The reasons to revolt in northern Sudan

By Osman El-Hassan

March 13, 2011 — Lord Cromer, the author of the condominium agreement between Egypt and Britain in 1899, described the birth of the new country, Sudan, as a “child of opportunism”, saying that the child might “eventually die”. It will be noted in our history books that a group of not more than 1,000 faceless*, almost alien, men descended on Sudan one dark night, killed democracy and tolerance first and then finished up by slicing the country apart, vindicating Lord Cromer’s cynical prophecy.

Now, following the referendum on 9 January 2011, the remaining Sudanese people in the north, in addition to their great sadness at seeing their country split up, have been promised more economic hardship, more flogging, amputation and stoning by the current government in the north. Those who dare to protest, speak out, or complain will be met by merciless force and subjected to harsher treatment. Our religion will be Islam, our language will be Arabic, there will be no diversity of ethnicity or religion as we will all be declared Arab. No one knows what we have done to deserve such a fate and such pathologically cruel rulers – maybe this is our hell without knowing it!

The economic budget’s objective for 2011 is simple, let the poor eat cake or nothing; it is all about the protection of those in power. More than SDG5 billion has been allocated for the security sector (police, army and National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS)) with the NISS alone receiving over SDG1 billion, while the health sector has received a meager SDG445 million, and education about SDG500 million. With the anticipated reduction in the oil revenue in July 2011, the ordinary Sudanese people, mostly poor, will be expected to pay the cost of being badly governed. Currently an estimated 6 million are employed in the government and private sector. The rest of the population are left to fend for themselves in the form of “cannibal capitalism” where the state, at all levels, literally feeds itself off the sweat and the hard work of the remaining 12-14 million self-employed.

On 20 June 2010, UNICEF called on Sudan to increase the budget for children’s welfare, as about 3.6 million children in Sudan, the highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, were reportedly out of school, either due lack of infrastructure, a shortage of trained teachers, or existing cultural barriers. Only 1% of Sudan’s Gross Domestic Product is reportedly dedicated to the education sector.

In 2010, Transparency International ranked Sudan at 172, seventh from the bottom, while Tunisia and Egypt ranked 59 and 98 respectively. All the checks and balances that are supposed to be in place to minimize corruption are non-existent; strong parliament, independent judiciary, good anti-corruption agency, vigorous law enforcement, as well as free and independent media and a vibrant civil society.

In Sudan, corruption spreads from the top, permeating every level of society. The ruling party controls over 166 companies at least, most of them working in the oil, telecommunication, construction, banking and import and export sectors. The General Auditor’s report of 2010 noted that a total of 106 out of 237 government’s department have not submitted their annual reports – including 14 ministries, also many government officials issue decrees to establish companies while completely disregarding the law or conflict of interests. Ali Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir and Abdella Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, the president’s younger siblings, own at least 22 companies under the umbrella of the Hi-Tech group. Their activities range from telecommunication, oil, construction, pharmaceuticals, trade, industry, mining, and services. The two brothers were virtually unknown in business circles before 1989, but their company now holds shares in SUDATEL (Sudanese Telecom Company) 9%, Higleig Petroleum Services and Investment Co. 16.47%, Alwaseed Aluminum 47%, and Giad Industrial City 43%.

Furthermore, to protect his grip on power, al-Bashir has introduced a deadly African tradition that has always ended in disaster – Rawanda (Habyarrimana), Congo (Mobutu), Liberia (Samuel Doe) and now Libya – as he increasingly relies on a number of elite military and police units, such as the Security Special Force, commanded by a select group of officers from al-Bashir’s own relatives and tribe which he rewards with high pay and perks.

Any of the above is a credible cause for you to explode, however, the struggle against such regime should not be only about food prices, unemployment, corruption, torture in prison and rape, or to stop war crimes in Darfur, as grave as they may be. A common thread runs through all this calling us to; restore the nation’s dignity. You can’t find a job, you can’t find food, you can’t speak your mind, you beg for school’s fees for your children, you beg to treat your father and mother, in airports around the world you are treated like a terrorist, your country dismembered, and you are helplessly watching war criminals bragging about their crimes. In short this is a calculated humiliation. The journalist Fathi Al Daw also noted in his recent article that, “the code word that could reignite revolution in Sudan is ‘dignity’”. Those who were, and still are, humiliated in Sudan include; “you, your father, daughter, son, mother, uncle, friends, neighbors, acquaintances, it is the whole country”, stressed Fathi Al Daw.

As many similar regimes are crumbling in the region through popular revolt, the question in Sudan is not about “if” but “when and how?”. The game that the people cleverly mastered in Tunisia and Egypt is more like a chess game which ended in a checkmate for their kings. However, in Sudan, as in Libya now, we need to act differently than this because our faceless rulers are more callous and morally inferior; if they perceive that their end is imminent they will overturn the chessboard. They stop at nothing to protect themselves. The best chance we could have with this bunch is to play Spanish-style bullfighting, although it is dangerous for the players, the raging beast will be slain at the end. Meanwhile, we should continue with a “plucking the bird” strategy, as one USA General remarked on the Somalian situation, “take one feather at a time, one day the bird will not be able to fly”.

More importantly, we all know revolution will not just happen in Sudan because it happens in other places, we have done it twice before, 1964 and 1985, without help or inspiration from other people. It might happen again, but in our own time. Please do not despair, of course we have thousands of reasons to revolt to get rid of our nightmare, but remember Martin Luther King once said (quoting the abolitionist Theodore Parker), “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward just.”

* According to Ali Al Haj, one of the six Islamist leaders who had plotted the coup of 1989, that “there are only 1,000 people participated in the coup, 80% were civilians.”

The author can be reached at [email protected]