THE INTERNATIONAL CITIZENS’ TRIBUNAL FOR SUDAN

CASE NUMBER: ICTS-1

THE PROSECUTOR

AGAINST

OMAR HASAN AHMAD AL-BASHIRPRESIDENT OF THE GOVERNMENT OF SUDAN

INDICTMENT

This indictment concerns a military regime that is criminal to its core. Since its violent assumption of power in 1989, the Government of Sudan has intentionally launched, orchestrated, and knowingly enabled a consistent pattern of gross human rights abuses against segments the Sudanese civilian population. As detailed more fully in this Indictment, these abuses include widespread and systematic murders; deportations and forcible transfers of entire communities; enslavement; torture; rape; persecution; the destruction of civilian property without military necessity; pillage; and the deliberate infliction of adverse conditions of life. This pattern and practice of abuses rises to the level of crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes under international criminal law. At all times relevant to this Indictment, civilians have been the intentional and primary object of these attacks. In particular, these abuses have targeted a number of minority tribal groups expressing opposition to, or perceived to be in opposition of, the Government of Sudan and its hegemonic control over the country, including the Fur, Massaleit, Zaghawa, Tunjur, and Dajo people of Darfur; the peoples of the Nuba Mountains; the Dinka people; the Nuer people; the people of the Shilluk Kingdom; and the Beja people of East Sudan.

The defendant OMAR HASAN AHMAD AL-BASHIR sits at the apex of this repressive military dictatorship. AL-BASHIR exercises effective authority, command, and control over all regular and irregular armed and police forces within the Government of Sudan. In addition, AL-BASHIR’s government has deployed, supported, aided and abetted a number of militia and paramilitary groups, including the so-called janjaweed and murahaleen in Darfur and elsewhere as agents of the Government of Sudan to advance the Government’s repressive and genocidal aims while at the same time enabling deniability on the part of the Government.

In light of these facts, as set forth in greater detail below, the Prosecutor of the International Citizens’ Tribunal for Sudan hereby charges:

1

OMAR HASAN AHMAD AL-BASHIR

With CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, GENOCIDE, and VIOLATIONS OF THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF WAR as set forth below. These abuses are in contravention of the Statute of this Tribunal, which closely mirrors that of the International Criminal Court; customary international criminal law; and international treaties to which Sudan is a State Party or is bound by customary international law. These treaties include:

• The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; • The Slavery Convention of 1926 as amended; • The Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery; • The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment; • The Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (the 3rd Geneva Convention); • The Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (the 4th Geneva Convention); • The Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I); • The Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II); • The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; • The Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees; • The Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa; • The Convention on the Rights of the Child and Optional Protocol on Involvement of Children in Armed Conflicts; • The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; • The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; and • The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

THE ACCUSED

1. OMAR HASAN AHMAD AL-BASHIR as the President of Sudan is the “supreme commander of the People’s Armed Forces and other regular forces” pursuant to Article 43 of the Sudanese Constitution. Accordingly, AL-BASHIR is the highest authority with respect to strategic military matters, internal security, and the deployment of armed and police forces within the Sudan. Thus, at all relevant times, AL-BASHIR exercised effective command, authority, and control

2

over the groups and individuals who directly committed the crimes set forth in this Indictment. In addition, and in the alternative, AL-BASHIR aided, abetted, conspired with, shared a common purpose with, and/or entered into a joint criminal enterprise with the individuals and groups that directly committed the crimes set forth in this Indictment.

2. AL-BASHIR was born in the village of Hosh Bannaga in 1944. He joined the Sudanese Army at a young age and studied at a military academy in Cairo.

3. When he returned to the Sudan, AL-BASHIR assumed responsibilities for military operations against the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in the southern half of the country during the Second Sudanese Civil War between the central government in the north and rebel groups in the south. The SPLA and its political wing, Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (Al-Harakat Ash-Shaabia Le Tahreer As-Sudan), have for years advocated a “New Sudan” based on respect for human rights and democracy. The SPLA was commanded by John Garang until his death on July 30, 2005.

4. AL-BASHIR eventually obtained the rank of Lieutenant General. In 1989, he was involved in a military coup that overthrew democratically elected Prime Minister Sadeq al-Mahdi. AL-BASHIR immediately began implementing the repressive policies that have become the hallmark of his reign of terror, including a ban on all political parties, a press crackdown, and the dissolution of Parliament. AL-BASHIR then became Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation (RCC), which consisted of fifteen military officers who had joined AL-BASHIR in carrying out the 1989 coup and which assumed all legislative and executive powers over the country. This entitled AL-BASHIR to the posts of Chief of State, Prime Minister, Chief of the Armed Forces, and Minister of Defense.

5. AL-BASHIR, allied with Hassan al-Turabi, the leader of the National Islamic Front (NIF) political party, began making northern Sudan a fundamentalist Islamic state. The NIF extended Sharia law and created Public Order Police. On October 16, 1993, AL-BASHIR was appointed President of the Republic of Sudan by the RCC. He then dissolved the RCC and transferred its legislative and executive powers to himself. AL-BASHIR has ruled the nation as a virtual dictator from that point on. In 1996, AL-BASHIR was elected to a five-year term as President in a “showcase” election. Hassan al-Turabi also won a seat in the National Assembly as a result of the election and was later named its Speaker. In 1998, AL-BASHIR and the Presidential Committee put into

3

effect a new Constitution. Although some limited political associations are allowed by law, these groups have failed to gain any significant access to governmental power.

6. In 1999, Hassan al-Turabi sought to limit the President’s power by empowering the National Assembly to remove him from office if it deemed necessary and by reestablishing the office of Prime Minister. In response, AL-BASHIR declared a national state of emergency, suspended the nation’s Constitution, dissolved the National Assembly, and stripped al-Turabi of his governmental and party posts. Shortly thereafter, in 2000, AL-BASHIR removed all al-Turabi loyalists from his cabinet and replaced them with his own followers. A general election was held later that year; however, the election was boycotted by almost all opposition groups who contended that AL-BASHIR would simply fix the results of the election if he lost. Most Sudanese in the south were furthermore prohibited from voting by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Therefore, while AL-BASHIR won re-election as President and the Parliament became stacked with members of his National Congress Party, the victory was hardly a legitimate one. As his second presidential term nears an end, AL-BASHIR is now seeking to change a provision in the Sudanese Constitution that would otherwise prohibit him from seeking re-election. It should also be noted that the state of emergency which AL-BASHIR declared in 1999 is still in effect to this day, leaving essentially all governmental power with the President. AL-BASHIR, as the supreme executive of Sudan, consistently represents the country on the international plane in international conferences and negotiations. It is recognized that change will only occur in Sudan if AL-BASHIR consents to such change.

7. In his capacity as chief of the ruling Revolutionary Command Council and then as President, AL-BASHIR exercised effective command and control over all members of the armed and police forces of the Government of Sudan and all agencies of the state, including the regular army and air force units, Popular Defense Forces, and State Security Forces, which are variously designated as Military Intelligence, and Intelligence and Security Forces. In addition, the accused exercised effective command or control over—or in the alternative aided and abetted and shared a common purpose with—armed militia, such as the janjaweed who, working in coordination with Sudanese armed forces, are responsible for massacre, rape, and forced displacement in Darfur and elsewhere.

4

STATEMENT OF FACTS

8. AL-BASHIR is in exclusive control and command of a military apparatus whose constitutional mandate includes the maintenance of internal security. The Sudanese government forces include the Sudan People’s Armed Forces, which are comprised by an army, navy and air force. These regular armed forces are supplemented by Popular Defence Forces, consisting of civilians who are called to military duty when needed. The Sudanese government also employs several intelligence organs such as Military Intelligence, Borders Intelligence, and the National Security and Intelligence Service. While each of these organs technically exists independent of the regular armed forces, Sudanese intelligence forces have worked closely on the ground with the regular armed forces, providing them with information that they used as the basis for operational planning.

9. As President, AL-BASHIR sits at the highest level in the command structure of these Sudanese governmental forces and is the ultimate authority on all tactical decisions concerning the waging of war and internal security. For example, in the case of the Sudan People’s Armed Forces, tactical decisions and policy are made by a Command Group, consisting of a Commander of the Armed Forces, a Chief of General Staff, and five Deputy Chiefs of Staff. The Command Group reports to the Minister of Defence, who in turn, reports to the President. In the case of the intelligence organs, the head of each organ is directly accountable to the Presidency.

10. AL-BASHIR has mobilized and deployed this vast military apparatus against various minority tribal groups in Sudan, including the Fur, Massaleit, Zaghawa, Tunjur, and Dajo of Darfur; the peoples of the Nuba Mountains; the Nuer people; the Dinka people; the people of the Shilluk Kingdom; and the Beja people of East Sudan as set forth in more detail below.

