Stop the PDF peace buffoonery in the Sudan T.V.
By Mahgoub El-Tigani
July 23, 2005 — Repeatedly since the 9th of July, 2005, the Sudan T.V. initiated a penalizing tradition to the peace loving people of the country as it continues to punish the audience with the same systematic clowning of peace by the notorious warring NIF-controlled People’s Defense Force (PDF).
The PDF is a bad memory of the Salvation Revolution that the Naivasha Peace Agreements regrettably failed to abolish. Still, the peace forces of the country, embracing all democratic parties and civil society groups, are required to put the strongest pressure on the transitional government to pacify the PDF for the sake of peace, if not to abolish it all together, as a corrupted partisan army whose purpose aimed primarily to terrorize people in the interest of the NIF ruling party.
The Sudan T.V., however, has been determined to host the PDF atrocious memories, those based on harassing, torturing, and terrorizing every single human inside Sudan for 16 consecutive years to be a member of the PDF by force. This occurred in a series of programs supposedly transmitted via the costly satellite station “to disseminate peace, sisterly relations, and cooperation between all peace partners towards the optional unity” in the post-war era by virtue of the Naivasha Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
On July 23rd, the Sudan T.V. hosted the Military Leader of the PDF, its General Coordinator, a Mujahid, member of the PDF, and the Director of the al-Fida Enterprise, which is a PDF war-supplying institution. The dialogue centered on the issues of war, the religious Jihad for war, the preparation of the Sudanese for battlefields, and the inculcation of war-loving practices in the civil service personnel, etc. The program was equally strengthened with songs of martyrdom that magnified the Mujahideen and the heroism of fighters in civil war.
For many sight-seers, it was hard to believe that, after a formal inauguration of a new regime in the country on July the 9th, 2005, based on the internationally-recognized peace treaty between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (that should be simultaneously read with the Cairo Agreement between the Government of Sudan and the National Democratic Alliance), the Sudan T.V. never abandoned terrorizing the people by repeated interviews with the PDF warlord institution – the same State body that continues to harass the innocent people of Darfur with the severest forms of human rights violations, including massive displacements, mass murders, and women rapes by the government-supported troops, including the PDF mujahideen who are much popularly known in Darfur as the criminal janjaweed.
In the T.V. program, the PDF leaders and their mujahideen emphasized the need to carry out the same activities of the PDF. The PDF leader, however, put it bluntly that the Sudanese “have been warriors since the Cushite times; they would be warriors for ever. It is, therefore, necessary to keep up the warring abilities so that the people’s tranquility would be closely felt all over the country.”
The speaker, however, forgot to say that the Cushite kings were largely known for non-aggressive defensive wars since they had been warring for the most part – as modeled by their founder Pyankhi – in pursuit of justice. The Cushite leaderships were famous for their true love of humanity and international cooperation almost all over their millennium civilization. In contrast, the Salvation or Inqaz Revolution and its PDF troops were notorious for aggressive non-founded wars all over Sudan in only 16 years of unjustified terrorist rule.
Legally speaking, the PDF leader has definitely missed the point when referring to his PDF duty “to ensure tranquility of the whole country in the present time,” as he affirmatively asserted. For sure, such duties are meant for the regular police forces of the Sudan, not any PDF troops or janjaweed gangsters, to enable civilian parliamentary elected authorities, not any military governors by presidential appointments, to supervise over the police work in the whole country by law.
Speaking for a State apparatus in the transitional government, the PDF leader should have remembered, at least, to honor the Naivasha Agreement that carefully distinguished between the South and the North, being two politico-administrative entities with obligatory legal provisions on the territorial and national security responsibilities within the conditionally-promised referendum in the would-be unified State of Sudan 6 years later on. The Sudan T.V. could have done better teaching the PDF personnel what the Naivasha Agreement really bears on the PDF and the other instruments of the Inqaz decaying political and military control.
