Rebels in Khartoum

All is earily quiet here in Khartoum this afternoon, following the Darfur rebel attack last night in Omdurman, just across from the Nile. Everyone seems pretty shocked that JEM managed to get so close, though they were far outnumbered by government forces and had no real chance of ‘taking the city’, as they claimed they had done. I have just spent some minutes trawling through the press coverage of this incident - which I was just far too busy to contribute to - when I see, once again, how so many outlets in the UK and America have missed the essence of the attack, by cobbling together snippets from news wire stories and pretending that the copy is their own.

So here, for what it’s worth, is my take on things.

Firstly, although I am rather astonished by the speed and logistical finesse of the attack (get out a map of Sudan to see the distances involved), I am not actually as shocked as many other people seem to be. For months, I have been writing that JEM is the only real threat to peace in Darfur, and now it looks as though they have validated my position. It is nice to feel smug.

So, what did JEM hope to achieve in their attack? Did they really think they could bring the government to their knees?

Far from it. What this attack represented was a warning strike against the government, a sort of cry that JEM should be taken seriously. I have it on good authority that the government have been holding long negotiations with the SLA rebel group in Darfur, and despite constant whinging and whining from Adbul Wahid, the rebel leader, were close to making quite an attractive deal. This was a very clear message to the government that it is not just the SLA they should worry about. It is JEM that represents the real threat. And at least, whatever you want to say about Dr Ibrahim Khalil (the JEM leader), at least he is in Sudan and not wining and dining in the Champs Elysee of Paris. Abudul Wahid still won’t grant me an interview - and after that snide comment, I’m not sure I favour my chances in the future.

And, yes, Chad probably did give some support to the rebels. How much is anybody’s guess, but it is well known that there are strong ties across the border.

The coverage about this attack has really irritated me, in general, and I don’t know if it is the journalists fault or the editors. The one thing that has not been made clear is the set up in Darfur. VERY briefly, there are numerous rebel factions in Darfur, all fighting for different reasons. Many of these have not converged, at the insistence of the UN, and can basically be boiled down to around five. The four that are prepared to play ball and JEM, who most definitely wants to be the one to score all the goals. The biggest groups are the SLA and JEM (though both can be sub-divided into smaller factions). The SLA was formed to call for more rights for Darfur, in the fear of encroaching Arabisation. JEM was formed in the late 1990s, when harliner Hassan al-Turabi and his cronies were thrown out of the government. In other words, JEM are pre-dominently Islamic - though you would wonder to see the news coverage today. Al-Turabi denies that he is pulling the strings behind JEM, but inner-circle speculation on this is rife. I daresay that this is where the suggestion of an attempted military coup comes from, as I saw in a few American papers. Personally, I have nothing that makes me think the attack was a coup - I just think it was JEM saying “I am here”.

Dispelling a myth

Rob Crilly, a Nairobi-based freelancer, kindly thought to pick up my comments about how too many journalists cover Sudan from Nairobi - and did so in that gentlemanly manner so befitting of an Irishman abroad, where he declined to offer any counter-attack.

But his posting made me think that I really must dispell a myth that seems to have surrounded my time in Sudan. And that is that I am a teacher here and occasional freelancer.

The same thing happened with a blog post during the Gillian Gibbons affair, with some blogger (I have lost the link) assumed I was working at Unity High School.

Then, the other week, at the Queen’s Birthday in the British Embassy (Lawd bless you, ma’am), the head of Reuters in Khartoum introduced me to someone as a teacher and part-time journalist.

The reality is that I now spend far more hours writing than I do teaching - which includes, of course, this book we’re just finishing.

So, in reality, I am a freelance journalist in Khartoum and an occasional teacher.

What’s America famous for?

I don’t often shy away from subjects with my students, who tend to be university students or young professionals. Alcohol, the stupidity of Western politics, why John Garang died, whose to blame for Darfur, the pros and cons of polygamy. We have great fun discussing all these subjects and more. Things don’t usually get too heated. Steering clear of teddy bears probably helps.

Today, I had a new bunch of elementary students, so I took them through my usual introductory lesson on nationalities and asking where people are from. I wrote a load of countries on the board and asked them to say what they were famous for.

