Al-Mahdi let down the Umma Party constituencies in Darfur
By Mahmoud A. Suleiman
May 26, 2008 — The Statements of Imam Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi in which he condemned the Operation Long Arm were considered hasty, ill-fated and a betrayal of the trust given by the Umma Party voters in Darfur. Moreover, his fiasco has also hurt hard the legitimate rebellion of the revolutionary people of Darfur against the oppressive racist genocidal regime of the National Islamic Front (NIF). Nevertheless,
it does not dearly matter to the Justice and Equality Movement if the Imam al-Sadiq al-Mahdi chose shamelessly to be the first to condemn the Operation Long Arm in his ‘subservient’ role to Omer Bashir. The position taken by Mr. al-Sadiq al-Mahdi after the battle of Omdurman was morally disgraceful, disappointing but not surprising given the history of his political failures, lifelong cowardly pacifism and proneness to be overthrown by military junta. In this event he has annoyed, baffled and let down his constituencies in the Western Sudan, especially Darfur. Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi has blamed the wrong person and risked the loss of the votes of his traditional constituents that used to represent 90%. Darfur voted overwhelmingly for the Umma Party, giving it 35 out of the Parliamentary seats allocated to it in the 1986 elections. Mr. Imam al-Sadiq needs to recognise and reflect that the “Empire” and wealth of the Mahdi Dynasty (clan) was earned with sweat and blood through hard labor and back-breaking task of the people of western Sudan, exclusively Darfurians. The Mahdi Clan used religion and sectarian Ansarism to exploit the devout Muslim masses in Darfur. Sadly, The End Justifies the Means doctrine in Niccolo Machiavelli’s’ THE PRINCE’ has been adopted and applied in Darfur for quite a long time. Al-Sadiq al- Mahdi knows very well that the people of the Western Sudan “al-Gharraba” were the first and most of the supporters of his great grandfather Mohammed Ahmed al-Mahdi and fiercely fought and died for the Mahadiya cause in major battles against the Turkish and the British Empires whist other Sudanese elsewhere opposed to the ideology itself and struggled against. To name a few, the devout, intelligent, and an able General and administrator, the Khalifa Abdullahi Ibn Muhammad Torshain At-ta’i’ishi (born 1846 died November 24th 1899) who followed his family’s vocation for religion and in about 1880 he became a disciple of Muhammad Ahmad Ibn as Sayyid Abdallah (August 12, 1844 – June 22, 1885), who announced that he had a divine mission, became known as al-Mahdi, and appointed Abdullahi a caliph (Khalifa). Khalifa succeeded Muhammad Ahmad (al-Mahdi) as head of a religious movement and state within the Sudan. The Darfurian Ansars, sometimes referred to as Dervishes, such as Osman Azrak , Ali-Wad-Helu and Sheikh ed-Din fought with unprecedented bravery the British army commanded by the British General Sir Horatio Kitchener in the Battle of Omdurman on 2nd September 1898. The battle took place at Kerreri, 11 km north of Omdurman.
Mr. al-Sadiq al-Mahdi seems to have forgotten the 2nd of July 1976 invasion of Khartoum by troops from Libya planned by the Sudanese opposition in exile, the National Front, in which his Umma Party was a member against the former defunct President military ruler of Sudan, Jaafer Mohammed Nimeiri. Funnily, history seems to be repeating itself, that event was also labeled as Mercenary invasion by the Nimeiri regime. Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi was elected in 1986 following the ouster of President Jaafer Nimeiri and ruled until the 30th June 1989 military coup by National Islamic Front (NIF) led by the genocidaire Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir with whom al-Sadiq al-Mahdi striking a deal! However, it is no wonder that al-Sadiq al-Mahdi condemning the Operation Long Arm, given the reported breaking news about his recent close ties with the National Congress Party (NCO) regime by signing the so-called “National Consensual “Compromise” Document” with the genocidal military junta president Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir. The Umma Party leader, Mr. Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, was quoted to have said that he signed the Document with the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) following a close dialogue that continued for more than seven months. No one knows the terms of the agreement, members of the Umma Party of the younger generation were not consulted and not one of political forces has been contacted in this regard. The agreement was a bipartite accord signed after a feast in a private residence belonged to al-Sadiq al-Mahdi and not at the Umma Party Head Quarters! In doing so, al-Sadiq al-Mahdi is rewarding Omar al-Bashir, a general who seized power after toppling his democratically elected government!
