Obama Administration to Welcome Genocidal Sudanese Leaders for Talks

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Act for Sudan, Blue Nile State, Darfur, diplomacy, Faith J. H. McDonnell, genocide, ghost houses, ICC indicted war criminal, Islamism, Jihad, Khartoum, moral equivalence, Nafie Ali Nafie, National Congress Party, NCP, Nuba Mountains, Obama, Obama Administration, Omar al-Bashir, South Sudan, State Department, Sudan, terrorism, torture

By Faith J. H. McDonnell (@Cuchulain09)

In a makeshift shelter of plastic tarps in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, an American linguist, Deborah Martin, interviewed dozens of Darfurian refugees. The year was 2006, and some two thousand Darfurians had fled the Islamist Sudanese regime’s genocidal war against them and walked over 900 miles to the Nuba Mountains. At that time, just after the signing of the 2005 North/South peace agreement, the area now once again a killing field of the Islamist regime was relatively safe.

One young Darfuri woman told Martin she had witnessed the rest of her family, including her 80 year-old grandmother, “sliced up like meat” by the Janjaweed (Arab militia). Other refugees had similarly horrific tales. And common among all the testimonies were four names – either whispered in terror or spat out in defiance. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, Vice President Ali Osman Taha, Arab Janjaweed militia leader Musa Hilal, and former Chief of National Intelligence and Security Services/presidential advisor Nafie Ali Nafie – these were the men they held responsible for the Darfur genocide, and for the regime’s atrocities far beyond Darfur.

Today, the Obama Administration has invited Dr. Nafie Ali Nafie and other high-level officials from Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) to Washington, DC. State Department spokeswoman Hilary Renner defended the visit as the opportunity for a “candid discussion on the conflicts and humanitarian crises within Sudan.” But in the Sudanese press, the NCP crowed that the invitation is a call “for the development of relationships between Sudan and the U.S.” Nafie assured his fellow hardliners that he was not going to the U.S. in order to discuss Sudan issues, saying that the regime knew what it was doing in that regard. Writing of the visit Rabbi David Kaufman, founder and co-chair of “Help Nuba,” said it was similar to inviting Heinrich Himmler to the U.S. to discuss the “humanitarian crisis” during the Holocaust.

Nafie eschewed training in plant genetics (he studied at UC Riverside, receiving a Ph.D. in 1980, thank you, USA!) for training in terrorism. According to the Sudan Tribune, Nafie travelled to Tehran in 1981 “on the apparent pretext of conducting further studies in the field of agriculture.” During the 1980’s, he also spent time in Afghanistan and the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon where he gained the expertise and contacts to develop Sudan’s own security apparatus, import weapons, and establish secret desert training camps. The Sudan Tribune says that it is also believe that during this time, Nafie coordinated with his former Iranian mentors “to supply arms to those opposing the American and French presence in Somalia.”

As Chief of National Intelligence and Security Services for Omar al-Bashir’s National Islamic Front regime, Nafie perfected the art of torture. Sudanese Online says, “Dr. Nafie is by far the most brutal security official the Sudan has ever seen.” And the Sudan Tribune explains that he is notorious for the creation of Sudan’s “ghost houses” (buyut al-ashbah), unofficial detention and torture chambers run by Sudan’s security services.

Typical ghost house treatment was given to Nafie’s old colleague from the University of Khartoum, science professor and human rights activist, Farouk Mohammed Ibrahim. Ibrahim was arrested and taken blindfolded to a Khartoum ghost house where he was held for 12 days with no charges. According to his statement seeking redress from the Sudanese government, Ibrahim revealed he “was subjected to interrogations about courses taught and about colleagues.” During the interrogations, he “was repeatedly kicked, beaten and flogged, subjected to a prolonged bath in ice water, threatened with rape and death and deprived of sleep for up to three days.” Ibrahim told the Los Angeles Times that Nafie “was administering the whole thing. He did it all in such a cool manner, as if he were sipping a coffee.”

Condemning the upcoming visit and urging that Secretary Kerry rescind the invitation, Sudan advocacy alliance Act for Sudan noted that Nafie “helped design the regime’s strategy to eliminate or expel indigenous African people by bombing, attacking, raping, and starving innocent civilians. Sudanese Online adds, “Dr. Nafie has expelled international aid agencies from eastern Sudan, Nuba Mountains of Kordofan, Darfur and Blue Nile provinces.”

