Underestimating Sudan and What That Means to the Region, the U.S., and the World
(Faith McDonnell, October 14, 2017)
Transcript available below
About the speaker
At the Institute of Religion and Democracy since 1993, Faith McDonnell is the Director of Religious Liberty Programs and of the Church Alliance for a New Sudan.
She writes and speaks on the subject of the persecuted church and has organized rallies and vigils for Sudan in front of the White House, the State Department, the Canadian Embassy, and the Sudanese Embassy. She has drafted legislation on religious persecution for the Episcopal Church and for the United States Congress. In June 2007, her book, Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children, was published by Chosen Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group.
She is a Contributing Editor to Providence: A Journal of Christianity and American Foreign Policy and writes for such publications as Breitbart, The Stream, FrontPageMag, PJMedia, and with Chelsen Vicari has a blog site, Faith&Chelsen: Tackling Tough Topics in Church & Culture, on the Patheos Evangelical Channel.
Faith is a member of Church of the Apostles, Anglican, and serves on the church’s international missions committee. She serves as a board member for several human rights organizations.
She previously spoke at Westminster on A Visit to South Sudan (February 20, 2014).
Transcript
Introduction
Robert Reilly:
Tonight, we are extremely pleased to have a real friend of the Westminster Institute, who we have been happy to have here a number of times, who is going to talk about the very important subject of Sudan tonight.
As you probably know, Faith McDonald has served at the Institute on Religion and Democracy as the Director of Religious Liberty Programs and of the Church Alliance for a New Sudan. It is a subject on which she has frequently written. In fact, today, Faith has a new piece out in Breitbart on this subject. Faith has been very active in creating and supporting rallies on the subject of Sudan, most recently in front of the White House again, [as well as] the State Department, Canadian embassy, Sudanese embassy. She has drafted legislation on religious persecution for the Episcopal Church and for the United States Congress.
As you may know, the United States recently declared its position or rather its decision to lift the sanctions it had imposed on the Sudanese regime of Al Bashir, which has hosted and assisted terrorists and persecuted Christian minorities.
Faith also has a book on a different subject, which she published in 2007, “Girls Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children.” She is a contributing editor to Providence, the Journal of Christianity and American Foreign Policy. We have complimentary copies of Providence out on the table for any of you who are interested. Faith also serves on the board of a number of human rights organizations. Her topic tonight is “Underestimating Sudan and what that means to the region, the U.S., and the World.”
Faith McDonnell:
Underestimating Sudan. For years I tried to figure out what is wrong. Why we not getting it? Why is nothing changing in the work that I have been doing for 24 years now on Sudan and South Sudan. And, it occurred to me, finally, not like that recently, but sometime along those years that we are underestimating this regime, big time. The U.S. has done that.
So, at the Institute on Religion and Democracy, as Bob said, I direct the Religious Liberty Program and what we call the Church Alliance for a New Sudan, which was taken from the vision of Dr. John Garang to have a Sudan that would be for all people, everyone treated equally, religious freedom, secular democracy.
So, this was before the CPA was signed and the South Sudan became a country that we we did that. And I will tell you a little bit more about my work as I go along because it fits into this, but U.S.-Sudan policy, as I said it, we underestimate Sudan because it has been what seems like a good thing, but it is rooted in humanitarian concern. Our U.S. policy on Sudan and South Sudan has been rooted in humanitarian concern.
It is the band-aid approach. Sudanese people and South Sudanese people have said that to me for years. We are extremely generous and compassionate, but we really do not get it. We have been great to the victims without acknowledging or stopping the victimizers. We have underestimated Sudan. We treat genocide as a humanitarian issue. We have a faulty perception of Sudan’s ideology.
Now, when I say we, you know, I do not know who the we is. I am sure there are people in the Central Intelligence Agency who totally get it. There are people in the military who totally get it. But somehow our policy has not translated to that. We have consistently ignored warnings from Sudan’s marginalized people, the people who could be our best allies, our best sources of intelligence because they would give us intelligence that is real, that is not lies, the way the Khartoum government has. And Sudan’s remaking of itself in the last three years has been one of those warnings. We just ignore those things.
So, the first reason we underestimate Sudan is we underestimate their capacity and their willful intent to commit genocide, you know, so genocide just happens, you know. It is people fighting each other and genocide takes place. No, it is willful intent because while our policy is rooted in humanitarian concern, their policy is rooted in Jihad. That is why there is genocide, because it is a jihad.
So here is a map of Sudan and South Sudan and, you know, we are going to talk about the five genocides that have taken place. So, we have got the genocide in South Sudan and then the genocide in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile, the genocide in Darfur over here, the genocide back in Nuba Mountains again, and Blue Nile. People should not have to go through genocide twice.
But, the plan is, as I said, it is jihad. So, the whole country is supposed to be one and this came about now in South Sudan right after Sudan’s independence. There was also a war of genocide, a war basically, the Anyanya War, but I am not even going to talk about that one. It was 1989 when President Omar al-Bashir came into power and they launched what they called al-mashruu al hadari, the Civilization Project. The Civilization Project was for the total Islamization and Arabization of the country and that is what you call a civilization. If you do not have that, you are not civilized.
Basically, you may know that when 9/11 happened President Bashir sent his condolences to the U.S. and he specifically said, ‘We are very sorry for the death of civilians.’ Well, that means something different to him than it would to us. So this was the ‘Civilization Project’. Civilians are only Sharia-compliant Muslims.