CRIMES COMMITTED AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF DARFUR

11. In February 2003, loosely federated rebel groups, calling themselves the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), declared open rebellion against the Government of Sudan because they were excluded from the power- and wealth-sharing agreements emerging from North-South peace negotiations in connection with the Second Sudanese Civil War. The Government responded with a counter-insurgency campaign directed primarily at civilian targets. This campaign coincided with the emergence on the international scene of the janjaweedroving

5

militia on horse- and camelback with deniable ties to the central authorities.

12. The janjaweed have worked in close coordination with Sudanese land and air forces to empty, plunder, and destroy over 1000 villages in North and South Darfur. The violence and destruction of everyday life is staggering. Janjaweed and government troops have systematically murdered, raped, mutilated, starved, driven from their homes, and robbed of all their possessions, including more than 2 million head of livestock, Non-Arab (and non-combatant) Darfuris of the Fur, Massaleit, Zaghawa, Tunjur, Dajo, and other tribes. These combined and coordinated forces have destroyed hundreds of mosques, targeted imams, and in several instances killed all the men of a village as they prayed together.

13. The high degree of violence in Darfur led the United Nations Security Council by Resolution 1564 to direct the Secretary-General to form a Commission of Inquiry to “investigate reports of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law in Darfur by all parties, to determine also whether or not acts of genocide have occurred, and to identify the perpetrators of such violations with a view to ensuring that those responsible are held accountable.” During November 2004 and January 2005, the Commission sent investigative teams to Sudan to hold meetings with representatives of the Government, the Governors of the Darfur States and other senior officials in the capital and at provincial and local levels, members of the armed forces and police, leaders of rebel forces, tribal leaders, internally displaced persons, victims and witnesses of violations, NGOs, and United Nations representatives. On January 25, 2005, the Commission issued its Report, which found that the Government of Sudan was responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes on a mass scale in Darfur. Although it could not conclude that the government had implemented a policy of genocide, the Commission did reserve consideration of whether individual members of the government, armed forces, or armed militia may have harbored and acted with genocidal intent.

14. The International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur also reported in January 2005 that of a total population of 6.3 million in a region the size of France, more than 1.65 million were internally displaced and another 200,000 had fled to neighboring nations such as Chad, where they had become refugees. The United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees stated in its most recent report on the region that, because of the “rapidly deteriorating situation” in Darfur, the number of refugees and internally displaced persons grew at an alarming rate during 2005. The number of refugees and

6

internally displaced persons in the region is therefore undoubtedly now much higher than the already alarming numbers reported by the Commission. The International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur cited hundreds of reported incidents involving the killing of civilians, massacres, summary executions, rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture, abduction, looting of property and livestock. The Commission furthermore reported that government and janjaweed attacks have destroyed hundreds of villages and hamlets. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians have died as a result of these attacks. Furthermore, with their farms, villages, and livestock destroyed and with humanitarian personnel unable to deliver the food and medical assistance, hundreds of thousands more have fallen prey to conditions of famine and disease. As a result, prominent NGOs such as Amnesty International have recently estimated that the conflict in the region has directly or proximately caused as many as 285,000 deaths, while other experts argue that the number is as high as 450,000. These numbers continue to rise as this Indictment is issued.

15. The previous fall, Vice President Ali Osman Taha had warned rebels of “total destruction,” a genocidal goal echoed by militia leader and Government of Sudan agent Musa Hilal, who directed his forces to “change the demography of Darfur and empty it of African  [i.e., non-Arab] tribes.” These statements have proved to be chillingly prescient.

CRIMES COMMITTED AGAINST THE NUBA PEOPLE

16. Subsequent to the coup of June 1989, the Sudanese leadership began a campaign against the 1.3 million members of the Nuba tribe in South Kordofan province. Between 1989 and 1991, scores of villages were burned and thousands of villagers were killed in joint assaults by the Government of Sudan army and locally recruited militias.

17. In 1991, educated Nuba became a special target of wholesale arrests, executions, and “disappearances.” In 1992, the Government of Sudan declared a jihad. AL-BASHIR took the title of imam al jihad (spiritual leader of the holy war) and bestowed subordinate leadership titles on Arab tribal leaders. The Government of Sudan Vice President, Zubeir Mohammed Salih, moved his headquarters to Kordofan to insure close supervision of operations. The Governor of South Kordofan, Lt.-General Abdel Karim el Husseini, was distinguished by the zealotry with which he enforced the fatwa decree of April 1992 in support of the jihad, despite protests from other government officials who pointed out that many of the intended victims were Muslims. The forces under Gen. Salih

7

and other units of the Sudanese army and militias systematically killed Nuba civilians of all religious allegiances, including Muslims. These forces also destroyed mosques and churches and desecrated Bibles and Korans.

18. Along with attacks against these embodiments of Nuba culture, Government forces deliberately attacked the non-Arab civilian population, using tear gas to force them out of caves and starvation to force entire villages to surrender. Those interned in “peace camps” were forced to work on mechanized farms for token wages, and many women were kept against their will as “wives” for the soldiers.

CRIMES COMMITTED AGAINST THE DINKA PEOPLE

19. Throughout his rule, AL-BASHIR escalated the Second Sudanese Civil War by launching scorched earth attacks against the southern region. These attacks involved numerous war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other human rights violations including the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure and the murder, torture, and rape of civilians. The civil war also resulted in millions of southerners being displaced, starved, and deprived of education and health care.

20. Because of these actions, various international sanctions were placed on the Sudan. Nevertheless, AL-BASHIR pursued the war in the south, buying arms and funding military operations with money eventually gained from the sale of the country’s vast amounts of petroleum resources from 1999 onward. Under intense international pressure, the Government of Sudan finally agreed to peace talks in 2002, and a peace agreement was signed in 2005. In this agreement, AL-BASHIR agreed to grant limited autonomy to the south for six years, split the proceeds from the country’s oil revenues with the southern provinces, and allow the southerners to vote in a referendum of independence at the end of the six year period.

21. The Dinka are a tribal group located in the South of the country. Following the June 1989 coup by the National Islamic Front, attacks on the Dinka continued, with individuals being targeted for starvation, slavery, and persecution by the Sudanese leadership. As the largest ethnic group in the South, the Dinka practice an agro-pastoral lifestyle upon lands with vast oil reserves. Along with their animist religious beliefs, the Dinka are seen as a threat to the government’s dual policy of expansion over the South’s oil-rich areas and Islamization of the South’s indigenous groups.

8

22. From 1989-1993, the Government of Sudan armed militias composed of Arab murahaleenArab tribesmen with a historic enmity against the neighboring Dinka tribe. With this government’s blessing, murahaleen razed the crop lands and looted the cattle that form the livelihood of the Dinka. These attacks intensified famine conditions that originated in 1983 with the Nimeiri regime, resulting in the deaths of 1.5 million southerners, the majority belonging to the Dinka.

23. Between 1992 and 1995, widespread abductions of Dinka women and children ensued in the South, while Dinka families who had fled to Khartoum were kidnapped or otherwise coerced into camps. It was widely reported by prominent NGOs such as Human Rights Watch that many of the abductions of the Dinka people were perpetrated by murahaleen militias who had been armed by the Government of Sudan. The murahaleen led a campaign of widespread destruction of Dinka villages, and the residents of those villages were collected as “spoils” by the murahaleen raiders. Their captors would then force them to take Arab names, subject them to living conditions far below their own, and deprive them of education. Many Dinka were forced by their captors to convert to Islam. When the Government of Sudan drew criticism for this practice, it denied its ties to the murahaleen and furthermore insisted that the matter was one of hostage-taking between rival tribes and that it had little power to combat the problem.

24. Between 1994 and 1997, the Government of Sudan sponsored the forces of Kerubino Bol, a former SPLA commander, in their attacks against rural Dinka communities in the Upper Nile region. By the end of 1997, continuous looting and forcible displacement had left approximately 250,000 at risk of starvation.

25. After Bol’s defection to the SPLA in late January 1998, and his subsequent attempt to capture government garrisons around the towns of Wau and Juba, the Government of Sudan embarked on a vengeful campaign against the Dinka population in these areas. During the fighting at Wau and for ten days after, government forces scoured Dinka neighborhoods and marketplaces, searching for civilians hiding in these areas as well as in the local hospital and public buildings. On February 18-19, at least 600 mostly Dinka men, women and children were killed by a combination of government military forces, local Fertiit militia, and Popular Defense Forces. According to a U.N. on-the-spot investigation, hundreds of bodies were found scattered in the streets and dumped into the Jur River. In addition, the Government of Sudan banned all relief flights into the SPLA-

9

held region of Bahr-el-Ghazal until the end of March 1998 as a means to punish Bol’s forces and the inhabiting civilians. This ban marked a clear example of the Sudanese government using starvation against a civilian population.

