Politics in Sudan: managing conflict in multiple intolerant contexts
by Hussien Arko Minawi
When we go through the pages of the crisis in Sudan and read between the lines, there is more than one complexity that dominates the crisis, but the most mind-boggling issue is the one related to the contexts of our conflict, it is a real challenge to our politics. According to the norms of engagement in politics, this challenge is certainly an indispensable rule of the political game as long as the rivalry is one of the ABCs of politics. To face this challenge, we need a paradigm shift in addressing the different contexts of our crisis. The plurality of the opposition and the plurality of means of resistance are also part of political complexity in Sudan and they have posed a degree of challenge, but the biggest challenge that must be faced by the Sudanese, is not in the plurality of parties to the conflict or the plurality of means of resistance, it’s actually, in the plurality of contexts in which the conflict is managed, or what might be called a conflict of multiple contexts.
The term conflict of contexts used above may need a little clarification to avoid any semantic confusion. Though the term seems a new coinage, it is an old political reality that contributed to the fragmentation of Sudan in terms of geography and politics and made the state almost collapse. The conflict of contexts in Sudan is the most instrumental weapon that brought destruction to Sudan. It is a kind of conflict that can not be contained by conventional means, but rather a dogmatic one and ideologically oriented in nature, every context has no choice but to inflict a crushing defeat on its political rival. They believe in the principle of two options of no compromise; black and white options. Politically, Islamists manage the conflict on the principle of war and peace, or Muslim and Non-Muslim, communists manage the conflict on the principle of either communism or repression, and the Baathists see everyone who does not belong to Arab nationalism has no room in the world of politics. The complication of this conflict is evident in many dimensions. It is in the dimension of war, in the dimension of culture, in the dimension of our social relations, and in the dimension of religion. Multiple contexts embrace multiple paradoxes that a country like Sudan with its complex diversity can never accommodate, not even a simple community can tolerate it.
Because of intolerance of the different contexts in our political history, many opinions related to our crisis had been suppressed and considered taboos for a long time. This has happened whether under dictatorships or during sporadic democracy. Until the recent past, It was not easy for a person in Sudan to express his opinion openly and freely about self-determination. Due to accumulated sacrifices, nowadays, the situation has changed and no longer people are held captive by taboos invented for political purposes. Now, It’s an everyday phenomenon people boldly discuss issues related to the future of Sudan and its unity. In political, academic and media forms, it is not surprising that you hear opinions and comments like; Sudan is a country that has not yet formed or it is in the process of formation.
These comments at least reflect the difficulties experienced by Sudan under the national governments of the post-independence era. Certainly, it was a period of suppression and considered one of the most difficult times for Sudan as major transformations have taken place within this period were marked by extreme shock in many aspects and made the future of the country unpredictable.
The viewpoints made about the process in Sudan are also strongly supported by so many political, social and historical events of different contexts that have coincided with the idea of the process of formation.
Our history is full of a series of painful events that started with the mutiny of the Torit garrison in 1955. Some events were turning points in the process of formation. The wars engineered by dictatorial regimes against the margin in Darfur, South Sudan, Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains have had an apocalyptic ending. They have torn the social fabric, jeopardized national unity, disintegrated the country and paved the way for a wide range of war crimes. This conflict is managed in the context of what is known as Margin-Centre conflict. While the conflict of Margin-Centre constitutes a really instrumental force for replacing the old Sudan with a new one, the ideologically oriented conflict has become a stumbling block to the transition to the new Sudan.
Whether in the margin-centre context or ideologically oriented context, Sudan in its process, has experienced both military and civil resistance against tyranny in different contexts but the most intolerable contexts are the ideologically oriented contexts. In an ideologically oriented context, many political organizations and civil societies have made a lot of contributions to become part of this resistance to achieving freedom and some model of a modern state but they failed to give a precise description of what model of democracy are they trying to implement, and to what extent do they agree on the concept of a state of equal citizenship? The dilemma of the political forces is that every organization looks at the fundamental issues of Sudan from a different angle, instead of agreeing on the issues for the sake of the unity of the country.
What makes the political situation more pessimistic is the extreme discrepancy of the political forces in their visions or what I prefer to call a conflict of contexts, which has led Sudan to a crossroads.
Indeed the political organisations, with no exception, lack a common goal on major national issues and politically, they always operate in disharmony and a contentious atmosphere. They are contradictory in goals, tactics and means of resistance. Each organization does not recognize the role of the other organization. In such disharmony, it is not only too difficult for political organizations to set a common agenda on national issues, but it’s unfortunate that each political organization wants to establish the state according to its viewpoint and deliberately excludes the vision of others, or wants to impose its viewpoint on the entire governance system. So logically, everything about unity is just a utopia and the political organisations can’t come together to build a democratic state when a final victory of dictatorship removal is achieved.
The main conflict on the battlefield is seen through the ideologically oriented political parties particularly the Islamists, the Communists and the Baathists. The Islamists versus the Communists and the Baathists versus both the Islamists and the Communists. It is a war of all against all.
