In Response to the Statement Issued by the Khatim Adlan Center for Enlightenment and Human Development Regarding the Allegations of Militarizing Zamzam Camp

للاطلاع على الرد باللغة العربية

Amgad Fareid Eltayeb

21 November 2024

The Khatim Adlan Center for Enlightenment, which appears to have played a prominent role in drafting and promoting the false statement we criticized in our previous article, “Deadly Words: How Misinformation and Humanitarian Advocacy Efforts Were Exploited to Pave the Way for an Attack on the Zamzam IDP Camp in North Darfur” (published on 16 December 2024), continues to gaslight the public under the guise of humanitarian advocacy and civil society rhetoric. Instead of retracting the lie that sought to pave the way for and later justify the heinous ongoing deadly bombardments by RSF militia on the Zamzam camp, they persist in their attempts to provide excuses for such atrocities.

In response to the justification offered by the Enlightenment Center, I outline the following:

1. The Enlightenment Center’s response fails to address the blatant forgery they committed by including the names and signatures of 14 organizations— as publicly announced so far, who had not even seen the statement, let alone agreed to or rejected its contents. How did these signatures find their way into your statement? Or forging other entities signatures is part of your Illusory Self-Entitlement too?

Before delving into the substance of the matter and your extensive words on “collegiality” within “civil society,” perhaps you could explain how you permitted yourselves to engage in such deception, which serves only to provide justification for militia crimes against Sudanese civilians.

This opportunistic approach of “let’s keep things under wraps,” is pioneered by the former National Salvation Government, and it seems you are intent on replicating it. Let us lay out the facts as they truly are and hold reality accountable for what it is: Why did you include in your fabricated statement the names and signatures of 14 organizations that had not even seen the statement to approve or reject its contents?

2. You asked in your statement whether the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia needs justifications to commit its crimes? Yes, it does! Its hegemonic project requires these formalistic justifications and so do you, to rationalize your alignment and alliance with it by perpetuating these justifications and fabrications and your active participation in their political propaganda campaigns which show little regard for the lives of Sudanese civilians in Zamzam and elsewhere, who continue to perish under the militia’s bombardment.

Rather than insulting people’s intelligence, creating false narratives and engaging in logical fallacies with verbose statements which you think its empty eloquence suffices to deceive the people, perhaps you should reflect on your actions and their consequences. Your statement is part of a systematic disinformation campaign we have observed since the eruption of this damned war—a disinformation campaign aimed at justifying the militia’s war and its crimes at any cost. The ongoing bombardment of Zamzam by the RSF since early December is a glaring and undeniable example of this.

3. You claim that the joint forces established checkpoints and brought weapons into the camp. I won’t engage in prolonged debate with you or ask against whom these checkpoints were established, as the wounds from your militia ally’s attacks on Geneina and Ardamata remain fresh. Instead, I will pose a direct question to the so-called “Enlightenment” Center: Are there drone launch pads, tanks, and medium-to-heavy weaponry inside Zamzam camp, as you alleged in your statement dated 16 November 2024? Or was this claim merely a preparatory narrative for the savage attacks being carried out by your ally, the RSF militia, on the camp since early December?

As a center supposedly dedicated to “enlightenment and human development,” do you not realize that many residents of Zamzam are family members of fighters from the Darfurian armed movements currently defending their people and families as part of the joint forces, shielding them from the fate suffered by the people of Geneina at the hands of your militia allies? Are you genuinely unaware of this, or do you consider the blood of these Sudanese civilians a justifiable price to satisfy your corrupt lust for power, even if it comes through the barrels of RSF militia guns?

And I ask you, with Zamzam being a long-standing camp dating back to Bashir’s regime, how would you have reacted if the current RSF attacks on the camp had occurred during Bashir’s rule under the same pretexts—claims of weapons, checkpoints, and the sheltering of armed fighters among civilians? Would you have engaged in crafting and disseminating the same justifications for the bombing and killing of displaced persons?

Do you truly understand the meaning of civilian protection in war zones, as you claim to advocate? Or do you regard these lives as cheap, unworthy of grief or defense?

I will only reiterate what I’ve said before: If you do not fear the consequences of your actions, then at least have the decency to feel some shame!

4. In your statement, you refer to the remarks of U.S. Special Envoy Tom Perriello, made on December 14, as a justification for the claims in your statement issued on November 16. Setting aside the validity of the U.S. envoy’s remarks—which, incidentally, included before praise for the RSF militia’s commitment to rules of engagement—it is worth noting that his statement itself was based on your November 16 fabricatations, which propagated the falsehood of Zamzam’s militarization and retroactively justified the RSF attacks. His remarks did not rely on any independent sources from the U.S. government. Naturally, as a distinguished “enlightenment center”, you and others have the means to reach out to him directly and inquire about this.

5. You deny in your response that the camp’s residents refuted the militarization claims in your statement and even underline parts of my article addressing this as a “lie.” Strangely, however, several employees of your center are also part of the Sudanese civil society advocacy group, where the discussion about your false statement took place.

