Unity etudes on strategies for autonomy routes (1)

Western politicians with intellectual visions emphasized the Sudan’s unity and national integrity.

Mahgoub El-Tigani

October 2, 2010 — Several important works by American contemporary writers examined with serious studies the unity of Sudan and the Sudanese struggle to free themselves from repressive regimes as a prerequisite to command a life of consistent democracy, progression, and peace. Founded on authentic references and editorial skill, they were sincerely pursued to scrutinize with rigorous research the complexities of these vibrant issues. We will discuss some of these works which are extremely important to the Sudanese central concerns in weekly etudes addressed to the current state of affair of our country.

The studies in question were investigated with meticulous details, for example the most recently published book on Sudan’s unity and separation by Professor Richard Lobban, Jr. (2010). Global Security Watch was the publisher of Lobban’s work as well as earlier reports on Korea, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, Russia, Lebanon, Kenya, Jordan, Caucasus and Japan. “Sudan – The Land and The People,” the subject of this etude, is another book which documented the research of expert westerners on the agenda of national unity and development in Sudan with internationally reputed photography.

SUDAN – THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE

This is a book written by American ambassador Timothy Carney and the American journalist Victoria Butler based on photos by the international photographer Michel Freeman, published by Marquand, Seattle, 2005. An Arabic version translated by this writer was most recently made available in the Sudan. Opened by auspicious words on Sudanese unity by President Jimmy Carter, the volume contained three chapters on history, land, and people; words by the translator, the photographer, and the authors, in addition to a list of references and an index.

The authors’ admiration of our Nation’s diversity is well represented by a Sufi dancer in a recitation festival at the Hamadelneel mosque in Omdurman in the front cover page, as well as the royal cemetery in Bjrawiya, the ancient capital of Cush. This work is the first publication that described by picture and text almost all parts of the million miles Sudan. It touched upon the difficulties Sudan is facing today, as it did for long decades in the past, as well as highlighting the human and economic resources of development that have been largely ignored by succeeding governments.

Showing Sudan’s breathing autonomy in a sea of delight is well articulated in the photography of Freeman who traveled all over the country for two years to document the research. His photo glorified a great geography over the Savannah plains, the Suds, and villages never seen by westerners for long years. Unique shots embraced the Bedouins, farmers, teachers, students, lawyers, physicians, industrialists, and laborers all indicating that Sudanese share uniquely many similarities of life whether Muslim, Christian, or believers in other traditional beliefs with respect to marriages, childbirth rituals, or aging. Freeman’s camera “has caught the essential humanity in Sudan,” in the words of Jimmy Carter. The next sections are citations from the book that expressed in a powerful way the Sudan’s wonderful potentialities for unity and autonomous rule, not only for the south, but for all regions of Africa’s largest country, regardless of governmental failures to accomplish this goal.

THE AUTHORS

“The work of award-winning photographer and author Michael Freeman spans three decades and is widely published internationally by, among many others, the Smithsonian Magazine, Time-Life, GEO, Vogue, Paris-Match, and the Sunday Times Magazine. He has more than seventy books to his credit, on subjects as diverse as Asia, design and architecture, and photography. He lives in London.”

“Timothy Carney served as the United States Ambassador to Sudan from 1995 through 1997. During a State Department career that spanned three decades, he also served as US Ambassador to Haiti, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, and Director for Asian Affairs on the National Security Council Staff. He was the senior American on the UN Peace Keeping Mission to Cambodia, and worked as a Special Political Advisor to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in Somalia and in South Africa. Since his retirement in 2000, Ambassador Carney has worked as a consultant in the areas of national security strategy, conflict resolution, and crisis management. He spent three months in Iraq in 2003 and has facilitated numerous seminars on National Security Planning in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and South Asia.

“Victoria Butler, a freelance writer, has worked for Time Magazine, the Toronto Globe and Mail, Voice of America, NBC News, and APTV. Her stories have appeared in numerous magazines including International Wildlife, Reader’s Digest, and the Far Eastern Economic Review. She wrote the text for two illustrated books on Indonesian artists. She also served as an information officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and headed the office producing educational materials for the United Nations mission in Cambodia.”

