(traduction de Viviane Calfon Jaslet)

Dear friends,
These Sudanese presidential “elections”, of which I spoke yesterday in my first intervention on the website of “La Règle du Jeu” have been prolonged another three days. Indicating yet another example of the reliability and democratic worth of these elections. In short, the masquerade continues and even intensifies. In order to continue to convince you, I could give you more derisive and pathetic details of this masquerade or tell you about the four policemen of the Minuad who disappeared in South Darfur. I could describe to you the fashion in which El-Béchir’s police broke up a peaceful demonstration held by my partisans in the north quarter of Khartoum (ten of them immediately condemned to one year in prison). However, an even more urgent affair has taken precedence.
The realpolitik, being what it is, all attacks are permitted. Since “little Darfur” doesn’t carry much weight and must immediately cease combat without hope and being that I, leader of the resistance, must comply with the international community, led by the U.S.A. and France, obliging us to attend Doha to negotiate with the executioner of our people without even requiring the Sudanese bombing and attacks to cease in Darfur, a campaign of misinformation has been launched against me attempting to drag me through the mud. Each week I receive threats of deportation from France. Yesterday the rumor increased. So today, without delay, I will clarify the situation for you. Let the truth be known.
I don’t believe that the end justifies the means. I have learned from experience that the balance of power in Darfur is not in our favor. I abhor this unjust war along with the genocide that is progressively decimating my people. I am in no way demanding the independence of Darfur. I have always been ready to negotiate the status of Darfur with this government, no matter how criminal and intransigent, for an equal and just position in a united and democratic Soudan where the wealth of the nation would be fairly shared amongst all the States of the Federation.
With the exactions, the genocide and the resistance in Darfur, the international community, passing through an initial phase of indifference, has shown its commitment and support excluding, of course, China and the neighboring Arab nations. The memory of the genocide in Rwanda and the international paralysis is still fresh. We were assured that “never again” by popular opinion and diplomats of the western world. “Take heed you assassins, you will not have your way.” The Sudanese authority ended up accepting international forces of 26,000 men, mandating the Minuad yet limiting their power and successfully paralyzing them in thousands of ways. It took 300,000 dead in a sorry stadium, two million and a half people in displaced camps in Darfur and hundreds of thousands of refugees elsewhere to arrive at this point. The inhabitants of the villages and countryside of Darfur where systematically eliminated at the hand of the Janjawid militia to Khartoum who took up residence with their imported Arabs on the lands they took from the peasants, stole the international aide, ransomed the camps, raped the women who dared venture out looking for fuel. However, according to observers and diplomats, the situation was “generally stabilized”. The conflict was essentially of “low intensity”. Simply two hundred deaths per month. End of genocide, wouldn’t you say? Since then, of course, nothing has changed; we are still here, in addition to our elections!
Already in 2003 the hour of negotiations had begun. With the support and encouragement of the international community, great western nations and the United Nations, I had accepted the fact that, at the negotiating table, without the anticipated genocide, we could not have obtained the protection of Darfur solely with our local resistance opposite the great Sudanese war machine in hope of a future peace. I was the “good guy”. I went twice to Abéché, Chad to negotiate with Khartoum without imposing any conditions. I returned in 2004. Then I went to Abuja, capital of Nigeria in the end of 2004 and throughout 2005 for at least seven rounds with the Sudanese Majzou Abl-Khalifa, senior assistant to El-Béchir, who, in spite of the crushing military superiority of the Khartoum forces, would not concede anything politically. Here things began to change. Mr. Robert Zoellick, Deputy Secretary of State (today head of World Bank) suggested in vain that I accept the “reality of the forces present on the land” and began to lose patience, but not with the Sudanese representatives, but with me, the weak link, the bad egg in the “peace process”. He threatened me with charges of “obstructing the peace” with the International Criminal Court in front of the amazed Nigerian President Obasanjo. Thus ended the soft diplomacy, the time had come for forceps-style diplomacy. Meanwhile, with the help of promises, political and personal, Robert Zoellick instilled dissidence within our own resistance movement via Minni Minawi who was soon to be enticed by Khartoum’s promise of a private militia of 5000 men and a high position in the Sudanese government. Today he is special advisor to President El-Béchir. To top it off, he was introduced to President Bush in the White House. With the election of Barak Obama, things became more straightforward. However, only for a short time, the time during the electoral campaign for the benefit of the Afro-American votes and the tens of thousands of friends of Support Darfur. Very quickly, the State Department, in light of a future independent South Sudan, anticipated in 2011 a future state entirely black, Christian and animist, with abundance of fuel sacrificing once again the defense of “little Darfur” and its principles for Realpolitik profit by naming Scott Gration, special envoy, following the steps of Robert Zoellick, along with two Minawi counterparts, Ali Haroun and Abdullah Khalil, reuniting them all in Ndjamena and then Addis-Abeda, rushing through the Doha negotiations to then tour the camps of Darfur, reminding the public opinion that the displaced have changed leaders to “finally have peace”. Thousands of people from Darfur have turned their backs on him. He came to Paris with threats.
Last spring I was invited to the Quai d’Orsay by my friend Bernard Kouchner, who, two years earlier, prior to his appointment as Minister had personally welcomed me, found me lodgings in Paris and declared in a meeting at the Mutualité for the “Urgence Darfour” : “People of Darfur, you will see tonight is the beginning of the victory. The procrastination and false excuses must cease.” Present at the meeting two years later at the Quai d’Orsay, along with Bernard Kouchner (who became Minister) were the French envoy for the Doha negotiations and the Sudanese envoy Sala Gosh, head of the Sudanese Secret Service. I told them that I would attend the Doha talks once the following conditions are met: the bombing and attacks cease and that the terrible Janjawid militia be disarmed. I was looked upon as a manipulator and a peace-preventer. At another peace conference in Geneva last year in the presence of Mr. Richardson, an American along with a representative of the African Union, I presented the same demands. The reactions were unanimous, including that of Russian and China, “OK fair demands, we will do everything to achieve results”. I have heard nothing since. Sala Gosh, one year after the Geneva conference, after a meeting at the Quai d’Orsay had a message passed on to me where he promised to place 35 million dollars in an account in Europe for me if I attended the talks in Doha along with a non-specified Sudanese government position. As the forceps-style diplomacy failed, next try, the bank account diplomacy to later embark on a criminal-style diplomacy.
My obstinacy in refusing to attend the Doha negotiations without having had my demands met first have caused rumors accusing me of having eliminated those under the SLM command in Jebel Mara who would have wanted me to attend the talks.
Tomorrow I will go over, point by point and name each and every man who has accused and slandered me so they may answer to these accusations.
Until tomorrow my friends!