Khartoum’s War: There’s an opportunity in every crisis
Dr. Mujtaba Arman
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“Never think that war no matter how necessary, nor how justified is not a crime.” Hemingway
A metamorphosis of the Calamity
Sudan has been going through a catastrophic war in the tremendous commercial and financial centre of the capital, Khartoum. Khartoum is deemed to be the hub of the whole country in which big business establishments were installed. The average Sudanese man or layman says:” Khartoum is where the president sleeps, and the plane takes off.” Historically speaking, Khartoum has exported wars to the peripheries, and it has not been affected enormously. The god of wealth and power represented in the post-colonial ruling class has fought wars in the peripheries.
Grounded upon the modern Sudanese political literature, the war had been fought in marginalized areas. Consequently, the downtrodden from the peripheries were influxed to the biggest commercial and financial centre and lived in the outskirts of Khartoum in ghettos or shanty towns without electricity and drinking water. Sarcastically, they nicknamed it ‘the head of the devil’, Jabarouna, or they forced us to leave, to mention a few. The paradoxes that emanated from those names were obvious embodiments of the absence of social justice and the state of law that caters to all Sudanese people irrespective of their religious, ethnic, class, and geographical backgrounds.
Essentially, the absence of a welfare state in post-colonial Sudan, coupled with the rise of the Political Islam forces that snatched the state apparatus in a coup d’état, have pushed the predicament of the war and peace in the country to its climax or peak. The Political Islam forces have established religious totalitarianism that discriminated between the Sudanese citizens and created the dichotomies of Muslim versus Non-Muslim, Northerners versus Southerners, etc. Sadly enough, the country had been divided into south and north. To crown it all, the rule of the few or Islamic Oligarchy has executed an economic program that led to an entire destitution among the Sudanese people. The percentage of poverty increased to an unprecedented level, and the naked eye among haves and have-nots could see the social misery. With the oil exploration, a new class of tycoons of Islamists has appeared and controlled the heights of the economy via corrupted business transactions and institutionalized corruption through utilising the state apparatus. The corruption that made Noses puffy was undeniable among the family of the president and his second wife.
Arguably, several reasons accelerated the downfall of the Islamic Empire that ruled the country by the iron fist. These reasons can be summarized as follows: the resentment among the Sudanese people as a result of the economic crisis. Salaries remained unchanged and prices of food stuffs had risen sharply. Most of the oil revenues had gone south because of the secession of South Sudan, and as a result, the economic crisis reached its peak. Of course, the oil greases the engine of corruption and makes the state apparatus move. The government continued its war in Darfur, the Blue Nile, and the Nuba Mountains against the ‘out-groups’ in those areas.
It is worth mentioning that the cracks in the dictatorial regime had deepened because of the cross-interest among the ruling class, and the cake of power was diminishing. On the other hand, a new generation of Sudanese youth was born from the womb of the suffering. The Sudanese students were introduced to a low-quality education. An education that sought indoctrination, i.e. the new educational curricula, was saturated with the ideology of Political Islam, particularly at the basic level of education. Ironically, the same generation of Sudanese youth spearheaded the demonstrations against the Islamic Oligarchy in 2013. The spontaneous demonstrations were met with the use of brutal force, and more than one hundred and fifty youths were killed in cold blood. The regime tightened its security measures instead of addressing the real crisis of its rule that incarnated in the one-party system and unprecedented ratios of corruption that the modern Sudanese political history has seen before. The leader of the dictatorial regime, Omer al-Bashir, thought of a double-edged sword game to suppress the new opposing forces led by the Sudanese youth and established the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces to assist him in staying on the shaking chair of power. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces were primarily constituted to suppress the rising opposing forces, extinguish any military moves within the army, and fight the armed groups in the peripheries.
