Mick Hartley

The Sudanese defence minister identifies the real problem in Darfur – the media (via):

Sudan’s defence minister expelled foreign media from a news conference on Wednesday and compared them to “terrorists”, saying that they had fabricated the three-year-old conflict in Darfur.

Sudan’s government has intensified a media campaign against foreigners and the United Nations, ahead of a possible decision by the African Union to transfer their forces in the war-torn Darfur region to a U.N. peacekeeping mission.

Khartoum violently opposes U.N. forces being deployed to the western Darfur region, where almost 7,000 African troops are facing funding and logistical difficulties protecting civilians from attacks by militias and rebel forces.

“Any foreign correspondent, from any foreign agency, get out — we don’t want you in here,” said Defence Minister Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein. […]

African foreign ministers were due to meet on Friday to decide on a transition to a U.N. force in Darfur, but delayed the meeting a week, which some AU officials said was due to top AU diplomats having other commitments abroad.

But the top U.N. envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk, said on Tuesday the AU may be having second thoughts about the transfer given Khartoum’s fierce opposition.

He said Sudanese in Khartoum feared fighters from the militant al Qaeda organisation would flood into the country, as they had in Iraq, if a U.N. force including Western contingents was deployed in Darfur.

So the Janjaweed were beyond the control of the Sudanese government (not of course that they were doing anything reprehensible – that’s all a Western fabrication), and now, should UN forces intervene in Darfur, Al Qaeda will be beyond the control of the Sudanese government.

Khartoum hosted Osama bin Laden in the late ’90s, but the Sudanese government has played both sides by supplying America with some intelligence for the war on terror while continuing to raise the Al Qaeda specter as a warning to the West.

Mr Pronk [UN special envoy] said that unlike failed states like Somalia, Sudan’s government has firm control in the country, and that even street demonstrations are orchestrated to the last detail and the crowds “know how far they can go.”

Currently, he added, the climate against the UN in Khartoum “is heating up,” and therefore it would be “foolish not to take such warnings [of Al Qaeda attacks against a UN force] seriously.”

Meanwhile the genocide continues.