WESTERN COMMENTATORS

“The Sudan for most people is just a name in the news. This magnificent book corrects that; its wise and well-informed text, and lavish pictures, give the country a face-irresistible, photogenic, bewitching and profoundly human, in all its fabulous Sudanese variety,” said Paul Theroux.

“This superb story of the Sudan does everything. Michael Freeman’s photographs portray both the glory and the grimness of this huge and tantalizing country. The text by Tim Carney and Victoria Butler is beautifully written, erudite and illuminating. Altogether Sudan provides a marvelous, unique journey through this historic and strategically vital country. It will have deep resonance and long life,” expressed William Shawcross.

Deborah Scroggins commended the book and its contents with these warm words: “This is a stunning achievement. Very few people have managed to visit, and none until Michael Freeman to photograph, the whole of Africa’s biggest and perhaps most fascinating country. The Sudan of war and famine that we in the West come to know is here, but so are the many other Sudan’s-Arab, African, desert, swamp, antique and modern – all those who love the country so often find missing. In one arresting photograph after another, the Sudan holds us in its famous thrall. Meanwhile, Timothy Carney and Victoria Butler’s text provides an engaging and thoughtful introduction to a fragmented country just beginning to knit itself back together after decades of civil war.”

INTRODUCTION BY PRESIDENT CARTER

“Sudan is the most ethnically, geographically, and culturally diverse country in Africa. Yet most people only think of it in terms of large-scale suffering and seemingly endless strife. Hundreds of ethnic groups from a mosaic of Arab and African: Muslim, Christian, and animist; nomad and farm. The brutality of nearly fifty years of civil wars and a succession of humanitarian crises have retarded economic development and obscured the possibilities of creating a truly plural society… The peace agreement of January 9, 2005, brings an unprecedented opportunity for the people of Sudan to put violence behind them. Despite the enormous challenges, there is now the chance for al Sudanese to forge new ways to share the natural, cultural, and historic bounty of their country, living together in peace and mutual respect… I am very pleased to see this book and am certain it will broaden understanding of Sudan, not only outside the country, but among Sudanese themselves. This understanding is vital if the country is to begin to realize its potential.”

THE SUDANESE WELL-EARNED REPUTAION

Photographer Freeman, who showed in a wonderful way the amazing bounties of our country stated that ”The Sudanese are, as I hope the photographs here convey, highly individual people, very far from homogenous but sharing a Sudanese context that, as Tim and Vicki [the authors] point out, is elusive to describe. The ethnic diversity was very easy on the camera, and while the landscape was vast, and occasionally had spectacle, it was the people who held the center of my attention. Over a period of two and a half years, we spent twenty weeks shooting, in conditions I can describe best as varied.”

In three essays, the Friends of Sudan Timothy Carney and Victoria Butler drew heavily on the history of Sudan, land and people, to introduce a country in which the first Homo sapiens lived in the Nile Valley much before a quarter of a million years in prehistoric times. Five thousand years ago, the Sudan offered Africa its first Black kingdom. The authors described clearly the near past of the country with all of the historically recognized modern disputes. A chapter on the landscape exposed the overwhelming influence of the River Nile in Sudanese cultures and economics. A concluding chapter examined the rich Afro-Arab composite in population and culture which created in Sudanese society great diversity and continuous suffering at the same time.

Carney and Butler wondered, “We often asked why we decided to do this book. The short answer is that we believe only photographs can convey the geographic and ethnic diversity of Africa’s largest country. Sudan’s problems and its possibilities are far more complex and its people, like people every where, are far more complicated than press accounts can convey. Good pictures are worth thousands of words, and we know that our friend Michael Freeman was the photographer to take them.”