In such a climate imbued with hostility and hatred, the late Dr, John Garang tried in the early eighties of the last century to reconcile the political situation in Sudan and put forward the idea of a new Sudan, which is based on equal citizenship. Later the vision of the new Sudan had flourished by joining others from marginalized areas, especially from Nuba Mountains, the Blue Nile and Darfur. The resistance of the margin is the most notable shift in Sudan. Armed with the idea of the new Sudan, the vast majority of the marginal people have fought against the centre to restructure Sudan based on equal citizenship, regardless of religion, race, language and colour.
There was a wide interaction with the idea of a new Sudan from a large sector of the Sudanese and the idea began to spread very fast among all Sudanese, especially among the educated who believed that the way out of the dilemma of the conflict of contexts will only happen through consensus on the idea of equal citizenship because this vision puts the state at the same distance from the differences that have crippled Sudan for decades.
As mentioned earlier, the conflict that is managed in the context of Margin-Centre is the real instrumental force for establishing the new Sudan. As a result of the war managed in this context, there was an immense impact on the cohesion of the NCP party and its military junta. The NCP regime in Khartoum signed the CPA in Naivasha in 2005 under heavy pressure from the Margin-Centre context and the international community. In this agreement, Khartoum has conceded more than one-third of its revenue which the regime used to fund the state organ and wars, while the power-sharing agreement with the SPLM, made a dramatic downsizing of the Regime’s ability to make crucial decisions both at the level of the Federal Government and the level of the southern region and under the agreement a new reality has emerged whereby the level of governance in Southern Sudan was closer to confederation.
Regarding the war in Darfur, Khartoum has undergone for the first time in the history of its wars against the Margin an unprecedented experience that made Sudan accept the international forces on its soil, in addition to dozens of international resolutions issued against the head of state on crimes against humanity and thus the regime became politically, diplomatically and economically crippled by the conflict of the Western region of Darfur.
The most prominent side conflict that resulted from the conflict of contexts was the internal conflict of the National Congress, which eventually led to the weakening of the position of Omar al-Bashir and he became politically liable. This internal conflict was explicit, managed by the members of the Islamic Movement in addition to the paramilitary group known as Rapid Forces. The internal conflict of NCP was a very effective weapon that weakened the Government and helped a lot to end the Regime. It was effective because most of the members and those who were loyal to the regime had taken an anti-regime position.
The internal conflict of the National Congress was an outcome of the main conflict, particularly the conflict of the Margin Centre. The conflicts that arise on the sidelines of the main conflict have a great impact on the process of transformation, as seen in the internal conflict of the National Conference in which the veil of political Islam has been lifted and the vision of political Islam is no longer a valid political programme at any time or place.
In light of the conflict of contexts, our political reality has shown that the future of Sudan is held hostage by the main conflict of the political forces of Islamic, socialist and Arab Nationalist orientations as well as marginal forces, and any other conflict is only part of the main conflict.
For instance, the military intervention in December 2019 was neither independent of the main conflict nor any future intervention will constitute an independent conflict because the military institution whether in the past or today is not neutral and it will not be neutral unless radical reforms are introduced to address the presence of political elements within the military institution. The information leaked before and after the fall of the NCP regime was that there were more than three plans to seize power, two of which were led by the Islamist Movement, but in the end, the one led by the other political forces and perhaps supported by some international bodies succeeded, but in fact, all three attempts were using the military institution to topple the regime.
The situation shortly before the fall of the NCP Regime has shown the strong relationship of the military institution in Sudan to politics. There was a form of rapprochement among the main actors with the military institution including the mobilized masses. They all either had direct channels of communication with the army generals or indirect via media inciting the army to play an active role in removing Omar al-Bashir in the way that happened in October 1964 and April 1985.
It seemed that the role of the military at that crucial moment was very decisive to remove Al-Bashir, but this role had brought a major complication that affected the process of the traditional period. It gave legitimacy to the military institution to participate effectively in the structures of the state in sensitive civilian posts, both at the executive and sovereign levels. As a result, the parties to the transitional period entered into an intense conflict over the type of government at this stage. The dispute is over the question of whether it is a civilian or military government?
The dispute over the role of the military in our politics is not new. The conflict over this issue has a long history. For a long time all the ideologically oriented parties have recruited their members to penetrate the military establishment, some of them succeeded in carrying out a coup, and some of them failed. In light of the roles recently played by different actors to remove Omer Al-Bashir and in light of the absence of constitutional legitimacy, the issue of sharing power with the military institution has become a controversial issue and an area of conflict.
The conflict is between those who support a pure civilian-led government and who believe in the role of the military in the transitional period. In fact, during the transitional period, being a civilian-led government or the one shared with the military institution does not make a big difference if the actors have reached a compromise. But a compromise on this point depends on how flexible the actors are to the concept of inclusion and exclusion and to what extent they can overcome the restrictions imposed by their extreme political visions. The bitter reality is that the problem is not the idea of what type of government, but rather, who controls the military institution because each political organization is struggling to bring the military commanders under its control so that it can achieve the political goals through influential military elements who can manage coups.