many camp residents were killed and describing the incident as a “government attack”.

7.20pm – Reuters gets first quote from Sudanese army, saying armed camp residents started the fighting.

11.30pm – State news agency SUNA puts out first official statement about incident, denying death figures and claiming officers were fired on first.

The reason? This rather chilling article about the looming job cuts at the newspapers of Trinity Mirror Midlands in the UK.

Reporters, sorry, Multimedia Journalists (MMJs), are already struggling with bulging workloads. Their new role (should they get one) will include taking photographs, shooting video and writing directly to web pages... These new "multi-skilled" journalists spell job losses for 15 members of the papers-wide photographic team, as 39 roles turn into 24, with the shortfall of images being made up by reporters and hi-tech mobile phones...

...Four pages of "user-generated" content will be introduced in the Coventry Telegraph when the changes sweep in - an early indication of the surviving MMJs being replaced by Bob Jones of Hillfields et al.

Not so much a brave new world of journalism then, more a cut-price filler of space left by dead journalists. Something tells me those four pages of "user-generated" content are not going to be very near the front.

In fact there are a few bit parts coming up. If anybody wants to audition, get in touch via the email top right.

So, it was panic stations this morning when most of Khartoum's Arabic newspapers came out with front page stories saying that Sudan’s President Bashir had threatened to expel Darfur's UN/African Union peacekeepers. He would kick them out, said the reports, if the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against him.

The stories were based on an interview he did with Al Arabiya TV while on his recent trip to Turkey.

Here is how the UN-funded Miraya FM reported on the interview earlier today:

President Al-Bashir announced that he will ask the UNAMID peacekeeping troops in Darfur to leave the country should the ICC issue an arrest warrant against him as requested by the Court's chief persecutor Moreno Ocampo last July.

Pretty dramatic stuff.

Then somebody had a closer look at what Bashir had actually said. The interviewer asked him whether the peacekeepers would be in danger if the arrest warrant was issued. He answered:

"It's not a threat by the Sudanese government...If we refuse the forces, the secretary general of the United Nations, we'd ask them to leave, we won't target the forces, which are originally African forces."

Note the "if". It basically means, 'We are not threatening the peacekeepers. And, even if we wanted to get rid of them, we wouldn't threaten them, we would just ask them to leave.'

Not so dramatic.

So, you would expect the government to issue a denial, and get back to waiting for the ICC decision.

Except that they haven't. And now the Sudanese Media Centre, an online news service seen as very close to the government, is taking up the original "threatened expulsion" line.

President Warns to Ask Exit of UNAMID if ICC Issues Arrest Warrant
The president held sideline press conference in Istanbul stating that he would go for war if that is necessary to protect sovereignty of the state. Moreover, he said he would ask exit of UNAMID if ICC issued an arrest warrant against him.

So what is going on here? Have they just not got round to issuing a denial yet? Or was it always meant as a dark hint that they might expel the peacekeepers if the arrest warrant comes through? Or is it more a case of 'Well, we didn't say that, but it's quite a dramatic line and should shake the UN up a bit so we'll stick with it for now?' Is this what it was like covering the Kremlin back in the days of the cold war?

Who knows? And who cares? And is anyone still reading this article anyway? If you are, and you are bored to tears, I did warn you.

UPDATE

By the end of the day, the UN held a meeting to discuss its response to a threat against it that was never actually made. A classic case of a story becoming true over time.

Sudan: UNAMID in talks to assess Al-Bashir's threat to expel it
Miraya FM on 21 August - The spokesperson of the United Nations African Mission in Sudan, Nur-al-Din Al Mazni told Miraya FM that the leadership of the mission is still holding meetings to assess the situation after president Al-Bashir threatened to expel its troops from Darfur.

UPDATE 2

So at last it has happened. The misrepresentation of the original interview has become so widespread that it has now become fact. Sudan's foreign minister has just done an interview explaining Bashir's threat to expel UNAMID.

Sudanese warning on peacekeepers a "political message" - foreign minister says
Al-Ahdath on 22 August - The minister of foreign affairs, Deng Alor, has refused to describe President Umar al-Bashir's threat to expel the hybrid [AU-UN] force as a declaration of war saying it was a political message to the international community. He further pointed out that procedures for declaring war were stipulated in the constitution.

Does this mean that UNAMID will now actually have to go if the arrest warrant is issued?

Female judges to determine the fate of Sudan president
Sudan Tribune 18/08/08

...The unique aspects of Al-Bashir’s case don’t stop here. All the judges of the Pre-Trial Chamber I happen to be females consisting of Akua Kuenyehia from Ghana, Sylvia Steiner from Brazil and Anita Usacka from Latvia.

...The female factor also arises in the application by the ICC’s prosecutor against the Sudanese president. Ocampo alleged that rape in Darfur “has been committed systematically and continuously for 5 years”.

The italics are mine but might as well be theirs.

We were half way round Khartoum race course when the pick-up came racing up on the inside lane. A man was standing up in the back chatting to two veiled women sitting on the bottom of the truck.

It was only when he got closer that we saw he was carrying a shiny grey pump-action shotgun. A flock of birds scattered as the truck braked hard. Then we saw what he was really aiming at - a pack of city dogs. They sprinted off and the pick-up followed in and out of the race course lanes, along the boundary wall, then back on to the track. Every so often he cracked off a shot that echoed back off the wall. Then the driver saw another pack and he was off after them again.