CRIMES COMMITTED AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF THE SHILLUK KINGDOM

26. Despite its largely Christian population, and its leadership under a non-Muslim king, the Shilluk kingdom remained free from government persecution until 2004. Situated in the Midwest Upper Nile, one of Sudan’s potentially leading oil-producing areas, the kingdom was formerly secured by Nuer militias aligned with the Government of Sudan. On October 25, 2003, however, Khartoum’s control over the region unraveled when Lam Akol, the leader of a government-allied militia within Shilluk, defected to the SPLA. In retaliation, the Sudanese government began conducting numerous attacks on the kingdom in conjunction with Nuer and other militia groups.

27. Beginning on March 5, 2004 in the town of Owechi, the Government of Sudan sponsored attacks that were initially limited in scope against military officers and associates of Lam Akol who had joined the defection to the SPLA. But by the end of March, the military campaign transformed into a spree of indiscriminate looting and killing of civilians throughout the kingdom. On March 28, militias from the government garrison in Warjog arrived in the village of Datang and began burning down the homes of civilians suspected of sympathizing with Akol and the SPLA. According to the Civilian Protection Monitoring Team (CPMT), a U.S. State Department-funded investigative unit which consisted of investigative teams, run jointly by the SPLA and the Sudanese Army, 700-800 mostly Nuer militiamen came equipped with two machine-gun mounted Land Cruisers, and proceeded to burn homes, grain stocks and medical provisions. Witnesses reported that the militias were directed by Sudanese army officers, including Commander James Othow, a brigadier in the Sudanese army who also served as the commissioner of Tonga County within the kingdom.

28. Just days later, these same militiasemerging in three groupsreturned for a second assault upon the village of Datang. CPMT reported that a main force arrived from the direction of Leno, a Government of Sudan-controlled town, and that a barge transported the aforementioned Land Cruisers under Othow’s command. Three other Sudanese army commanders were reported to have been transported by

10

government military motorboats from Malakal, the main town in the southern part of the kingdom. These commanders were Joseph Mobutu, Thomas Mabor and Gabriel Tanginya, who also held the rank of Brigadier General in the Sudanese army. In a thinly veiled denial of the attacks, Lt. Hamdun Da’ud, the Sudanese army commander in Datang, stated that militia forces were “only passing through” the village around March 28, but claimed “drunken bandits” had burned homes, adding that “civilians sometimes wear army uniforms.”

29. Beyond Datang, attacks on villages spanned from Owechi to Papwojo along the southern border of the kingdom. In these attacks, more civilians were killed, homes and sorghum stores were razed, and cattle were looted. These attacks displaced over 100,000 individuals without food or shelter. Terrorized by the indiscriminate shooting of civilians and burning of entire villages along the White Nile River, those displaced were prevented from returning to their homes until after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord between the Sudanese government and the SPLA in January 2005.

INDIVIDUAL CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY

30. AL-BASHIR is individually criminally responsible for the crimes set forth above through theories of common purpose/joint criminal enterprise, superior (command) responsibility, and criminal complicity. The accused planned, instigated, ordered, committed, was complicit in, or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation, or execution of the crimes charged. For the modes of liability of planning, instigating, or ordering the crimes charged, the accused acted with the intention and awareness of the substantial likelihood that the crimes would be committed in the execution of the plan, order, or instigation. For the mode of liability of aiding and abetting, including the provision of means for the crimes’ commission, the accused acted with knowledge that the acts performed would assist in the commission of the crimes.

31. The Prosecutor does not allege that AL-BASHIR physically or personally committed all the crimes charged, nor do international law or the Statute of this Tribunal so require. “Committing” in this Indictment instead refers to intentional or knowing participation as co-perpetrator, either as an accomplice, as a member of a joint criminal enterprise, as a member of a group sharing a common criminal purpose, or as a superior exercising effective authority, command, and control over subordinates. In contributing to the commission of the crimes charged, the accused intended to further the criminal activity or common purpose of the group or individuals directly responsible for committing the crimes

11

within the jurisdiction of this Tribunal. In the alternative, the accused knew of the criminal intent of the group or individuals actually responsible for these acts and knowingly and purposefully contributed to the criminal purpose.

COMMON PURPOSE

32. Upon gaining power over the Sudanese government in 1989, the accused immediately formed a joint criminal enterprise that continues into the present. A number of individuals participated in this joint criminal enterprise during the entire duration of its existence, or, alternatively, at different times during the duration of its existence, including:

• OMAR AL-BASHIR, • Ali Osman Taha, • Salah Abdallah Gosh, head of the Security Services;• Muhammed Hussein;• Musa Hilal;

Other members included unidentified persons who were members of the government’s command and coordinating bodies, members of the armed forces of the Government of Sudan at all levels of the chain of command, and members of the janjaweed and other paramilitary forces who shared the intent to affect the common purpose of the joint criminal enterprise. This includes the head of the Popular Defense Forces, the head of the Intelligence Service, individuals occupying the governorships of the Darfur and other provinces, police heads, the heads of some Sudanese humanitarian organizations that are actually staffed by Security Service personnel, command of janjaweed militias, and command of the Border Guards. In addition, it includes high level personnel of the Revolutionary Command Council, the National Islamic Front, and the National Congress Party.

33. AL-BASHIR has, at all times since 1989, held the highest position within the Government of Sudan and been the commander-in-chief of the Sudanese armed forces. The accused therefore sat at the center of the joint criminal enterprise. AL-BASHIR, together with his co-perpetrators, participated in the planning and execution of numerous crimes within the subject-matter jurisdiction of this Tribunal. The crimes alleged above were perpetrated as part of a common plan to employ criminal means to systematically eliminate the tribes and ethnic groups mentioned above, either because they were viewed by the Government of Sudan as an impediment to the creation of an entirely Islamic state, or because the Sudanese government perceived them as a threat to its exercise of autocratic power.

12

34. AL-BASHIR worked in concert with members of the Government of Sudan, the Sudan People’s Armed Forces, and other militias and police forces to design and implement a widespread and systematic campaign of terror and repression directed at certain minority political, religious, and ethnic groups, in particular the so-called “African” tribes. The means employed as a part of this common plan and joint criminal enterprise included deportations and forcible transfers of members of these groups; enslavement; torture; rape; persecution; the destruction of property belonging to members of the group; pillage; the forcible transfer of children of these groups; the imposition of measures to prevent births within these groups; and the deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction, in whole or in part, of these groups. AL-BASHIR exercised his de facto and de jure authority as the President of the Republic of Sudan and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces to order and ensure that this criminal plan would be carried out.

35. The civilian populations targeted by this joint criminal

enterprise include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The Fur of Darfur

• The Massaleit of Darfur

• The Zaghawa of Darfur

• The Tunjur of Darfur

• The Dajo of Darfur

• The peoples of the Nuba Mountains

• The Dinka people

• The people of the Shilluk Kingdom

• The Beja people of East Sudan

36. These groups constitute national, ethnic, racial, and/or religious groups within the definition of genocide set forth within the 1948 Genocide Convention, contained within customary international law, and incorporated within Article 6 of the Statute of this Tribunal. Victims from these groups were civilians, unconnected to formal armed forces and uninvolved in any armed conflict other than as victims. As such, they constituted “protected persons” within the meaning of the Geneva Conventions and their Protocols, as incorporated within Article 8 of this Statute. In addition, attacks on these

13

groups constituted a widespread and systematic “attack directed against any civilian population” within the definition of the prohibition against crimes against humanity set forth within Article 7 of the Statute of this Tribunal.

37. The crimes that are the subject of this Indictment were within the object of the joint criminal enterprise or the common purpose of the group, and the accused shared the intent with the other co-perpetrators that these crimes be perpetrated. Alternatively, these crimes were the natural and foreseeable consequences of the execution of the object of the joint criminal enterprise, and AL-BASHIR was aware that such crimes were the possible outcome of the enterprise. Despite his awareness of the foreseeable consequences, AL-BASHIR initiated and participated in the enterprise. The accused and other participants in the joint criminal enterprise shared the intent and state of mind required for the commission of each of the crimes charged. In the alternative, the accused and other participants in the joint criminal enterprise knew with substantial certainty that the crimes outlined above would be committed by other members of the joint criminal enterprise. On this basis, AL-BASHIR bears individual criminal responsibility for the crimes alleged in this Indictment under Article 25(3)(d)(i) of the Statute of this Tribunal.

