contribution by Tim Flatman

Earlier this year the Guardian became the first mainstream UK newspaper in recent memory to carry a front-page interview with an ICC-indicted war-criminal, describing him as a “maverick” who “polarised opinion”.

It implied state-sponsored abuses in Darfur were a thing of the past, contrary to many reports over the last 12 months of numerous rape and camps being bombed.

Now its columnist Simon Tisdall is trying to justify the Government of Sudan’s invasion of Abyei.

The first indication of bias comes when he reduces the numbers of those displaced to “up to 45,000″, rather than using the more recent figure of at least 96,000 reported by the UN OCHA.

Aid is political, as the closure of the North-South border by the NCP to prevent supplies reaching the displaced shows. (some estimates are as high as 150,000)

Tisdall describes Bashir as having “a case” when he says the “latest trouble in Abyei began when northern troops came under attack from southern forces” and says this claim is “supported by the UN”. It isn’t.

The UN condemned that attack, but it was only one episode in a long chain of escalating violent incidents including the razing of villages by Northern militias in March and an attempt by Sudanese Armed Forces to invade Abyei town on May 1st, over two weeks before the attack of May 19th.

Besides, the claim from Khartoum has long been disproved by satellite evidence, photos and testimonies which clearly show that the invasion of Abyei was premeditated, and not a response to any one incident.

He also states that the NCP has accepted a demilitarized zone along the border. Although the UN press released this, the NCP denied it the very next day. The tendency to say one thing to one audience one day and the opposite to another the next is classic Bashir.

Tisdall also gives credit to the NCP for proposing a rotating administration in Abyei. This seeming concession was made because the NCP knew the South could not accept it. It deviates from the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and the South cannot afford to make a precedent of making new agreements which deviate from the CPA. Furthermore, it fails to deal with the question of a timescale for self-determination, so the South could not accept it.

The aim, like all “negotiations” from the NCP was to get the South to give up on something (in this case self-determination, the key aspect of the Abyei Protocol) then to cause another incident in the future that can be used as the pretext for further negotiation, keeping moving towards the NCP position. It was a tactic, not a “solution”.

Contrary to Tisdall’s reassurances on behalf of the NCP regime, a small, containable war is in the NCP’s interests. It allows them to save face after losing the South, and provides a pretext for refusing to recognize the independence of South Sudan & mobilize allies to do likewise.

Its still a mystery why Simon Tisdall continues to offer such a one-sided interpretation of events.

Reader comments

1. Liberal Conspiracy

   Why is the Guardian's Simon Tisdall defending Sudan's Bashir again? http://bit.ly/mG64HH

2. Tim Flatman

   Why is the Guardian's Simon Tisdall defending Sudan's Bashir again? http://bit.ly/mG64HH

3. Joanny Stewart

   Why is the Guardian's Simon Tisdall defending Sudan's Bashir again? http://bit.ly/mG64HH

4. National Courier

   @guardian's Simon Tisdall a #genocide denier or just naive admirer of #Sudan's Bashir.. http://t.co/Mzw1Y5F #genrprev #humanrights

5. dengthepoet

   Plz RT: @guardian's Simon Tisdall a #genocide denier or just naive admirer of #Sudan's Bashir.. http://t.co/SwxDS93 #genrprev #humanrights

6. The New Sudan Vision

   Plz RT: @guardian's Simon Tisdall a #genocide denier or just naive admirer of #Sudan's Bashir.. http://t.co/SwxDS93 #genrprev #humanrights

7. End Impunity

   "Why is the Guardian’s Simon Tisdall defending Sudan’s Bashir again?": Liberal Conspiracy http://bit.ly/kGxYi5 #endimpunity

8. Heywood Hadfield

   Why is the Guardian's Simon Tisdall defending Sudan's Bashir again? http://bit.ly/mG64HH

9. Tim Flatman

   Plz RT: @guardian's Simon Tisdall a #genocide denier or just naive admirer of #Sudan's Bashir.. http://t.co/SwxDS93 #genrprev #humanrights

10. Tim Flatman

    2 good comments at http://t.co/SwxDS93 supporting my criticism of Guardian's Simon Tisdall for doing Bashir's PR. No-one defending him yet!

11. Waging Peace

    http://bit.ly/jDr7gl Why is the Guardian's Simon Tisdall defending #Sudan #Bashir again?

12. Richard Wilson

    No-one does useful idiocy quite like the Guardian's #SimonTisdall… http://bit.ly/jDr7gl #

13. Robin Ince

    No-one does useful idiocy quite like the Guardian's #SimonTisdall… http://bit.ly/jDr7gl #

14. Tim Flatman

    @GeorgeMonbiot will you also call out the Guardian's own Simon Tisdall – see here: http://bit.ly/mG64HH

15. Is there a political solution to halt genocide in the Nuba Mountains, Sudan? | Bright Green

    [...] overlapping set of interests within the National Congress Party headed by Omar Al-Bashir, which I have explored elsewhere. But one of the hopes of the regime was undoubtedly that the residents of Abyei [...]