Arab Summit: Mass Murderers Shouldn't Be Celebrated.

The Arab League Summit planned for Qatar this weekend seems fated to go down in the history books, but for the worst possible reason. Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, embraced Sudan's resident Omar al-Bashir as an honoured guest today as he arrived to attend the Summit in a brazen act of defiance against an international arrest warrant on charges of war crimes in Darfur.

On March 4, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for al-Bashir's arrest on for "directing attacks against an important part of the civilian population of Darfur, Sudan, murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians and pillaging their property."

Given a red-carpet welcome:

Wearing a traditional Sudanese robe and white turban, a smiling al-Bashir was greeted at the airport with an embrace and kiss by Qatar's emir. They later had coffee with the head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa.

It was a low-risk trip for al-Bashir with high symbolic value for his Arab backers, who argue that carrying out the ICC's arrest would further destabilize Sudan as the Darfur conflict between the Arab-led government and ethnic African rebels enters its seventh year.

Only Jordan and two other tiny Arab League members, the Comoros and Djibouti, are party to the ICC charter, but can take no action on Qatari soil. Arab foreign ministers have endorsed a draft resolution for the summit rejecting the ICC's arrest warrant.

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo has said that al-Bashir should be arrested once he leaves Sudanese airspace, but it was unclear whether any military forces were monitoring his flight. The United States does not recognize the ICC's jurisdiction, citing fears that Americans would be unfairly prosecuted for political reasons. But President Barack Obama earlier this month denounced the "genocide" in Darfur.

The Sudanese government's battle against rebels in the western Darfur region has killed up to 300,000 people and driven 2.7 million from their homes since 2003, according to the United Nations.

Clearly, no Arab leader is keen to accept the precedent the ICC set when it issued its warrant. But even a club of kings, strongmen and despots shames itself by breaking bread with a man accused of murder, transfer, torture and rape.

Al-Bashir has no business being in Qatar, especially considering that planned peace talks with Khalil Ibrahim, the head of Darfur's strongest rebel group, have fallen through. Ibrahim cancelled on Friday after al-Bashir expelled aid groups such as Oxfam, Save the Children, CARE and Médecins Sans Frontières that care for people in Darfur, where 4.7 million rely on aid for food, shelter, water and protection.

Expelling these aid groups marks a new low in the war al-Bashir's Arab-led regime in Khartoum has been waging against ethnic African insurgents since 2003. As many as 300,000 people have been killed and nearly 3 million have been driven from their homes.

These dismal developments should galvanize U.S. President Barack Obama to step up pressure on the Khartoum regime, even though George Bush's, Obama's predecessor refused to back the ICC.

Al-Bashir should be arrested when he ventured outside the Arab League zone. China, his powerful patron, should withdraw its support. The United Nations/African Union peacekeeping force in Sudan should be reinforced with troops and equipment, so that it can protect civilians. Sanctions should be tightened on al-Bashir and his cronies. Donors should carefully re-evaluate the $1 billion aid operation in Darfur, as relief agencies are expelled. The arms embargo on Sudan should be expanded. And the U.S. and its allies should impose a no-fly zone in Darfur, to prevent al-Bashir's air force from bombing civilians.

Al-Bashir said contemptuously that the ICC "can eat" its warrant. For Darfur's sake, he must be made to swallow those words.

Who did Israel(?)/US(?) attack? Sudan(?)/Iran(?)/Hamas(?)

Several outlets are reporting that Sudanese officials said foreign warplanes launched two separate airstrikes in January on Sudan near its border with Egypt, targeting convoys packed with light weapons and African migrants trying to sneak across the frontier. However who was behind the strikes remains a mystery, since conflicting reports are suggesting that it was both Israel and the US.

Mubarak Mabrook Saleem, Sudan's State Minister for Transportation, said he believed American planes were behind the bombings about a week apart in early February and claimed hundreds were killed. A Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed his account but said there were discrepancies on casualties. The U.S. denied any airstrike on Sudan.

But even stranger following the highways minister's statements, even further conflicting reports have emerged from within Sudan. Namely, according to Al Jazeera English, the Sudanese foreign minister Deng Alor said Wednesday, "we have no information about such an attack."

Moreoever, the Al Jazeera report mentions claims of two bombings -- the original January incident plus one in February as well. From Al Jazeera English:

Mabrouk Mubarak Salim, the state minister for highways, said on Thursday that Sudanese, Somalis, Ethiopians, and Eritreans were killed in the attacks in January and February.
...

CBS said that the jets were targeting weapons convoys heading through Sudan on their way to Egypt, where they would have been taken across the Sinai into the Gaza Strip.

"Sudan used to provide Hamas with weapons but that is not the case any more," Alor said.

Salim said that the air raids hit human traffickers travelling through the desert area and the only weapons in the convoys were small arms being carried by guards.

But it gets even more bizarre - who was the intended target of the air strikes?

As CBS reports:

CBS News national security correspondent David Martin has been told that Israeli aircraft carried out the attack. Israeli intelligence is said to have discovered that weapons were being trucked through Sudan, heading north toward Egypt, whereupon they would cross the Sinai Desert and be smuggled into Hamas-held territory in Gaza.

In January, the U.S. signed an agreement with Israel that calls for an international effort to stop arms smuggling into Gaza. Hamas was showering rockets on Israeli towns, and Israel had responded by invading Gaza. More than 1,000 Palestinians were reportedly killed in the December-January war, and 13 Israelis lost their lives.

Sudan is known to be a way station for weapons smuggled into Gaza via a vast network of tunnels under the strip's border with Egypt. The route begins in Iran, which supports the Hamas in Gaza. It is said to pass through Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Egypt - going from the Persian Gulf around the Arabian Peninsula to the city of Port Sudan on the Red Sea, some 400 kilometres south of Egypt.

So he intended target was Hamas right? Not so fast.

However, the involvement of Sudan in the Iranian-Hamas war effort would fit with the larger pattern of Sudan's regional alliances and activity. The close connections between Teheran, Khartoum and Hamas are a matter of public record.

The regime of Brigadier Omar al-Bashir in Sudan is, with the exception of the Hamas enclave in Gaza, the only overtly Islamist and pro-Iranian government in the Arabic-speaking world. Sudan is an acknowledged member of the Iran-led regional alliance, which includes Syria, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Sudan has maintained close relations with Iran since the 1989 coup which brought Omar al-Bashir to power. Bashir's coup was carried out in co-operation with the Islamist National Islamic Front. Members of the front went on to hold key positions in the new regime. Iranian supplies of weapons and oil began soon after. Hassan al-Turabi, a Muslim Brotherhood associated Sudanese Islamist activist, was the key figure in building the Iran-Sudan link in the early days of the regime.

The last time Israel took responsibility for carrying out a secret activity on Sudanese soil was when it airlifted Ethiopian Jews from Sudan in Operations Moses and Joshua in 1984 and 1985.

With such a completely convoluted and confusing geopolitical saga - is it any wonder that there is so much difficulty starting something as simple as peace talks?