Recently, Nafie, who is also the deputy chairman of the ruling National Congress Party, addressed a graduation ceremony of the paramilitary Popular Defense Forces (PDF), the jihadists used by Khartoum to conduct the purge of black, African people in the Nuba Mountains. He said of those in Sudan who want equality for all Sudanese and a secular democracy, that they “are traitors for collaborating with rebels to overthrow the regime, and for preaching a secular system.” The opposition “has dug its own grave” by rejecting “the principles of Islamic Sharia law” and seeking to “establish a secular state like the Western countries,” he declared. He vowed to the graduating PDF members that 2013 will be a decisive year in which they would wage a war like that fought by Mohammed at the Battle of Badr, a battle that ushered in the beginning of Islamic expansion.

The Obama Administration is not happy about the backlash it is receiving because of the invitation to Nafie Ali Nafie. Perhaps it has forgotten how frequently Senator Barack Obama and his supporters criticized President George W. Bush’s Sudan policy. Bush’s policies merely saved hundreds of thousands threatened by starvation and disease, brought about the Nuba Mountains ceasefire, created a presidential-level Sudan Special Envoy, and helped to bring about a peace agreement leading to the establishment of the nation of South Sudan. But since he couldn’t bring perform the additional miracle of ending the genocide in Darfur, Obama accused the Bush Administration of not doing enough.

For example, speaking about Darfur in October 2004, Senator Obama said, “There must be real pressure placed on the Sudanese government. We know from past experience that it will take a great deal to get them to do the right thing.” Where is that pressure today, when an architect of genocide is invited to Washington, DC?

In a February 2006 speech on Darfur, Obama confided that “for more than a year now, I’ve been working with other Senators to see what we can do to really push the Administration to take this as seriously as it warrants.” (Emphasis added). He was disturbed that “the United States government seems to be backing off a little bit, the commitment that it made to deal with the problem.” Today, many Sudan activists are disturbed. Members of Congress, including U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), have written to the President, questioning his overarching Sudan policy.

Finally, in April 2008, with the Presidential election drawing closer, Obama again criticized Bush Sudan policy, saying, “I am deeply concerned by reports that the Bush Administration is negotiating a normalization of relations with the Government of Sudan.” He warned that “this reckless and cynical initiative would reward a regime in Khartoum that has a record of failing to live up to its commitments.”

Today, in justifying the invitation to Nafie, the Obama Administration challenges the idea that a trip to America for diplomatic discussion can be considered a “reward.” And it posits only three alternatives in U.S. Sudan policy: go to war with Sudan, engage in diplomacy, or be irrelevant. But there could be another alternative for U.S. Sudan policy. In his book, The Coming Revolution, Dr. Walid Phares advises the U.S. government to support the freedom and democracy-loving sections of civil society within totalitarian and Islamist regimes to foster democratic transformation. In the case of Sudan, the U.S. government could also quietly support the opposition forces that want regime change and a free, equal Sudan. In fact, Senator Barack Obama mentioned this possibility in his 2004 speech when he said that we should be “providing resources . . . including logistical support like airplanes, helicopters, trucks, and other resources that are needed to deliver humanitarian aid.”

But although the Obama Administration was willing to take strong actions to bring about the downfall of Egypt’s Mubarak and Libya’s Qaddafi, (and facilitate the takeover by Islamists) in this case, when the downfall of the regime could mean the downfall of the Islamist agenda in Sudan and the wider region, it prefers diplomatic engagement. Could that not be construed as a “reckless and cynical initiative”? Bringing Dr. Nafie Ali Nafie and other high-level officials of the Sudanese government to Washington, DC threatens to once again reward a regime that not only continues to have a record of failing to live up to its commitments and of committing brutal atrocities against its own citizens, but of pursuing an agenda of global jihad and Islamist supremacism.

This blog post originally appeared on the Front Page Magazine website as an article and is reposted with permission.

Documenting Persecution in Nigeria

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Boko Haram, Faith J. H. McDonnell, Foreign Terrorist Organization, Islamists, Jihad, moral equivalence, Nigeria, Northern Nigeria, persecution, Sharia, State Department

By Faith J. H. McDonnell (@Cuchulain09)

The Washington Working Group on Nigeria, of which The IRD is a founding member, this week will release a report of the documented atrocities committed in Nigeria by Boko Haram in 2012. Compiled by Justice for Jos, a project of Jubilee Campaign, the report is in the form of a prayer calendar which memorializes attacks against individual Christians, churches, government institutions and employees, schools, and businesses in 2012 in Nigeria by month and day.