The SPLM and A, Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Army, was launched to counter that. You know, even in the early days when I was working at IRD, they talked about well, the rebels, you know, the warlords… and our media did not know what to make of this, did not know if they should choose sides because mostly humanitarian groups were not choosing sides because if they did, they could not get in to help people.
But, the FPLMA was launched to counter that civilization project, to say, ‘No, we are not all the same, but we are all equal. We should all have part of this country. We should have a secular democracy with religious freedom.’ And that was John Garang’s vision of a new Sudan.
But the Sudan government created a Popular Defense Force, a militia from Arab nomadic tribes, using propaganda, telling them that you are fighting jihad against these people that want to force everyone to become a Christian and they are going to spread Christianity throughout Africa. So they recruited people that way and also recruited officers from the Muslim Brotherhood because the Muslim Brotherhood is very strong in Sudan.
In fact, right now, the ones who are running Sudan are people who were rewarded for fighting in the jihad against the south. There are people who are running hospitals, running universities. This was their reward for waging jihad against the south. Before I get to two, let me just tell you a little bit more about the genocide in South Sudan because it never was declared a genocide the way Darfur was declared a genocide.
But, you know, working on it for many years… In 1998 Dr. Millard Burr, who was then at the U.S. Committee for Refugees, did a report called quantifying genocide in Sudan in the Nuba Mountains, 1998, and there were already 1.8 million people dead in South Sudan and the Nuba Mountains at that time, and it went on till 2005, so you can imagine how many more people died. It was starvation.
You have seen that that horrible picture of the child with the vulture behind him, the starvation in areas like Bahr El-Ghazal, aerial bombardment mostly using Antonovs, old Russian Antonovs, throwing barrel bombs out of the plan. I had a friend who testified before Congress because she was actually there, Fran Boyle – Suzanne, you know Fran- on a mission when the bombing took place and a child died because they got out of the – what do you call it – the foxhole before the shrapnel had finished flying. You know, the shrapnel just would fly and shear through everything.
Slave rapes: it was not very popular and IRD and a few others were stood with Christian Solidarity International that was redeeming people out of slavery. Others were saying, you know, that is so distasteful, you are paying for people. Yeah, we are paying to get them out of slavery.
The former Lost Boys, these were the young boys who were watching the cattle in the cattle camps and when the raiders came and attacked their villages and they walked from South Sudan to Ethiopia. They lived in Ethiopia and then had to flee from Ethiopia, walked back, and then ended up in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya where they grew up and some of those Lost Boys… Well, when they got off the planes, they had stories to tell and I was just saying today that I think that one of the reasons why we even paid attention to South Sudan were the former slaves and the former Lost Boys who told their stories. Now, some of those former Lost Boys are bishops and archbishops.
One of the other things that they did, this is another way we underestimate Sudan, they use the divide and conquer strategy. They used this on South Sudan, so they pitted against southerners not always by tribal groups, although sometimes, but by the ones who were ambitious, who wanted power and particularly, Riak Machar, who has also been the problem in this latest conflict that is going on in South Sudan.
Machar left John Garang and Khartoum took him and said we are going to make you the President of South Sudan if you fight for us, and so, southerners were killing southerners. In fact, more southerners killed southerners than northerners did. Most of that, the policy was also use a slave to kill a slave, but I guess they did not tell Riak that.
We move to genocide number two. This was the same time, basically, 1989 to ’91, the Nuba began to fight with the southerners against the north because they believed in the vision of John Garang too, so they joined and of course, were automatically attacked. I said ’92 because that is when jihad was formally declared against the Nuba by the governor of South Kordofan, which is the Arab name for the Nuba Mountains. That was just devastating, what happened there, the same kind of things as in South Sudan: bombings, villages burned, scorched earth, which is, you know, they come in and burn all the crops, they kill all the cattle and and everything else.
The Nuba are farmers. They are just amazing. They do not like having to depend on anybody else, but this happened. There were peace camps where the North put people and would only feed them if they would convert to Islam, to northern style-Islam, because the Nuba are about 50 percent Christian, 50 percent Muslim, but everybody gets along. The leader of the SPLA in the north now, Commander Abdelaziz Adam Al-Hiloo, is a Muslim who loves Christians. He loves me, so I know he loves Christians. And these are these are amazing people and they were almost totally wiped out by this.
I was at the Episcopal Church’s General Convention in 1994, talking about what was happening in the Nuba Mountains, and we tried to get a resolution passed that talked about the forced Islamization of people and we had a debate about that because people said, ‘You cannot say that. That is, you know, you are saying that Islam is a bad thing’. They said, ‘No, we are saying forced is a bad thing’, but we finally found some language that everybody could agree on.
So this was happening also in Blue Nile Province. This was part of the same genocide, but it was a different genocide because it was against a different group, a group of over 40 tribes in the Nuba Mountains and, as I said, it was a policy of deracination and acculturation to try to rid the culture of the Nuba and to bring them into the Arab, Islamist culture.
Before we get to Darfur, the U.S. made efforts to stop the genocide and they were big efforts, you know, I tried to help with them a lot, but they were still rooted in humanitarian issues and believing that Khartoum plays win-win, you know, ‘everybody wins, isn’t this great, we will have a peace agreement and everyone will win,’ but Khartoum does not play win-win, it only plays win-lose.