SUDANESE ARE AMONG THE WORLD’S MOST GRACIOUS

The authors praised the people of Sudan: “When we landed in Khartoum on a hot August night in 1995, the official relationship between the United States and the government of Sudan was at a nadir… Within days, however, we discovered that Sudanese, whether rich or poor and from every region, are among the world’s most gracious people. The warm welcome started with Sudanese employed at the embassy. These men and women, representing nearly every ethnic group in the country, are among the best educated, most thoughtful, and hardworking individuals anywhere. They provided our first glimpse into a multicultural society full of contradictions, where the poorest man will offer a stranger his last teaspoon of sugar and where more than a million people had died during decades of civil war.”

“Sudanese are renowned for their hospitality and extend it from the markets to the universities, from the churches and mosques to the homes of leading businessmen and politicians. Merchants in Sudan’s suqs [markets] offer cardamom-laced coffee along with lively conversation about politics and religion. The late Shaykh Hassan Qariballah, leader of the Sammaniyya Sufis, invited us to attend a dhiker, the vigorous Friday recitation of the ninety-nine names of Allah, and allowed us to stand together in observation despite the fact that men and women usually worship separately.”

THE SUDANESE SOCIETY HAS BEEN IN INFLUX

“Hundreds of thousand of people of different ethnic origins all jumbled up – the ethnologist in Africa may sometimes sigh for some neat little Polynesian or Melanesian community” (E. E. Evans-Pritchard, 1971). “Sudan owes its unrivaled diversity to its long history as a major economic crossroads to Africa, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. Ancient trade routes linking West Africa to the Arabian Peninsula and to the Egyptian coast all passed through Sudan. Here, for thousands of years, disparate cultures – African, Egyptian, Greek, Turk, and Arab – have collided and blended to produce people of great beauty who share a turbulent history and rich heritage. Their society since its earliest times has been in flux, as it is today,” viewed the authors.

“Observers often describe Sudan as ethnically divided between the Arab Muslim north and the African south, where traditional religions predominate. This broad characterization does not convey the social complexity within these regions or the degree to which different ethnic groups have influenced customs across regions, producing a unique Afro-Arab culture. Arabs and Africans alike divide themselves into specifically named ethnic groups, and in every area of the country these ethnic groups subsist as either nomadic herders or sedentary farmers. Much of the intergroup conflict in the south, west, and east results from competition over resources.’

ARE THE SUDANESE ARABS OR AFRICANS?

“Foreigners often ask individual Sudanese whether they are Arab or African. It is a question the Sudanese themselves ponder, overwhelmed at times by the vastness of their geography and the magnitude of their diversity. But it may not be the right question. Just as no northern Sudanese would consider himself a Saudi or Kuwaiti, no southerner would think of himself as a Kenyan or Congolese. More and more northerners refer to themselves as Afro-Arab, which while an accurate description, does not necessarily explain what it means to be Sudanese.”

“All these people live in the vast Nile River basin, lured and pushed over the millennia from the north, south, east, and west. In this huge mixing bowl they adapted to different geographic conditions; adopted various religious, cultural, and ethnic identities; and, to varying degrees, warred with each other for as long as history has been recorded. In this crucible, certain indefinable qualities have nevertheless emerged that transcend race, religion, and ethnicity. Despite all the fighting, Sudanese from one end of the Nile to the other have the well-earned reputation of being among the most hospitable and generous people on earth. They possess a certain smile and warmth in the eyes and, in recent years, a growing recognition of belonging to something larger than just one ethnic group. It will be up to the country’s political, cultural, and spiritual leaders to ensure that their definition of the nation has enough room for all of them to be counted as Sudanese.”

TYRANTS NEVER CONTROLLED SUDAN

“The Sudan has never been an easy place to govern. Even those who have lived it the most have been frustrated by its complexity. Charles Gordon, Ottoman Egypt’s governor-general, whose passion for Sudan cost him his life in 1885, lamented that “the Sudan is a useless possession; ever was and ever will be… It cannot be governed except by a dictator who may be good or bad.” Over the millennia Sudan’s dictators came in the guise of pharaohs, monarchs, sultans, chiefs, foreign generals, and nationalist autocrats. None could exercise consistent central control over the entire country.”

