The Bashir Code

A VERY peculiar African irrationality will likely play itself out in Sudan in the immediate medium to long term in the wake of the International Criminal Court (ICC) indictment, for crimes against humanity, of Sudanese president Omar Hasan al-Bashir and his subsequent expulsion of major humanitarian agencies from Sudan.

At every level Bashir seems to be painting himself, and Sudan, into a very bloody corner. The Republic of Sudan stands at a volatile juncture, held together by tenuous agreements on various fronts, and Bashir’s drastic knee-jerk reaction to the ICC indictment might just be the knife that severs these already very frayed agreements and plunges the country into an all-out civil war, again. Bashir’s irrational lashing out at non-political aid organisations, which in many cases constitute the primary lifeline of millions of Sudanese, not just in Darfur but across this vast country, comes across as nothing but the bullying of soft targets. Regardless of what the opinions are around the ICC indictment, people are going to suffer and the suffering has probably already started. Sudan is a country where great swaths of the population are reliant upon aid agencies for everything from water and medical services to a very basic daily meal. The question is, how will the situation play out?On a security level, in the West, with the conflict never really having died down, Darfur is always on the verge of full-scale violence. Darfuri rebels have already stated that the humanitarian devastation that might follow the aid agency expulsions is outright provocation and another indication that Khartoum is not interested in peace. While in the eastern extremities of the country Khartoum is already battling Islamic rebels for control. And then there’s the 2005 peace agreement between Khartoum and the autonomous Government of South Sudan (GOSS), led by Salva Kiir, who also serves as one of Bashir’s vice presidents, which always appears to be on the brink of collapse. South Sudanese officials seem to be playing their cards close to the chest. On a recent visit to Sudan, which coincided with the ICC announcement and the NGO expulsions, officials in Juba, GOSS and Central Equatoria state capital, were quick to stress their neutrality on the ICC/Bashir issue, a neutrality verging on muted support for the Sudanese president. ‘Our position is clear,’ said George Garang Deng, GOSS Information Under Secretary, adding that the ICC should have waited and that a diplomatic solution should have been found. This cautious neutrality is understandable because the south is looking towards 2011, when a referendum will basically determine the continued existence of the Sudanese republic. GOSS wants an independent state and wants, and needs, a peaceful and legitimate election to validate the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) sweeping the region, which encompasses roughly a third of the Sudanese land area, to independence. However, continuing volatility along border regions, marked by skirmishes between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLA), as happened at Malakal, in Upper Nile state, recently, suggest GOSS’s hope of peace in 2011 might be a bridge too far. Many of the expelled aid agencies served as quasi-peacekeepers in border states, by providing services Khartoum was not, thus diverting tensions. A great many of those on the Khartoum side of the north-south border want to be part of the south and it is feared that now that aid agencies have left, these tensions will escalate into all-out border war again.Importantly, the expulsion order does not affect the South Sudan operations of the targeted NGOs, which in itself could be seen as something of a defiant departure from Khartoum’s hardline stance, highlighting the fact that for all intents and purposes the south is no longer part of what is currently referred to as Sudan.The point is that Sudan is a country where guns are as easy to buy as bread and it would take very little to get them firing.On the humanitarian front, millions of Sudanese, not just in Darfur, are now denied the services of an effective medical and food distribution network and infrastructure set up over years by expelled aid agencies. Warnings have already been sounded about the desperation and devastation that could follow the expulsions. The two major UN missions in Sudan relied and rely on many of the expelled agencies and their infrastructure and contacts to realise its mandate in the country. Starvation, death and displacement on catastrophic scales are predicted. The Khartoum government has stated that it will take over the functions of the expelled agencies, but then the question is, if it can, why hasn’t it done so before?Only time will tell whether Khartoum is up to the task or whether Bashir’s brashness will be the detonator that explodes Sudan.In the meantime the African Union has set itself the task of trying to smooth the sands between Khartoum and the West, but given the poor track record of the AU on such matters, as well as its irrational need to preach African solidarity at such times, instead of looking at the leaning of the facts, one cannot be left with other than low expectation. In the end, if large scale starvation, death and displacement, accompanied by war, does occur, Omar Hasan al-Bashir will have made the ICC’s case for it.