So we did what we could, you know, President Clinton was actually the one who put those sanctions – that President Trump just lifted – on Sudan, so we had that to start with, but then when President Bush came into office we got him to make speeches, to use the bully pulpit, to talk about the disaster in Sudan. You know, disaster, that is a humanitarian issue. We changed U.S. food aid delivery so that it would be given through groups other than just Operation Lifeline Sudan, the UN Food Program, because they gave coordinates to Khartoum where they were delivering food and then Khartoum would drop bombs on the people while they were waiting to get the food. So that was actually Senator Bill Frist who was responsible for getting that changed.
The anti-slavery task force, when we finally did push people to realize yes, there is actually slavery going on in Sudan, there was an anti-slavery task force that was actually led by one of the founders of IRD, Pen Campbell. If anybody remembers the late Pen Campbell, he did that. The Sudan special envoy position, we pushed to get that and the Bush administration was thinking of making President Carter this – this is kind of coming out for the first time here – the first Sudan special envoy and we said no, no, we do not want President Carter, please, and I managed to find some material where President Carter had actually called Omar al-Bashir ‘an enlightened and courageous leader’, so when I got that to them they said, no, I guess this is not the guy we want, so it was former Senator Danforth.
Jack Danforth was the first Sudan special envoy in the Rose Garden on September 6th, my birthday, 2001, he was made the Sudan special envoy and we thought, you know, wow, things are going to happen. And then five days later, 9/11. I was in the Rayburn House Office Building for a press conference on Sudan and Sudan connections to terrorism, trying to get capital market sanctions against Sudan and you know what happened, all hell broke loose, literally, but we did get the Sudan Peace Act passed in 2002.
So part of the work towards peace talks with Khartoum and the SPLA, SPLM was a ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains, so I really think that Senator Danforth saved the Nuba. I think they would have been wiped out if it had not been for Danforth, pushing for this ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains as one of the benchmarks for the peace talks that would eventually take place.
So, we move on to genocide three. In 2003 it started, or at least we became more aware of it, in Darfur and as you saw, Darfur was on the west of Sudan and this was again, you know, that the Darfurians saw what was happening with the peace talks and it looked like the South was going to become autonomous and Darfur wanted to be autonomous. They did not want to be treated like second-class citizens any more than southerners did, so they started to rebel and the government responded by slaughtering civilians, which it always does, you know, this is a war where civilians are slaughtered deliberately in every one of these cases.
So the government funded and armed Arab militias called Janjaweed. You probably remember hearing about them with the whole Save Darfur campaign and everything that is gone on. There was aerial bombardment just like in the south and in the Nuba Mountains followed by these Janjaweed attacks, burned villages, mass rape, mass slaughter. And when they killed people, they would throw them in the wells to contaminate the water too, destruction of crops. But in the case of Darfur, it took a year for declaration of genocide to take place in September 2004 by Secretary Powell.
So, you know, I was just asked, why do you think things did not happen with the south and they happened in Darfur like this? Part of it was the bank account that the people who worked on Darfur had, and the fact that they had movie stars working with them. You know, I brought a bishop from South Sudan to the State Department once to talk to – it was Paula Dobrianski back then – and there was all this hustle going on and bustle and in the hallways and Bishop Bulandoli said to me, “What is going on?” And they said, “Oh, well, Richard Gere is here to talk about Tibet,” so everyone was looking out their doors, wanted to see Richard Gere, and we are so interested in everything he had to say. And Bishop Bulandoli said to me, “I wish that we had someone like that for South Sudan.”
Never did, you know, I tried I go to every like Christian rock concert I could and say to the bands, ‘You need to talk about South Sudan’, but it did not do a lot of good, but Darfur, thank god, had a different story. Although, you know, even when the declaration of genocide happened, it really did not make that much of a difference. Darfur was more well known, but it was still happening. There was even just recently a mass rape, just a couple of years ago, and chemical weapons that Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have both documented.
With all of these, as I said, it is jihad and once jihad is declared, it is never rescinded, so you can have peace talks that go on. Darfur had the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act, which brought everybody together again, thinking, ‘Oh, this is going to be a win-win situation, but there is never a win-win with Khartoum’.
Nuba Mountains, as we will see, you know, deja vu, Nuba genocide again because once jihad is declared, it is never rescinded and the South, what is going on right now in South Sudan is part of the jihad that the north declared against the south years ago. They, you know, they give up graciously and allow the south to become a country and then do everything they can to undermine it.
Genocide number four, the Nuba Mountains, again, and that started just as the South was becoming independent. And we underestimate Sudan’s patience, too, and their long view of history that they are going to get what they need eventually. I forgot to say too, in Darfur as in other places, there is repatriation going on. That is part of genocide too. There is a repatriation of the areas of Darfur with Arabs from outside even the country, and this is also happening in areas that we have not talked about in Nubia, in the far north, and in the Bejaland in Eastern Sudan, where the indigenous people are being pushed out and replaced with people who are more in line with the government of Sudan. It is a demographic alteration of Sudan.
The Comprehensive Peace Act, we should say too, made South Sudan first a regional government, part of the government of national unity, and then just days later, the death (murder) of John Garang took place in July 2005, but genocide four was six years later, 2011, when the referendum on South Sudan took place in January 2011 to vote for independence. And then, in July, Independence Day for South Sudan, and get the significance of that. They wanted it to be July. They have said to me over and over we want to be like the United States. We want our independence to be celebrated in July, but we do not consider them allies right now.