Argentina - football

Brazil - coffee and football

Italy - pizza

Germany - cars

Japan - technology

“So,” I said at length. “I hesitate to ask this question, but what is America famous for?”

“Killing people,” said one young lad sitting at the back, without hesitation.

Come on, don’t hold back, tell me what you really think.

Food crisis? What food crisis?

I must admit to not being one of the world’s greatest lovers of food shopping (as I constantly remind Violetta, my absolute maximum attention span in a supermarket is about thirty minutes), but nevertheless I can’t fail to notice the lack of interest in the food crisis in Sudan.

Egypt teetering on the brink of socio-economic colapse because of the high price of basic foodstuffs, or so we’re told. Riots in Kenya… well, there are always riots in Kenya. Gideon Rachman of the FT tells his reading public that pretty much every country he visits in the world is suffering because of price increases.

And what have I noticed here, over the past year? Well, a 33ml bottle of Coca-Cola has gone up by 10 piastras (2 and a half pence). But that probably says more about the avarice of Dal Group than it does about the imminent end of the human race. And coffee has gone down by 50 piastras (12 and a half pence), so it all balances out.

No, the prices in Khartoum do not seem to have increased dramatically over the past year, and I wonder why. My initial hypothesis, without having looked at the issue too closely, is that prices were so high anyway (because of high import taxes) that the government is able to soak up any immediate price increase. I wonder if that is what is happening. In which case, it is probably only a matter of time before Sudan joins the rest of the world in unaffordable basic food needs.

Oh, Boris

I have been wanting to write this blog entry for many months now, but at the time of relevance things were a little crazy over here and there simply wasn’t the time.

Well, by dint of fate, relevance has returned and there now is the time.

I refer, of course, to the tragic election of Boris Johnson as Mayor of London, proving that it is not just the good people of America that lack a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to deciding who should hold the power and who should not.

The election of London is slightly beyond my remit, although I do note here that a) he has mastered Classical Greek and therefore should be capable of anything (paraphrased quote from his father); and b) that he has certain reservations about the million or so Poles now working in London and wants to kick them out (for someone who writes so often on economics, he really should read one or two good economics text books).

No, my gripe is with the commentry he wrote about Gillian Gibbons, the teacher that was accused of blasphemy before Christmas.

Like so many other commentators on Sudanese affairs, he is not actually all that well-connected here and, to the best of my knowledge, has never been to the country. Spluttering outrage about the way Gillian Gibbons was treated, and accusing the Sudanese government of being nutballs that should be brought to bare by the British colonial empire, may look good on the page - but has nothing to do with reality. He had no idea why Gibbons was imprisoned, nor any idea of the slight that she made to Islam. I fully agree that she should not have been imprisoned, and that the whole thing was blown out of proportion - but at least I understand why. At least I am here, living and breathing Sudan and Islam. Not touring the golfcourses of England.

(Shouldn’t surprise me, of course. Boris was famously sacked as a journalist in his first job, on the Times, for making up a quote. He also gained something of a reputation for creativity when he was the Telegraph’s Brussels Bureau Chief. But everybody loved him for his white hair and his wit. The same reason, I guess, that Londoners love him.)

To recap, for those that do not know the story, Gibbons was arrested because some secretary at the school had a grudge against the principal. The thing was blown out of a proportion because of a few loose cannons in the government. Bashir was quite surprised to hear that the issue had got as far as it did, and summarily sacked the Minister of Justice. It was all very embarrasing for him.

But that’s the problem with media coverage of Sudan. Too many people arrogantly pronouncing upon Sudan from afar, without any real insight into what is going on here. Well-known commentators in London and New York write prolifically on the country, as though their word is God, whilst only a handful of hacks in the country really understand what’s going on. Then you have the press pack in Nairobi, based there because visas are easy and booze is cheap. Many of them flit over the border from time to time, head for the Juba bars, scribble down a few lines and scoot back again. Most do not speak Arabic.