The report is in itself an indictment of the false moral equivalence frequently utilized by the United States government and the media to describe the growing conflict in Nigeria. It will be released on Friday, April 26, at 11:00AM at a briefing at The Family Research Council, 801 G Street, NW, Washington, DC featuring human rights leaders and government officials from northern Nigeria.

April 2013 marks the second anniversary of one of the worst attacks on Christendom in modern history. In Nigeria’s 12 Sharia states in the north, over 700 churches were destroyed in the space of 48 hours in post-election violence stemming from Islamist anger at the April 2011 election of a Christian president, Goodluck Jonathan. The carnage resulted in hundreds of deaths and the displacement of over 65,000 people. But Islamic of militants of the terrorist organization, Boko Haram (“Western education is forbidden”) continue their campaign to Islamize Nigeria with ongoing attacks.

Just this past week over 185 people were killed in Boko Haram’s Friday-after-prayers-at-the-mosque attack on Baga, a town in Borno State. According to the BBC news Boko Haram bombarded Baga with rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire, burning down 40% of the town. BBC reported that “Residents of Baga fled into the bush and only returned on Sunday afternoon to find much of the town destroyed and human and animal corpses strewn through the streets.”

Justice for Jos Special Counsel, Emmanuel Ogebe, adds that his contacts on the ground have revealed that Boko Haram has overrun northern Borno State, much as jihadists took over northern Mali last year. He told of a recent attack on a bus, in which the passengers were separated by religion, and the Christians were killed.

In addition to the meeting on Friday to launch the 2012 report, the Washington Working Group on Nigeria will hold a briefing on Capitol Hill on Thursday, April 25, at 12:30 at the Cannon House Office Building, Room 234. Although open to the public, the briefing will focus on helping Congressional staff members to understand the true situation in northern Nigeria and to encourage a renewed effort by Congress to push the State Department to designate Boko Haram as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

USA, Wake Up: The Cry of American Copts in the Aftermath of Arab “Spring”

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Boko Haram, Christian persecution, Coptic Christians, Copts, Faith J. H. McDonnell, Iran, Iranian Freedom, Jihad, Marginalized people of Sudan, Mohamed Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood, Northern Nigerian Christians, protest, Religious Minorities, Syrian Christians, terrorism, The White House, U.S. Capitol, U.S. support of Muslim Brotherhood

Coptic Christians and other Egyptian Americans, joined by supporters, march from the White House to the U.S. Capitol.
(Photo credit: Faith J. H. McDonnell)

By Faith J. H. McDonnell (@Cuchulain09)

“US, wake up!” was one of the most frequent shouts heard in Washington, DC on April 18, 2013, as hundreds of Coptic Christians, other Egyptian Americans, and their supporters joined together to protest the most recent atrocities against Christians and others since Egypt fell into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood and urge action by the U.S. government and the world community.

Photo credits: Faith McDonnell

Signs demanding justice for victims of Islamist violence in Egypt and signs heartbreakingly depicting some of those victims shared space in the protest rally at Lafayette Park across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.

The rally in front of the White House was extended until busloads of participants from all over the United States arrived, and then the march began down Pennsylvania Avenue to the U.S. Capitol. Members of other people groups that have been marginalized and persecuted under Islamist supremacism joined the Copts to show solidarity.

The groups included a delegation of Christians from northern Nigeria, under constant attack by the Boko Haram terrorists who want to cleanse Nigeria of all Christians.

Syrians show solidarity (Photo credit: Faith McDonnell)

Christians from besieged northern Nigeria show their support.

Also present were Syrian Christians — first oppressed under the tyrannical Assad regime and now facing the possibility of an Islamist takeover in Syria.

Marginalized and oppressed Sudanese from the north, from Beja land in the east, and from South Sudan participated.

And also joining was an Iranian dissident who has suffered under the Islamic regime in his country. A representative of each of these communities spoke at the rally.