So genocide four started then. Commander of Abdelaziz’s house and compound were bombed by the government of Sudan. Abdelaziz had won the election to become governor and then was not allowed to become governor and so that started the whole protest again, which protests are met with mass slaughter, so that was what happened. The government of Sudan decided this was as good a time as any to get revenge on the Nuba for siding with Garang and the south. They did not get a deal with the CPA. They got kind of a half deal, but they did not get what the South got, so they really did not have the protection that the South had at that time.
So the genocide started in June and people were just being wiped out. They were going house to house, looking for Nuba and killing them in their houses. If they tried to flee, they were killing them on the roads and so what happened after the bombing started and the killings, people would flee to the caves and you may have seen the pictures of children in these caves in the Nuba Mountains. People were reduced to eating roots and leaves because they could not farm because the Antonovs would fly over and bomb them. But also, people die in the caves because there are insects and snakes in the caves that bite people and bite the children especially.
Others were displaced to South Sudan and to Kenya. Aida refugee camp in South Sudan, when I was there in October 2013, there were about 70,000 Nuba in Aida refugee camp and the UN was pushing to close the camp. They said that it was too close to the border and people were going back over the border and they were, gasp, supporting the SPLA North, which they should not be doing, so the UN did not like that.
When I was there even in 2013, there were no teachers. The Nuba taught the children themselves because the UN would not provide teachers in this UN camp. They were no longer registering people. They would not give them seeds to grow things just they had to eat the food that, you know, the UN brought in. But the Nuba are farmers, like I said, so people would sneak back over the border and get seeds and I saw some great gardens in Aida refugee camp. And they had little borders that were made by empty insecticide cans, which I thought, “Oh, this is probably not the greatest idea as a border,” but that is how they did it. And there were blocks of shops that the Nuba did as well, but the are still there. Some have been pushed out. They were pushed into another camp, which basically was in a swamp not a very good place to be. Other people have gone back to the Nuba Mountains and just take their chances with the planes and say I’d rather die in my own area, but that is it.
And then genocide five also started in 2011 just a few months later in Blue Nile state and I call this the North Korea of Sudan because we really do not have a lot of information about Blue Nile State and what is happening because they have banned humanitarian access and banned basically access to the area the government of Sudan has. But we know that there is a blockade on aid, that there is prevention of farming, that crops have been burned, cattle have been killed. This is the same thing that they always do and again, division, divide and conquer. Khartoum divided the leaders of the marginalized people against each other, so the leader of Blue Nile State, Malik Agar, was wooed by Khartoum the way that Risk Machar was in the south to oppose the leader of the Nuba. And actually they have a conference going on right now in the Nuba Mountains to try to get things straightened out.
And I am sorry, but the U.S. policy has exacerbated rather than supported the marginalized people because they say, “Oh, you need you need to make peace. Everybody needs to be included.” The same thing with the north. We cannot even think about regime change or if we do, it is got to include everybody, including the people that you are replacing, so we are going to move on from genocide and quickly finish with the other ways we underestimate Sudan.
Underestimating Sudan’s leadership in global jihad and terrorism: now, this is where it gets really fun. I have some letters and they give the evidence of Sudan’s collaboration with jihadists. These are leaked documents and they have been authenticated by the CIA and they show that our allies provide real, truthful intelligence because they risk their lives getting these documents to us and as I said, they have been authenticated by the CIA.
This first one is July 15, 2016, so it is just last year. When we got it it was March of 2017. Ibrahim Awad Ali Al Bedri Al Samri, who knows who that is? Anybody know who he is? Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the Caliph of the Islamic State. This is a letter to him from the Islamic movement in Sudan, basically, ISIS in Sudan, talking about money transfers through Turkey with their companies. Danfodio, if you know anything about Nigeria and Nigeria’s Islamists, that is a great name for that and these other groups. Sudan is providing full accommodation for all transiting Mujahideen to North and West Africa. ISIS, okay? Sudan is helping ISIS get to North and West Africa.
And then, I mean, even if you look at the beginning of it, this was them congratulating him for becoming the Caliph of all Islamic State. The jihad in Sudan is excellent and we are confident in you all. Your spirit and responsibility is how we are winning the war. And it goes on to say the nation of Sudan, the nation of Sudan, meaning the government of Sudan is helping us transfer our money from Islamic countries to the outside world, the infidel countries, those who are launching airstrikes against us. The Sudanese government has agreed to transfer our money and hard currency and gold bullion, so that the infidels cannot access it. And there is what the letter actually looked like. We got it and my buddy translated it, who was at the agency.
Okay, here is another one, November 14, 2016, this one is to the guy who is the head of Hamas in Lebanon, and it is from the Lieutenant General of Security in the Office of the President, Taha Osman al-Hussein. When I was looking him up today to see, “Huh, I wonder if he is really important or not. I found a picture of him, shaking hands with President Trump in Saudi Arabia.” I wonder if President Trump knows what kind of guy this is. This is just appalling, so it talks about them giving two million dollars in support of the Islamic State that you were founding in opposition to Western imperialism.
Let us look at this part though, okay, so he met in Mauritania and thanks him for allowing us to assist in your fight to rebuild Jerusalem. We wish to help you embarrass the occupiers of Jerusalem. Okay, they will stop Israel from building settlements and work to gain support for Palestine, so that is what they are doing and they are going to give them two million dollars, so now that the sanctions are lifted, economic sanctions, imagine how much more money they are going to give to groups like Hamas and ISIS and everybody else.
