Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir made public his disdain for international involvement yesterday by appointing Musa Hilal special adviser to Sudan’s Ministry of Federal Affairs. So who is Musa Hilal, and why did his appointment elicit this reaction from the US State Department?
An answer from the International Herald Tribune:
As chieftain of a clan belonging to a powerful tribe of nomadic Arabs in Darfur, Hilal bears responsibility for the razing of African villages, the killing of villagers, the raping of women and girls and the displacement of 2.5 million people into refugee camps. For these crimes against humanity, the UN Security Council imposed travel and financial sanctions on Hilal and three other militia leaders in April 2006.
When Sudan officials claim the Janjaweed were acting on their own, or that Hilal has “contributed to stability and security,” as President Omar al-Bashir declared Monday, they are contradicting what Hilal himself has acknowledged. In an interview in 2004 with Human Rights Watch, he said he always acted under orders from the Sudan government.
Since February 2003, Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir has been funding Hilal’s Janjaweed. We’ve been seeing it, hearing about it, reading about it, petitioning against it, and joining facebook groups about it - almost everything short of actually doing something about it.
With the Coalition for International Justice figure currently standing at 400,000 dead and 2.5 million homeless, Darfur remains the most pressing issue of our time. The reason why it usurps North Korea, and Iran is that the mass murder of human beings is more important than ICBMs in concrete bunkers. Iran and the DPRK’s nuclear weapons are a real and pressing threat, but one that can be addressed through diplomacy, tact, and sanctions. In Sudan, we need troops.
After United Nations Security Council Resolution 1769 was passed on 31 July 2007, 26,000 UN/AU troops were sent to Darfur and it finally seemed that things were changing. The media moved on to the U.S. presidential elections, and as troops began to arrive in Darfur, the Janjaweed and Baggara influence began to fade slightly.
Nevertheless, the 8 January 2008 Sudanese army attack on a UN/AU convoy, and the Hilal appointment demonstrate Khartoum’s total unwillingness to allow international intervention in Darfur. So far I have avoided calling it ‘genocide’ because the United Nations, African Union, Amnesty, and Médecins sans Frontières refuse to call it genocide. Their excuse is that there does not appear to be genocidal intent. However, what is happening in Darfur is unbridled chaos. It is rape. It is mass slaughter into the hundreds of thousands. It is a humanitarian catastrophe. It is genocide.