I have so far found one person who is a Boris fan here, and it surprised me as to who it was. A teacher, whom I had thought had a strong socialist streak running through him. Now I am not so sure. Yesterday, though, I happed upon someone who shuddered as much as me at the thought of Boris Johnson running London-town. And the strange thing was that he is one of Khartoum’s many foreign richies. Which just goes to show.

Well, it just goes to show something anyway.

Boris Johnson. Brilliant man. Brilliant writer. Lousy politician.

The frontmen in a new war

The big silver sign on the front of the building in Othman Digna Street is so shiny it is almost impossible to read. You have to stand in the shade, lean to one side and squint really hard. Then you see it: “National General Press Council”. But the over-shinniness of the sign is only a minor glitch. What lies beneath is more interesting. The frontmen in a new war.

When I went to the NPC previously, the sign was only in Arabic and the entrance to the institution was tucked away down a little back alley. I had to ask several times where it was. No one seemed to know.

This time, I was on a mission for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, who are seeking sponsorhip from the NPC to run a series of seminars over here. “No problem,” I was told. “No problem whatsoever.” That’s nice.

The NPC, needless to say, is a government body. It has been widely criticised for selectively choosing journalists that can report in this country - because all national journalists need to undergo an exam before they can so much write one word for the media. Now they seem to be warmly welcoming a institution who, let’s be fair, might have less than pleasant things to say about the country.

But I am often struck by how wonderfully open the government seems these days - a far cry from the sordid nineties. The other day, I wrote an article about the Sudan’s census, which was delayed by a week because of squabbling within SPLM ranks. I tried really hard to speak with the SPLM - you might have thought that they at least wanted to justify their position. But no, meetings were set up and cancelled no less than half a dozen times (over the course of a month - I was researching this for a long time). But then the head of the Statistics Bureau, another government body, happily took me into his office to discuss what was happening with the census.

Before that, I did an article on alleged torture in Sudan. I spoke to a few lawyers, who insisted: yes, yes, yes, torture is rampant and should be stopped. Can I see some evidence of torture? Sorry, client confidentiality. Well, can I at least use your name? Nope, sorry. But: torture, torture, torture, definitely a problem in Sudan. When I put all these vague points to Abdul Moneim Osman , the head of the Advisory Council for Human Rights (guess what: another government body), he painstakingly dismissed all of them - and explained why. We even had tea. He wouldn’t let me leave.

I tried to meet with Kamal Omar, who is the lead attorney in a prominent death penalty case (the case of Mohammed Taha, a journalist that was beheaded by a group of extremists for questioning the origins of Prohet Mohammed). He stood me up, though. I waited in the centre of town for five hours, repeatedly calling him and sending him text messages, but he never answered. Later, a former colleague of his suggested that maybe he didn’t want to meet because
of the poor way he has handled the case so far. Omar accuses the government of not allowing a medical examination that could prove the defendents were tortured. But, in reality, he failed to request this examination through the official channels. One would think that he might have liked to have the chance to defend this allegation, rather than see it appear in someone’s blog.

And on it goes. The government speaks. The righteous opposition, who make wild accusations against the government, don’t.

The tide of the propaganda war is turning. Someone in the government has clearly understood of the importance of presenting a good, pleasant face for the government. And these are the frontmen of this new war: oozing charm and charisma and making an awful lot of sense.

Not that I wholeheartedly endorse what the government is doing in this country. I know that they continue to do a lot of bad stuff - and it will take an awful lot of spoonfed propaganda to pull the wool over this hack’s eyes. But so do other’s in the country, probably in equal measure. The difference is what people see.

The curse of perfectionism

One of my students, remarkably, said something quite profound to me the other day: “Perfectionism is the enemy of success.”

Now a week and a half before our deadline for publishing our guidebook, I have come upon the real meaning of this.

I spent the whole weekend, whilst Violetta was “on assignment” up north, trawling through the pages of our almost-complete guidebook to spot every tiny little error I could. I think I probably had a total of eight hours sleep over the two days.

And, after the cappucino-fired weekend, I emerged, bleary-eyed, with a crumpled ten pages of things that aren’t quite right. That’s a lot of not-rights to emerge with so close to the deadline.