Here is another one, June 15, 2016, from the same guy who shook hands with our president. He is the director of the Islamic movement in Sudan and he is talking this time to the Taliban and says he appreciates their efforts and their exchanging military intelligence and tactics and other issues in other global Islamic movements. Bashir delegated this guy – okay, so the President of Sudan – to congratulate them, be patient, and do not panic. Allah will finish our enemies in the world. Stay steady and repentant and be confident in Sharia.
Okay, so, and then, you know, he is just waxing eloquent, “We will be a shining light for Allah, Islam, and jihad, so we can defeat America and their allies.” Do you think he told President Trump, “We are going to defeat you and your allies?” I do not think so.
And then this last one. This is an old one, but I thought it was still worth putting in here because this is to Ayman al Zawahiri and they wrote this right after bin Laden was killed, so this is Sudan, renewing their allegiance to the new leader of al-Qaeda and this happened just before South Sudan independence and the war on the Nuba started. And I will not read you this whole thing, but just that they are renewing their allegiance, they are quoting from the Qur’an, saying we must remain united to defeat our enemies, and the interesting thing about this too is bin Laden was in Sudan.
Now, most people know he was in Sudan you know for like six years at one point, but this is later. I’m talking about he was in Sudan on and off while he was living in Pakistan and we had people telling us, you know, this person was working in the president’s house, palace actually, Omar al-Bashir’s palace, and was the person who handed the cup to Osama bin Laden, but we could not get anybody to pay attention to it or believe it. And, you know, there is a quote from Eli Wiesel. I cannot remember it exactly, but it talks about how the Nazis did things so terrible that nobody would believe it, that it was unbelievable and that is how they got away with it.
That is how Sudan gets away with that. That is how we underestimate them.
Okay, the next point for underestimating Sudan’s ability to successfully lie and deceive about everything – I’m not at all subtle – to get what it wants and to get the sanctions lifted. And I would recommend to you this group, Sudan Democracy First Group. You can find them on the website under that title, Sudan Democracy First, and then this just talks about them remaking their image. Of course, they did that with the help of lobbyists, and they did it by [saying], “We will take in all these these Syrian refugees for you, West, Europe, and ease your burden.” Well, they only do it because they are radicalizing them when they are there.
So, on the same day that Obama issued the executive order, the Treasury made monetary transactions for Sudan, which now are permanent, paving the way for debt forgiveness. Open U.S. Sudan cooperation began with the partial lifting and then there were these five tracks that the U.S. government said well, if Sudan does well on these then will will reassess it and maybe we will make this lifting of sanctions permanent.
So these were the five tracks: increased cooperation in the War on Terror, cessation of LRA, the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, who slaughtered people in Uganda and Sudan and the DRC and CAR, the maintenance of ceasefire in areas of conflict in Sudan, and allowing the delivery of humanitarian assistance, that means into the Nuba Mountains and everything.
And that became like the, just the thing that the State Department was obsessed with, ‘Well, if they let the humanitarian assistance in and everything is good,’ but the SPLA North said, ‘No, we are not fighting for food. We are fighting for freedom,’ so the final decision was to be made. Well, you might say, you know, well, all those letters you showed, that was the period between January 2017 and October, you know, maybe they had their come-to-Jesus moment and they just changed totally and they do not do things like that anymore.
MSNBC Excerpt
Greta Van Susteren (For the Record with Greta):
Today, the Trump White House condemned brutal regimes like North Korea that do not respect the rule of law or human decency, but what about Sudan? On Friday, we told you about the hidden effort to ease sanctions on Sudan despite the vicious cruelty of the dictator Bashir. Now, a DC law firm, Squire Patton, Boggs is being paid $40,000 a month by Bashir to help him lobby the Trump administration to lift sanctions against him. Today, protesters gathered in front of the law firm, telling them to drop Bashir as a client to stop helping this masked killer, who incidentally is also under indictment for genocide. The Trump administration has until July 12th to decide whether sanctions temporarily lifted in January should now be permanently lifted and whether to lift all the remaining sanctions. I have been to Sudan. I have seen the devastation with my own eyes. Mr. President, do not let this brutal dictator off the hook. You can prevent this one. Keep those sanctions on.
So here was the Secretary’s report and, basically, I think they just made a Xerox copy of the one that Kerry did and gave it to him to read, maybe changed the dates on it, but this was the the same kind of report that that was given in January in the Obama administration, so they described the government of Sudan’s actions between January and October, and in those areas, maintaining cessation of hostilities (COH) in Darfur and the two areas of South Kordofan. It is the Nuba Mountains. They do not like to be called South Kordofan, but we are giving that to Khartoum, too.
Improve humanitarian access, all the things I said, and the report concludes that the “Government of Sudan has sustained the positive actions.” This conclusion is based on consideration of relevant and credible information, and they talk about what that information is, but did they, the government of South Sudan, really sustain positive actions?
Well, I have got one more leaked document for you that we just got a little while ago, about a month ago, and this took place on June 18th, so this is smack dab in the middle of the reporting period, and this has also been authenticated by the CIA just a few days ago, so this was a top-secret meeting and I have got the whole document in Arabic if you want to look at it. I mean it is all flourishes, and beautiful, and colors, but this is just the translation.
But this was a top secret meeting of the National Intelligence and Security Services, so the President, the Vice President, the man who was just here in Washington, Ibrahim Gondor, is a foreign minister who also came to the National Prayer Breakfast, by the way, and, unfortunately, who a congressman brought to his district for a peace conference a couple years ago, and then all these other guys. But I only am giving you some of the quotes from Bashir and the Vice President.
