The Brutal Reign of Omar al-Bashir

Olivia Mattsson Clarke

Explicit Content: contains account of genocide, murder and rape

Many of us have been reading stories about recent events happening in Darfour, Sudan, and maybe have vague memories of hearing about civil wars in the country - but I find myself wondering about the bigger story. What is happening now, and what led to it happening? These questions led me to decide to write this three-article series about Sudan that will be published in the coming weeks. This first article will cover the reign of President Omar Al-Bashir, who ruled the country with an iron fist for 30 years, including his involvement in the ethnically targeted cleansing in Darfur, with the resulting convictions from the International Criminal Court (ICC). The next articles will investigate how Omar al Bashir was toppled from his reign and the ongoing situation in Darfur.

Genocide in Darfur

Preceding the genocide in Darfur, a civil war had been raging between North and South Sudan for two decades. North Sudan consisted predominantly of Muslim Arabs, while Christians and Aminists lived in the South. Omar al-Bashir wished the government of the country to be based on Islamic ideology, and since the people of the South did not agree with this, a civil war broke out. In 2005, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement ended the civil war. In the lead-up to this, chaos erupted in Darfur, which is situated in the Western part of the country. Rebels in Darfur sought the same kind of benefits as the South was gaining from the peace agreement, and attacked a government outpost in 2003. The government reacted by brutally suppressing the rebel movement. 

Darfur’s population was mostly Muslim, but there were ethnic differences; the Arabs tended to be nomadic herders, and African groups were pastoralists, which are sheep or cattle farmers. The government took advantage of these differences through supplying Arab militia groups, known as the ‘Janjaweed,’ with arms. The government would stage attacks in Darfur from the air, and the Janjaweed would perform so-called ‘scorched earth campaigns,’ where villages were burned and wells poisoned. Nearly 400 000 people were killed, women were raped systematically and millions of people were displaced from their homes. During 2003 and 2004, there were two government offensives against the rebels: August-December 2003 and February-March 2004. In 2004, the Government of the United States recognized these events as being a genocide, basing this off of the UN Genocide Convention.

One aspect of this genocide I would like to shed light on is the prison camp known as Kailek, run by the Janjaweed and certain areas of the police force. It housed people who had been displaced by the conflict. The prisoners of this camp were treated in horrifically brutal ways.  Witness accounts recall terrible things, so these following events are just a few examples. Men often got their hands tied together and were then tied to a camel on the other end, who was then beaten to make it gallop, dragging the man after it. Men were also often murdered by gunshot or stabbing in front of their families. Children were thrown into fires, and women and girls were frequently raped. The Janjaweed militia and the police were in full control of the prison camp; this includes controlling access to basic, essential commodities such as water and food. When UN workers were allowed to visit the region in late April 2004, news of the horrors spread to the world. Many children in the camp were suffering from extreme malnutrition, and surrounding African villages had been almost completely destroyed and left deserted. Arab villages in the area were still well-populated and functioning. Shortly after April 2004, relief agencies could move the inmates from the Kailek prison camp to other places with at least improved security and relief conditions. 

Convictions by the International Criminal Court

Former President Omar al-Bashir is the first sitting president to be indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC). He has, however, not been brought to justice despite warrants for his arrest being issued in 2009 and 2010. The court ruled al-Bashir was guilty of: “five counts of crimes against humanity: murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture, and rape; two counts of war crimes: intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking part in hostilities, and pillaging; three counts of genocide: by killing, by causing serious bodily or mental harm, and by deliberately inflicting on each target group conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction, allegedly committed at least between 2003 and 2008 in Darfur, Sudan”

The question that sprung to my mind upon researching al-Bashir’s charges was why he had not been arrested; it seems to me that due to the ICC not having any legal jurisdiction over individual countries and not having a police force, it is reliant on the co-operation of its member states to hand over people charged with crimes by the ICC. Al-Bashir has made several visits to countries that are members of the Rome statute which is the foundation of the ICC, but has not been arrested. If a guilty man can walk free, charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide, does justice truly exist?