Grievances run deep in the Sudan
By Abdullahi A. Galleb, The Deseret News
August 16, 2004 — The struggle and sufferings of the Sudanese people under an oppressive regime have become global news. The tragic situation in Darfur is one part of a continuously administered system of highly organized and packaged methods of oppression directed toward different groups of the country’s population one at a time since 1989.
For the past 15 years, the specialists of violence within the Islamist regime in Khartoum have been competing with each other in the transfer of different forms of violence from one sphere to the other and from one group of the population to another. Oppression has been exercised over all sectors of the population by the state terror machine in a variety of ways.
Control mechanisms and patterns of coercion included the state of emergency and curfews from dusk to sunrise, arbitrary detention, and security personnel who visit homes and businesses and issue threats of bodily harm, torture, purges and killings.
Even more striking was the phenomenon of ghost houses. In their 1996 report, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights noted that in these private homes and offices security forces “committed the cruelest acts of mental and physical torture including beatings, mock executions and sleep and food deprivation.” Thousands of Sudanese professionals, politicians, journalists and activists fled the country for fear of persecution. For the past 15 years the Islamists were successful in contracting organized violent groups to fight on behalf of the regime rebellion in the south and other parts of the country. Within the urban Sudan, thousands of high school graduates were forcefully conscripted and thrown unprepared into the war zone in the south.
Simultaneously, the regime was persistent in deploying racists, residue of old tribal feuds over water and grazing land resources, in addition to politicizing religious impulses to keep these wars alive. One of the most tragic outcomes of such a situation was the dispersal of thousands of Sudanese children in the wilderness, later settled in countries of second asylum as the lost boys of Sudan.
The most recent in this saga is the conflict in Darfur, which is being presented erroneously in the media as a war between Arabs and Africans. The notorious jinjaweed militia is only one terrorist band contacted by the regime to pacify the population of Darfur, whose grievances run deep and became a viable instrument for rival groups to exploit against the regime. Other actors in other parts of the country are preparing themselves to turn simmering grievances into open conflict.
The international concern about the humanitarian crisis in Darfur “regardless of the agenda of some of the actors in this regard” has brought to the fore the underlying social, political and ethnic grievances running deep in the Sudan. The solution is not by any means an outside military intervention, sanctions or similar measures. A Sudanese solution is the most appropriate, and it should be sincerely pursued and equally encouraged.
Since their independence, and within the lifetime of the post-colonial state, twice the Sudanese people toppled military rule through civil disobedience: General Abboud’s regime (1958-64), and Marshal Nimerie’s regime (1969-85). Viewed in hindsight, the driving force for the Sudanese political imagination is grounded in two convictions: a strong confidence in the resilience of Sudanese political and power structures and the belief in the weakness of the foundation of the military rule. So long as a military regime, no matter how oppressive, is seen as one day facing the same fate its predecessors met. As more time passes, it looks most likely that the regime’s fate is sealed.
However, in order to avoid violent possibilities, immediate process of phasing out the regime should be in place by the Sudanese themselves. But for a peaceful transfer of power to be established, helpful arrangements should be achieved. A process of a negotiated settlement needs to be well-developed in a new and creative way that could involve all Sudanese political parties, civil society groups and other elite and other actors whose expertise and wisdom could be recommended.
This strategy should lead and legitimize a road map to a new Sudanese social contract, a new consciousness of common identity, and a new meaning of belonging that grants democracy, peace, equality, and fundamental civil and human rights. In this respect the Sudanese might need the international community’s moral authority, support and wisdom helping such a process to reach its successful conclusion.
Abdullahi A. Gallab, Ph.D., is a professor of sociology at Brigham Young University. He is currently writing a book about the Sudanese regime entitled “The Islamists’ First Republic.”