It seems clearly that Mr. al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi had been paid the price in advance for signing the controversial so-called national consensual compromise agreement. Sources close to circles of dialogue between the NCP and the Umma Party revealed that Dr. Mariam al-Sadiq, the daughter of Imam al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, allegedly, being appointed Minister of State for Social Welfare, according to Alwan Newspaper; but they denied this news. Moreover, AlWattan, a Sudanese daily newspaper, reported that the youngest son of the opposition Umma Party leader al-Sadiq al-Mahdi has been appointed, according to reports, an officer in the Sudan Armed Force (SAF) Intelligence Service (National Security and Intelligence).
Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi was an opportunist politician at his core; in his capacity of a leader of the umma party and imam of the Ansar, he joined the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) which was formed in 1995 as an umbrella of opposition and armed groups with headquarters in Asmara, Eritrea, and branch offices in Cairo, Nairobi, Washington, and London. The NDA was composed of political parties, trade unions, armed factions and other groups. It included the DUP, SPLM/A, the General Council of the Trade Union Federations, Beja Congress, the Free Lions Association, the Sudan Liberation Army, the Arab Socialist Baath Party, and the Sudanese Communist Party. It was chaired by Muhammad Othman al-Mirghani, the head of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). The NDA signed agreement in December 2003 in Saudi Arabia with the government of Sudan (GOS) supporting peace negotiations in Kenya with the SPLM/A and calling for a new democratic Sudan benefiting all political parties. The Umma Party suspended its membership of the NDA on March 2000, but remains committed to the NDA’s resolutions and declarations.
The Sayed al-Mahdi, Al-Sadiq al-Siddiq Abd al-Rahman, leader of the “National” Umma Party had echoed the three Words catchphrase, terrorizing peaceful citizens, which the National Congress Party (NCP) elements and its propaganda mouthpiece use repetitively in the wake of the aftermath of the Operation Long Arm, led by the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) on the city of Omdurman to end the claimed invincibility of the genocidal security arsenal of the regime. The people of Darfur thought that ass Sayed al-Sadiq cares for them during their hardship. On the contrary, he proved beyond doubt that he was insensitive and lacking concern about the plight of the people in Darfur, five years on. Similarly, Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi had never showed any concern about the horrific experience of the Southern Sudanese civilians over half a century at the hands of the Sudan Armed Force (SAF). Mr. al-Sadiq al-Mahdi presided over the massacres carried out by his Murahaleen Arab tribesmen militias. For instance, during the period of the Fur-Arab conflict, the al-Sadiq al-Mahdi led government proved itself no different by, for ideological and pragmatic reasons, reversing the Nimeiri government’s anti-Libyan stance by offering support in the way of Darfuri territory to Libya in exchange for Libyan military support in the on-going North-South civil war. Therefore, while Darfur was all but forgotten during the famine period, it was exploited by the central government for purposes of waging a successful civil war. Furthermore, the controversial Arab Gathering or “Arab Alliance” first made itself known in an open letter to Prime Minister al-Sadiq al-Mahdi,” and the letter—while it did not specifically target non-Arabs—did carry a supremacist tone, “presenting Arabs as the standard bearers for religion, culture and civilization, and claiming they produced the lion’s share of the region’s wealth. They complained of underrepresentation in the Darfur regional government. They gave an ultimatum that if their demands for administrative changes and half the government posts were not met; they purported to fear the consequences. They subsequently adopted a Manifesto of a political and military programme called Quraysh 1, advocating destruction of the regional government and the murder of black “Zurga” tribal leaders. This marked the escalation of the Fur-Arab War. Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi’s inability to live up appropriately to the demands of critical political events eventually caused the catastrophic disaster in Darfur and his inevitable downfall.
Mr. Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi has been the major factor for the disintegration of his Umma Party into half a dozen or so of breakaway factions. To name a few, the Umma Reform and Renewal led by Mubarak al-Fadil, the Reformed Umma Party led by Ahmed Babikir Ahmed Nahar and Abdalla Ali Masar, Ali Hassan Tajeddin was appointed Presidential Adviser for African Affairs, Zahawi Ibrahim Malik, Abduljalil el Basha, Yousif Suleiman Takana, the National Umma Party led by al-Sadiq al-Mahdi and many other faction members Najeeb el Khair and El Fatih Mohammed Saeed. The National Congress Party regime appointed those high rank breakaway Umma Party members into ministerial or presidential
advisor posts. Omer al-Bashir issued presidential decrees appointing Mubarak al-Fadil al-Mahdi, the leader of the Umma splinter group, as assistant president and another member, Ali Hassan Tajeddin, as his presidential adviser. In mid-July 2007 the authorities arrested Mubarak al-Fadil al-Mahdi, the leader of an Umma Party splinter group, and accused him and others of involvement in a sabotage and coup plot. Like previous claims by the government of Sudan (GOS), the alleged plot was implausible and was found out to be a fabrication.
