By Hans Pienaar, for South Africa's "Sunday Tribune"...
(See also the largely related ABC News [U.S.] item from a few days ago.)
There we were, dozens of spooks and hacks, having a party on the lawns of Sudan's intelligence headquarters. We ate goat meat, drank Pepsi-Cola, and watched several heads of Africa's intelligence services join a local pop group in jumping up and down on a makeshift stage.
Probably smarting from the humiliation of hosting an African Union summit two years ago, but not given the chair, as is the custom, Khartoum decided to pull out the stops when the new Committee for Intelligence and Security Services (Cissa) in Africa held its annual meeting of spymasters in the Sudanese capital.
And so, discarding the secretive nature of all intelligence services, and despite Sudan being a semi-secretive country itself, Cissa was turned into a spectacle.
Roads were cordoned off, banners announced Cissa all over the city, Chairman Limousines drove in convoys to and from the AU complex built two years ago for the heads of state meeting, and a lavish reception was held on the banks of the Nile, where Sudan's best artists performed.
And the media was invited to attend. Dozens were flown in from all over the world for a week and longer, all expenses paid by the government.
That caused some problems. The tenuous link made at a preview briefing seemed to be that spooks and hacks have confidential sources, which was a very interesting idea to ponder.
How does one become a confidential source of a spy agency without becoming a spy oneself? But talking to the media off the record doesn't turn a spy into a journalist.
Dennis Dlamini, Cissa's executive secretary, took a firm hand of the briefing, spelling out the guiding principles behind Cissa, which had been somewhat glossed over by the conference chair, Brig. Mohammed Al Hassan.
Sanctity of human life, individual security and not regime security, and "shunning" genocide were all assumed to be the values of its members.
Immediately, there was a barrage of questions from Arabic journalists, on whether Cissa was going to collaborate with the United States.
Ordered out
Of course, most African governments already are, including Sudan, but Dlamini did not want to divulge any details. Neither was it clear how many members Cissa had. At the end, claims were made that 46 African nations had joined, but many of them did not appear to be at the conference.
Then again, maybe that's why they're called spooks.
The media were kept busy by being sent on PR trips, along with some volunteering intelligence agents, to places like Al Fasher, capital of North Darfur.
The Kenyans were thrown off the trip, apparently because a critical report on such PR trips was published in a local paper written by a Kenyan journalist.
When they tried to throw off the South Africans - possibly because Archbishop Desmond Tutu had called for sanctions against Sudan from the EU - we demanded to be flown back home.
With several of the world's leading TV channels switching on their cameras, the Sudanese relented, but only after an SABC team had declined to have any further part.
In Darfur the firm hand of Mohammed Atta - not the ghost of a certain terrorist, but the deputy chief of Sudan intelligence - steered us away from anything that might be controversial. We drove through a large refugee camp outside Al Fasher, but requests to stop to talk to its inmates, or even to go to the toilet, were ignored.
We were shown the legislature of North Darfur, where some grim-looking former rebels in turbans and dark glasses were discussing public-works proposals.
At an African Union briefing, we were gruffly ordered out by the heads of Amis (African Union Mission in Sudan), its mission in Darfur.
At the UN headquarters, we were treated with professional courtesy for the first time, but after one question had been asked of Miguel Marti, a UN security top dog out of uniform, Atta intervened with profuse thanks to end the session, to the visible dismay of Marti.
Then we went for lunch, where some Sudanese soldiers guarded the two contingents, one inside a hall, the media outside under a tent. Several spooks had to be coaxed inside.
After all this manipulation, we were given a detailed briefing of the Darfur situation at Sudanese security headquarters in town.
We returned to the governor's residence, where a tame herd of antelope, looking suspiciously like springboks, were unfazed by bands of tribal dancers waving swords in the air and dancing very energetically in heat of 40C-plus.
Pestered by the press, the governor agreed to a press conference.
He was asked the million-dollar question: How many people had died in the Darfur conflict?
Under Atta's watchful eyes he said, not more than about 9 000. This has been the figure trotted out by Sudanese intelligence for years now, as opposed to the 200 000 on which international monitors appear to have settled.
Preposterous
In a region where the last census was held in the 1960s, the ultimate death toll will always be contentious, and perhaps a matter for negotiation.
But a figure of 9 000 is so preposterous that the media could be heard to respond with a collective, confidential smirk. Any success the trip might have had, evaporated at that point.
Outside, a ceremony to hand over gifts was held. All the spooks received locally woven baskets covered by straw hats containing pairs of snake-skin shoes. South Africa and Zimbabwe failed to collect theirs.
"Smuggling" of snake skin has led to jail terms for several foreigners, so perhaps that was why the plane was littered with baskets when we landed in Khartoum again.
The Cissa conference ended in chaos. The media waited for hours outside the hall, as the only entrance [that] they were allowed to use was blocked by Muslim security people choosing that spot to pray in, bowing before us behind the glass doors.
Then we were herded after being scanned twice into a briefing room and then taken to attend the closing remarks of the new Cissa chairman, General Salah Abdallah Gosh, Sudan's top security agent.
Gosh looked like he hadn't slept for years. He had a soft voice, and his one eyelid drooped, and overall there was only one description for his demeanour: Spooky.
Dlamini declared the meeting adjourned, but Gosh was waylaid by some American journalists.
Rather flustered for a spymaster, he returned to the podium and began to take questions. He responded most of the time in Arabic, with no attempt being made to translate.
However, he did make the astounding statement that the Darfur crisis only existed in America, where it was an issue between the Democrats and Republicans. Which raised the very serious question: Is Gosh the right person to run an organisation that is supposed to feed Africa's early warning system for possible conflicts?
Cissa might look like another pie-in-the-sky idea from pan-Africanists, but it has the potential to turn the nascent African structures into even-more-undemocratic bodies than they already are - and give the AU chair a platform from which to build an unrepresentative power base.
How can one trust African intelligence run by a man who continues to claim that only 9 000 people died in Darfur?
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