April 13th, 2007 - Nikki Serapio  Permalink  View & Add Comments

Bashir Denies Involvement in Darfur Genocide, Claims Rape “Doesn’t Exist” in Afflicted Region

Yesterday, the NBC journalist Ann Curry conducted an exclusive two-hour interview with Sudan President Omar al-Bashir. Part One was shown yesterday on NBC Nightly News.

Among other denials, Bashir objected to overwhelming evidence that the Sudanese government is using rape as a weapon of war against the people of Darfur. Bashir simply and flatly said: “It doesn’t exist. We don’t have it.”

Sudan’s President has a penchant for calculated conspiracy and propaganda. Last year he “charged that the West wanted to dismember the country [Sudan] in order to help Israel.”

The blatant untruths of the interview suggest an important question: How does Khartoum benefit from giving such interviews? The answer will be demonstrated more clearly during Part Two of Ann Curry’s interview, to be shown tonight on NBC Nightly News: Bashir wants to make the case that Sudan is a good-faith partner in our country’s war on terrorism (this, despite the U.S. State Department’s designation that Sudan is one of the world’s five state sponsors of terrorism).

Currently, Khartoum maintains an intelligence-sharing relationship with the Bush administration (as reported by CBS, The Economist, and The Washington Post, and as confirmed by the non-partisan International Crisis Group). The genocide’s perpetrators have offered the White House updates about the ongoing political crisis in Somalia.

Rather than improve the image of Bashir and company, the intelligence-sharing news simply reinforces the tragedy of the current Darfur policy calculus. The tidbits that Bashir is offering the United States can be easily gained from other sources: there is no reason why our own government should prioritize such information over the millions of civilians fighting to survive in the Darfur region.