page_title: Omar al-Bashir
section_title: War in Darfur
hierarchical_section_title: Omar al-Bashir / Presidency / War in Darfur
caption_attribution_description: English: Darfur refugee camp in Chad.
context_page_description: Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir is a Sudanese politician who served as the seventh President of Sudan from 1989 to 2019, when he was deposed in a coup d'état. He was subsequently incarcerated, tried and convicted on multiple corruption charges. He came to power in 1989 when, as a brigadier general in the Sudanese Army, he led a group of officers in a military coup that ousted the democratically elected government of prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi after it began negotiations with rebels in the south. He was elected three times as President in elections that have been under scrutiny for electoral fraud. In 1992, al-Bashir founded the National Congress Party, which remained the dominant political party in the country until 2019. In March 2009, al-Bashir became the first sitting president to be indicted by the International Criminal Court, for allegedly directing a campaign of mass killing, rape, and pillage against civilians in Darfur. On 11 February 2020, the Sudanese government announced that it had agreed to hand over al-Bashir to the ICC for trial.
context_section_description: Since 1968, Sudanese politicians had attempted to create separate factions of "Africans" and "Arabs" in the western area of Darfur, a difficult task as the population were substantially intermarried and could not be distinguished by skin tone. This internal political instability was aggravated by cross-border conflicts with Chad and Libya and the 1984–85 Darfur famine. In 2003, the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudanese Liberation Army, accusing the government of neglecting Darfur and oppressing non-Arabs in favor of Arabs, began an armed insurgency.
  Estimates vary of the number of deaths resulting from attacks on the non-Arab/Arabized population by the Janjaweed militia: the Sudanese government claim that up to 10,000 have been killed in this conflict; the United Nations reported that about 300,000 had died as of 2010, and other reports place the figures at between 200,000 and 400,000. During an interview with David Frost for the Al Jazeera English programme Frost Over The World in June 2008, al-Bashir insisted that no more than 10,000 had died in Darfur.
  The Sudanese government has been accused of suppressing information by jailing and killing witnesses since 2004, and tampering with evidence, such as covering up mass graves. The Sudanese government has also arrested and harassed journalists, thus limiting the extent of press coverage of the situation in Darfur. While the United States government has described the conflict as genocide, the UN has not recognized the conflict as such. (see List of declarations of genocide in Darfur).
  The United States Government stated in September 2004 "that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the Government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility and that genocide may still be occurring". On 29 June 2004, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell met with al-Bashir in Sudan and urged him to make peace with the rebels, end the crisis, and lift restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian aid to Darfur. Kofi Annan met with al-Bashir three days later and demanded that he disarm the Janjaweed.
  After fighting stopped in July and August, on 31 August 2006, the United Nations Security Council had approved Resolution 1706 which called for a new UN peacekeeping force consisting of 17,300 military personnel and 3,300 civilians and named the United Nations–African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). It was intended to supplanted or supplemented a 7,000-troop African Union Mission in Sudan peacekeeping force. Sudan strongly objected to the resolution and said that it would see the UN forces in the region as "foreign invaders". A day after rejecting the UN forces into Sudan, the Sudanese military launched a major offensive in the region. In March 2007, the United Nations Human Rights Council accused Sudan's government of taking part in "gross violations" in Darfur and urged the international community to take urgent action to protect people in Darfur. A high-level technical consultation was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 11–12 June 2007, pursuant to the 4 June 2007 letters of the Secretary-General and the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, which were addressed to al-Bashir. The technical consultations were attended by delegations from the Government of Sudan, the African Union, and the United Nations.
  In 2009, General Martin Luther Agwai, head of the UNAMID, said the war was over in the region, although low-level disputes remained. "Banditry, localised issues, people trying to resolve issues over water and land at a local level. But real war as such, I think we are over that," he said. This perspective is contradicted by reports which indicate that violence continues in Darfur while peace efforts have been stalled repeatedly. Violence between Sudan's military and rebel fighters has beset Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states since disputed state elections in May 2011, an ongoing humanitarian crisis that has prompted international condemnation and U.S. congressional hearings. In 2012, tensions between Sudan and South Sudan reached a boiling point when the Sudanese mi
caption: Darfur refugee camp in Chad, 2005
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