Source: ZNet | Africa

Sudan
Can we learn?
by Khalid Fishawy and Ahmed Zaki; August 26, 2004

None of the key parties in the Sudanese [Darfur] crisis, whether international, regional or national, really wants a peaceful solution to it. The U.S. and other competing powers are investing this conflict to destabilize, reconfigure, and possibly replace the Sudanese regime, with a view to a new Iraqi-style government and country. The Sudanese regime is interested in maintaining the military as the sole ruling institution, denying the other political civilian parties their right to rule. The Sudanese military seized the opportunity provided by international threats of intervention to seek the support of Arab and Muslim countries on the official and popular levels. The Sudanese armed opposition groups have surrendered to deeper links with "foreign superpowers", taking otherwise inexplicably hardline positions in the negotiations with the military government, aiming to undermine the ruling regime. Meanwhile, the civil political opposition has been diminished because of the national security threats caused by foreign enemies knocking at the doors of homeland.

For ordinary Sudanese, the choices left are either waiting for bouts of violation and terror by death squads of the local fighting parties, supported by national, regional and international "Evil" axes, or a disastrous climate of desperate and deteriorating conditions relieved by scarce humanitarian aid from politically biased regional and international aid organizations.

Suddenly, after more than one year with U.S. and subordinates ignoring violations and sufferings going on in Darfour, only last month, international establishment media and official and semi-official international community organizations started focusing on the human tragedy taking place there. They loudly claimed that imposing sanctions on the Sudanese regime, as well as military intervention, would be a necessity to ensuring protection for the wretched population there. (The same logic imposed sanctions on Iraq to ensure security to its neighbors!).

There are a number of explanations for the current hypocritical focus of the U.S. administration and subordinates on the sufferings in Darfour. These range from an argument that it is intended to distract from the present escalation of military confrontations in Iraq, to an argument that it is intended as a part of Bush’s presidential campaign for re-election to win African-American votes under the title of securing lives of African ethnic communities in Sudan. Still another argument is that it is intended for U.S. domination over African oil resources in this region. The region’s production estimates amount to 345,000 barrels/day, and should grow up to 660,000 barrel/day after completion of some expansion projects in the region (according to U.S. principles, oil-rich regions need U.S. military bases for controlling and patrolling production and distribution). Last, there is the argument of U.S. continuous need to humiliate a weak state, a useful exercise to terrorize the rest of the world.

All the fore-mentioned arguments could be collectively or individually true, but the most certain is that the right wing Bush's administration has persistently enlisted Sudan as one of the world’s “evil” countries. This has been also true since the era of "Bush" the Father. The Democrat administrations have shared the Republican view-point regarding Sudan as one of the states sponsoring terrorism. The United Nations has been rendered merely one of the U.S. foreign policy tools; sometimes used for legitimizing US intervention actions, sometimes excluded so as not to interfere with Washington’s absolute will. The US had recalled UN to Sudan, and when arrangements with the Sudanese regime were inconsistent with US interests, she pressed the Security Council to draft a resolution – more appropriate to be called an American ultimatum – to implement a solution for the decades-long problem within a month.

All parties are sure the desperately deteriorating conditions cannot be resolved within a month, or even a year. Reports of international humanitarian aid organizations about efforts to improve the living conditions in Darfour are very pessimistic. The local manager of the World Food Program said that by the beginning of rainy season, transportation of aid articles via land routes will be rendered impossible; there would be no other route except the highly expensive air route. Meanwhile, the Program has received to date less than $ 78.5 million from a budget of $ 195 million required for its operations in the year 2004 alone. At the end of this month [August], the Program will have no funds to proceed on. Within the same context, Doctors Without Borders says in its recent reports that death rates in the refugee camps have reached catastrophic levels due to severe shortage in provision of water, food and shelter. The opposition doesn't care: they exploit this fact to prove the incompetence of the military regime in Khartoum. The competing western European states that opposed the US and coalition invasion of Iraq have displayed more pliancy at Security Council on Sudan, passing the American ultimatum there. We should not expect in the Sudanese case a European resistance to the American project. This time, unlike Iraq, there are certain aspects of cooperation and mutual benefits between the global economic powers involved. Italy, