This Sudanese General Founded The Janjaweed. So Why Is The Arab League Sending Him To ‘Help’ The Syrians?
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For the first time in Syria’s nine-month-old uprising, there are witnesses to President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown, which according to the United Nations has claimed more than 5,000 lives. Arab League observers arrived in the country on Dec. 26, and traveled to the city of Homs — the epicenter of the revolt, where the daily death toll regularly runs into the dozens, according to activist groups — on Dec. 27. Thousands of people took to the streets to protest against Assad upon the observers’ arrival, while activists said Syrian tanks withdrew from the streets only hours before the Arab League team entered the city.
“I am going to Homs,” insisted Sudanese Gen. Mohammad Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, the head of the Arab League observer mission, telling reporters that so far the Assad regime had been “very cooperative.”
But Dabi may be the unlikeliest leader of a humanitarian mission the world has ever seen. He is a staunch loyalist of Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity for his government’s policies in Darfur. And Dabi’s own record in the restive Sudanese region, where he stands accused of presiding over the creation of the feared Arab militias known as the “janjaweed,” is enough to make any human rights activist blanch.
Dabi’s involvement in Darfur began in 1999, four years before the region would explode in the violence that Secretary of State Colin Powell labeled as “genocide.” Darfur was descending into war between the Arab and Masalit communities — the same fault line that would widen into a bloodier interethnic war in a few years’ time. As the situation escalated out of control, Bashir sent Dabi to Darfur to restore order.