Okay, so these are the things that the President says. “As an Islamic movement, we have [a] strong relationship with Muslim brothers and Hamas,” okay? They are not changing anything. “We have a strong attachment with Muslim brothers [because] they supported us to maintain our Islamic government… What is happening to Qatar is the action of targeting Muslim brothers and Islamic organizations in the world. We financed the Islamic movements, and Gaddafi’s government assisted Morsi’s election campaign and enabled Muslim brothers to come to power in Egypt. All these activities we realized through the help of Qatar and Iran.”
One of the the justifications for lifting sanctions, too, is that Sudan has ended its relationship with Iran, so how did they find that out? Did Bashir just pinky-swear with the U.S. that he ended the relationship with Iran? I do not think so. “We recognized the big role Saudi Arabia played,” and then they say that the U.S. promised to lift all the sanctions on July 12th through Saudi Arabia. They told Saudi Arabia on July 12th, yeah, we are going to lift the sanctions on Sudan.
This does not mean that they are cutting their relations with Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic movements or expelling its leaders from Sudan. “There are no guarantees to international politics.” See, they are smart. This is here they go again: “They are the Darwin’s best example of survival of the fittest, “…when the U,S, president is facing legal problems in America, the Islamic movement is targeted by campaigns against its interests,” and then he goes on to say that the, “Reasons behind this are known because of our efforts” meaning the destruction they are doing in, “South Sudan, Libya, [and the] Central African Republic.” Seleka is another Khartoum friend, “and Somalia,” Al-Shabaab.
They all go to school at African University in Khartoum, too, that is another thing that happens. Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, Hamas, Hezbollah, they all go to school at the Islamic or African University, but it is a jihad training place. “Our support will go to our brothers in Egypt and Libya to continue struggle until we are totally in control of the Libyan land.” So, that does not mean, you know, that Sudan has to be in control of Libya, but the Islamists have to be in control of Libya.
This is a good one. “Following the expulsion of the Islamic State,” which our soldiers are giving their lives for and working on in the Middle East. They are going to bring ISIS through and find them sanctuary in South Sudan, which, you know, why not kill two birds with one stone? That way we are totally wrecking South Sudan, and we are also helping ISIS, our brothers in the struggle, so that is what they are doing.
They are going to find sanctuary in South Sudan and Bahr al Ghazal in Western Equatoria, and then link them to Boko Haram, and use some of them in Libya, too. So, Sudan has a plan, along with ISIS, for a West African Caliphate. They already had shown us the Middle East Caliphate, but they have a plan for a West African Caliphate, too, which is, basically, if you can see it, I do not have a picture of that, but it is the same area that was controlled by Islam back years and years ago so they want to reestablish that. “If sanctions are lifted, it is our right to establish relations with Iran.” Okay? So, they lied, surprise, surprise.
They also lied about North Korea. There was some articles today about Sudan doing some business trades with North Korea, not only that, but it might be that Sudan is providing uranium to Iran, as well. There is uranium in the Central African Republic, and they use what they call taxi drivers to bring it through. And one of the ports that nobody seems to be checking is a port just south of Port Sudan on the eastern port side of Sudan called Suakin, and it could be that uranium is going out that way.
And I have also heard that there might be uranium being brought in attaché cases, too. I saw a picture of what is supposed to be uranium in a bag that says, you know, it is something else, but a General from Darfur told me that they have good reason to believe that that is Uranium, but that nobody would pay attention.
“Our security cooperation continues,” tells us how wonderful Iran is, and then says there is an alliance between Turkey, Qatar, and Iran. Okay, so now, at the end here [is] just what the Vice President had to say. He does not use as much flourish as President Bashir. He just, you know, goes for it, “To complete,” they want the complete listing of sanctions. ‘We will put pressure on Saudi Arabia to convince the U.S. President to lift the sanctions completely, that will bring a big political victory.’ They already think they had a victory. The TV in Sudan has shown the President and Ibrahim Gondor, talking about [how], ‘This is a victory, we have won this battle and defeated the rebels and opposition that dreams of regime change.’
‘If the sanctions are lifted, the rest is easy.’ And this really hurt, “According to my judgments, the Americans and Europeans would not neglect their security for the benefit of a few people called activists in America.” And he thinks, you know, they cannot get intelligence information if they do not get it from us. They will cooperate with us. “If they do not lift the sanctions?” ‘[Then] we will stop cooperating with them on intelligence, will stop the combating of illegal immigration, human trafficking,’ which they themselves are behind, by the way, “and money laundering,” and they want Bashir to be taken off of the International Criminal Court, and they want the removal of Sudan from the list of states supporting terrorism, so that is what he is saying.
Now, there are sources of information and intelligence, like I just showed you. There are people who are risking their lives to get that intelligence, and the U.S. should realize that we can get intelligence for people we can trust, not from people we cannot trust. This shows you what they are doing in South Sudan. Remember Jihad is never rescinded.
‘We will control the situation inside South Sudan.’ “[We] will increase the production of oil to prevent Salva Kiir,” the President of South Sudan, “from defeating his opponents and will support the Darfur movements in South Sudan and in Egypt. Salva Kiir’s goal is not to lift Sudan sanctions, but ‘they do not know that Sudan possesses information that the U.S. cannot obtain is safe.’ Ha ha ha.