Noticeably, the structure of the governing system after the revolution was very odd in that the military institution ruled the first part of the transitional period, and the civilian component could have ruled the second part. The military component with the defunct regime elements placed many barriers before the revolutionary government. For instance, the blockage of the main seaport in eastern Sudan, the sabotaging of the Committee of Dismantling of the Empowerment of the Regime, and the igniting of tribal and racial conflicts among different tribes. A sit-in has been schemed in front of the Republican Palace where the military institutions of the Sudanese Armed Forces, the Rapid Support Forces, a portion of the Juba Peace Agreement movements, and the defunct regime elements played a key role in executing a coup d’etat a against the revolutionary government. Wonders never cease in Sudan; a coup d’etat has been executed, and the Prime Minister and his cabinet were taken to jail. The new military rule has faced fierce opposition in the streets of Khartoum and big cities in various parts of the country, not to mention the boycott of the regional and internal organizations. The coup failed to attain its objectives of maintaining power privileges, and civilian rule was about to be installed in which the military Institution would play no role in the new government structure away from restructuring the military Institution and creating a professional army.
Against all odds, the Sudanese people could write a new history of their country by dissolving the primary and secondary contradictions among the mosaic of the opposing forces. The Sudanese youths have played a pivotal role in organizing the people in the streets and sacrificed their lives to build a new Sudan that attains their dreams. The intrinsic motto of the revolution is freedom, peace, and justice. The youths witnessed the thunderous fall of the dictator who met him bare chests and with songs. A new regime was born in partnership with the security committee of the old regime. The defunct regime elements had a sizable existence in the state apparatus for more than thirty years coupled with the ambitious generals who had a power lust that the profound contradictions among the revolutionary forces had consolidated.
A negative campaign was waged in social media to terminate the revolutionary government led by Dr. Abdallah Hamdok and a sizable portion of the social incubator represented in the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC). The revolutionary government, despite the reservations made by some of the revolutionary forces, made essential changes, such as lifting the name of Sudan from the list of state-sponsoring terrorism, stabilizing the rate exchange of the U.S. dollar, and the availability of the commodities, fuel, and medicines just to mention a few.
The opportunity in the crisis: the defunct regime elements exploited their sizable existence in state apparatus, in particular, in the Sudanese Armed Forces and waged war in Khartoum to cease an accord that would hand over the government to the civilians. On Saturday 15th of April, a brutal war began in Khartoum. Both parties to the conflict committed atrocities against civilians. Systematic human rights violations occurred by the Rapid Support Forces, such as the conquering of civilian homes and turning them into military war zones, mass killings in Darfur against the aboriginal population, and looting of cars and homes. By the same token, the Sudanese Armed Forces used military planes to destroy the Rapid Support Forces and its huge existence in the capital. The military planes destroyed civilian homes and infrastructures, for example, bridges, factories, and communication towers. More than nine thousand people were killed, and six million were displaced internally and externally. The late great Imam Mohamed Ahmed Almahdi, the leader of the Mahdist Revolution, said: ” اﻟﻣزاﯾﺎ في طي اﻟﺑﻼﯾﺎ ” ،which has the equivalence of the Chinese proverb that goes, in every crisis, there is an opportunity. The opportunity lies in the war of Khartoum; the practical experience has proven that the existence of many armies is too dangerous to the safety of everyone and the existence of the state itself. This war provides an opportunity to rebuild a professional army whose primary objective is to protect the constitution and the massive borders of Sudan. The war also provides an opportunity to readdress the issue of social justice, combat poverty, idleness among youth, and uneven development to create a new Sudan that accommodates all Sudanese. Indeed, the new mission statement in nation-building is creating a pluralistic state that tolerates the peaceful- existence of sociocultural, linguistic, religious, cuisine, and identitarian mosaic in Sudan. A welfare state must be installed to build a new Sudan based on the rule of law and social justice to translate the motto of the revolution of freedom, peace, and justice into actuality. Sudanese youth’s dream of Freedom, justice, and peace cannot be buried alive.