HISTORY PRODUCED A UNIQUE NATION

Carney & Butler noted that “In the five decades since independence, every Sudanese government has struggled, mostly unsuccessfully, to articulate a national vision, rule a united country, and maintain good relations with neighbors. Differences in ethnicity, religion, and education have long threatened to splinter the country into fractious smaller states. Nevertheless, history has produced something uniquely Sudanese, a complicated blend of countless ingredients that have maintained their individuality even while taking on a communal flavor. With the formal end to the long civil war between the north and the south in early 2005, Sudanese leaders have the opportunity to develop a government that will, for the first time, be responsible for its entire people.”

THE IGAD BAIL AND SUDAN’S BIIL

“A series of international conferences sought to negotiate an end to the conflict. Under the aegis of the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and an associated body of foreign governments, the IGAD Partners Forum, Khartoum, fully accepted a “Declaration of Principles” in 1997, after three years of negotiation. The agreement gave priority to the unity of Sudan; secular, democratic, social, and economic systems; and equitable sharing of national resources… In 2000, Sudan had responded to the concerns of a U.S. counterterrorism team that had visited the country during the last months of the Clinton administration. In early September 2001, President Bush appointed former Senator John Danforth as his special envoy to assist the peace process… In 2002 the Machakos Protocol set forth the principles for a peace agreement… John Garang will become First Vice-President.”

“The International Community has a broad, sustained role to play in helping Sudan build its infrastructure and develop its human resources if the country is to enjoy a peaceful and prosperous future. The success of the peace process, however, will depend foremost on the political will of the majority of Sudanese. The international community can offer imagination, money, mediation, and monitoring of the process, but Sudanese must show the political will to recognize and embrace their country’s ethnic, religious, and cultural plurality and diversity. Good leadership can make this happen. Sudan’s success could be a model for Africa and the larger world.”

SUDANESE MUST SHOW THEIR POLITICAL WILL

“Technology and education are playing their parts. Communications are faster and easier. Long-distance learning and laptop commerce are creating opportunities… Sudan has always had a progressive and important group of northern and southern intellectuals ideologically committed to human and political rights for all Sudanese. Their numbers have grown substantially over recent years. In addition, northern politicians who went into exile either voluntarily or by force have over the past decade increasingly rubbed shoulders with southern political leaders. This was notably the case in the creation of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a northern insurgent opposition against Khartoum that joined all opposition parties together with the SPLA. NDA and Khartoum authorities signed a peace agreement in June 2005.”

“The 2002 Nuba Mountains cease-fire and the reduction of hostilities during negotiations enabled people to begin to patch the social and economic fabric of their lives. People resumed planting sorghum. Southerners, long separated by battle lines, started moving more freely between government and SPLM villages. This unfolding process has facilitated trade and promises to improve health care throughout the south.”

FUTURE

“Sudan’s new government faces formidable problems, not the least of which is the major political and humanitarian crisis that erupted in Darfur in February 2003. Two groups – the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) – spearheaded the western rebellion using foreign money and arms. Scores of thousands have been left dead and more than 1.5 million people displaced, following brutal suppression. Human rights violations occurred on both sides but the government’s use of nomad militias received broad condemnation. The new coalition government must address legitimate economic and political grievances of people ignored and badly treated by central authorities. At the same time, the national government must deal with rebel groups such as the JEM, which draws its very name from the words of the Mahdi himself and whose ideology seeks the violent overthrow of the government.”

“Perhaps the most important change in Sudan in the century since Charles Gordon lamented that the country was ungovernable is the nascent shift in thinking about southerners by those in the north. More and more are now beginning to recognize the extent to which southerner blood runs through their veins and influences their culture. Sudanese today will claim a Dinka, Shilluk, or Nuer ancestor, or explain the African roots of northern music and dance. In discussion, the reality of Sudan’s diversity is broadly recognized, as is the potential that synthesis could have for the future. Moreover, war has brought a huge influx of southerners into the northern workforce. Every business or industry of any size depends on an integrated workforce.”