But the thing is our guidebook is actually really good (hands down, it’s the best you’re going to find about Khartoum and Sudan), but the niggling little doubts I have our stupid things over spellings etc.

For example, a lot of street names begin with Abd, as in, for example, Abd Latief. What’s odd about that? Well, it suddently occurred to me that Abd isn’t a word. Even in Arabic. Of course, I knew immediately what it stood for: Abdul. A call to a friend, who endured many such calls over the weekend, confirmed to me my suspcions. So out go all Abds, to be replaced by Abdul’s (or could be Abdel, again more painful deliberating).

Or the train station in North Khartoum is called Moghif Shandi. But it suddenly occurred to me that this name is mightily similar to Shendi up north - must be a reason. Quick call to my friend, whose dispair becomes more obvious with each fresh phone call, and my suspicions are again confirmed.

And so on it goes.

Hence the ten pages.

And there are still about six of those pages to correct. Hence perfectionism being the enemy of success. We can’t really miss this deadline looming at the end of the month, if we are to have any chance of shipping our product here before we (temporarily) return to Europe for a few months.

The thing that I really don’t want to do is sacrifice quality just because we have this deadline to make. All this thinking is giving me a headache.

Oh, I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they shoot by. - Douglas Adams

What’s this census all about, eh?

In certain tribal villages in South Sudan, mothers with large families have somehow got wind that a census is going to take place. Not that they really know what a census is. Rather, they have just about understood, listening to all the rhetoric, that someone wants to come and count their children. They don’t really know why, but they do know that, unless they take steps to hide their children, this census thing is going to put an evil curse on them.

In Darfur, images of angry demonstrators in IDP camps, brandishing banners viciously: no one is going to count us! They don’t know why they object so strongly to this census thing, but they do know one thing: that it’s all to do with politics (again), and that after they have been counted they are bound to be much worse off.

The educated ‘elite’ in the north and the south are planning to complete the census form with black pens. In remote regions of Darfur and south Sudan, they are readying the ink wells, where bemused villagers are going to be sticking thumbs before applying said digit to a dainty bit of white paper. They’re certainly going to remember the hilarity of sticking a thumb in a pot of ink, but they’re not really going to grasp why.

So what’s all this census thing about then? Does it matter and, if so, why? And why does it keep getting delayed? (It was supposed to take place on April 15, but has now been postponed to April 22 - see my article for why?)

When people talk about the census, they link it to the election due to take place in 2009 (insh’allah) and the referendum in 2011. But an interesting background briefing I had with a couple of Western diplomats say that both of these things can happen, more or less fairly, without the census. And I agreed. True, there would be a little more work involved, but in all fairness it’s about time that the UN staff recovered from their hangovers here long enough to actually do some work.

No, the true importance of the census lies in working out what money should go where: the so-called wealth sharing protocols of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). Once the population is more-or-less worked out, the South knows how much oil revenue it should be getting, and the government can stop duping everyone (or the other way around).

And this is why there has been such a problem actually getting the census to take place. Both sides want to make sure that, when the count actually takes place, they are in the best positions. The latest complaint by the south is that not enough refugees have made it back home to give them a fair result. The more returning refugees that are south of the border come C-Day, the greater the population of the south and the more power and money they can claim from Khartoum.

Perhaps the most obvious example of all this politicking is poor Abeyi, a disputed region of South Kordofan where most of the country’s oil is. Edward Lino, a member of the SPLM, has just been appointed governor of the region - and has set about pitting the Ngok Dink against the Masseriya Arabs, in order to disrupt things in the region and move southerners into key areas. Meanwhile, the government stands accused, by those honest people at Human Rights Watch, of launching deliberate attacks in certain areas to dissuade refugees in the north from returning to the region. All this is in a confidential UN report, so it must be true.

Not that any of it really matters to the bemused women in Darfur with the blue, inky thumb. She’ll only remember C-Day for its strangeness. Not for the power it has to change the shape of Sudan; if only the two sides could be brave enough to let it get started.

Another vice-president for Sudan?

There is a certain amount of speculation, among the dark wheelers-and-dealers of Khartoum, that Sudan may soon have a second vice-president. That President Bashir is right now considering offering the hand of friendship to a former foe. Pretty much like he did with John Garang (then leader of the SPLM) in 2005.

