The
Beginning of a New Term: The 20-year-old Path Of Violence,
Wars And Arrests
25 May 2010
By Abdul Rahman
Al-Rashed
Just two weeks after his so-called presidential
re-election, he ended the victory celebrations and
began the torture campaign. The most important
decision made by the re-elected Sudanese President
[Omar al Bashir] was to mount a new offensive in the
Darfur region and during the offensive, al Bashir’s
forces proudly stated that they had killed 108
insurgents and arrested the 78-year-old opposition
leader Sheikh Hassan al Turabi. This is precisely how
al Bashir began his new term in office. He proceeded
on the 20-year-old path of violence, wars and arrests
in the largest country in Africa and the Arab world.
Al Bashir won international silence regarding his
presidential win in exchange for Southern Sudan. He
pledged and signed an agreement granting Southern
Sudan the right to vote for independence in 2011. This
makes al Bashir the first ruler in the modern history
of Sudan to relinquish national soil, or rather, give
away half of the country's territory. Southern Sudan
is inevitably heading toward secession after al Bashir
agreed and signed what can be called the right to vote
for remaining under- or gaining independence from-
Khartoum. If the South votes for independence, it
would be the biggest case of secession in the Arab
world since the end of colonialism.
Al Bashir thinks that the Sudanese people will remain
silent when the time comes for Southern Sudan to
secede and declare its independence; the whole world,
not just the Sudanese people, will turn against him
and those who remained silent will cry out in protest
and pursue him. Al Bashir will eventually be tried,
not only for the appalling crimes he has committed
against the people of Darfur but also for what he has
done to Sudan as a whole.
Many people in Sudan today have chosen to remain
silent out of fear. The West gave al Bashir its
blessing because it wants to settle the problem of
Southern Sudan once and for all. This is just a
temporary period. The West knows that al Bashir will
not be president forever; somebody else will come and
take over whether through elections or a coup d'etat.
The latest elections in Sudan made the main political
parties realize that al Bashir used them as false
witnesses to a forbidden marriage, merely to justify
the secession of the south.
Al Bashir ordered the arrest of Sheikh al Turabi
because the man refuses to remain silent. Of all
Sudanese opposition leaders, al Turabi has the most
right to criticize al Bashir as he was the only
religious leader who supported him during the 1989
coup believing that al Bashir's government would come
to the rescue just as al Bashir promised. To his
disappointment, al Turabi came to discover, as years
went by, that al Bashir used him so that he could rise
to power and gain legitimacy before turning on him.
What caused al Bashir’s anger and panic was that the
Rai al Shaab newspaper, run by al Turabi's Popular
Congress Party (PCP), published a detailed feature on
the suspected cooperation between al Bashir’s regime
and the Iranian regime. Al Bashir hastened to
confiscate all issues of the newspaper available on
the market and to block access to its website. He
arrested and led al Turabi to an unknown destination,
most probably the horrific Kobar prison in Khartoum.
If al Bashir believes that others are unaware of his
dealings with the Iranians, and are unaware of the
existence of Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ camps and
of a special weapons factory in Sudan [affiliated to
the Revolutionary Guards] and covert Iranian attempts
in Khartoum to infiltrate the countries of the Arabian
Peninsula and Egypt then he is certainly mistaken. The
presence of the Revolutionary Guards in Sudan is no
longer a secret; however, it is al Bashir's
persistence in trying to hide that is inexplicable.
©
EsinIslam.Com
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