Southern Sudan at War with itself on the Web

By Abraham Awolich

March 23, 2007 — Allow me to humbly bring this topic to your attention. It is clear and evident that Southern Sudan is at war with itself on the World Wide Web. Reading a lot of nonsensical articles with unverifiable sources from my fellow Southern Sudanese on the World Wide Web some times make me furious and angry. A lot of time is being wasted and great minds are being consumed by absurdity and foolishness. It makes me wonder whether we are training ourselves to be fools or training ourselves to get smarter. First of all, we have forgotten the fact that the Arabs can cook any allegation and drop it on the website; a place we have given our trust so much so that we do not even think twice when reading articles, we just believe. Secondly, it is getting clearer every day reading this generation’s minds that this is going to be the most chaotic generation in the history of Sudan politics. We have forgotten our patriotic duties and have abandoned our loyalty and allegiance to the Government of Southern unknowingly. We are carried away so much by illusion and we have adopted misrepresentation as our dogma. We have detached ourselves from reality and smear ourselves with unreality and falsification.

The trend is clear, peace has been signed in Southern Sudan and the war has officially ended only to be declared on the websites. So actively, Southern Sudan is at war with itself on the websites. This is war; how do you call it? A war meant to kill character by employing too much propaganda, bitter utterances driven by hatred and sectarianism. We are in the state of war with ourselves. Day after day, mongers of website wars are recruiting the most intelligent members of our society and drop them in the sea of foolishness only to come out and dry themselves with a towel of lies and dress in tribalism and sectarianism and then led away blindfolded. Where are they going? They are being led to their final destination. A place where their rights are buried and their freedom nailed on a hard wood never to be removed.

We are not preparing for referendum in 2011, we are preparing ourselves for genocide which is cooking and boiling in Khartoum. We have forgotten the lion that is chasing us and we have started to quarrel on which direction to run while the danger is drawing nearer. I think we are endangering our government and we are preparing our people for a final destruction. You don’t have to shoot a person to become his or her enemy. It only takes a few words to make a million enemies. Caution! Let us not make ourselves our own enemies and let us not open the gate of our destruction with our own hands.

Suicide does not occur only to individuals, a society can commit a suicide and what we are doing is very close to societal suicide. Yesterday, it was John Garang who was the evil, today, it is Salva Kiir, tomorrow it could be x. If we assassinate the character of our leaders, who is there to cheer them? If we trust only leaders from our tribes or our clans, who is going to trust us when we need everybody’s trust? We embrace Southern Sudan and the ideology on New Sudan where all the people have a place of honor. We cannot accept anything less or short of that. This ideology is bigger than our tribal believes.

My advice to all of us starting with myself is to continue to use the internet and World Wide Web to enhance our political awareness for the betterment of our future. Let us not fool ourselves by immersing ourselves in the blood of our characters, rather, we must embrace ourselves and stand strong in our own defense. The more we attack our characters, humiliate our leaders, distrust ourselves, oppose ourselves, hate ourselves and gang up against each other, we are reinforcing the policies of our enemies. We may disagree in opinions, but we can not disagree on the strategy for our own survival. I want the website debates to change drastically from gang debates to legitimate and honest debates for our own good.

* The author is the Director of New Sudan Education Initiative and President of ALCOM. He can be reached at [email protected]