Omar Al-Bashir: Not So Arab

The Sudanese despot Omar Al-Bashir, whose 18-year reign in Sudan has seen the murder of several million human beings, depicts himself as a defender of Arab rights in Sudan. Indeed, many of the murderous campaigns he has led against Sudanese black Africans tribes have been driven by an underlying racial component. And Al-Bashir of course is a regular at Arab League confabs.

But now Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times is reporting that Omar - as his looks would suggest - has African roots. Kristof's column is firewalled in the TimesSelect subscribers-ony section, but here's a taste of his findings:

...Bashir's own family appears to come from an African tribe. Yes, Bashir has led a genocide against people like himself.

As best I can establish from my contacts in Sudan, Bashir's grandfather was from the Falata tribe and grew up in Nigeria. He migrated to Sudan to work on the Gezira irrigation project and settled in a village called Um Audam.

Then the grandfather was killed in a dispute, and Bashir's father and grandmother moved to Hash Banaga in the Arab north. Bashir grew up speaking Arabic, so in that sense he is Arab -- but by heritage he is Falata and a black African...

Nor is Bashir the only person in such a position. The on-and-off again leader of the janjaweed militias, Musa Hilal, has unleashed his soldiers with particular brutality on another black African tribe, the Zaghawa. You can drive for hours through Zaghawa regions of Darfur where every single village has been burned; only corpses are left, and some of those have been stuffed in wells to poison them.

Yet, according to people from Musa Hilal's hometown, his own mother is Zaghawa.

These are murderous men evidently in need of serious psycho-therapy. And just as their genocidal impulses need to be deconstructed, so too do we need to reconsider the social formulations of identity along the Arab-African faultline in North Africa. There, millions have already died in the falsely-constructed name of "Arab" identity.

Comments

[Vagabondblogger]

This situation is like so many others before, except, most of them were based on seperatist movements. This one is confounding - racist? Why? It's a tragedy and no one seems to be able to get a grip on how to help / stop the genocide.

[olegna]

The next time an Arab comes up to me bitching about a dead Palestinian, I'm going to remind him or her of the despicable way the Arab leaders ignore Darfur and coddle Bashir while at the same time using every dead Palestinian as a foil to keep their own oppressed population focused on Israel instead of deplorable human rights conditions in their own countries. Why is one dead Palestinian is an outrage but a few hundred thousand murdered black Muslims in Sudan is acceptable? If Arab leaders gave a rat's turd about human rights they'd isolate Bashir and solve that problem on their own.

[Vagabondblogger]

olegna:

You really made me think. Your comment has been on my mind all day, since I first read it and I have to agree with you - you are spot on.

[Urban Infidel]

Olegna is absolutely correct. Well said indeed.

fag

To bad the article is fire walled... would really like to read it. Interesting... & sad...

[YihHon Alewei]

Dear Author,

I like your article which outlined the background of the brutalist people like omar and musa. I like you to send me more information about these savage people.

Hope to hear from you asap.

Cheers YihHon Alewei

[loki]

No Arab loves Arab palestinians, but anti Israelism which is basically 'Arab racism' & 'Islamofacism' is what "unites" them...

[Sa]

I am west african called also sudanese peoples and i now by apparences that peoples because arab domination and Noth african in general make confusion of identity They speak arab langageand so they think they are arab In my conutry we hav official langage portugese but we are 100% african and black