Bashir in El-Fasher, Darfur

First posted at Save Darfur’s blog…

President Bashir’s National Congress Party in Sudan is driving for one primary goal: winning the national elections scheduled for April 2010.  All analysis of the NCP’s behavior between now and April should be viewed through this lens.

Bec Hamilton in a blog yesterday sees such motivations behind the NCP’s outrageous suggestion of closing down IDP camps next year:

[T]he NCP sees the 2010 election as a rare chance to start over with a clean the slate in the eyes of its neighbors, if not the broader international community. “Democratically elected Bashir” sounds so much better than “indicted war criminal Bashir.”

But the desire is not just to win the elections (the conditions have already been established such that short of radical changes that I don’t expect to see, I think it’s safe to say they have that one in the bag already). The desire is to be seen as having won them legitimately, which in turn requires convincing anyone who would dare to say otherwise, that the elections will be “free and fair.” The consequences of this desire are seen in several areas, one of which is the aggressive agenda that Khartoum is now pushing on IDP returns.

There is a very real sense in which those in Khartoum view the IDP camps themselves as the problem – as if the camps would disappear, then there would no longer be a “Darfur problem” and the world shift the spotlight. What the regime understands well is that “free and fair elections” and “2.5 million IDPs” are not concepts easily reconciled.

Part of the NCP’s effort, therefore, will be to make the case that the vast majority of Darfuris can participate in the electoral process.  A NCP-leaning newspaper this morning includes the headline, “The Displaced are the highest percentage of registered voters in South Darfur.” The article claims that in 10 days that 388,000 IDPs have registered to vote.  With no election monitors (domestic or international) working in Darfur, no one will be able to confirm or deny these numbers.

Many are also complaining about the registration process in less troubled areas of the country.  During the first days of registration, the Carter Center “expressed concerns about the obstacles facing election observers.” Since then, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the northern opposition parties have all leveled complaints with the National Election Commission concerning the registration procedures and accusations against the NCP of manipulating the entire process.  Their central demands now are an extension of the voter registration period (which currently is schedule to conclude at the end of the month) and greater independent monitoring.

To prevent President Bashir from using fraudulent elections as a means to re-legitimize his regime both domestically and internationally, the U.S. administration must urgently call on the Sudanese government to create the political environment throughout Sudan necessary for free and fair elections to take place.  And as Bec stated in her blog, the administration must also ensure that the return of IDPs in Darfur take place in a manner consistent with the international standards of “voluntary, safe and dignified.”  They cannot be pushed home just to fit the electoral timeline of President Bashir and the NCP.

After weeks of research, I have been unable to find any information that makes me think Abu Sharati, supposedly the “representative” of Darfuri refugees and IDPs, exists -except to the extent that someone, who possesses neither that name nor that position, has been making statements to the press. And that whoever that person is, he is apparently awfully fond of the rebel leader Abdel Wahid Al-Nur.

I cannot think of any way to interpret the information I have been given that would allow me to conclude that no journalist has either (a) lied to me, (b) failed to follow the professional ethics that a journalist should, or (c) been duped by a fake “refugee representative” when any minor amount of digging or critical thought would have alerted them that there was more to the story. Frankly, the Occam’s Razor explanation here really seems like it’s (d): all of the above.

The trail that leads her to this conclusion is definitely worth a read, as are her conclusions for why this misreporting matters.  She believes first that “Abu Sharati’s” claiming to represent all Darfuris deprives other IDPs of their ability to tell their own stories and, furthermore, that “presenting a political argument in the guise of a humanitarian sentiment is disingenuous at best, and dangerous at worst.”  With 2.7 million Dafuris scattered over numerous camps in Darfur, it seems highly unlikely that they are organized and represented by one voice with one message.

Finally, she notes the implications for the Darfur activist movement:

Thirdly, it matters that the media quoted “Sharati” misleadingly, because it allows any of us who trusted those stories to be, well, misled. The Save Darfur movement is massive, and has motivated a huge number of grass-roots activists to support the cause, many of whom have never been to Darfur and rely on the media for information about the humanitarian situation there. They are ordinary people, (except when they are Mia Farrow or Nat Hentoff), with regular jobs and lives, and they don’t have access to firsthand experience to guide them. So when the mainstream media quotes Sharati, they trust that he is who the articles say he is. That lends power not only to the views expressed in mainstream publications, but also to the things that he says in less reputable publications. So, if it’s not true that he can reasonably speak for the displaced, then the activists who listen to him have been duped, and that sucks for them. And if it turns out that the thing they’ve been duped into doing is supporting one particular dude’s particular political ambitions because those views are presented as a neutral humanitarian perspective, then I think that sucks even more.

Overall, I think Taub accurately summarizes the dangers posed to the advocacy community’s understanding of Darfuri politics.  At the end of August, I did quote Abu Sharati in one of my blog postings from a telephone interview “he” gave to The Sudan Tribune in which “he” expressed concerns about the “protection of civilians and evacuation of new settlers who occupy IDP lands.” These complaints matched up with a number of other reports we have received from Darfur and Darfuris.

“Abu Sharati’s” strong denunciations though of U.S. Special Envoy Gration’s visit to the IDP camps in early September motivated me to look into other statements allegedly made by him.  I found, like Taub, that Abu Sharati had a consistent record of restating the talking points of Darfuri rebel leader Abdel Wahid al-Nur.  I shared this information with my colleagues and when such criticism of the Gration was brought up the same week on a Save Darfur activist conference call, a colleague of mine noted that activists should not put too much stock in the quotes from Abu Sharati because there were strong suspicions that he was speaking mostly for one faction of the Darfuri rebels.

Taub should be commended for trying to ensure accuracy about the reporting on the harsh, no-exaggeration-needed situation and concerns of the 2.7 million Darfuris living in IDP camps.