AIDING AND ABETTING

38. Many of the atrocities perpetrated against the Sudanese civilian populations were carried out by janjaweed, murahaleen and other ethnic Arab militias. While these militias are not formally part of the infrastructure of the Sudanese military, it has been noted by the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, several prominent NGOs, and international observers that such militias often work at the direction and with the active support of Government of Sudan, including with respect to the provision of means (weapons, transportation, and other materiel). Furthermore, the Commission on Darfur noted that the janjaweed militias were, at times, armed by the Popular Defense Forces and worked in coordination with regular armed forces. In addition, janjaweed leaders received compensation in the form of grants and gifts from the Sudanese government. To date, the Sudanese government has failed to apprehend and bring to justice the members of janjaweed militias who are responsible for the crimes in Darfur. Instead, the Government of Sudan has effectively condoned the janjaweed actions by creating a sham investigative and judicial framework that is intended to divest the International Criminal Court of jurisdiction over the

14

crimes committed by the janjaweed, but which has made no appreciable effort to actually bring the perpetrators to justice.

39. AL-BASHIR oversees a government that actively supports groups who are directly responsible for perpetrating crimes that are within the subject-matter jurisdiction of this Tribunal. The accused furthermore provided such support to the janjaweed militias even after being provided with actual knowledge that such crimes were being committed. This is evidenced by the U.N. Security Council’s repeated requests to the Government of Sudan that the janjaweed militias be disarmed and the perpetrators brought to justice. The accused instead responded to these requests by providing further support to the janjaweed militias in the form of false investigative and judicial organs. Accordingly the accused aided and abetted the atrocities committed by the janjaweed militias and bears individual criminal responsibility under Article 25(3)(c) of the Statute of this Tribunal.

SUPERIOR RESPONSIBILITY

40. AL-BASHIR, while holding positions of superior authority, is also individually criminally responsible for the criminal acts or omissions of his subordinates pursuant to Article 28 of the Statute of the Tribunal. A superior is responsible for the criminal acts of his subordinates if he knew or had reason to know that his subordinates were about to commit such acts or had done so, and the superior failed to take the necessary and reasonable measures to prevent such acts or to punish the perpetrators.

41. Pursuant to Article 43 of the Sudanese Constitution, the President is the “supreme commander of the People’s Armed Forces and other regular forces.” Accordingly, as President, AL-BASHIR was the highest authority with respect to strategic military matters and the deployment of armed forces within the Sudan. Notwithstanding any explicit de jure power AL-BASHIR might have possessed over the Sudanese military, the accused exercised de facto authority over all Sudanese military forces beginning with the 1989 coup. Thus, at all relevant times, AL-BASHIR exercised effective command, authority, and control over the groups and individuals who directly committed the crimes set forth in this Indictment. There existed a functioning chain of command within the Government of Sudan that ensured that command and control ran from the highest levels of government in Khartoum to all armed forces in the field. The accusedalong with other unindicted members of the Government of Sudanformulated strategy, issued directions, and commanded operations by forces throughout Sudan. AL-

15

BASHIR has been, at all times, in a position to control the activities of the armed forces of the Government of Sudan and to punish violations of international criminal law.

42. At all times relevant to this Indictment, AL-BASHIR knew, should have known owing to the circumstances of at the time, or consciously disregarded information which clearly indicated that subordinates were committing, had committed, or were about to commit crimes within the jurisdiction of this Tribunal. The accused was informed of the widespread and systematic crimes being committed by government and paramilitary forces under his effective command, authority, and control through, among other things, the reporting systems of the armed forces of the Government of Sudan and his meetings with members of the highest levels of civilian and military leadership of the Government. In addition, there has been widespread reporting from many sources about crimes committed by armed forces under the effective authority, command, and control of the accused. These allegations were also publicly and prominently raised by, among others, foreign diplomats, the United Nations, human rights organizations, and the domestic and foreign media. These reports include the following:

• “Darfur in Flames: Atrocities in Western Sudan,” A Human Rights Watch Report, April 2004; • “Darfur Destroyed: Ethnic Cleansing by Government and Militia Forces in Western Sudan,” A Human Rights Watch Report, May 2004; • “Darfur Documents Confirm Government Policy of Militia Support,” A Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper, July 19, 2004; • “Empty Promises? Continuing Abuses in Darfur, Sudan,” A Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper, August 11, 2004; • “If We Return We Will Be Killed,” A Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper, November 15, 2004; • “Targeting the Fur: Mass Killings in Darfur,” A Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper, January 24, 2005; • “Sexual Violence and its Consequences among Displaced Persons in Darfur and Chad,” A Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper, April 12, 2005;• “Entrenching Impunity: Government Responsibility for International Crimes in Darfur,” A Human Rights Watch Report, December 2005; • Amnesty International, “Sudan: At the Mercy of KillersDestruction of Villages in Darfur,” July 2, 2004.• “Alarming Situation of Human Rights and Dramatic Humanitarian Crisis in Darfur,” FIDH, April 13, 2004; • “Ongoing Harassment of Human Rights Defenders,” FIDH, November 7, 2005; • “Peace and Justice in Darfur: Victims’ Rights Hijacked,” FIDH, April 3, 2006;

16

• “Human Rights and Humanitarian Organizations at Risk in Sudan,” FIDH, March 3, 2006.• “Slavery and Slavery Redemption in the Sudan,” A Human Rights Watch Background Paper, March 12, 1999.• “In the Name of God: Repression Continues in Northern Sudan,” A Human Rights Watch Report, November 1994.

43. Additional notice of abuses by subordinates and others came from the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur. In its comprehensive report, the Commission concluded that crimes within the jurisdiction of this Tribunal were widespread within Darfur and were attributable to government forces and janjaweed forces working together with government forces.

44. The crimes set forth in this Indictment are within the AL-BASHIR’s effective responsibility and control as President of Sudan. At all times relevant to this Indictment, AL-BASHIR failed to exercise responsible command and control over subordinate forces. In particular, the accused failed to take all necessary and reasonable measures within his power to prevent or repress the commission of crimes within the jurisdiction of this Tribunal. For example, in Darfur, AL-BASHIR failed to utilize the military and police forces to control or disarm the janjaweed forces. On the contrary, it has widely been noted by civil society groups and the report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur that the janjaweed militias conducted attacks against civilian groups at the behest of the Sudanese government and often acted in concert with Government of Sudan aircraft. Furthermore the janjaweed tribal leaders often received compensation from the Sudanese government in the form of grants and gifts.

45. Furthermore, AL-BASHIR failed to submit any of the crimes set forth in this Indictment to the competent authorities for investigation and prosecution. With respect to the abuses in Darfur, the accused did act in his official capacity to create judicial and investigative mechanisms such as the Judicial Investigations Committee, the Special Prosecutions Commissions, and the Darfur Special Court. All these institutions were ostensibly intended to answer the demands of the Security Council, civil society groups, and the international community that the Government of Sudan apprehend and bring to justice those responsible for the ongoing atrocities in that nation. However, civil society groups such as Human Rights Watch, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights each noted in official statements that these mechanisms do not represent a genuine effort on the part of the Sudanese government to exact

17

justice, as there is little evidence that they have carried out their mandates in any appreciable way.

46. In March 2005, the Security Council passed Resolution 1593, which referred the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court whose Prosecutor then initiated an investigation into the situation. The Rome Statute, the Court’s constitutive document, operates on the principle of complementarity and is prohibited from commencing a prosecution if the state in which the crimes allegedly occurred has demonstrated a genuine willingness and ability to prosecute the crimes domestically. The creation of these bodies by the Government of Sudan therefore appears to be little more than a paper maché effort to mollify international critics and divest the International Criminal Court of jurisdiction. Accordingly, by failing to genuinely investigate and prosecute the crimes committed against these victim groups, AL-BASHIR effectively encouraged the continued commission of such crimes and failed to exercise responsible leadership and command. This inaction and impunity have created and maintained an environment permissive of criminal behavior that continues today.

47. For purposes of the crimes enumerated in this Indictment, the accused can be considered a military commander within the meaning of Article 28(a) of the Statute of this Tribunal. Because AL-BASHIR exercised effective command and control over Sudanese military forces at all times relevant to this Indictment, and because he knew or should have known of the crimes enumerated in this indictment which were committed by Sudanese military forces, and because the accused faileddespite repeated requests by the Security Councilto take all necessary and reasonable measures within his power to prevent or repress the commission of crimes or to submit the matter to the competent authorities for investigation and prosecution, the accused bears individual criminal responsibility for their commission as a under the Doctrine of Command Responsibility, as codified in Article 28(a)(i) and (ii) of the Statute of this Tribunal.

