Al-Bashir: The splitting of Africa’s largest country

 PAUL ARHEWE 14/07/2011

Sudan’s President al-Bashir addresses the parliament in Khartoum on Tuesday Last week Saturday the long awaited secession of Sudan was finally conducted as South Sudan becomes Africa’s newest country. The man in the middle of the storm, while this North African country civil war and internal crisis lasted, is President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir. President al-Bashir on Tuesday announced austerity measures for Sudan and proposed to change the country’s currency after Africa’s newest country, South Sudan, had announced same measure the previous day.

Background

Al-Bashir was born 1 January, 1944 in Hosh bannaga in Khartoum. He hails from Al-Bedairya Al-Dahmashya, a clan of the larger ja’alin tribe, a Nubian tribe in north of Sudan, then part of the Kingdom of Egypt and Sudan. He received his primary education there, and his family later moved to Khartoum where he completed his secondary education. Al-Bashir is married to his cousin Fatima Khalid. He also has a second wife named Widad Babiker Omer, who had a number of children with her first husband Ibrahim Shamsaddin, a member of the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation who had died in a helicopter crash. Al-Bashir does not have any children of his own.

Military career

Al-Bashir joined the Sudanese Army in 1960. He studied at the Egyptian Military Academy in Cairo and also graduated from the Sudan Military Academy in Khartoum in 1966; where he quickly rose through the ranks and became a paratroop officer. He was sent in 1975 to the United Arab Emirates as the Sudanese military attaché. He became a garrison commander after his return home. In 1981, he returned to his paratroops’ background when he became the commander of an armoured parachute brigade. Later, al-Bashir served in the Egyptian Army during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 against Israel. Al-Bashir was 42 years when he seized power in a sudden military coup on 30 June, 1989 from the democratically elected government of Sadeq al-Mahdi.

Governance

On 16 October 1993, al- Bashir’s powers increased when he appointed himself President of the country, after which he disbanded the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation and all other rival political parties. The executive and legislative powers of the council were later given to al-Bashir completely. In the early 1990s, his administration gave the green light to float a new currency called Sudanese Dinar to replace the battered old Sudanese Pound that had lost 90 percent of its worth during the turbulent 1980s. He was later elected president (with a five-year term) in the 1996 national election, where he was the only candidate by law to run for election[18] and Hassan al-Turabi was elected to a seat in the National Assembly where he served as speaker of the National Assembly “during the 1990s.”

Al-Bashir and the Presidential Committee put into effect a new constitution in 1998, allowing limited political associations in opposition to his National Congress Party and his supporters to be formed, although these groups failed to gain any significant access to governmental power until the Darfur conflict became a subject. On 12 December 1999, he sent troops and tanks against parliament and ousted Hassan al-Turabi, the speaker of parliament, in a palace coup. However, despite receiving international criticism regarding internal conflicts, Omar al-Bashir has managed to achieve economic growth in Sudan. This is partly because of the drilling and trading with oil from Southern Sudan.

Civil war and Darfur crisis

Civil war had raged between the northern and southern halves of the former Sudan, which lasted for over 19 years between the northern Arab tribes and native southern African tribes, but the war soon effectively developed into a struggle between the Sudan People’s Liberation Army and al-Bashir’s government. The Dafur crisis is believed to be an ethnic, rather than a religious war. The ethnic cleansing towards the non-Afro-Arab population by the Janjaweed (literally “devils on horseback”) The Sudanese government has been accused of suppressing information by jailing and killing witnesses since 2004, and tampering with evidence, such as covering up mass graves. The Sudanese government has also arrested and harassed journalists, thus limiting the extent of press coverage of the situation in Darfur. While the United States government has described the conflict as genocide, the UN has not recognized the conflict as such. In March 2007 the UN mission accused Bashir’s government of orchestrating and taking part in “gross violations” in Darfur and called for urgent international action to protect civilians there. After fighting stopped in July and August, on 31 August 2006, the United Nations Security Council approved Resolution 1706 which called for a new 20,600-troop UN peacekeeping force called UNAMID to supplant or supplement a poorly funded and ill-equipped 7,000-troop African Union Mission in Sudan peacekeeping Al-Bashir force. Sudan strongly objected to the resolution and said that it would see the UN forces in the region as foreign invaders. The next day, the Sudanese military launched a major offensive in the region.
ICC arrest warrant
Al-Bashir became the first sitting head of state that was issued an arrest warrant in 14 July, 2008 by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The warrant for his arrest was based on the civil war genocide where tens of thousands of people were killed. Luis Moreno Ocampo alleged that al-Bashir bore individual criminal responsibility for genocide crimes against humanity and war crimes committed since 2003 in Darfur. The former Sudan, before the South secession last week was a country divided between mostly Muslim Arabs in the north and Christian or animist black Africans in the south. The southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) launched its drive for secular democracy and selfdetermination in 1983. Since then, the Government (even before al-Bashir became leader) has conducted an all-out war against southern dissidents.
The United Nations put the death toll at 300,000 and about 2.7 million internally displaced as a result of fighting between government forces and their Janjaweed militia allies and the separatist rebel groups in Darfur that peaked in 2003 and 2004. Sudan’s government estimates is at pegged about 10,000 people died and about 70,000 displaced. Since, the issuance of ICC’s arrest warrant, al-Bashir has visited several countries such as Eritrea, Egypt, Libya and Qatar, all of which are non-signatory of ICC treaty. He also visited Kenya who decided not to arrest him, even though the country is a member signatory of the ICC treaty. In April, this year President Omar al-Bashir admits for the first time in an interview with a foreign media that he accepts full personal responsibility for the conflict in Darfur that left tens of thousands of people dead. But in an exclusive interview with the Guardian, his first with a western news organisation since he was charged with genocide by the ICC, Bashir accuses the UN-backed court of “double standards” and conducting a “campaign of lies”.



Recently, the Libyan embattled president Muammar Gaddafi was also issued a arrest warrant by ICC over the human right abuse and war crime against his people since the revolution to oust him began since March this year.