Well, maybe not. “We will punish Salva Kiir and [Abdulaziz Adam] Hilu in a suitable time.” And here we go, “Instructors and those in charge of recruitment are to recruit from the International University of Africa to find students of South Sudan who are members of the Islamic State to assist those who are coming from the Middle East and jungles,” the welcome-wagon.
Okay and that is what that document looked like on page one. And this is the same document. This is another reason why I thought, “Oh my gosh, this has to be real.” I am not sure, but I think that this is Field Marshal Haftar of Libya. If anybody knows what he looks like, I think that that is him because they talk about destroying Haftar in the document, and in this video this guy was freaking out, holding up this document, and so if he is not, it is somebody there.
One final thing [on] how we underestimate Sudan. We underestimate how much Sudan’s government hates us and wants our destruction. This was a rally at the White House on September 16th, demanding the lifting of sanctions, and they had these lovely T-shirts. You cannot see the T-shirt, but there are these signs that had American and Sudanese flags, and saying peace and friendship, but once you get beyond that, there were other things.
This guy – he looks really cute does he not? I mean that is a cheerful looking outfit. My Darfuri friend told me those are Dawa clothes. When you declare jihad, you put on Dawa clothes, and you say that you are declaring jihad, so basically, this guy was declaring jihad in the U.S., offering the Dawa, the opportunity to convert. And if you do not take it, that is it man, you are done. And he was quite aggressive, as well.
So, ready for the videos? These are just two minute videos to give you an idea of what went on at this rally.
Audience member:
This was in September?
Faith McDonnell:
This was just a few weeks ago. Yep. This is the Sudan Embassy’s video, so it has lots of pretty young girls, wearing Muslim Student Association sweatshirts.
Unidentified protestor:
You can see, the Sudanese people, we stand together, we are peaceful. A beautiful group of people of men, and women, and children, here to end the sanctions in Sudan. Sudan, I stand with you as a child of Sudanese parents. Sudan, we are together. Sudan, we are peaceful.
Unidentified protestors:
Hey, hey, ho, ho, the sanctions have got to go.
Unidentified protestor:
We, as the Sudanese community need to stand together in solidarity.
Unidentified protestors:
Hey, hey, ho, ho, the sanctions [have] got to go. Hey, hey, ho, ho, the sanctions [have] got to go. Hey, hey, ho, ho, the sanctions [have] got to go. Hey, hey, ho, ho, the sanctions [have] got to go. Hey, hey, ho, ho, the sanctions [have] got to go. Hey, hey, ho, ho, the sanctions [have] got to go. Hey, hey, ho, ho, the sanctions [have] got to go.
The people, united, will never be defeated. The people, united, will never be defeated. The people, united, will never be defeated. The people, united, will never be defeated. The people, united, will never be defeated. The people, united, will never [be defeated].
Hey, hey, ho, ho, the sanctions [have] got to go. Hey, hey, ho, ho, the sanctions [have] got to go.
Faith McDonnell:
There were lots of American flags and they were being dragged all over the ground because nobody really cared. Watch this boy in the red shirt. He just lets that flag go. And I would love to know what that symbol means. I do not know what that is, but, no, the other one with the little tie thing. I do not know what that is, but it freaks me out.
Okay, let us move on to the next one. That was the Sudan Embassy’s official video. This is, “Khaybar, Khaybar, Ya Yahud.” It is anti-Semitic Arabic, talking about what happened in Khaybar, outside of Medina, when Mohammed slaughtered thousands of Jews. And this song goes on to say, ‘We are going to come back and finish the rest of you.’ And they are singing this, chanting this outside the White House. One of my friends, the Sudanese who are for freedom, said to the guy, “What is that you were saying,” so that he could get it on video again.
Interspersed in here are some of the good guys. My friend from Blue Nile was just on there, but there are those T-shirts, friendship and peace between America and Sudan. Yeah, that black sign is really weird. It has got that same symbol. Okay, at the very end of this one, listen to this girl.
Unidentified protestor:
Lift the sanctions in Sudan! Lift the sanctions in Sudan!
Unidentified protestor:
Donald Trump has got to go! Hey, hey, ho, [ho].
Unidentified protestor:
Sudan, Sudan, Sudan, Sudan.
Unidentified protestor:
Lift the sanctions on Sudan!
Protestors:
Lift the sanctions on Sudan!
Unidentified protestor:
Lift the sanctions on Sudan!
Protestors:
Lift the sanctions on Sudan!
Faith McDonnell:
[Did you] hear what she said? “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donald Trump has got to go!” Then suddenly, she remembered, oh, wait, this is not an Antifa rally, and started saying “the sanctions [have got to go].”Okay, this is the last one. This is one of our friends from Blue Nile, and he is confronting the Dawa guy. They were very intimidating, too. There was one guy who was like flashing the Quran at people as if it was a weapon. Okay, that is enough, we cannot take any more of this.
And then the last thing; while they were there, they were passing out a paper, again, in Arabic. Doesn’t anybody pay attention to Arabic anymore? I mean outside the White House to be talking about the destruction of the Jews?
But General Moussa, who is the head of the Popular Defense Force, there, which I was talking about earlier, that wiped out all those people, he sent his greetings to the people at the White House in Arabic. But we got the translation, which is a little crazy because it talks about every fighter having 19 thousand mermaids, so I do not think that the translation came across too well. Yeah, I think it was virgins, but mermaids – maybe something new is happening.