48. Alternatively, in the event that this Tribunal might conclude that AL-BASHIR is a civilian superior, and not a military commander, the accused still bears individual responsibility under Article 28(b)(i), (ii) and (iii) of the Statute of this Tribunal. In most instances, the accused can conclusively be presumed to have known that the crimes enumerated in this indictment were being committed by his subordinates, as they were carried out at his direction. The crimes enumerated in this Indictment were also well-documented and widely reported by civil society groups. Furthermore, the Security

18

Council implored the accused on several occasions to apprehend and bring to justice the parties responsible for perpetrating the atrocities in the Darfur region. The accused was also aware of the conclusions by the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur that crimes against humanity and war crimes were being committed in the Darfur region and that such atrocities were possibly being committed with genocidal intent. The accused therefore undoubtedly had actual knowledge of the crimes enumerated in this indictment and, at best, consequently disregarded and failed to act upon information that clearly indicated that criminal activity within the subject-matter of this Tribunal was being committed by his subordinates and was likely to continue.

49. At all times relevant to this indictment, AL-BASHIR exercised de facto and de jure control over the Government of Sudan and over Sudanese military forces; therefore, any crimes attributable to these entities were committed within the effective responsibility of the accused. As noted above, the accused furthermore failed to utilize his authority to repress the commission of these crimes or submit the matter to the competent authorities for investigation and prosecution. Therefore, while the Prosecutor does not contend that the accused is a civilian superior under the Statute of this Tribunal, the accused nonetheless bears individual criminal responsibility as such, should this Tribunal so find.

CHARGES

50. The Prosecutor hereby charges the accused with CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, WAR CRIMES, and GENOCIDE for the crimes set forth above.

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

51. By these acts and omissions in all the regions discussed above with respect to the Darfuri, Nuba, Dinka, and Shilluk people, AL-BASHIR planned, instigated, ordered, committed, or otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparations or execution of:

Count 1: EXTERMINATION, a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY punishable under Article 7(1)(b) of the Statute of the Tribunal.

Count 2: MURDER, a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY punishable under Article 7(1)(a) of the Statute of the Tribunal.

Count 3: PERSECUTION, a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY punishable under Article 7(1)(h) of the Statute of the Tribunal.

19

Count 4: DEPORTATION, a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY punishable under Article 7(1)(d) of the Statute of the Tribunal.

Count 5: RAPE and SEXUAL VIOLENCE, CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY punishable under Article 7(1)(g) of the Statute of the Tribunal.

52. From 1989 until the present, AL-BASHIR, acting individually or in concert with other participants in the joint criminal enterprise, planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparation or execution of the extermination, murder, persecution, deportation, rape, and abuse of members of minority racial, religious, ethnic, and political groups.

53. Government and paramilitary forces under the effective authority, command, and control of AL-BASHIR, committed these crimes against humanity. AL-BASHIR knew or had reason to know that the crimes alleged above were about to be committed or had been committed by his subordinates, and he failed to take necessary and reasonable measures to prevent such acts or punish the perpetrators thereof.

54. Where armed militia without formal ties to governmental forces committed the crimes, the Government of Sudan at AL-BASHIR’s direction and under AL-BASHIR’s command and control gave substantial assistance to these militia. AL-BASHIR knew that the assistance provided by the Government of Sudan and by governmental armed forces in the form of weapons, transportation, air support, and materiel to armed militia would substantially contribute to the commission of the crimes charged above.

ENSLAVEMENT

55. By the acts and omissions with respect to the Dinka people as discussed above AL-BASHIR planned, instigated, ordered, committed, or otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparations or execution of:

Count 6: ENSLAVEMENT, a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY punishable under Article 7(1)(c) of the Statute of the Tribunal.

56. AL-BASHIR, acting individually or in concert with other known and unknown members of the joint criminal enterprise planned, instigated, ordered, committed, or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation, or execution of the enslavement of members of the Dinka people.

20

57. Government and paramilitary forces under the effective authority, command, and control of AL-BASHIR, committed acts of enslavement against the Dinka people. AL-BASHIR knew or had reason to know that the crimes alleged above were about to be committed or had been committed by his subordinates, and he failed to take necessary and reasonable measures to prevent such acts or punish the perpetrators thereof.

GENOCIDE

58. By these acts and omissions in Darfur and with respect to the Dinka and Nuba people, AL-BASHIR planned, instigated, ordered, committed, or otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparations or execution of:

Count 14: GENOCIDE.

59. AL-BASHIR, acting individually or in concert with other participants in the joint criminal enterprise, planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparation or execution of the intentional partial destruction of these minority tribal groups.

60. AL-BASHIR participated in a joint criminal enterprise whose main objective was primarily achieved through a manifest pattern of persecutions as alleged in this indictment. This campaign of persecutions included or escalated to include conduct committed with the intent to destroy in part national, ethnical, religious and/or racial groups in Darfur associated with the rebel forces there. Government forces under the command and control of AL-BASHIR targeted a significant part of these tribal groups for intended destruction.

61. The destruction of these groups was effectuated by:

• The widespread killing, deportation, and forcible transfer of members of these groups during and after the attacks villages. Members of these groups were killed and hundreds of thousands deported or forcibly transferred in furtherance of an “ethnic cleansing” campaign in Darfur. A large segment of these tribal groups were driven into displaced person camps in Sudan or across the border into Chad. • The causing of serious bodily or mental harm to members of these groups. Members of these tribal groups in these villages were subjected to cruel or inhumane treatment, including torture, physical and psychological abuse, sexual violence and beatings.• The subjecting of these tribal groups to conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, namely through cruel and inhumane treatment, including torture, physical and psychological abuse and sexual violence, deportation, and inhumane living

21

conditions. The conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of these groups also included the failure to provide—or to enable the international community to provide—adequate accommodation, shelter, food, water, medical care or hygienic sanitation facilities.

62. From no later than 1989 until the present, AL-BASHIR knew or had reason to know that the crimes alleged above were about to be committed or had been committed by his subordinates, and he failed to take necessary and reasonable measures to prevent such acts or punish the perpetrators thereof. He knew, or had reason to know, that his subordinates, accomplices, and co-perpetrators were acting with genocidal intent.

63. Where armed militia without formal ties to governmental forces committed the crimes, the Government of Sudan at AL-BASHIR’s direction and under AL-BASHIR’s command and control gave substantial assistance to these militia. AL-BASHIR knew that the assistance provided by the Government of Sudan and by governmental armed forces in the form of weapons, transportation, air support, and materiel to armed militia would substantially contribute to the commission of the crimes charged above.

WAR CRIMES

64. At all times relevant to this indictment, there existed within the South and in the western region of Darfur a protracted non-international armed conflict between government forces and organized rebel groups.

65. By these acts and omissions undertaken in connection with the waging of the Second Civil War and during the conflict in Darfur, AL-BASHIR planned, instigated, ordered, committed, or otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparations or execution of:

Count 7: MURDER and VIOLENCE TO LIFE AND PERSON, WAR CRIMES punishable under Article 8(2)(c)(i) of the Statute of this Tribunal.

Count 8: COMMITTING OUTRAGES UPON HUMAN DIGNITY, a WAR CRIME punishable under Article 8(2)(c)(ii) of the Statute of this Tribunal. Count 9: INTENTIONALLY DIRECTING ATTACKS AGAINST THE CIVILIAN POPULATION, a WAR CRIME punishable under Article 8(2)(e)(II) of the Statute of this Tribunal.

22

Count 10:INTENTIONALLY DIRECTING ATTACKS AGAISNT CIVILIAN OBJECTS, a WAR CRIME punishable under Article 8(2)(e)(iv) of the Statute of this Tribunal.

Count 11: PILLAGE, a WAR CRIME punishable under Article 8(2)(e)(v) of the Statute of this Tribunal.

Count 12:RAPE and SEXUAL VIOLENCE, a WAR CRIME punishable under Article 8(2)(e)(vi) of the Statute of this Tribunal.

Count 13: ORDERING THE DISPLACEMENT OF CIVILIANS, a WAR CRIME punishable under Article 8(2)(e)(viii) of the Statute of this Tribunal.

66. From no later than 1989 until the present, AL-BASHIR knew or had reason to know that the crimes alleged above were about to be committed or had been committed by his subordinates, and he failed to take necessary and reasonable measures to prevent such acts or punish the perpetrators thereof. He knew, or had reason to know, that his subordinates, accomplices, and co-perpetrators were acting with genocidal intent.

67. Where armed militia without formal ties to governmental forces committed the crimes, the Government of Sudan at AL-BASHIR’s direction and under AL-BASHIR’s command and control gave substantial assistance to these militia. AL-BASHIR knew that the assistance provided by the Government of Sudan and by governmental armed forces in the form of weapons, transportation, air support, and materiel to armed militia would substantially contribute to the commission of the crimes charged above.

