Daily Darfur: African Columnists Get Feisty

I'm becoming a big fan of Ugandan and Kenyan newspaper columnists, who've taken a strong stance against the rising tide of support for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in recent weeks. Yesterday, a piece in the Nairobi-based Daily Nation gets rights to the point:

"According to the AU, arresting al-Bashir would lead to an escalation of violence in Darfur, besides leading to the collapse of the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

This is all crap. The world knows that even prior to his indictment, al-Bashir failed to control the violence in Darfur and has been scuttling the Comprehensive Peace Agreement."

I couldn't agree more.

In Uganda, the New Vision Daily defends a foreign ministry official for his comments last week about arresting Bashir. Making reference to a comical slip-of-the-tongue by former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien in front of Queen Elizabeth II, the columnist writes:

"Now, I know Uganda's minister for international relations Oryem Okello is a gentleman who could never swear in public, but I would forgive him, in fact, even applaud him for letting out a string of choice equivalent of ‘merde!' toward the unidentified ‘senior government official' of Sudan who wants Oryem's head. The New Vision's headline yesterday ran: ‘Sudan wants Oryem sacked'. Merde!"

For those not familiar with French curse wordes, "merde" translates to "sh*t."

Finger-pointing like there's no tomorrow

The Chadian government appears to have backed down from its insistence that air raids against Chadian rebels were conducted on its own side of the border: A government spokesman told Reuters yesterday, "We didn't touch the population or the Sudanese army." He added:

"Sudan wants to portray itself as the victim but everyone knows that it is Sudan who attacks Chad. It doesn't fool anyone ... It is the continuation of the destabilisation of Chad."

Rough translation: "Sure we dropped bombs across the border onto another nation, but we didn't hurt anyone that matters. Besides, it's their fault to begin with."

Quickies

It's all a matter of perspective: The Chinese Xinhua news agency reports that Abyei is "calmly waiting for international arbitration," while the BBC states that "tension is high" in the region ahead of the much-anticipated border ruling. (Note: As 5:45am, as I'm writing this, the decision on the boundary has not yet hit the news wires.)

I'm happy to see Alex Meixner blogging over at Save Darfur --- he's put up several great posts over the past few days about US Envoy Scott Gration and the Obama Administration's ongoing policy review on Sudan. Here's the latest.

The African Union extended the mandate of the UNAMID peacekeeping force for another 12 months. The UN Security Council is set to do the same next week.

Armed gunmen raided an NGO compound in Darfur yesterday, injuring a staff member.

Lastly, Radio Dabanga reports that IDPs in West Darfur were attacked by gunmen, while the four victims of another attack were recovered near El Fasher, North Darfur.