Of course, this is not something you will see written anywhere at the moment, and it is not something that right now, alas and alack, I have time to follow up on. But I wanted it written down here, in black and white, so that, in a few weeks or a couple of months, when the deal is announced, you can all sit back in satisfaction and say “I knew that already.”

Nor can I, I’m afraid, even give hints as to who the second vice-president might be. You’ll just have to wait and see.

But the cynic in me thinks Bashir is being extremely clever, with his beady eye on those 2009 elections, and his foes are being all too fallible. Peace is good, sure, but at what cost? And are the men that have followed a leader so long going to forgive someone who sells out so easily, for personal gain?

If I am wrong, and you don’t hear of a deal taking place, then this will only be because Bashir wasn’t able to offer a sweet enough deal.

El-Fateh: Vivre la Revolution!

I had a pre-view of Burj El-Fateh this morning. You know, the grand egg-shaped hotel (aka Gadaffi’s Egg) that has transformed Khartoum’s skyline over the past few years. I was severly reprimanded for hinting at its egg-like ovalness. Don’t call it an egg! It is supposed to symbolise the sail of a ship. That is as might be, but I’m pretty sure that rabbiting on about sails of Italian sea vessels is likely to sell far fewer articles than talking about eggs. It’s only human nature. Actually, I reckon that, if you walk round El Fateh, on the west side, and head for the National Museum, the hotel starts looking like The Titanic, particularly at night. And you know what happened to The Titantic.

If you’ll forgive me a little bit of drooling for the moment, the hotel, from the inside and outside, is actually pretty stunning. With six restaurants and cafes at various points throughout the hotel, and oozing plushness in every cranny, this hotel is certainly going to be a hit with the rich businessmen and government delegations. Plus the facilities: squash courts, tennis courts, gym, sauna, health club, spa, swimming pool, club lounge, business/conference hall… There’s even a shopping mall attached!

I don’t mind saying I was a tad impressed, although I’ll admit the wow-factor would probably have been markedly less were this hotel in Dubai or London. Where my review would probably have been “sure, it’s okay, but why the egg shape, surely gherkins are all the rage these days?” But this is Khartoum. Khartoum! Where things do not really happen in floors of more than three. This hotel has 23! And 230 rooms!

So I asked about the prices, thinking they’d probably send me reeling down the glass stairwell. But, surprisingly, they were not outrageous. $275 is the cheapest, for a rather nice single room, ending up at $5000 for the presidential suite. The prices fluctuate according to demand, I was told, so this $275 might in reality be higher. But, for a standard rack price, it’s pretty good. The nearby Grand Holiday Villa, which is dwarfed by this billowing sail, has similar prices. These other hotels in Khartoum are really going to have to do some price-cutting.

At the end of my tour, I asked about the name, which as I already knew is named after the year and month that Colonel Gadaffi took power in Libya. The young lad that was showing me around said that he didn’t want to get into politics since the hotel has nothing to do with politics. Apparently, it’s owned by some Libyan enterprise or other, nothing to do with the chap in the military uniform.

Au contrare, mon ami, au contrare. The hotel has everything to do with politics. After all, why would a company who wants to establish an a-political hotel in Sudan, name it after a coup d’etat in their home country? And one must ask what powers are at work behind the scene that allows a Libyan company to launch such a hotel in the city, when the government isn’t always so welcoming of foreigners. And then there is the history - let’s not forget the deep, deep ties that Libya and Sudan have had for many years, and yet which are so rarely talked about.

As I left El Fateh in beautiful sunshine, I was half-toying with the idea for an article, provisionally entitled: “How many people have died to build El Fateh?” Not, of course, in the literal sense of falling of the roof (none, I think), but in the more abstract way that Libya has been able to cement its ties with Sudan by being so intricately linked with the country’s conflicts. And yet no one really seems to talk about this. (But, of course, this would just be adding fuel to the endless and nonsensical Sudan-bashing everyone in the West seems engaged in, and I refuse to get involved in that unless I have an original point to make.)

Vivre la Revolution!