The bare realities of DarFur

Concrete Documentary on the NIF Genocide Horrors in DarFur by Suliman Hamid al-Haj

By Mahgoub El-Tigani

A new book by the Sudanese writer Hamid Suliman al-Haj, a renowned political opponent of the Sudan’s dictatorial regimes since 1957 up to the present day, is announced in the al-Midan Journal (August 6, 2004).

Decades before the DarFur’s Crisis, Mr. Hamid and many other class-analysts were largely concerned for the miserable situation of the country’s working force, especially the seasonal migrant DarFurians in the agricultural areas of Central Sudan (where most of the irrigated schemes were located to generate aggregate national economies at expense of regional development), and the need to improve the living standards of workers.

Hamid’s new book, however, adds a significant contribution to the accumulated documentary on the state-militia crimes against al-Zurqa (the Sudanese African black people of DarFur). This criminal attitude was not solely based on class structures or economic disparities. The attitude was equally motivated by ethno-regional and ideological factors to include ethnic cleansing and the other acts of genocide, besides the forms of racism that were deeply entrenched and largely pursued by state managers and government militias all over the region.

“As far as official documents and press statements are concerned, the DarFur’s Crisis is a full-fledged state conspiracy plotted by Dr. Hassan al-Turabi, then top Guide of the NIF governing bodies, and subsequently pursued by Arab militias in full collaboration with the Sudan Government and its ruling party, the National Islamic Front,” emphasized Hamid.

Wad’ al-Nuqat fi al-Hurof [The Bare Realities of DarFur] includes storming evidence on the direct responsibility of the NIF’s civilian and military state leaderships and supportive Arab militias for the ongoing horrors against the non-Arab people of DarFur. Government, much greater than the militias it established and systemically manipulated, is “squarely responsible” for the whole situation and all of the heinous catastrophes related to it.

Mr. Hamid’s documentary evidence indicates the ongoing horrors can never be reduced to “tribal conflicts,” “limited administrative problems,” or “greedy intrusions by foreign powers,” as the government feverishly propagates nowadays: the horrors were planned and executed by state authorities, in the first place, to eradicate the physical existence of specific populations of DarFur.

For the achievement of this goal, the government was determined to replace the Sudanese African DarFurians by Arab supporters of the regime. Along with that, the government manipulated many Arab Bedouins from neighboring borders to help execute the Plot. “Seen in its real depth and breadth, the DarFur’s Crisis is nothing but a state responsibility,” affirms Suliman Hamid.

The crisis is not simply “a responsibility for the government to solve,” as foreign affairs minister Mr. Mustafa Ismail painstakingly relayed to the Jezira T.V. today (August 6, 2004), as if his government had nothing to do with the Crisis! The DarFur’s Crisis is “definitely made by a government that planned for it, executed it; hence it stands before the Sudanese People and the whole world fully responsible for it,” ascertains Hamid.

Suliman Hamid further claims that, “the documents of the Chapter concretely prove the NIF’s non-stoppage execution of al-Turabi’s Plot beyond any doubt. It will be realized that President al-Bashir placed himself, his government and his party in a very critical situation although the way he talked about Hassan al-Turabi was a show down of his (former) Mentor.”

Here are some intriguing excerpts of the opening chapter of Hamid’s work, as published in al-Midan:

In the heights of his authoritative position with the NIF-ruling regime, Dr. Hassan al-Turabi issued a decree clearly stating that: “The Islamists of Negro tribes became hostile to the Islamic Movement. The Islamic Front aims to support the Arab tribes by these steps: forced displacement of the Fur from Jebel Merra to Wadi Salih, followed by complete disarming of the Fur people, for good; and then replace them with the Mehairiya, Itaifat, and Irayqat (Arab tribes). Never return arms to the Zagawa who must be moved from Kutum to Um Rwaba (North Kordofan State); but arm and finance the Arab tribes to act as nucleus of the Islamic Arab Alliance” (see Sahifat al-Sudan, 20/9/1992, and al-Sudan Hiroub al-Mawarid wa a-Hawiya, Dr. Mohamed Suliman).

This Fatwa [decree] is the basis of the Plot. It has been literally executed, as revealed by the current events of DarFur, even after Turabi was purged. The ideological and the political contents of the Plot and its class dimension represent the interests of the Islamized parasitic capitalism, which included strata of the Arab tribes as well as some of the Zurqa (non-Arab black tribes). This was evidenced by the fact that most of the Arab major tribes did not participate in the Plot. Not only that they rejected it; but some of them resisted the whole plot when it was first implemented. Only a few Zurqa supporters of the Authority, or those sharing class interests with it, took part in the Plot.

President Omer al-Bashir strongly denied the accusation waged against the National Islamic Font (NIF). He believed the NIF had not played any role in the plotting against DarFur or the ensuing tragedies of the crisis. Bashir said in the inauguration day of the White Nile Sugar establishments (4/4/2004): “The name of al-Mutamar al-Sha’bi [party] is non-existent. There is only one man whose name is al-Turabi who tells them to go east or to go west, and they do what he says. This is Muslim blood and we appeal to God we are not party to the shedding of Muslim blood, or to what al-Turabi did in this regard.”

Bashir explained to his audience: “First, he was our Sheikh (Mentor) as well as our Chief. But we realized that he was a liar and a hypocrite? There are people who are enemies of the Homeland, enemies of the people of Sudan. They do not want to stop the war, or to put an end to the death and destruction? They want to tear the country apart, to pity the Muslims against one another? What judgment is there for a person who abetted the Muslims to fight among themselves with blood-shed? Strangely, this man spent all his life deceiving people and calling for Shari’a. Today, he said that he didn’t want the Shari’a? [and that] wine was available in the Prophet’s Medina? Have you ever heard of such speech? Have you ever heard that there was Marisa [native drink] sold at the Prophet’s Mosque ? He said he wanted open the bars that Nimeiri earlier closed in Khartoum? There is no God but Allah whom we sincerely worship in spite of the Turabians’ or the Hypocrites’ hate.”

Despite the Bashir’s speech, it is crystal clear al-Turabi was the one who put forward the Genocide Plot (see al-Ayyam: 5 April 2004).

The Bashir speech, notwithstanding, raised the same questions that were previously asked when al-Turabi told him [in June 1989] “to go to the Palace as a president, whereas I’ll go to the prison as a prisoner.”

Suliman Hamid al-Haj concluded his chapter in the following questions, which constitute a legal basis for judicial prosecution:

– As Head of State, what was al-Bashir’s opinion in al-Turabi’s Fataw?
– Why was al-Bashir silent all this time, when he was aware that the Muslims were massacred in DarFur and dismantled from their homes?
– Did the tragedy end with the Turabi’s purge?
– Has the Plot stopped since al-Turabi was excluded from authority?
– Why would al-Bashir raise the issue after DarFur became a human butchery of whose horrors the whole world was gravely concerned?

*Member of Sudanese Writers’ Union (in exile) and the president of Sudan Human Rights Organization Cairo-Branch.