In the Naivasha provisions, the PDF is not entrusted with any lawful task to ensure the security of the South, which is specifically linked to southern disciplinary forces, let alone the security of the North in areas not any more falling under the PDF working law, that is to say the anti-democratic Sudan Emergency Act. The democratic groups of the country, including the SPLM, should make sure that the PDF is not saved by the President of the State as an extra-praetorian guard to curb the movement of people for democracy and peace, as it used to be in the Inqaz reign. Regardless of the president’s pledge to maintain peace, state business is based on institutions and laws, not any personal promises.
A key point here is that the National Unity Transitional Government is strongly required to clarify the state of affairs of the PDF in the context of the Naivasha Protocols and the Peace Agreements as well as the Cairo Agreement. The NDA and all other political groups are equally required to clearly draw specified boundaries between the NIF-controlled security operatives and the necessary peace-equipped programs and tools of implementation for the ongoing transitional period.
The PDF Coordinator was further asked in the T.V. program to lay out ideas what the PDF would do to enhance the situation of peace in the country. In several speeches in the program, the PDF top official was unable to state clearly how the PDF warlord institution could be working for peace while the PDF is still heavily armed, fully coated with the uniforms of war, and meticulously guided by one of the harshest ideological demagogies of religious Jihad in the history of modern Sudan, i.e., those of the NIF Inqaz Salvation Revolution. Similarly, the top leader of the PDF, who is an army officer in active service, failed to relate the PDF to the present peace process.
In the Sudan T.V. interview for the post-Naivasha peace programs, the two PDF leaders exchanged terrorizing ideas on the necessity of Jihad in Sudan today (!), and then, joined by the director of al-Fida institution (another PDF entity), the three leaders spoke about plans to use up the PDF full-time activities “in sportsmanship and operations necessary to keep up the unity and peace of the country” – without clear definitions what impact these “necessary operations” might have on the Naivasha legal provisions or the newly-established governments by agreement in South and North Sudan.
Moreover, the “sportsmanship” of the Sudan has always been handled by peaceful civilian teams of football, basketball, or other Olympic games. What the PDF leaders were unable to hide was the PDF “irrevocable” commitment to Jihad wars by its presidential emergency act, ideology, and performance throughout the 16 years of the NIF one-party one-man’s rule.
There was so little to say by the PDF leaders or the Sudan T.V., except for very few programs, on the role to be played by the PDF, the police, or the armed forces in peace, sisterly relations, or co-operation despite the fact that these military groups retained the lion’s share in the formal media of the State.
The war hawks were reiterating stories throughout the program about the PDF martyrs “who sacrificed their lives in the civil war.” Not a word, however, was said about the hundreds of thousands of the innocent Sudanese who were murdered by the PDF forces in many parts of the country, especially in the South, Darfur, and the Nuba Mountains, or even the thousands of innocent recruits who were burnt in the death fields of the NIF-incited wars.
The PDF mujahideen refrained from mentioning the hundreds of villages that the PDF demolished to earth, the wealth of crops or livestock ruthlessly sacked or destroyed, or the other heinous violations committed against thousands of the innocent children who had been recruited by force from schools or even universities only to be shot dead in the Khartoum-Ailafoun Camp massacres, or to be tortured in the al-Qitaina, the East, or the other training camps or ghost houses, often to death.
It is time that the Sudan T.V. programs should be completely re-designed and re-shaped into a favorable nationally-oriented instrument of peace in the service of the post-Naivasha peace and unity agreement. This essential mission, however, would never be accomplished by the same cadres of the Salvation Jihadist or the PDF terrorist body.
Abolishing all together the warlord administration of the Sudan T.V. national station, its warring programs, media battlefields, and offensive anti-democratic interviews would do justice to the Nation’s most important issues of peace and the Sudanese priorities to develop sisterly relations and cooperation between and among themselves as a people permanently victimized by war; still are yearning for the peace making and the peace keeping, the peaceful development, and the optional unity.
It is time to put a final end to the government’s culture of violence, terrorism, and Jihad wars that are unnecessarily escalated by the buffoonery of the PDF and other NIF hawks over the media shows.
Shuffling the Sudan T.V. to act as a peace initiator, promoter, and supporter is a top immediate task of the National Unity Transitional Government!