~~~ بيان تأسيس اتحاد الجاليات و المنظمات السودانية الأمريكية ~~~

Quote: Dinners with a dictator Karti: Amr Abdallah/REUTERS/Landov In his 2008 book, A Deadly Misunderstanding, Mark Siljander wrote, "Omar al-Bashir was, in the eyes of the West, a bad man. In the eyes of God, as near as I could understand it, he was just another human being, with frailties and failings like the rest of us." When Bashir seized power in a military coup in Sudan in 1989 and instituted Shariah law throughout the country, atrocities against Christians living in the South proliferated. Nearly 2 million have been killed in the course of religious cleansing in the South and 4 million southern Sudanese have been displaced (including over 27,000 young orphans who came to be known as the "Lost Boys of Sudan") by the time the parties to the conflict signed a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005. In 1997, at a time when the United States had broken off relations with the Islamic government, Siljander made his first of many trips to Khartoum to meet with the Sudanese head of state, accompanied by the head of the Fellowship, Doug Coe. Terrorist leaders Carlos the Jackal, Osama bin Laden, and Abu Nidal all resided in Khartoum at one time or another in the mid-1990s, and in 1996 the Clinton administration designated the Sudanese government under Bashir a state sponsor of terror and broke diplomatic relations. In 1997 it imposed comprehensive sanctions against Sudan. During Siljander's visit, he recounts in his book that he told Bashir: "Of course, you can make peace with the south or not, sign a treaty or not, you do whatever you're inclined to do. But just know that we're going to be praying with you and for you in this process, and believing in you and in the very essence of what you call the power of Islam—being surrendered to God and in peace." His book recounts trips to meet with other ######### of state—in Libya, Benin, the Balkans, Pakistan, Indonesia, and other countries. Many of these were then considered Marxist or Islamist terrorist rogues, particularly Libya's Moammar Qaddafi. Both Siljander and Coe flew to Benin, surrendered their passports, and took a middle-of-the-night flight aboard an unmarked Libyan jet in order to evade prevailing sanctions against travel to Libya. In the end Qaddafi denied them an audience. Siljander met Abdel Azim el-Siddig during a trip to Chicago in 2001, where they met with faculty members at Wheaton College to discuss Christian-Muslim relations in the wake of 9/11. Siddig eventually hired Siljander as a lobbyist for the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA). Siddig is also a close friend of Ali Karti, a longstanding member of the Bashir government who earlier this year was named foreign minister. Siddig and Siljander traveled to Khartoum together in 2006. Siljander told me in November 2006 he made other frequent trips to Khartoum: "I've had dinner four times in the last four months with Bashir." Ali Karti was increasingly a part of Siljander's circle in Khartoum. And Karti at the same time was fingered by the Bush administration as a key player in orchestrating attacks on villages in Darfur. In September of that year U.S. Homeland Security officers detained Karti for four hours on the tarmac of Dulles International airport outside Washington after his name appeared on a suspected terrorist watch list. The suspicions stemmed from his support for janjaweed militias then attacking African tribal villages in the western Sudan region of Darfur. Experts estimate that between September 2003 and December 2008 in the conflict 300,000 died and over 2 million were displaced as Arab militias backed by Khartoum overran African villages and African militias. "Yes, we made mistakes with janjaweed," Siljander said during our interview. "Ali Karti and Bashir have said that to me. It doesn't remove the evil but privately indicates their desire to change. If they say they are willing to disarm janjaweed and protect [aid] workers, let's come to some agreement, remove sanctions, and then incentivize them." — Mindy Belz[/red