CONCLUSION

68. By these acts and omissions, President defendant OMAR HASAN AHMAD AL-BASHIR should be decreed guilty of crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes.

23

BILAD AL- SUDAN

(To the tune of “Sweet Betsy from Pike,” an old American folk tune)

(explanatory footnotes will be in the final draft distributed with the score)

Oh, have you heard tell of Bilad-al-SudanI’ll tell you its story as quick as I canAt the end of the Eighties there came a big coupAnd the worst of the suffering would quickly ensue

CPA, DPAOur justice and freedom and peace signed away

The mountains of Nuba resisted BashirHe taught them a lesson so others would fearHis armies burned churches and murdered imamsThe skies were all lit up with bullets and bombs

CPA, CIASo Salah Abdallah good Gosh got his way

Divide them to conquer was the word in KhartoumFor non-Arab peoples this land has no roomBaggara and Dinka they once had been friendsBut Bashir now drove them to serve different ends

CPA, break awayOur friends in the North and the West to betray

The kingdom of Shilluk was next on the listThe power of Khartoum it dared to resistThe troops and planes swept through in April ’04To genocide’s victims was added one more

CPA, DPA“Leave no other culture to stand in our way”

China, Malaysia, they came to their wellAnd Talisman drooled over what they could sellBut then they encountered a problem from hellWhen hit by the lawsuits from David and Mel

CPA, in the wayThe pipeline sucks all of their scruples away

Rashidi Free Lions arose in the EastThey threatened the source of the wealth of the Beast

24

The goldmines and pipelines and fees from the PortBrought Antonov bombers to cut their lives short

CPA, DPAThey search all the time for a trust to betray

So Salah and Taha just kept to their planSplit Arab, non Arab, set clan against clanUse Beja to fight the Zaghawa and FurAnd gunships to zap Massaleit and Tunjur

LRA. in their pay“Kill your mother and father” says Kony –today!

Darfuris had always by Khartoum been screwedNeglect to protect and deliver no foodAnd keep them away from the North and South deal"They’d find out how much we intended to steal"

CPA, giveawayImpunity goes with the Unity way

Then Colin and Kofi expressed their concernIt sure wasn’t nice for a people to burnThe White House was angry, UN resoluteThe janjaweed just had to turn in their loot

DPA, rue the dayPolitical cowardice got in the way

The UN deplored the reports from SudanThey said “we will help just as much as we can”We’ll tell Mr. Bashir just what we will doWe’ll send in our watchdogs, the mighty AU.

If we may, not todayIn sending peacekeepers there’s always delay

The African Union they trickled in menWhile begging for money again and againHapless and helpless, no radios, tanksSo victims were ready to give them no thanks

Look away, never sayHow bad is the slaughter you see every day

The AU sent Steidle to witness the doomCame back with the goods on the boys in KhartoumThis angered their friends in Department of StateThey warned him his photos would seal his fate

25

DPA, that’s our way“The price of its flaws let all Darfuris pay”

Canadians pleaded that this had to stopPaul Martin made speeches right over the topBut when all their offers Khartoum did rejectThey gave up the notion that they could protect

R2P, Not For MeWe might really have to fight for it, you see

A rescue by NATO was victims’ fond hopeBut soon the objections emerged from De HoopTheir stewardship should have meant troops on the groundWith weapons to match GoS round for round

Let’s all pray, Save the dayGet fat in Abuja while kids waste away

But Omar the Basher said “be on your guard!”He pictured Sudan as the white man’s graveyardThe crowd in the streets loved his screaming and threatMade diplomats’, counselors’ pants go all wet

Gave the nodTo jihadTo fight the protectors of Muslims, by god!

Slovenians sent out their Tomo KriznarJournalist, filmmaker, peacemaking starBut when he discovered the facts of their crimeThey put him in prison for quite a long time

The AUSaid “you’re through”“Khartoum will soon give you some hard time to do”

A rainbow mosaic is our human raceThe shape of its tiles gives our peoples a faceDiminish one culture reduces us allSo let’s take our weapons and answer the callLet us swearThat we dareBash Bashir and Musa to show that we care

26

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

27

[An essay in the Cornell Daily Sun intended to prepare the way for a series of international conferences on “Plan B”, a Three-Part intervention in Darfur enabled by an enforced no-fly zone, to be held at several universities within the next six weeks.]

What to do About Darfur... And Why We Won't Do It

By John H. WeissSep 8 2006

As a faculty member who once served as an artillery officer, I have been able to profit from military officers and NCOs I have met on the University-ROTC Relations Committee. I have also been able to make contact with many who have returned from Iraq or who are now serving there. It is not a painless experience: tough questions are put to me, with all the straight-shooting style and professionalism that I have come to expect.

Recently, an African-American field-grade officer serving in Iraq, learning about my work to reverse the Darfur genocide, posed me one of the toughest questions. Several of them, actually. First, he wondered why people considered military personnel to be uninformed about political developments in the rest of the world. Nor were they supposed to care. As an officer, he was of course limited about what he could do or say while he was in uniform, but did that signify that he did not care?

The case that bothered him most was Darfur. Because he naturally and unreservedly owed his first loyalty to the United States, was he supposed to be indifferent to the fate of Darfuris, whose skin was the same color as his own even if their various cultures were radically different? He knew the history of Kosovo, where, in 1999, Europeans and Americans had stopped a genocide-in-the-making directed against other white Europeans despite the refusal of the United Nations to authorize the intervention. He knew what had happened in Afghanistan, in the months after our successful attack on that country’s disgusting regime, hosts of Al Qaeda. We had a political strategy as well as a military strategy. We gathered up a wide range of non-Taliban leaders and took them to Bonn where, with the help of United Nations experts, they had formed an Interim Administration. That Interim Group then returned to Afghanistan where, working with American troops, they began to establish security and set the conditions for a more broadly based and accountable group to meet in a grand council, a loya jirga. Elections played a role in strengthening the legitimacy of the group as did a certain realistic acknowledgement of power relations that brought the inclusion of traditional clan leaders and warlords. Sure, he said, the place was not yet a Switzerland or a Canada, but the generalized oppression had ended, and Taliban-targeted groups like the Shiite Hazaras were no longer facing a deadly discrimination.

I felt that in reply I had to shoot as straight as I could. I began by recounting the history of Darfur rescue policy, a sad tale of calculated naïvete, deception of self and others, conscious adoption of policies

28

known to be ineffective, and diversionary strategies such as concentration on “awareness-raising,” divestment campaigns and fund-raising for humanitarian aid. The would-be rescuers were not only UN diplomats, Canadian prime ministers and American State Department professionals. The broadest coalition of religious, ethnic and political groups in America’s recent history had been asking for someone, somehow, to “do more for Darfur” since the summer of 2004. A fury of frustration was building among American, Canadian and British rescuers. Nothing seemed to deter the longest-ruling genocidal regime in history, that dominated by Omar al-Bashir and his co-conspirators. They launched their first genocide against the peoples of the Nuba mountains, both Christian and Muslim, almost immediately after they seized power in 1989. They kept rolling on, using genocide as their “counterinsurgency” (and Arabization) policy, outdoing Hitler in the number of victim peoples and cultures attacked by a factor of ten.

But my interlocutor in Iraq already thought he had the answer: nobody cared enough to put their non-violent purity or their clean-solution sainthood on the line. As he said to me in a familiar lament, “Every democratic nation in the world deplores genocide. And every democratic nation in the world refuses to take the risks necessary to stop it.” Especially when it’s the Fur, Massaleit, Zaghawa, Dajo and Tunjur people, Muslims mostly of the tolerant Hanafi tradition and speakers of Arabic as a lingua franca as well as their own languages. Who had ever heard of these people before?

What if it were Canadians now facing the final phase of the Final Solution that the Sudanese Government launched last week? Would we continue to promise that no violation of Sudan’s sovereignty would ever occur, a mantra repeated by UN diplomats and by all the employees of our own State Department and Ottawa’s Ministry of External Affairs? This despite all the wonderful papers and speeches, especially from Canadians, about the nations’ “Responsibility to Protect” fellow members of the human race victimized by their own governments. As my friend in Iraq, commanding a unit that has seen real combat, pointed out, “You academic and government guys can play with abstractions and metaphors better than I can, but I’ve never seen a sovereignty bleeding, raped, starved, or driven from its home. But I’ve sure seen real people have that done to them, and I’d like somebody to give me a chance to neutralize the perpetrators.”

I wish that he would get that chance. But in a world, in America and Canada and elsewhere, where all but a tiny minority of would-be Darfur rescuers have never heard a shot fired in anger, never worn a uniform, never lost a friend to a genocide (or been a witness to this crime as it was happening), or even missed a meal they did not want to miss, a political-military plan that involves risks, complicated options and a need for imagination has little appeal. When you have experienced one or all of those things, however, developing that plan in an atmosphere of criticism and debate seems a compelling task.