We in the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) do not disagree on the Tenets of National and Homeland Red Lines. We also know exactly where the real interests of our country. The people of the marginalized regions are striving to remove forever the alien concepts introduced by the genocidal and racist regime to divide and rule and damage the social fabric of Sudanese on the basis of race, colour, religion and tribal lines. The people of Darfur consider striking a dodgy deal between Mr. al-Sadiq al-Mahdi and the genocidal NCP as blatant breach of National Principles. The so-called National Consensus Compromise agreement between al-Sadiq al-Mahdi and the oppressive ruling NCP racist regime is intended to prolong the stay of the infamous National Islamic Front (NIF) in power at the expense of suffering of the marginalised people of Sudan in Darfur and elsewhere.
The heartless elements of the regime that use the catchphrase “terrorizing peaceful citizens in Omdurman” should shut up their foul mouthpieces for a moment to reflect the fact that what they experienced over a few hours in Omdurman happens to a greater extent daily in Darfur for more than five years. Antonov aircrafts and helicopter gunships relentlessly bomb towns and villages, killing non combatant civilians including children, women and the elderly and displacing the wounded and the survivors.
The main aims and objectives of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) for launching the unprecedented Operation Long Arm (OLA), the Battle of Omdurman, on Saturday the 10th May 2008, were:
– To overthrow the oppressive National Congress Party (NCP) authoritarian military junta regime that has been subjecting the people of Sudan in Darfur and elsewhere to atrocities that include genocide and ethnic cleansing for two decades.
– To reduce the capacity of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) regime by destroying its military arsenal & capability. JEM, in this respect, destroyed 5 Helicopter gunships, 75 Tanks, military equipments and recovered its lost older vehicle by gaining new ones.
– To expose the regime’s weakness and fragility that proves its incapability to defend itself let alone to protect the people of Darfur. Moreover, the regime will recognise its size when it comes to the negotiating table for Darfur peace talks next time. The myth propagated by the National Islamic Front (NIF/NCP) government that they have sustained security for Khartoum is proved to be a drunken farce. No one knows for certain the number of casualties in the GOS forces during the battle of Omdurman, but for sure hundreds of soldiers were killed or wounded despite the cover up and the propaganda machine of the regime’s satellite TV channel.
– To give a clear message to the international community to enhance the peace process.
During the Operation Long Arm (OLA), JEM has achieved 75% of its objectives. It lost only 1% of its military capacity that includes human and equipment.
The basic message, which the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) wanted to delivery to the dwellers in the streets of the National Capital was that the what they witnessed on May 10th 2008 in Omdurman occurs on daily basis to the Sudanese people in Darfur and perhaps what happened in Khartoum is far less than that occurs in Darfur five years on.
The Justice and Equality Movement by attacking Omdurman on daylight has transformed the Darfur conflict to a new phase and undoubtedly embarrassed the political forces that include al-Sadiq al-Mahdi who scrambled to denounce the invasion and describing JEM forces as hired mercenaries. The inevitable fact is that JEM has ended the myth of invincibility of the Islamists security system and the sanctity of Khartoum from being attacked.
The chief of the NCP regime defiantly declared that he would not negotiate with JEM during the future Darfur talks. Political analysts assert that whether agreed to or not, any solution to the Darfur issue needs to pass across the gate of the Justice and Equality Movement! Does the regime expect the International Community rally to listen solely to Omer al-Bashir and support him to intentionally disregard the Justice and Equality Movement? That is the question! Nevertheless, JEM will certainly return to Khartoum if the government of the NCP maintains its stubbornness and entrusted arrogance whilst the suffering of the people in Darfur goes on. We will then see towards which of the two teams al- Sadiq Al-Mahdi draws his sword!
Dr. Mahmoud A. Suleiman is the Deputy Chairman of the General Congress for the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). He can be reached at [email protected]