Iran is not welcome to secure Sudan affairs
By Mahgoub El-Tigaini
March 8, 2008 — The agreement Sudan and Iran signed for cooperation in technology, education, science, industry, and exchange of experts is not welcome in the light of Sudan’s state of affairs in the present time.
The Muslim militants’ Iranian intercontinental -Sudanese Afro-Arab elites “revolutionary” aspirations are indeed ill-suited for Sudan, the “warring” multi-religious, multi-ethnic egalitarian nation of Africa. For all sound purposes and practical terms, the peace talks favored by the national and regional security of the million-mile country and its multiple Arab and African neighbors are truly unfavorable at all for a new military pact with the alien power of Iran in the Sudanese space.
True, Iran and Sudan are both ruled by elites influenced by a militant ideology of religious doctrines whose mentors allowed, in theoretical and practical terms, unrestricted levels of power usurpation, pragmatism, violence, hatred, and other questionable tools of domination versus the Sudanese governance relations that had been founded on various historical experiences emulating western democratic traditions, separate branches of government, elected participation in decision-making, and other check-and-balance systems of rule, in addition to indigenous native administrations and other community structures.
None of these nationalist systems or traditions, nonetheless, favored Shiite thought or Muslim Brotherhood Sunni revolutions throughout the modern history of Sudan, including the earlier Sudanese Mahdist Revolution against Turkish-Egyptian rule (1885-1899) was a unique blend of Sudanese Sunni Sufism and orthodox Islam. Nor is there, in the present situation of the country, a single reason, as far as Sudanese nationalism and democratic movement is concerned, to believe that the 20 years’ Brotherhood tyranny converted the Nation’s entrenched politics in any massive way to favor the Sudan’ defamed rule in Africa, or the Iranian inter-continental expansionism.
Unlike Iran’s overwhelming Shiite history, ideology, and political constituency, which has been consistently consolidated by a pragmatic central power over the last decades of the Khomeini-led revolution, Sudan is a multi-religious nation with a large diversified Sunni Muslim population, sizable Christian communities, and believers of African indigenous religions that should be equally protected by the Interim Constitution and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of Sudan, which is a treaty body guaranteed by the United Nations, the African Union, and other regional and global entities.
Equally importantly, hard internal political, economic, and security conditions make it extremely unfavorable to add an alien military and ideological fuel to the country’s shaky transition towards peace and political stability. The transitional nature of the Government of National Unity (GONU), whose minister of defense signed the agreement with Iran, requires broad consultations with Sudanese political opposition, in general, and the GONU partner, the SPLM/A, in particular.
The CPA reported hardships might be attributed, from the most part, to the technical loopholes of the agreement that wrongfully guaranteed veto power to the NIF-NCP ruling group over all other parties in all state authorities. This veto power generated poor performance by both partners, in the final analysis, as the NCP pariah regime took this unprecedented opportunity to act individually on behalf of the Nation. The military pact in question is no exception.
But the magnitude of Sudanese popular politics indicates a greater realization of the need to expand political participation with a view to improve relations between government and opposition groups in preparation of the upcoming scheduled elections in accordance with the CPA and the Interim Constitution of Sudan. Towards the achievement of these major goals, the Sudanese opposition parties and civil society groups called graciously on the GONU to strengthen party relations between the CPA ruling partners to expedite peace opportunities in the country, and to pursue successful talks with the Darfuri political opposition and armed movements.
Clearly then, the Sudanese public opinion opts for peace and national reconciliation, rather than new offensives or military pacts. Before signing the military agreement with Iran, the GONU should have made friendly deliberations with the Sudan’s Arab sisterly states Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which maintain alarming calculations about the growing influence of Iran in the surrounding space, as well as the Sudan’s African sister states Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda, and Chad whose governments observe with increasing caution the oil wealth expanding access of Sudan’s military to advanced war technologies from China and Iran over the years.
This situation never helped to end Sudan’s civil wars, but rather stretched them over the borders to trouble the poor economies and civil strivings of neighbors. A case in point pertains to the hostilities lately escalated by GONU versus Chad that invited increasing presence of foreign involvement in the region; weakened the AU initiative to end the Sudanese-Chadian conflict; overshadowed the political and humanitarian needs of Darfur; and escalated civil wars in the region.
The signing of a military agreement with Iran would further the ensuing hostilities to a higher level of escalation: both Iran and China, with whom Sudan signed military pacts, would be obligated to interfere in the region regardless of Sudan’s obligations to the African Union, the Arab League, and the United Nations’ Security Council resolutions to stop military build-up in Darfur, added to the CPA treaty body that requires GONU to preserve peace with the Government of South Sudan.
A quick glance into the direct orders by President ‘Umar al-Bashir to his NIF/NCP militias, the People’s Defense Forces, to “be prepared for fighting” in Abyie this last month and the subsequent skirmishes that erupted consequently between local inhabitants in the area with heavy casualties in lives and property, as well as unabated attacks on Darfur civilians by the GONU armed forces, testify to the offensive attitude of the ruling party towards the national security of the Nation.
All in all, the Government of Sudan has dealt a new blow with this new military offensive to the thinning chance of making fair and lasting peace in the country, since it continues to maneuver with increasing indifference the country’s escalated internal and external crises for anti-nationalist goals.
Exactly as China has been repeatedly urged to abandon military intervention in order to help country’s effort to make peace, Iran must immediately cease to secure Sudan affairs, including complete withdrawal of military pacts with the ailing regime of Khartoum.
* The author is a sociologist at the Department of Social Work & Sociology in Tennessee State University, Nashville TN, USA. He can be reached at: [email protected]