John H. Weiss is a Professor in the history department.

29

THREE-PART PLAN FOR DARFUR

(Public Version)Updated 9 Sept 2006

By John Weiss and Elvir Camdzic

I. THE CURRENT CONTEXT

A. Since the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) at the beginning of May, not a single Darfuri civilian has been given peace.

B. Violent attacks by armed groups, especially government-supported militias, have increased, by some accounts to double their pre-signing level. This has prompted an accelerating departure of major humanitarian aid organizations. Armed groups from rebel factions who signed the agreement have also repeatedly attacked civilian supporters of factions who refused to sign.

C. Major riots against the signing of the DPA have occurred in the large IDP camps. Inhabitants of the camps, inside Darfur and in Chad, have always favored strong interventions, by NATO, the US, or a seriously empowered and equipped UN force. But few would-be rescuers or policy analysts take into account the expressed wishes of these victims.

D. Four months after the signing, the Bashir government has moved into the final phase of its Final Solution, accompanying its rejection of UN resolution 1706 of 1 Sep 06, which “invited” the GoS to accept a UN role in Darfur, with a full court press of indiscriminate bombing, burning, raping and expulsion. .

E. White House sources stated to the authors of this Three-Part Plan that if Canada took on a lead role in the resolution of the Darfur problem, “that would get a lot of welcome at the Presidential level”

II. OVERVIEW OF THE PLAN

The Plan presented below seeks to achieve goals similar to those outlined in the failing DPA. It can thus be seen as a way of bringing about an atmosphere of security in Darfur and the restoration of its cultures, administration, and civil society but without requiring the voluntary cooperation of the Bashir Government (GoS). In fact, the implementers of this Three-Part Plan would welcome the assistance of the UN, the AU, and NATO, but the Plan can succeed without the cooperation of any of them.

This Plan to end the destruction of lives and cultures in Darfur has three elements:

A. Two sets of Darfur-Darfur conversations, protected deliberations among Darfuris. The first would produce an Interim Administration and a road map for the establishment of security and an accountable

30

government in Darfur. The second, convened after elections and broad based consultations, would constitute a Darfur Regional Government.

B. An Implementation Force that would work in close coordination with that Interim Administration to establish the security necessary for returns to the sites of villages and the support of a relaunching of Darfuri society

C. A Dual Purpose No-Fly Zone to neutralize the forces threatening the security of Darfur, especially the GoS and its associated militias, Popular Defense Forces, police, and other operatives.

III. PROTECTED DELIBERATIONS

Attendees and facilitators

The first conference of Darfuri leaders would construct a unified Interim Administration for the entire affected region. Canadians would play a lead role in selecting the attendees after consultations with various experts and political figures. They would also facilitate the deliberations with technical/logistical support and procedural counsel. The “road map” meetings in Bonn in December 2001 in which Afghan leaders participated under UN sponsorship provide an instructive example.

This “road map” meeting would be attended by a range of Darfuri leaders extending well beyond those assembled at the peace talks in Abuja: tribal authorities from Arab and non-Arab tribes, leaders of civic organizations, key religious figures, delegates from the Darfuri Diaspora, and militia leaders. It would be especially important to include leaders who have emerged from the social structures that have constituted themselves in the camps: sheikhs, imams, representatives of women’s self-help groups. Ranking Sudanese employees of non-Sudanese humanitarian organizations should also be invited to attend, perhaps as non-voting members.

Representatives of the Khartoum Government, however, including governors, other administrators, military officers, and security personnel, must be excluded. Their record of subverting, disrupting, manipulating, and delaying negotiations to which they are a party necessitates this exclusion. For the same reasons representatives of the Libyan, Chadian, and Egyptian governments must be excluded.

The constitution of an accountable and representative Darfur Regional Government will take some time and will be the result of both elections and consultations with traditional authorities guided by the outline of the process drawn up at the road map meeting. Not surprisingly, the Bosnian, Afghan, Kosovar, Iraqi, and Congolese cases give useful lessons yielding both commonalities and differences. The Afghan loya jirga has been an especially influential case.

Only when the citizens and stakeholders have successfully inaugurated their own institutions of a Darfur Regional Government and a degree of security permitting returns to village sites has been

31

established would the central government in Khartoum be contacted in order to address such matters as the use of the common infrastructure (e.g., the rail line from Port Sudan), the distribution of revenues, the structure of the national educational system, and other subjects of concern to an authentically federal state.

The DPA also contains provisions for a Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Consultation (DDDC). In this DPA case, however, the decisions of the conference would have no legal status: they would only be advisory. The “consultations” would in fact be discussions of decisions already taken by Government authorities or of proposals already formulated. It is hard to imagine that the Bashir government would take seriously any comments made by the parties doing the responding.

Venue

In the first version of this Plan, drawing upon the Bonn precedent, it was recommended that the road map meeting be held outside Darfur . However, given the need for the quickest possible convening of such a meeting, it may be possible to hold such a meeting within Darfur and still to isolate it from destructive outside influence and manipulation. In the case of the negotiations of November 1995 leading to the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the Bosnian conflict, a set of small buildings at the edge of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base provided a productive location that was isolated and guarded with relative ease. A similar complex might be created at the edge of the El Fashir or Nyala airfields, or possibly also on the grounds of the El Obeid Airport just outside Darfur in Kordofan. Military engineers or private contractors from any of several industrialized countries could construct and equip a suitable set of temporary buildings in less than a week’s time, as is demonstrated by their performance in many humanitarian emergencies.

Securing the Venue[Send request to jhw4@cornell.edu]

IV. IMPLEMENTATION FORCE

It is clear that no military or police forces now exist within Darfur (or all of Sudan, for that matter) suitable for implementing the decisions of the Interim Administration. An international force with advanced military capabilities will thus be required. In order to establish the required atmosphere of security, the implementation force will need to carry out a number of difficult and risky assignments, the need for which will command quick agreement among a substantial number of the leaders assembled at the road map meeting: the disarmament, arrest, or neutralization of the most dangerous militia units, GoS forces and rebel formations; the enforcement of the ban on flights by Government helicopter gunships and bombers; reconnaissance aimed at mapping areas of rebel and Government control; the collection of records of violations and violators from AU

32

repositories in El Fashir and Nyala; insuring that the Khartoum government does not impede the flow of humanitarian aid.

The indispensable task of protecting civilians also entails risks and difficulties. Any military commander tasked with protecting civilians, however, cannot limit his unit’s activities to guarding perimeters and escort duty. To accomplish his mission with due regard for the safety of his own troops, as well as those he is charged to protect, he must take proactive measures to reduce substantially the sources of the threat. In short, he must be prepared for extended combat with well-armed adversaries.

Staffing the Implementation Force will be a principal concern of the Canadian-American teams seeking to carry out this Plan. In the months after Darfur gained world attention in early 2004 Britain and Australia offered to send troops to a humanitarian intervention. NATO reportedly offered to send troops but was turned down by the African Union with the now-discredited slogan “African Solutions for African Problems.” Canadian General Romeo Dallaire has called for a coalition of “middle powers” such as Canada, Germany, Italy, and Japan to intervene to protect civilians, not just to monitor and verify. Respected political analysts have claimed that France would be willing to send a contingent. Slovenia and Denmark have expressed dissatisfaction with the level of concern evinced by their European Union partners and have advocated stronger action. Turkey and South Korea have also been mentioned. Bosnian military specialists are now serving in international missions outside Bosnia; they would seem especially appropriate troops since, like the Rwandans, they have experience the kind of atrocity crimes that have occurred in Darfur since 2003. Finally, AU members with troops already deployed in Darfur such as Rwanda, Ghana, and Senegal might be willing to participate in the expanded mission.

V. THE DUAL-PURPOSE NO-FLY ZONE

The Government of Sudan will express violent opposition to the intrusion upon their sovereignty inherent in this Plan. “Spontaneous” demonstrations of 100,000 in the streets of Khartoum will be fed racist, jihadist, jingoist, and hyperbolic threats to react to the arrival of any intervention force with measures against this “Northern crusade” that will make Darfur a “graveyard” where the crusaders will die in “rivers of blood.” At the very least the GoS will demand an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council --unless that Council happened to be the authorizing agent of the intervention in the first place.

Practical measures the GoS might take to prevent the implementation of the Plan would include arrests of potential participants in the road map meeting; the shutting down of telephone and cell phone relay towers, an action that reliably paralyzes the AU forces who have few radios; the taking of internationals as hostages;

33

and attacks by GoS forces on humanitarian organizations, IDP camps, and advance units of the Implementation Force.

