The Culture of war in the shadow of Sudan’s CPA

By Stephen P. Kuol

Sept 6, 2006 — Like a bolt of lightning out of a darkening sky, war burst upon the Sudanese landscape in the spring of 1983, climaxing two decades of bitter wrangling and pitting two vast regions of the largest nation in the content against each other. Northerners called it the War of the Rebellion, Southerners the War of Liberation Struggle. Indeed, to the people of Southern Sudan, it is a continuum of the liberation struggle that started in spring of 1955.The rest is a long history beyond the scope of this article. The world knows it largely as the Civil War in the Sudan. Those who practically lived the two Sudanese civil wars can better describe the South- North Conflict as protracted madness. War as an organized violence is a pathological state of affairs that violates human sensibilities beyond mere imagination. War imposes its own culture upon the people in question. It creates fatal industries and life styles that do not immediately cease with cease fire and peace agreement. In Southern Sudan , it has introduced a culture of material greed quite foreign to the traditional norms of the African societies. Evidently, war corrupts the minds and souls of all those who breathe its vapors. Economically, this Sudanese civil war earns blood dinars, countless heads of cows and herds of wives for the top lords in the business. In another word, war is wealth for its lords. The woeful contrast though is that it is horrifying and exhilarating experience for its innocent victims whose experience is punctuated by nothing but looting, death, and destruction of their homesteads.

In war, reign the war lords who tend to see the war as the end in itself. Their most loathed enemies are the peace makers. In their book, cursed are the peace makers and blessed are the war mongers. War is addictive, and its lords are truly addicted to the blood of their war’s victims these days in the Sudan .Of course permanent peace would put the lords out of business. So no wonder why they (the lords of the war) deliberately refuse to see the light at the end of this long and dark tunnel of the war. With war comes the culture of impunity where the armed and powerful get away with looted goods and horrible crimes. Jungle laws become the supreme laws of the land. Highway bandits and career criminals become war heroes. It is a survival of the fittest as the war put both its victims and makers on a very thin line of survival between living and becoming its casualties. In this culture, only the gunman is a total man. A politician without an army or armed group behind him/her is a laugh stock to those who have. War can give people, a nation, communities, tribes and freelance soldiers a reason for living and false sense of purpose. The culture of war intoxicates people, distorts visions, and handling of the world becomes simple. Psychologically, perpetuation of warfare requires a denial of the destruction it causes. War cultured masses of people live in delusions of honor and glory of violence and savagery to justify its continuation. The culture of war in the Sudan is best characterized by militaristic nationalism that overrides all civil reasons for positive dialogue.

Sudan at the time of this writing is armed to the teeth against itself. It is the only nation on this planet with more than three existing armed forces (SAF, SPLA, SSDF, and IUS). Each force is well trained, equipped and on maximum alert for any eventuality. This military buildup in my view makes Sudan look like a timed bomb against itself. Partisanship in war goes beyond the emphasis on group loyalty and cohesion needed for the well-being of the groups. War time mentality makes people obsessive and heedless of their group’s long-range self-interest and survival. As a common practice all over the war torn- world, one desperate tactic often employed by the so called sovereign nation states to quell insurgency is: Counter- Insurgency Recruitment within the communities of the insurgents to dislodge and isolate the insurgency. Sudan being one of the nations with a very long history of perennial civil war has excelled in those survival tactics more than many countries at war today. What makes it more hazardous though is that the State of the Sudan has always armed tribes against tribes in this vicious game of survival .In Southern Sudan for instance; the African tribes of Nuer, Dinka, Morle, Toposa, Mandari etce are armed against one another. In Dar fur, the Arab tribes of Baggara and Rezeghat (Jangjaweeds) are armed against African Tribes of Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. This has not only inflicted deep wounds on the cultural psyche of the people, but has also complicated the conflict resolution where mutual mistrust is well developed and victim mentality is ingrained deep into the minds of the people in those warring communities. The NCP architects of these projects want some thing like war of man against every man in those regions and communities of the Sudanese people.

