Today, I wrote a piece synthesizing the various reports coming out about post-elections Darfur. Have a look:
A troubled post-election Darfur: what did you expect?
Elections in Sudan concluded last month with indicted war criminal Omar Al-Bashir taking 68% of the vote. With his leading competitors deciding to boycott the elections, Bashir’s victory was never in doubt and, for many reasons, the international community could do nothing but assent implicitly or explicitly to the outcome. The man responsible for the heinous crimes in Darfur is critical to implementing the final stages of the North/South peace agreement, signed in 2005, that provides Southern Sudanese the opportunity to secede from Bashir’s rule in 2011. As troubled an experience as it has been for the marginalized communities of the South, no such silver lining as the referendum exists for those mired in the chaos that remains Darfur.
As such, it is important intellectually and morally for all interested parties to be clear that these elections were a disaster for efforts to achieve lasting peace, protection and justice in Darfur. How else can you interpret not only Bashir’s victory but that of notorious janjaweed leader Musa Hilal? This poster-child for atrocities in Darfur won a parliamentary seat and, presumably, the constitutional immunities that come with it. So much for Hilal, Bashir, or any other perpetrators being held accountable anytime soon.
This disheartening piece touches on many of the same issues addressed in an op-ed that my colleague Celeste and I wrote two weeks ago for The East African (of Kenya): “The big losers in Sudan’s flawed election are the abused and ignored people of Darfur.”
In the coming days, I will be writing additional posts on Sudan after the elections and in advance of the referendum in 2011, as well as a few other non-Sudan topics. So stay tuned.
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