THE BEST GUARANTEE OF NATIONAL UNITY

Francis Deng, a Dinka scholar, as depicted in the book, stated that: “Undoubtedly unity is a laudable goal, but the best guarantee for unity is for the leadership, especially at the national level, to rise above factionalism and to offer to the entire nation a vision that would inspire a cross-sectional majority of the Sudanese people, irrespective of race, ethnicity, region, or religion, to identify with the nation and to stand together in collective pursuit of their common destiny.”

COMMENTARY

In his introduction to Sudan: The Land and The People, President Carter stressed the fact that, “The striking parallels and borrowings of north from south and south from north should shake every Sudanese as well, adding to the recognition that, like all people, they are more similar than different and, in the end, all want much the same future for themselves and their families.”
The Sudanese Unionists asked, however: Why didn’t “it” go right?

Following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), the country sank in a shocking sadness for the sudden departure of the unionist leader John Garang, just a few days after he was sworn to the second highest office in the Republican Palace. The Khartoum Government continued to preclude the “country’s success as a model for Africa and the world.” The Khartoum “new government,” never cared to end the crisis it had previously made and sinfully developed in Darfur. Making a fool of state management, the ruling party escalated the conflict by brutalities under extremely shallow-minded policies that antagonized the people, alienated the peace partner, and dashed the issue unto competitive pools in the Gulf, instead of sisterly settlements with neighbors of the Nile.

The enthusiasm earlier pursued by the American administration to help the optional unity of Sudan by both text and spirit of the CPA, the very agreement the administration catered for in negotiation, formulation, and application, ended abruptly with a persistent announcement of separating the two parts of the country – even before advent of the CPA final days. And yet, the fate of our Nation rests in the hands of the People of Sudan who by both heavenly and worldly teachings are the only legitimate power to decide on their own fate. The American Nation provided the cosmological evidence for this cause in the USA heritage of Civil War, the unity of their nation, constitution, and democratic system of rule. Neither America civil war nor American federal government, were made by external sources.

“Union is strength” an Arab saying taught. The Sudanese writer, international diplomat Francis Mading Deng emphasized the same meaning in a statement the authors placed on top of Chapter 1 that leaders must “rise above factionalism.” To that wisdom, we add the essential consensus of the masses that comprise the foundation of successful national decision making on decisions that the Sudanese have never seen as yet emerging from within the relationships of the Khartoum and Juba governments and their two ruling parties, that seized the national elections and still are giving promises at face-value to the National Democratic Forces of Sudan.

These latter forces have been deeply entrenched in the history of the Nation. Their national concerns are grounded on the present time political crises. Their future is that of the Sudanese lasting democracy and stable peace. Apparently, the CPA two partners hurried in varying degrees to proclaim the partition of Sudan. Marketing separation goods in and outside the community at loggerheads with the CPA treaty-body’s optional unity before the eyes of the Sudanese and the whole world replaced the wisdom of legal neutrality and the virtues of power restrain with a pattern of partisan aims, escalated agonies, and un-healing memories. These North-South authoritative policies might painstakingly prepare a quick fix for some regional unity in the short run. They would generate, however, a most costly path for Sudanese unity, African integrity, and international peace in the long run.

Sudan-The Land and The People has done a good case for the unity of Sudan and a bright future for the whole Mother Continent of Africa. Clearly evident, the book expressed in a powerful way the Sudan’s wonderful potentialities for unity and autonomous rule, not only for the south, but for all regions of Africa’s largest country, regardless of governmental failures to accomplish this goal.

What we read in Freeman, Carney and Butler’s book and the Carter’s preface is opinions by western writers whose studies support the high potentialities of our country to march steadily towards peace by unity. What we read is their solemn political advisement for the Sudanese all over the country to pay full attention in the most dignified way to all segments of the population and their national democratic forces to be able to preserve the genuine peace and the inevitable unity of the unified Homeland. These are top agenda for which the CPA was originally negotiated and signed in January 2005, as millions of the Sudanese appreciated deeply the genuine meanings underlying the agreement’s legal text.
.