En route to Capitol Hill, the protestors continued to raise their voices. They asked why the U.S. would continue to fund and supply with arms a terrorist regime. They declared that “Coptic blood is not cheap.” They demanded the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood and President Mohamed Morsi. They plead for help to bring real freedom and democracy — not the type that came with the clueless support of Arab “Spring” — to all of the people of Egypt. One source of help would be the passage of a bill in Congress right now to create a special envoy for religious minorities in the Middle East and South Central Asia.

Whether in Egypt, Nigeria, Sudan, Iran, Syria, or any other place in the world — supremacists see all others as either second-class citizens to be marginalized and oppressed, or as threats to a pristine and pure Islamist state that need to be eliminated. These perpetrators of prejudice, violence, and evil must be faced by a united front of those who want all people to live in freedom. And such a united front is needed in order to arouse the United States and the global community. The Copts’ rally was a good starting point.

Attacks on Egyptian Christians Continue

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Arab Spring, Cairo, Coptic Christians, Coptic Church, Copts, Egypt, Faith J. H. McDonnell, Islamic democracy, Islamic supremacism, Jihad, Muslim Brotherhood, Pope Tawadros II, Salafists, Sharia, St. George's Church, St. Mark's Cathedral

Attack on St. Mark’s Cathedral, Cairo. (Photo Credit: AsiaNews)

By Faith J. H. McDonnell (@Cuchulain09)

In the preface to his most recent book, Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy writes that Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi’s election “has converted Egypt from a military dictatorship to a sharia dictatorship.” This, he continues, “is the end to which ‘Islamic democracy’ leads.”The persecution and oppression of the Copts and other Egyptian Christians is ongoing proof of the truth of McCarthy’s declaration. The Arab “Spring” is not “the triumph of freedom,” but the “ascendancy of Islamic supremacism.”

A few days before the Muslim Brotherhood leader’s election, he spoke to his followers on television ensuring them that Egypt’s new constitution “would reflect true sharia.” Islamic supremacists believe that they now have not only a moral obligation to wage jihad against Egypt’s indigenous Christian population, but they have legal carte blanche, as well.

The latest series of attacks on Christians in Egypt began on Friday (naturally), April 5, with what Nina Shea in her National Review article on the subject describes as a “pogrom.” A breaking news report from Mideast Christian News Service (MCN) on April 5 revealed that a Salafist attack on St. George Church in El-Khosos City, northeast Cairo district, was spurred by a clash between Christian and Muslim families in the district. The attack ultimately resulted in the death of six Christians.

MCN interviewed Father Surial Younan, the parish priest of St. George’s Church, on April 10. Father Younan revealed that over 2,000 bullets were shot at the Copts. Four Christians died on the scene, shot in the head, heart, and face. He blamed “Islamic religious rhetoric” for incitement against the Christians. The priest said that “a sheikh called on Muslims to carry out jihad to cleanse the Earth and the country of the impure (implying Copts).” The Brotherhood and the Salafists have both promised to “calm the fanatics and extremists down,” he continued. But nothing has been done.

The brother of a fifth victim of the Islamists corroborates Younan’s claims regarding Islamist rhetoric. Kyrillos Makram, 17, told MCN in an interview on April 10 how an extremist in the local mosque had declared that every Muslim should go out “with a weapon, and whoever meets a Christian person, kill him without hesitation.”

Kyrillos and his brother Daoud Makram Daoud, 34, were travelling to another brother’s house in El-Khosos on Saturday when they were stopped by four militants who demanded Daoud’s name. “They searched for the cross on his hand using a flashlight, and when they found the cross on his hand, they stabbed him in his heart,” Kyrillos said. “They dragged him about two meters and then left him in his last throes, took my money and left,” he told MCN. On April 10 MCN reported that a sixth victim, Hilal Saber Hilal, succumbed to burns he received during the El-Khosos attack.

Islamists attacked again on Sunday evening, April 7, during the funeral of the four Copts that were shot and killed in El-Khosos at the historic St. Mark’s Cathedral in Cairo. An April 8 statement from Egyptians Against Religious Discrimination (MARED) reported by MCN said that “Attackers assaulted the headquarters of the cathedral of St. Mark in Abbassiyaj (Cairo) with stones and birdshots under the protection of the interior ministry forces.”

A witness told MCN that the security forces were protecting “the aggressors” who “were sheltering” behind them. Another witness added that “The security forces didn’t only sit back and watch the Copts being assaulted” with stones and birdshot, but that they “even fired tear gas at Copts inside the cathedral and are not preventing the attacks coming from outside.”

