THE SUDANESE DESPOT
Who: Omar Hassan al-Bashir – president of Sudan and commander of the Rapid Support Forces AKA the Janjaweed militia.
Where: Sudan.
What he wants: To quell rebel and civilian unrest in south Sudan.
What he does: The 10,000-strong Janjaweed are tribal guns-for-hire, notorious for war crimes during the 2003 war in Darfur. They now ride SUVs fitted with high-powered weapons for use against Sudanese civilians at al-Bashir’s command.
How he can be stopped: “African states along with China, which has commercial interests in Africa, need to use their weight to enforce a decade-old UN Security Council resolution that the Janjaweed be disarmed,” says Abdi Ismail Samatar, a professor of geography, environment and society at the University of Minnesota, and a member of the African Academy Of Sciences.
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