A hundred twenty five millions reward to capture a rebel leader

By Mahgoub El-Tigani

May 12, 2008 — Of all offensive acts of the wasteful regime of the Muslim Brothers in Sudan (1989 to the present) against Sudanese “illegal” civil striving for “legitimate” political ends, nothing emerged so astoundingly shameful against the army’s traditions or the country’s ethics as the announced reward by the Sudanese Armed Forces to reward information leading to the arrest of JEM leader, Ibrahim Khalil, with Sudanese pounds 250 millions (US$126m) following the sudden attack on the national capital Khartoum on May 10, 2008.

Question is: if a army of a poor country that stands out today by all development criteria as an underdeveloped space lacking political stability and the least minimum standards of basic needs, to say nothing of social welfare programs for the majority populace, can possibly offer US$125 millions to capture a single citizen opposed to a ruling junta, how come the same government that provided the “millionaire army” with all these monies isn’t able to spend these same amounts of oil-money to return the Darfuri displaced million humans to their dispossessed homelands and peaceful life by the same wrong-doer government and army?!

The Sudanese army, which has been shamelessly controlled for the first time in its history by direct partisan command of the Brotherhood party (the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party) against all decent traditions of the Sudanese Armed Forces, then fully transformed by an unprecedented purge of all its high ranking officers, as well as a great many junior and/or non-commissioned officers, to favor only ideological and political commitment to the ruling junta, ceased to be a national army.

This agenda is clearly indicated by the parallel army of tens of thousands of the dismissed officers and other regulars who, whether the junta likes it or not, constituted a legitimate source of political pressure upon the regime, as well a potential reservoir for government retaliation to censor the opposition permanent threat to succeed the regime.

The JEM attack on the Omdurman, however, signaled new possibilities in the Sudanese political and military scenarios: for one, the well-fed army, police, and security forces of the brotherhood authoritative rule (which included a most recent complete change of the police command to tighten up regime control over the civilian force to meet government’s anti-election campaigns) were astounded by the viciousness of the JEM attack that almost paralyzed the highly-paid well-equipped army commands had it not been for police resistance and other uncalculated technical errors, as usually occurred in the history of armed attempts on Sudanese ruling regimes.

This situation is a replication to some extent of the National Front attack on the Nimeiri regime (July 1978). Both attempts were planned by political opposition groups although carried out by retired army staff crossing the Sahara from the west and astounding the national army with a surprising attack.

Both attempts failed to capture the Republican Palace, however, for the same reason: arousing nationalist sentiments among disciplinary forces to defend the “legal authority,” despite deep disenchantment with ruling groups. Both attempts failed, despite all negative effects on the integrity of the army and the Authority image, producing grave casualties amongst the very civilian population they claimed to liberate from oppressive rule. The popular wisdom holds true: no military action solves a political problem, and violence breeds nothing but violence.

It is true the Nimeiri and the Bashir military regimes were both passing deep political crises when the armed opposition launched attacks on their capitol premises in Khartoum. Still, a major difference, nonetheless, between the National Front’s attempt on Nimeiri in July 1978 and the JEM attack in May 2008 pertains to the geopolitics of the situation, the balance of forces, and the nature of the ruling junta.

Nimeiri rule was slightly supported by a military pact with its Arab neighbors Egypt and Libya, as well as strong economic and diplomatic support by the West. By the late 1980s, however, dictator Nimeiri risked his long-standing friendship with the West by the cruel imposition of a harsh version of Shari’a Law in September 1983 up to the last day of his rule.

Furthermore, Nimeiri relations with Libya were already changed to hostilities that allowed the opposition National Front to stage the July attack on Khartoum besides extended Libyan support to the Garang-led SPLM versus the Nimeiri/Brotherhood dictatorship. Egypt, on the other side, refrained from direct intervention in the Sudanese situation compared to the Sadat’s earlier military and diplomatic counter-attack to foil the left-wing military attempt to overthrow Nimeiri in July 1971.

The Brothers rule under the Bashir command, however, might have benefited largely from the Nimeiri experience: stronger military and economic ties have been promoted with China, a money-thirst superpower by Third-World criteria, and Iran, a power-thirst regional power by international measures.

