Sudanese reject latest bin Laden audiotape
KHARTOUM, Sudan – Sudan dismissed Osama bin Laden’s renewed calls for “jihad” in its troubled Darfur region, saying on Monday that it will not harbor terrorists or allow foreign interference in the country.
But outside experts said the chaos in Sudan – already spilling over to troubled neighbors like Chad – is exactly the kind of place al-Qaida has successfully exploited in the past and might again.
In a tape issuing more threats against the West on Sunday, bin Laden urged followers to go to Sudan to fight a proposed U.N. peacekeeping force for Darfur. Muslims must “get ready to conduct a long war against the crusader plunderers in western Sudan,” he said in the audiotape, broadcast on Arab TV.
The call made headlines in most of Sudan’s newspapers Monday, but Khartoum’s leadership seemed eager to dissociate itself from bin Laden, who was based in the country through much of the 1990s but thrown out in 1996.
“We are not concerned with such statements, or any other statement that comes from foreign quarters about the crisis in Darfur,” Sudanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Jamal Eldin Mohammad Ibrahim was quoted as saying by the Al Sahafa newspaper.
Sudan will cooperate with the international community to solve the ongoing humanitarian crisis “and we will not host any terrorist,” the spokesman said.
However, experts said that although Khartoum was trying to distance itself from al-Qaida’s leader, his words might nonetheless play into the government’s hands.
Sudan’s government has opposed the idea of shifting the peacekeeping mission in Darfur to the U.N. from the current African Union force, noted John Pendergast, a Sudan specialist with the International Crisis Group in Washington.
“The statement by bin Laden greatly serves their interest in Darfur,” he said, and would “give a good pretext to those who are bent on preventing that from happening.”
Yet few believe the government would deliberately allow al-Qaida into Sudan again.
Instead, most experts said bin Laden’s appeal was aimed at attracting the Muslim world’s attention to his vision of a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West. Few expected large numbers of fighters to take bin Laden up on the call.
“He’s trading on the prominence that Darfur has regained to push his own agenda and prove he’s still around,” said Eric Reeves, a Sudan specialist and a professor at Smith College in Massachusetts.
Bin Laden was thrown out of Sudan by the authorities in 1996, under U.S. pressure, and Pendergast said he doubted authorities would let his group in again and give up the benefits of cooperation in the U.S.-led war on terror.
The fighting in Darfur began when rebels from black African tribes took up arms in February 2003, complaining of discrimination by Sudan’s Arab-dominated government.
The government has been accused of unleashing Arab tribal militia known as the Janjaweed against civilians in a campaign of murder, rape and arson – a charge it denies.
The United Nations has described the conflict as the world’s gravest humanitarian crisis. The United States has described it as genocide.