A No-Fly Zone, which could make its presence felt within a very short period of time, could act as a counter to such contemplated GoS moves by posing three kinds of credible retaliatory threats:1. To GoS assets such as its aircraft and missile sites2. To the Government’s authority by making it lose face as a state unable to respond to “forceful monitoring” by aggressive fly-overs anywhere in the country.3. To troop and militia formations in Darfur itself.

As the only state with the weapons and transport capability to project power globally, the United States would form the core of this No-Fly Zone. Other coalition partners could also join in support after the initial phases of the operation, as occurred in the Bosnian and Kosovar cases and in Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq. America’s specialized surveillance and target acquisition aircraft (AWACS), special operations transport aircraft, anti-anti-aircraft missile systems, Stealth weapons systems, and satellite tactical capabilities are not yet fully engaged in other theaters. High-ranking sources within the American defense establishment have assured the authors that a no-fly zone is well within the operational capability of the USAF.

The no-fly zone could establish threat #1 above most easily if the Sudanese tested the enforcement of ths zone as did Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein. Sudan’s expensive fleet of at least twelve MIG-21s would be at considerable risk of reduction.

The no-fly zone could establish threat #2 above by means of the striking way military aircraft can establish their intrusive and unstoppable presence. The AWACs and other surveillance aircraft usually fly at a relatively high altitude. To someone on the ground they are barely noticeable. But fully loaded fighter-bombers can use a pattern of relatively low-level flights producing a variety of impressive, attitude-changing acoustical effects, from rolling sonic booms to a deep, long-lasting roar tht seems to dwell on the horizon for many minutes. Air Force planners understand the techniques for mapping and maximizing the psychological effects of such flyovers, whether over a janjaweed base, an IDP camp, or a politically vital urban agglomeration such as the capital, Khartoum, or its sister across the river, Omdurman.

The no-fly zone would establish credible threat #3 above by providing the “close air support” demanded by Kofi Annan in his list of requirements for the success of any UN intervention in Darfur. Ad hoc coalition ground troops charged by the Darfuri Interim Administration with peace enforcment operations would also need such support. Armored, low-flying aircraft of the A-10 “Warthog” type would be effective against militias mounted on horses or camels as well as against armored personnel carriers or trucks armed with machine guns. Precision-guided munitions (PGMs) delivered by aircraft based at Djibouti, on

34

carriers in the Red Sea, or at French-operated bases in Chad could be effective against fixed GoS positions such as the militia barracks (and headquarters of janjaweed leader Musa Hilal) at Misteriha or the helicopter gunship port at El Geneina.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

The UN Role

President Bashir will react to the final application of UN pressure, a Security Council demand for a UN role in Darfur, in one of three ways:

1. He will refuse again to allow any UN role whatsoever. In this case, the Three-Part Plan may be implemented immediately.

The UN may be requested to take charge of its implementation, but in the anticipation of the rejection of that request the US and Canada can be expected to mobilize an ad hoc coalition already put together in anticipation of such a refusal.

2. He will “relent” and permit blue-hatted troops to enter Darfur, but with only a Chapter 6 observe-and-monitor mandate and a side agreement by the UN to collect no information about individual war criminals. .

The authors of this Plan consider this move to still be a possibility. It is clearly unacceptable and has zero probability of advancing the DPA or reducing the suffering of the victim population. If the UN accepted it, the US and Canada should explain their reasons for rejecting it and proceed to the implementation of the Three-Part plan.

3. He will accept a Chapter 7 intervention with a protection mandate and the authorization to use force. In the months since a strategy meeting held in Washington on 4 November 2005 almost all the organizations grouped in the Save Darfur Coalition and certain other activist groups have come to agree that this intervention action is the one to advocate. Should an adequately equipped and trained UN force genuinely capable of protection(in the military sense described above) and reconstruction actually appear in sufficient force in Darfur, hope that the genocide may be stopped will find some real measure of justification.

But that such a force will appear at all in the western Sudan is highly unlikely, that it will appear quickly enough to spare the victims at least six more months of suffering is impossible. The UN’s own estimates place the arrival of a fully permitted protection force at January 2007 at the earliest.

In the event of a UN protection force agreement by Sudan, we thus propose the immediate implementation of the Three-Part Plan as a “bridging force” --a concept first introduced in the International Crisis Group’s Briefing on Darfur of July 2005 --to bridge the gap between the end of the failed AU mission (i.e., now) and the arrival of a mission-capable UN force.

35

Public Diplomacy and Media Relations

The political nature of both the goal of Darfur policy and the tactics used to accomplish those goals must be kept in mind at all times. Resources invested in the management of the road map meeting, the support of the Interim Administration, and the political empowerment of Darfuri citizens must at least equal those invested in the military aspects. As an example of just one such political consideration, the elimination of the hundreds of ways the GoS impedes and exploits the delivery of humanitarian aid must be seen as a necessary result of the forced reduction of its power and presence in Darfur.

Resources must also be invested in facilitating access to events in Sudan by Middle Eastern and African press, radio, and television. If embedding Al Jazeera journalists in the Implementation Force units proves impractical, civil affairs officers and civilian public relations experts must find substitutes. After all, Al Jazeera’s most ambitious attempt to cover the Darfur genocide, a documentary film produced in early 2004, resulted in the closing of its Khartoum office and the prosecution of its staff.

Particular care must be taken to avoid the appearance of Arab-bashing on the part of intervening forces. The racist Arabism deployed by one of the strongest factions in the Khartoum government is a peculiarly Sudanese concoction, no more characteristic of other Arab regimes than was Nazism characteristic of other German-speaking regimes. That the intervention is somehow an attack against Islam may be effectively refuted by the fact that almost all Darfuris are Muslims.

Planning for Intervention: How Public?Planning for the three-part intervention on the part of coordinating

task forces of Canadians and Americans should begin immediately. We find it instructive that American troops and aircraft were attacking in force in Afghanistan only 27 days after September 11th. To what extent such planning should be made public is difficult to determine, however. There are arguments for quiet planning as well as for a warning to Khartoum that, for once, one of the populations that took “Never Again” as a motto actually means what it says. In any case, the longest-ruling genocidal regime in history, the Bashir government of Sudan, needs to be decisively deterred from carrying forward with its challenge to our claim to value variety of cultures as part of our common humanity.

Likely Political and Armed Responses of the Bashir Regime and Others

It is certain that the Bashir regime will attempt to mobilize its population by using appeals to the Islamic jihad tradition. In 1991, after all, Bashir proclaimed himself “imam of the jihad” against the peoples of the Nuba Mountains. In the case of the Nuba Mountains, inhabited by both Christians and Muslims, this tactic was only partly successful. A significant number of officers of the Sudanese army resisted

36

attacking fellow Muslims, which caused a slowdown in execution and strategic reorientation of the battle plan.

The memory of this history helps to indicate why the GoS has made such heavy use of janjaweed militias. Although they are drawn from many sources, the smaller, more recently arrived Arab clans in Northern Darfur, ethnic groups more vulnerable to the appeals of the “Arab Gathering” and other racist ideologies, have provided a disproportionate number of the jj militias. These militias then were supported by the mercenaries and professionals flying the Antonov bombers and armed helicopters. In fact, the largest ethnically and linguistically uniform group of Arabs in Darfur, the Rizeigat of the South, have remained largely neutral in the conflict between rebels and Government. Their leaders, moreover, would be allocated major roles in the “protected conversation” meetings and the Interim regime.

Crowds in the streets of Khartoum and Omdurman will most likely be turned out in force, as they have been in the past, to be treated to feasts of rodomontade and warlike rhetoric. Directing the anger of crowds to “invaded” Darfur and translating it into militarily or politically effective operations may not be easy. In the first place, the Popular Defense Force units that might be formed as the result of the claims of a foreign “white” invasion do not have an impressive military record. The past record of using such units in the wars against the South and other areas has shown that the PDF formations often behave poorly and suffer heavy casualties.

Drawing on the recruits from “the street” who attended these gatherings, the GoS might train “insurgents” to attack Implementation Force units or civilian concentrations in Darfur or even abroad, using terrorist tactics. Any action that attempts to help Darfuri victim groups to reverse their radical diminution and escape the life of the camps must weigh the benefits of success in this attempt, the reversal of a genocide against 2.5 million people, with the possible costs from terrorist attacks. Against this consideration must be placed, however, the knowledge that the GoS is already training selected janjaweed in advanced terrorist tactics, in Sudan as well as in other countries. Evidence to this effect gathered by the authors of this report was submitted in early 2006 to US counterterrorism analysts. At the same time, of course, the GoS has posed as a leader in the war against terror, even hosting a conference on this subject in November 2005.

37