Did rioters mourn Garang?
By Namaa Faisal AL- Mahdi
August 5, 2005 — On the first of August 2005, the Sudan received with great shock and pain the news of the death of the Sudanese leader Dr John Garang (60). Two days of anticipation ended with the sad news, two days since the loss of communications between the vice president of the Sudan and Kambala airport and the Sudan’s media coverage was nil and not present. Rumors emerged on the night before the announcement that Dr Garang had been found and was well, yet on the very next morning news of his death arrived.
The Souk Al- Arabi in Khartoum that morning was in a state of frenzy and frantic activity; the people were running to catch the buses and coaches on their way out of Khartoum. Anticipating a southern reaction to the news, this reflects what little confidence they have in the CPA. (Comprehnsive Peace Agreement) signed on the 6th January 2005 between the Government of the Sudan and the SPLA/M).
Pockets of revolts started fires on cars, car tyres and petrol stations. Street children, no older than 18 year of age and opportunists enticed to join in by the street children armed with boxes of matches, bits of bricks and sticks ran riots; burning the cars, smashing shop windows and looting shop stocks on the deserted streets.
Almost half a day had passed and the president of the Sudan and the second vice president failed to address the people, to console the southerners on the loss of their leader, their anticipated salvation from years of marginalization, years of war and neglect and scorched earth campaigns and finally displacement.
The displacement camps of wretched poverty and constant government raids, to forcibly empty the increasingly lucrative lands occupied by the displaced to be sold commercially such as the Sarha area in Omdurman (formerly Marzouk), and most recently on May 2005, Soba Al- Aradi were the people who were evacuated from the area and moved to Jabel Awelia.
Numbers of riots police, armed with old rifles and guns, began to slowly emerge. Soon the situation began to cool down, with the governor of Khartoum announcing a six pm to six am curfew and a loss of 17 lives and tens of cars. Taking into account that the Skoda show room on Al-Baladiya Street went up in flames, 20 burnt cars littered the Baladiya street, and eyewitnesses were saying hundreds of people lost their lives.
The way these riots began to emerge did not follow a planned pattern, but with pockets of street children enticing opportunists to join in, to rob, raid and rape, to address the pent up frustrations of years of living on the streets, years of poverty and, lack of security, lack of food and most importantly lack of a home.
Many wars passed by the Sudan in a seemingly national oblivion, the South, Upper Nile, Darfur and the East, add to that a string of famines and droughts and the loss of many lives in human lives and live stock.
The majority of the nation of the Sudan not directly affected by the atrocities happening in the people’s back yard did nothing- which is ironically against the Islamic teachings, the predominant religion of the north that clearly states as per a quote of the prophet Mohammed.
“If a Muslim witnesses a wrong doing he/she should try and change, either by taking action to do so, or by speech if they can or through empathy for the people wronged and by the heart which is the weakest forms of belief”
Conflict in southern, western and eastern Sudan from 1980- June 2005, has forced many millions of IDP into camps in the outskirts of the major towns and cities, making the Sudan home to largest IDP crisis in the world. Most of the young displaced, the children who have lost all contact with their parents have taken up residence in the streets and make up the increasing population of city’s street children.
IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) with an average age of 22 years of age, and a staggering 40% without a steady job, with over 52 % of the IDP population without the basic job tools such as reading and writing- what hope do they have to get a steady job and what choice do they have but to be involved into casual labour, casual hours and casual income in a not so casual world and with a not so casual family in need of the basics: food, water and medicine.
The WFP (World Food Programme) and a couple of national and international NGO’s began to work with the IDPs, but that only started as recently as June 2004 and in the Sudan’s current situation – this it is not enough.
After the recent riots these areas have now been cut off from their original food sources, the international NGOs have pulled out as a precaution, shops were looted, food stores burnt down, mills destroyed, pharmacies and hospitals burnt down. Leaving many vulnerable people without food and many of those injured in the riots without basic medicines or wound bandages.
The rioters were not southerners, they were a mix of all the Sudan’s tribes, they were the street children whose numbers in the year 1989- were over 100,000 and rising, with no homes and no hopes was this movement to mourn the passing of Dr Gararng or was his death an excuse to launch the first ever hunger revolt in the Sudan.
* Namaa Faisal AL- Mahdi is a Sudanese from the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.