Soft-landing approach for Sudan’s crises is not workable

Salah Shuaib

The international community’s keen focus on allowing al-Bashir’s regime to be part of the formula for solving Sudan’s crises will sooner or later prove wrong. Al-Bashir’s unwillingness to faithfully implement the country’s previous political accords is still existing as a severe obstacle for Sudan’s comprehensive peace.

As blaming the opposition for not having a will for political reconciliation, the Sudanese president has succeeded in deactivating all peace accords signed by him and his opponents, and thus he had exhausted most of his tactical experiences in keeping his adamantly destructive policies alive.

In fact, the Sudanese opposition groups are not lacking the desire to achieve a stable peace in the country through negotiating the regime. But they rather lack a practical mechanism that deters the regime’s systematic manipulation of these accords that are sponsored by the international community itself.

Certainly, after signing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), all the country’s political forces engaged seriously to reconcile with the regime’s aggressive past and to build a new Sudan. The change forces made, for the sake of the country’s unity, concessions on many of their fundamental demands to help in creating sustainable peace. Instead, al-Bashir’s regime, then, succeeded in bolstering its evil intentions to destroy the opposition forces’ capabilities rather than building solid foundations to accommodate them as partners for making a better Sudanese future.

For more than half a century, the Sudanese people had been struggling against the dictatorships that have spoiled all opportunities of making the country progressing in all its societal realms. The opposition forces, before three decades, realized the necessary need to defeat this Islamist tyranny, which has adopted a religious ideology that divided the country into two parts, damaged the state’s economic and social structures, and initiated war as a means for giving legitimacy to the junta.

The international community should be entirely aware that the Sudanese people’s struggle to obtain national democratic governance is inseparable from the worldwide popular movements to achieve freedom. The whole world knows that Al-Bashir’s crimes have led the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant against him and his inner circle for their direct involvement in genocide and other forms of violations towards millions of civilians.

Besides that, his regime has contributed to endangering global peace by harbouring, supporting and training terrorist groups. Last but not least, the international community knows, too, that Al-Bashir’s oppression has led millions of Sudanese to flee abroad while paving room for his brutal militias to sustain his corrupt regime.

No doubt, the critical obstacle to solving Sudan’s crises is the ideology of political Islam, which aims to establish the Islamic rule in a multi-nation state. International partners, therefore, should support all forces of the Sudanese opposition to help create a democratic Sudan, rather than rewarding the regime for its tactical manoeuvring.

The soft-landing approach to end Sudan’s problems, which is adopted by some international powers, is somewhat helping Al-Bashir’s regime that is about to fall now due to its severe economic and political crisis. It will only be a stab in the heart of any Sudanese freedom-fighter whose only hope is to get rid of the worst totalitarian system in our planet today.

The international community has indeed noticed that all Sudan’s signed peace accords have included essential items for political reconciliation that can end the war, separatist trends, and violations of human rights. The CPA constitution was comprehensive enough to accommodate aspirations of Sudanese people for a better life.

But unfortunately, Al-Bashir’s deliberate neglect of implementing this regionally and the internationally sponsored document has led to escalating war in the conflict zones, increasing the number of displaced persons and refugees, and deteriorating living conditions in the country.

Also, the destruction of civil service structures, the intensification of ethnic and political injustice, and the deepening of the country’s social problems were part of Al-Bashir’s apparent mismanagement of the CPA.

Now, because of the regime’s depletion of the state’s treasury, two systems have been emerging in Sudan. There is a hidden system that Al-Bashir sustains with a full budget, where resources are exploited by all members of the Sudanese Islamic Movement (SIM) while the old formal state’s system is running with limited resources for health, education, security, and development.

It should thus be clear that any efforts to put an end for the fragmentation of the Sudanese ethnical components should consider toppling the regime by radical change, which will preserve Sudan’s territorial integrity.

There is no value to reforming the situation in Sudan in the existence of Al-Bashir’s regime. For all these facts, the international community should not disappoint the people of Sudan, who place great hopes on it to support its quest for freedom, peace, and democracy.

The writer is a Sudanese journalist; he can be reached at [email protected]