So, he says, “We salute our jihadist brothers who stood in front of the White House to lift the punishment on these noble, honorable Mujahideen, who changed the world by holding on the embers of jihad and fighting disbelief.” And then he says, “Shame and shame to the American people, the sellers of their conscience.” And he says to the Mujahideen, “We promise you, God willing and soon, that our faithful armies of the Popular Defense Force and the militias of faith will trample the arrogance of America within its territory, and its rulers will be captured in the hands of the Mujahideen, and their women and their daughters be slaves, slaves to the believers.” And then he talks about having a dream that the warriors of the Mujahideen took over the White House and the smell of the air of paradise.
So, these are not our friends, okay? These are not our friends. I am sure, I am sure.
What should we do? Well, do not underestimate Sudan, please. I pray that every night. Please, God, do not let the U.S. underestimate Sudan. Speak the truth. Well, that is what I am trying to do, and I am going to, you know, make sure that these documents get as much publicity as I can. Stand up to Saudi Arabia. If Khartoum is pressuring Saudi Arabia, we need to stand up to Saudi Arabia and say, hey, you know, we might be allies with you on some things, but we are not going to do this.
Support the good guys who give us intelligence both here, the good guys from Sudan who live here who are our friends, and in Sudan and South Sudan. And there are some of the good guys. That was the last demonstration that we had to try to stop the lifting of the sanctions outside the White House. Komi from the Nuba Mountains, Abdullah from Blue Nile, who is actually a friend of Congressman Gohmert. He sees him. He works at the airport, and he sees Congressman Gohmert all the time, so I said we have got to make something of this relationship here. Others from Darfur, my friend Hawa from Darfur, those are the people we should be supporting, those are the people that are the friends of the U.S., and my brother, we need to support the people who are our friends and not underestimate Sudan anymore. Thank you.
Q&A
Audience member:
Before you did the video, there were some still shots and there was a young woman who was circled in red. Was there any significance to that person?
Faith McDonnell:
My friend Hawa, the Dafuri lady, sent me that picture, and I think she circled it because she said look at these crazy people, they are wearing what they wear in Saudi Arabia, so that was the only thing I knew. Yea, sir?
Audience member:
Who paid for all of those people who were demonstrating in front of the White House?
Faith McDonnell:
I think the Khartoum government did. Maybe their lobbyists helped, you know, the lobbyists, Squire Patton Boggs, who is working for them, but a lot of them are very wealthy. They are not like the refugees, they have lots of money, so they can come over and do whatever they want.
Audience member:
Well, all of those Americans who are out there are getting paid by somebody.
Faith McDonnell:
The American Sudanese you mean?
Audience member:
The American students and so forth.
Faith McDonnell:
But the Sudanese ones? Yeah, they could be or they could just be ideologues who really care about this.
Audience member:
You mentioned the role of the State Department in getting rid of the sanctions. Who in the White House staff supported that? Do you know? In the NSC, particularly.
Faith McDonnell:
Yeah, I do not know because the only thing I know is that the UAE and Saudi Arabia were pushing for it, so if they have relationships, you know, there, but still, depending on what is going on for Sudan and South Sudan, they are depending on Obama people that are still in the administration because they do not have a clue. Like you said, they do not know what is going on, but they think these are the experts, and surely on an issue like Sudan, we can trust them, you know, they might not trust them on Obamacare, but they trust the people who are working on this exotic issue of Sudan and South Sudan. So, you know, they are taking the word of people in the State Department, who say, you know, well, you know, if Khartoum says we are going to allow food aid in, then the whole game is over, you know. We have won. No, we have not won because Khartoum lies for one thing, and they will bring in food that is poisoned for another thing.
Oh, and I forgot to tell you, too, that last document, the one from this past June, an Ambassador from South Sudan, who is in that Ministry of External Relations in South Sudan, is the one who brought that, and he brought it to the State Department to a meeting with [the] State Department’s Sudan Special Envoy Office. And someone from USAID is an advisor to the head of USAID, and they said we do not want to see it, we are trying to build our relationship with Sudan. So, this is information that there is terrorism against the U.S. and against the world, and they did not want to see it. So, to me, that is like the biggest story here and we need to get that on Fox News or something. And if the President sees that, that may change his mind.
Audience member:
Is there anyone in the Congress, in the Senate, who is interested in this at all?
Faith McDonnell:
The Congress, Senate and House both, did not want the sanctions lifted, so, yeah, no, Congress has always been better (I am sorry if there is anybody who worked for the State Department), but Congress has always been better than the State Department on these issues, so, yeah.
Audience member:
They do not do their job.
Faith McDonnell:
No, no, they are not, they are doing Khartoum’s job. I think part of it is there [are] people right now who have this whole globalist view of things and want everybody to get along, and there is moral equivalence.
Audience member:
It is Iran, Syria, and a lot of other countries, so I am not sure globalists, getting along – they do not seem to want to get along with them, so why Sudan after the links are so clear as you have outlined?
Faith McDonnell:
There has always been something strange about Sudan in terms of that, too, but I think, you know, maybe I thought when Donald Trump was elected that we would see things change and, sir, you mentioned Sebastian. He is not looking at Africa. I talked to him about this when he was still at the White House, and he said wait until we have somebody who is in the National Security Office for Africa and talk to them, but it depends who that person is.
Audience member:
You are talking about Gorka?
Faith McDonnell:
Yes, because he is a friend of mine, but he is not looking at Africa. Maybe now that we have evidence that Sudan is helping ISIS in Africa, it will change, but I do not know.