This genocidal behavior has demonstrated that the NCP leaders are not state men. They are Jahdists by instinct and warlords at best. War is not only their trade mark, but also their life line. They are using the war itself to preserve the power they seized by force 18 years ago. That is why they are still spending more money on building warlords than on infrastructure during this peace time in Southern Sudan . They give lips service to peace making and gear for war at the same time. The NCP leaders have set a record in the history of the Sudan for dishonoring political pacts and treating their peace partners like vanquish. The Niffers have reneged from all the agreements they signed with all their political adversaries in the last 10 years. The CPA is the last one they are now tearing down piece by piece before the eyes of the Sudanese and the world public.

Considering its global sponsorship and mediation, the CPA is an international legal document witnessed and signed by international observers plus more than four African head of states under IGAD. With that historic agreement signed in January 2005, the National Interim Constitution was drafted and the war was declared over. Politically, the terms of the CPA provide for democratic discourse that ought to end war time politics. They give the SPLM and other political forces in the country the right to pursue their struggle through political means. Ultimately, the terms of CPA put the burden of proof on the ruling NCP to make national unity attractive through democratization of the political process and equal sharing of wealth and power with the marginalized regions. None of the above has fairly come to pass so far. In truth, conflict resolution the NCP way is a mockery by all standards. First of all, the fundamental political grievances that compelled the marginalized regions to take up arms in the first place are not publicly acknowledged. The North does not wrong any one. The culprits behind all the wars that have now engulfed the country are Zionists, Americans, or British Colonialists. The Conventional wisdom has it that the prime objective of a just war must be to re-establish permanent peace. Once peace is established, the war is no longer a noble purpose driven project. Unfortunately, even the ruling party can not mentally come to term with peace as legal and political reality in the country at this critical time. In stead of cementing the peace process, the National Congress Party has continued recruiting and arming militias in Southern Sudan against its peace partner (SPLM). Hence, the war between the NCP and the SPLA continues in Southern Sudan through those armed militias solely sponsored by the same president who shares the Republican Palace in Khartoum with General Salva Kiir Mayardit, the Commander in Chief of the SPLA who is also the Vice President of the Republic. This defiant and manipulative attitude of the NCP has made the SPLM Party rely more on external pressure to bear on NCP as the only viable way to ensure fair and total implementation of the CPA. In real life, the war is not mentally over. The most alarming evidence of that on the horizon is that neither Vice President Mayardit nor President Beshier can absolutely rule out going back to full scale armed confrontation any time now.

War is correctly termed as a political mass violence. Once allowed to flare up, it plunges the entire masses of the people deep into a bottomless pit of death, destitute and sorrow. As a matter of fact, it is always a defeat for humanity. One war correspondent described war as a crocodile which is always hungry. According to that war reporter, “like crocodile, the war has dishonest eyes and a thrashing tail. “It creeps up quietly while you wash at the river, while you pound your corn, while you rock your old mother in her time of dying”. It is with you always, war, waiting to explode your life and throw you down beside a river to die. War wants death, always; war wants to quiet your mother’s songs. War wants your sorrow. The war tells its victims:” I am the prime reality in your lives, the ground under your feet and the certainty that lies beneath all uncertainties.”

One paradoxical but scientific fact is that human beings lead all animals when it comes to killing their own kinds in conflicts. They prove to be very efficient low-life cowards who fight to eliminate any hostile life against their own. Most other animals can only prey and kill to eat. Few territorial wild animals kill to defend their territories. Nevertheless, the contemporary scholarship on conflict studies is still struggling with the answer to the question as whether it is the human culture or it is the egoistic nature of human being that causes conflict in human societies. Historical accounts deny psychopathology by depicting war as a normal and natural human activity. However, one thing for fact is that cultures are social constructions that are learned and practiced over time. The culture of war in the Sudan is well learned and practiced over half a century. Presently, Sudan is cultural environment that breeds nothing other than conflicts. There is an image of war that has stuck in the minds of many including the political elites and public intellectuals. The generations of two long civil wars have known war better than any thing else. As the war replaced the pens and plowshares with guns and landmines, these war time generations have learned more skills to destroy than to build. Clinically, one does not need any credential in Social Psychology to conclude that beneath this popular demand for peace lies a profound psychopathology that will run its own natural course before a collective peace of mind is fully restored in the Sudan . In sum, Sudan has miserably failed to attain the culture of peace in the shadow of the CPA. If any, the culture of peace is being defeated by the culture of war in this inherently war-plagued Republic of the Sudan .

The author is a Sudanese national and scholar living in USA. He can be reached at [email protected]