It would have been different if it had been a huge national park with acres of open land to shoot around in. But this was a smallish horse racing track, hemmed in with buildings, with a football match going on in the middle and about 15 joggers doing the rounds on a Sunday night.

Another strange thing was that we were the only ones who found it strange. Every time the pick-up weaved between another set of evening strollers to fire off another volley, we were the only ones who jumped.

I've done it at least six times in the past year. (See this story from Tuesday.) And I've never had a complaint.

Then some busybody actually goes and does some measurements.

And it turns out that Darfur is actually quite a bit smaller than France.

The above busybody suggests Spain as a closer comparison. Personally, I've always been a stickler for accuracy. So, from now on, I am going to use Turkmenistan.

• France - 547,030 sq km (53,850 sq km bigger that Darfur)
• Spain - 504,782 sq km (11,602 sq km bigger than Darfur)
• Darfur - 493,180 sq km
• Turkmenistan - 488,100 sq km (5,080 sq km smaller than Darfur)

Figures from Mongabay apart from the Darfur statistic which was taken, on trust, from South of West (what do you expect - fact checking?)

So, as you do, I had a quick scan of the bookshelves.

There was a row of black folders - each of them, presumably, holding a sheaf of press cuttings. One folder was labelled 'Darfur', another 'elections', another 'comprehensive peace agreement'. And last of all was a big fat dossier labelled 'US/Israeli interference in Africa'.

It was also Sudan's second cargo plain crash in fours days. And it was the second time passengers have died in a fireball at the end of our road at Khartoum airport in three weeks.

If Sudan's air safety record wasn't so dismal, now would be the time to start forming conspiracy theories. But no one seems to be suggesting there was anything sinister behind today's accident.

An Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane carrying at least four people, all thought to be Russian, crashed seconds after taking off from Khartoum's city centre airport. One man I spoke to was driving up the runway in an airport bus as the plane took off at 7am local time. He said the left wing of the plane never lifted. Another eye-witness said it was an example of a wing stalling – something to do with a sudden change in air flow around the wing. The plane barely made it 50ft into the air before it suddenly veered to the left and came down in a "fireball".

At the scene, you didn't have to be an air crash investigator to work out what happened next. There was a big black mark on the grass one side of a dual carriageway. There was then a clear trail of smashed concrete and aircraft parts diagonally across both lanes. The plane had come in, skidded across the road, smashed into an electricity line on the other side, disintegrating as it went. It then hit an area of open land – essentially an empty city block - filled with deep trenches and hedged in by office blocks and flats. The only part of the wreckage that was recognisably a plane was about a third of its fuselage that had made it about 100 metres into the wasteland.

It was the first time I had seen a plane crash up close so soon after it happened. And the force created by such a short, low flight was devastating.

There were at least two scary 'what-ifs':

• The plane had come down in one of only a handful of empty blocks in that part of the city. A few seconds sooner or later and it could have piled into the UN headquarters, a nearby military compound, the Afra shopping centre, Sudan's top-end Rotana hotel and, more seriously, any one of scores of other blocks, heavily developed with flats and offices.
• On practically any other day of the year, that dual carriageway would have been packed with cars and trucks and taxis. Today was a public holiday so the road was empty

It was also a reminder of the perils of having a genuinely city-centre airport. AFP had the best description of an airport "located in a built-up area, sandwiched between four main roads, wealthy residential areas and close to key installations such as the UN headquarters".

I can remember feeling very impressed that when I first arrived in Khartoum, it only took five minutes to drive to our flat from the airport. Now, although we have moved about another five minutes away, that doesn’t seem like such a good selling point for our beautiful new neighbourhood.

Plans are underway to build a new international airport on the safe outskirts of Omdurman. Those are the same safe outskirts that came under attack from a band of Darfur rebels just over a month ago.

A significant military statement from slm-u

Able profiteers Liberation Movement / Army Command Unit in Darfur noon today, 08/06/2008, in sharp two twenty Greenwich Sudan and local forces across the 126 Brigade of the movement in the northern sector of the ambush of a military brigade infantry military mechanic continued for the Sudanese government and army Sudanese region between "gosa GMT" and the City "al towacha" North Darfur close to a local "um Kaddada" North Darfur.
It was defeat enemy forces represented in the Sudanese government forces completely burned and nineteen armored four-governmental payment, loaded with equipment and supplies, and some Alzacherh internationally prohibited weapons cluster bombs with high fission, as forces captured Liberation Movement / Army Command Unit on the number five Military vehicles with four-payment of a Sudanese army, and the number of battle left 157 dead amid the Sudanese army and a large number of injuries, where lie the rest of the Army forces from escaping.
As the movement has lost 7 soldiers of the Army movement.
And as we declare that we reiterate on behalf of the SLM / A leadership Unity Movement's commitment to all the ceasefire agreements signed and the protection of civilians, but in return movement will not stand idly by in case their positions transcripts of any provocation by the army of Sudan, and market movement cut leg Each would-be detracting from the sovereignty of liberated territories and under the control and sovereignty of the Army Command Unit.

Any linguists out there fancy reverse engineering that one?