To a great extent, the confusion of Western foreign policies towards the Brotherhood totalitarian rule in Sudan constituted a key factor in the imbalanced political situation of Sudan today:

Whereas the West showed clear dissatisfaction with the regime authoritative governance, civil wars, and genocide tendencies (if not actual practices in the South and Darfur), the West failed to assess correctly the political constituencies of the country, the size and influence of political parties, and the potential of civil society democratic groups to restore sustainable democratic rule in Sudan.

Instead of a viable assessment of the need to support the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which including all influential groups in North and South Sudan comprised the principled democratic opposition of authoritative rule throughout the post-independence history of the country (1955-1989), Western think-tanks, with modest knowledge of Sudanese complexities and realities (at best), managed wrongfully to exclude the NDA national charter, programs, and plans to re-establish democratic rule for a risky, miscalculated, incomplete peace agreement between the two combating armies, the Sudanese Armed Forces led by Bashir and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army led by the late John Garang.

It is well-known in the NDA that the political Garang himself never preferred the CPA to the earlier most popular Sudanese Peace Agreement signed by him and al-Merghani and legally supported by the Sadiq al-Mahdi democratically elected government and the late General Fathi Ahmed ‘Ali, the democratically-committed constitutionally-minded leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces.

Not only that the Western think-tanks, as new expertise in Sudanese old-centuries affairs, misled Western governments to strike a quick-fix for the chronic civil striving of the country for a sustainable democratic rule; the Western think-tanks campaigned with massive media campaigns, using journalists, right-wing religious groups (that collaborated closely with the right-wing totalitarian Brotherhood of Sudan), new writers, and political experts (mostly on African and Middle Eastern affairs, not particularly on any Sudanese affairs) to discard the NDA promising role as a major popular umbrella of democratic restoration in Sudan.

Granting the totalitarian non-democratic military rule of the Brotherhood NIF/National Congress Party “the” upper hand in the Sudanese State during the ongoing transitional rule by the Naivasha Comprehensive Peace Agreement as an international treaty-body, generated exactly the Sudanese (not any Western think-tank) nationally understandable well-predicted expectations of enforcing a Non-Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

One glance at the poor performance, aroused hostilities, non-actualized, persistently hostile policies and practices by the Bashir rule versus the CPA/Interim Constitution provisions to share equitable governance with the South Sudan Government testify to the increasing failures of the agreement and the rising possibilities of a new civil war in Abyei, to say nothing of the global crisis of Darfur. Naturally, however, the CPA/Interim Constitution wouldn’t have gotten a better chance with the exclusionary nature of its political foundation.

A key factor motivating the ruling junta to enforce consistent security measures, military action, and harsher forms of oppression on the Sudanese civil striving, including post-JEM attack possibilities to handicap election activities by stringent emergency law, rests on the military and economic assurances by China and Iran to protect the pariah government of Sudan.

This dangerous situation has not yet invited enough concerns or actions by the International Community, which continues to watch the tragedy of Darfur developing into unprecedented negligence of the fate of millions of the displaced people of Darfur. The situation leaves open the option of continuous military attempts to topple the ruling junta in Darfur or the National Capital, as well as all other parts of the country, regardless of all casualties or disastrous consequences. To be sure, the possibilities of civil wars by the China-Iran oil-arms sales promise a new decade of brutal civil wars all over the country.

To end the Sudanese Crisis, the International Community, especially Western governments, should move ahead with clear support to the Sudanese democratic opposition groups to stand on firm grounds vis-à-vis the China-Iran-brotherhood war mongering alliance in Sudan.

This support might take different “legal” forms of which effective measures should include the pressure on the ruling junta to end emergency law; allow full civil liberties to enable the public to prepare for the next national elections; stop security retaliation or military action against all political, ethnic or religious opposition groups; and act in a principled way to honor all governance sharing, human rights, and democratic provisions of the CPA/Interim Constitution.

Immediate measures to help reduce tensions, should include immediate release of all people arbitrarily arrested following the JEM attack on the military targets of the regime in Omdurman; brave steps to enter into immediate peace negotiations with the Darfur Movements (both armed and civilian); and a wise decision to convene an All-Sudanese National Conference for peace and democracy before the national elections under the auspices of the African Union and the United Nations.

Such a conference, which has been repeatedly supported by the UN Secretary General, should certainly help to ensure a smooth transition to democratic governance, stronger national guarantees for the South Sudan Government, and a most critical necessary confidence to bridge wiser relations between a Brotherhood Authority determined to rule by all means of repression and a People determined to end dictatorial rule by all means possible.

* 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]