Word: bashir
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Iran's interest in Sudan began after a fundamentalist-backed coup brought General Omar Hassan Bashir to power in 1989. Bashir immediately declared Sudan an Islamic state. Iran's President paid a call at the end of 1991, accompanied by his Defense and Intelligence ministers and the commander of the Revolutionary Guard. Reportedly, Iran agreed to provide Sudan with oil and technical aid in exchange for Sudanese livestock and wheat and promised to send Iranian Revolutionary Guards to train Sudanese Popular Defense Forces. U.S. officials say the Guards also offered instruction in subversion and guerrilla warfare for would-be terrorists...
Still, the subjects of some authoritarian governments would welcome a healthy dose of human-rights diplomacy, however faint. Says Egyptian analyst Tahsin Bashir: "It would be beneficial if Arab rulers realized the U.S. is not going to be an automatic safety net for every corrupt and incompetent regime in the region." Should Washington push too far, on the other hand, it might give militant Islamism, a movement distinctly untested in democratic virtues, entree to power. And a pronounced U.S. tilt back to Israel in the Middle East talks risks sending Syria and the Palestinians packing at a time when...
That is among the reasons Washington still hopes Saddam will be replaced by someone within the Iraqi military. Some of the participants in Beirut also saw that as the best option. According to Bashir Samourai, a member of the Democratic Movement, the opposition has been in touch with the Iraqi military. In the event of a coup, he said, "they would then call us to come and participate." Washington knows that to give tangible support to such a scheme would only doom it to illegitimacy in the eyes of most Iraqis. So until the phone call from an Iraqi officer...
...early December former U.S. President Jimmy Carter tried to launch negotiations between Bashir's government and the rebel Sudanese People's Liberation Movement, which seeks independence from Khartoum's harsh Islamic law. But the talks collapsed, and fighting has apparently intensified. On Jan. 4 a Sudanese guerrilla radio broadcast charged that 2,000 tribesmen were slaughtered by government-sponsored Arab militias in the Jebelein area, 250 miles south of Khartoum. The government claims that only 214 were killed, and that the deaths followed rioting over a farm dispute...
...political differences soon enough to allow a swift rescue of the people in peril. Ethiopia has recently claimed victories against the Tigre rebels, which may soften Mengistu just enough to permit some relief operations, at least for a time. But in Sudan, stiff rebel resistance threatens only to convince Bashir that his best course is to continue to block the already difficult lines of transport into the south -- and let starvation and disease do the rest...