MCN discovered that police forces used more than eight tear gas canisters, four of which landed inside and on top of the papal residence of Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadrow II. Other tear gas canisters landed in the cathedral’s front yard. The Assyrian International News Agency (AINA) provided video of Muslim youths firing on the Copts from rooftops and of street fighting and the burning of houses near the Cathedral. AINA reported that one Christian, Mahrous Hanna Ibrahim, died from gunshot wounds to the head and neck, and that 23 others were injured in the attack.

Pope Tawadros “strongly accused the Egyptian regime and security forces for failing to prevent the sectarian incidents of El-Khosos and St. Mark’s Cathedral,” MCN reported. He noted that this is the first time in Egypt’s history that the Coptic Orthodox Church’s headquarters has been assaulted in this manner.

President Morsi expressed his condolences to Pope Tawadros and to the Copts of Egypt and promised that the government would protect them in the future. His Holiness has responded that “while he appreciates the sentiments shown by the government, the president, and all Muslims. . .  these alone do not suffice in such matters.” He demanded that swift actions be taken to protect the Christian community. Only action to prevent future such egregious attacks will demonstrate that Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood truly disapprove of the jihad being waged against Egypt’s Christian citizens.

Twenty Years Ago in South Sudan

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Arabist, Ayod, Blue Nile State, Darfur, ethnic cleansing, genocide, government-orchestrated starvation, Islamist, Jihad, Kevin Carter, manmade famine, Nuba Mountains, Omar al-Bashir, South Sudan, starvation, Sudan

By Faith J. H. McDonnell (@Cuchulain09)

(Photo credit: Kevin Carter, 1960-1994) Photo-journalist Carter committed suicide in July 1994, just months after winning the Pulitzer Prize for the photo.

2013 is the tenth anniversary of the Government of Sudan’s genocidal war against the people of the western region of Darfur. The Darfur genocide continues today, as populations that were ethnically cleansed from their land are replaced with non-indigenous people groups loyal to the regime. The Darfur 10 campaign is just one of many initiatives to commemorate the genocide. “As we look back on the past 10 years since the conflict began, we are reminded that more than 300,000 people have lost their lives and another 4 million have been displaced from their homes,” Darfur 10 reflects.

I have a good (some would say annoying) memory for details. I also have the bad habit of holding onto emails for a long time. So somewhere in my computer, or in the hundreds of purple file folders that are stacked everywhere in my office or, remarkably, reside in the filing cabinet, I have pretty thorough documentation of the Government of Sudan’s first genocidal jihad — against the South, Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile State, and elsewhere since 1994, when IRD began focusing on Sudan.

In those regions, the conflict was confusingly referred to as Sudan’s “civil war,” or the “North/South war.” Over 2.5 million people died, tens of thousands were taken into slavery, and over 5 million were displaced. The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) led to the cessation of active war throughout most of the region, but by the time of South Sudan’s independence in July 2011, Khartoum had already resumed war against the Nuba Mountains. A few months later, the people of Blue Nile were attacked as well.

Khartoum’s supremacist agenda is also being implemented elsewhere throughout the country. Criminal neglect and cultural cleansing is slowly extinguishing the Beja people of eastern Sudan. And in the far north, Khartoum is literally “drowning” Nubia with dams on the Nile. The floods are wiping out traces of the great Nubian civilizations that pre-dated the Islamic invasion.

Just as the genocide in Darfur should be commemorated, Khartoum’s decades-long genodical war against South Sudan and the other regions that resisted its agenda of Islamization and Arabization should be remembered, as well. Anyone who has seen it can never forget the famous photo above, taken twenty years ago this month by South African photo-journalist Kevin Carter, in March 1993 outside an emergency feeding center in Ayod, Jonglei State, South Sudan.

This image of the tiny starving girl and the vulture is still used to speak of “famine” in Sudan. The outrageous truth was that the famine was man-made, Khartoum-orchestrated — the deliberate starvation of a people by their own government. The same thing happened in the Nuba Mountains, in Wau, Western Bahr el Ghazal State, and in numerous other places. Today Khartoum is perpetrating the same starvation technique in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile State. It is time to remember the past — not just the ten years since genocide began in Darfur, but the decades of atrocities committed by the Government of Sudan. The sad truth is that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to allow Khartoum to repeat it.

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