Iran's Ahmadinejad And the Darfur Deniers
The MEMRI Report
By STEVEN STALINSKY
March 7, 2007
nysun.com
"That Sudanese public radio is still calling Israel ‘the enemy' … is a good reason why the … Zionist groups all over the world, especially in America, are dedicating so much attention to the issue of Darfur when it is not the only humanitarian crisis in the world."
— The secretary-general of northern Sudan's ruling National Congress Party, Ibrahim Ahmed Omar, February 2007
Here are the latest facts about Darfur. In three years, more than 200,000 have been killed — some estimate 450,000 — and more than 2.5 million displaced.
On February 27, the International Criminal Court announced that it planned to try the Sudanese minister for humanitarian affairs, Ahmed Mohammed Haroun, and a janjaweed leader, Ali Kushayb, for crimes against humanity. The Sudanese interior minister, Al-Zubair Bashir Taha, responded by telling the Arab daily newspaper Al-Hayat on March 1 that the Sudanese government would "behead" any person who tried to arrest Sudanese officials.
At the same time, some are downplaying and even denying the killings, rapes, and displacements taking place in Darfur. The deniers are a diverse group, ranging from the Sudanese and Iranian leadership to the Arab government-controlled press, which would all rather blame the usual suspects — Israel, the Zionists, and America — than admit what is happening there.
President Ahmadinejad of Iran is at the top of this list. On Thursday he met in Sudan with the Sudanese leadership. Reports from the Iranian press quoted him as expressing pleasure at the "tranquility" of Sudan.
Referring to Darfur, he said, "There is no place in the world that suffers from divisions and wars unless America or the Zionists' fingerprints are seen there." According to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting news network, Mr. Ahmadinejad urged Islamic states to thwart such "conspiracies."
His statement followed a series of meetings between Iran and Sudan. On January 15, the Sudanese defense minister, Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein, visited Tehran and tried to duck responsibility for what is happening in Darfur, claming there really is a "satanic plot" by "the U.S. and Israeli regimes, [which] are working hard to incite the conflict."
President Bashir of Sudan told attendees at the Nation of Islam's national conference in Detroit via satellite on February 24 that America is "exaggerating troubles in Darfur" so it can control the country as it has Iraq. His comments were broadcast live on Sudanese state TV.
"Bashir Reveals Zionist Plot in Darfur" was the headline of a September 20 story on IRIB that included Mr. Bashir lambasting "a Zionist plot to dismember his country and plunder its resources … particularly its oil reserves and then place it under a de facto U.N. trusteeship. … He said humanitarian agencies are exaggerating the extent of the suffering of Darfur civilians to secure increased funding."
In the February 22–28 edition of the Egyptian government weekly Al-Ahram, the secretary-general of northern Sudan's ruling National Congress Party, Ibrahim Ahmed Omar, was quoted as saying: "The West wants to see Sudan divided. … We know it is not just about Darfur. Such a division of Sudan … would serve many of the West's interests, and for that matter of Israel, the Western agent in this region."
Mr. Omar added that the West is seeking to control Sudan's natural resources and that "the Americans cannot accept the fact that Sudan has large and very much unexploited oil reserves while it is not bowing to the will of Washington."
In a cartoon in the February 8-14 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly, a blind-folded Sudanese speaker is shown. Behind his back is Uncle Sam with butcher knives cutting up Sudan, which hangs on a meat hook. Under Uncle Sam are two flagged dogs that represent Israel and Britain, licking their lips as Sudan bleeds.
"The Real Conspiracy," an article by Ayman El-Amir, is laid out under the cartoon. "It is safe to assume conspiracy is at work" in all conflicts in the Middle East that are perpetrated by Israel, Mr. Amir writes. "Westerners have often scoffed at Arabs as conspiracy theory addicts. Throughout the 20th century, everything Arab nationalists suspected as a scheme by colonial powers against their interests and aspirations was dismissed as a figment of Arab imagination. … Yet after decades of secrecy, declassified documents of confidential meetings, agreements, diplomatic correspondence, and reports, from the early years of the last century to the mid-1990s, reveal that the stretch of Arab imagination is much narrower than the scope of the conspiracy."
Sadly, Darfur is not so far from Cairo, where these words were written. As the killing continues, many in the Arab world and Iran look the other way, and instead of helping, they create conspiracies to justify their inaction.
Mr. Stalinsky is the executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute |
