Diary

21 February 2009

Along the stretch of highway leading to the international airport in Khartoum there are illuminated signs of Sudan’s President Omar el-Bashir alternating with those of Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court who has indicted him.

The devils who came on horseback now ride in stolen 4x4s. Carjacking is a hobby in Darfur. A friend was held up and forced to lie face down in the sand as gun-totting militia men threatened to kill her and her Sudanese colleagues. They didn’t, but they did rob them. Somewhere out there a Janjaweed wears last season’s Roberto Cavalli sunglasses.

I was told that no trip to Sudan was complete without meeting the Black Pope of Terrorism, Dr Hassan Turabi, who engineered the 1989 coup d’état that brought Bashir, now his mortal enemy, to power. He comes across as a reasonable, gentle, turbanned sheikh. But he oversaw a gruesome period in the country’s history. Osama bin Laden used to be Turabi’s neighbour in the luxurious suburb where he has his house. It was at Turabi’s invitation that bin Laden came to town. Turabi says ‘he was a very gentle, soft-spoken and fragile man’.