Regrettably, your courage failed you, and you refrained from participating in that discussion, where multiple affirmations were made debunking the fabricated scene of tanks, drones, and medium-to-heavy weapons you described in your false statement about Zamzam. This is a desperate attempt to defend a lie that is now being used to justify the killing of civilians.

Your insistence on repeating and recycling these lies compels me to ask once again: What exactly are you longing to achieve through this, especially as you now witness with your own eyes the deadly consequences it has contributed to for the displaced people of Zamzam camp? How many more lives must the Rapid Support Forces claim before you wake up to the magnitude of the disaster facing Sudanese civilians—one that you actively justify and promote? Why do you regard the lives, suffering, displacement, and killings of Sudanese people as an acceptable price to pay for your ambitions, whatever they may be?

Your attempts to posture under the banners of civil society and humanitarian advocacy—when you are far away from either—and to exploit them in service of your agendas fool no one. Your statement is not innocent; it is not a mere error in information or a lapse in judgment. Language, as Derrida asserts, is not just a medium of expression but a tool for imposing specific perceptions of reality, making domination appear natural. This is precisely what your statement is doing—framing the militia attacks you align with as natural and justified.

Your discourse is far from innocent; it does not based on the principles of civil society’s duty to defend the people. When words are used as instruments of deception, as tools to spread lies and alternative narratives that serve fascist agendas—as you are doing—language itself becomes an instrument of oppression. Your false statement is a prime example, laying the groundwork for a narrative that legitimises the fascist domination of the RSF and turns the atrocities and crimes it commits into actions that appear justified and acceptable.

What you are doing is a calculated effort to transform injustice and oppression into necessity and virtue.

Enlightenment Center,

I have no competition with you or anyone else, whether in public or private matters. Such a mindset, which presumes that positions on public issues are taken based on self-calculations of personal gains or losses, is a dismal outlook that grips you and others. Our nation is enduring a serious catastrophe, and its people are suffering through one of the most harrowing crises in its history. Yet, you and others have chosen to become a chorus of justifiers for this suffering and tragedy, exploiting symbolic authority you believe grants you a blank check to define what is right and wrong, even if it involves blatant distortions for anyone with eyes.

The clearest evidence of this is the appeal in your statement calling on your colleagues who withdrew from your statement to return to it, without even acknowledging that they did not withdraw—they never joined you in signing the falsified statement in the first place. You included their names without their knowledge, in an attempt to inflate your mountains of deception and manipulation.

Regrettably, by adorning your center’s name with that of a great man who dedicated his life and legacy to defending what he believed to be the truth, you have sullied his name by becoming nothing more than a tool for media hegemony in the service of a fascist agenda. A tool for serving the agenda of the RSF militia with whom you align with and those behind it, as you propagate lies that justify its crimes. I even shied to mention his name alongside your center’s name in this writing, out of respect for his memory.

Defending civil society and its values cannot be achieved through the “let it remain hidden” approach, which you seem to advocate in the closing paragraphs of your statement. True accountability lies in admitting mistakes and correcting them, as you yourselves have mentioned. For indeed, the truth deserves to be followed—if you want to respect anything of the legacy of Al-Khatim Adlan, whose name you bear.

Perhaps, as you witness the consequences of your actions, you will rethink the role you have played in the killing and suffering of Sudanese civilians in Zamzam camp.

Regarding your remarks about moral integrity, in which you accused me of lacking it, I cannot refrain from reminding you of the irony in such accusations coming from a center with a long-standing reputation for allegations of financial and administrative corruption. These allegations included using funding for political bribery and internal disputes over the center’s salaries, leading to the 2011 split within the Haq political movement and, later, forcing your director, Mr. Baqir Afif, to resign as chairman of the board of the Sudan Democracy First Group to avoid investigation into fraud allegations (2015–2016). Your center did not even spare the suffering of our people during the war, exploiting humanitarian efforts by emergency committees to deduct 12% of donor funding for its administrative expenses. This was despite the fact that the center’s only administrative duty is receiving funds into its bank account and transferring them to the committees, with your further pressure to increase this percentage to 20%—funds that should have been entirely dedicated to feeding and aiding Sudanese civilians during wartime.

The extortion, members of the Enlightenment Center, is your doing and your sustenance.

The author of this letter has spent a significant part of his life moving between detention centers under the former regime, leaving him no room for pandering to your cheap provocations. I have no personal shame in the public sphere to feel vulnerable to the slander of your supporters or your allies within and outside the militia. You better reflect on whose agenda you are serving, and act justly toward the Sudanese people and stop attempts to silence others through intimidation—they will not work.

If you do not fear the consequences of your actions, then at least have the decency to feel shame. Our people’s blood should not be spilled as an offering for your ambitions in service of the militia and those who stand behind it.

Amgad Fareid El-Tayeb – Without the allies you dared not mention, out of fear or convenience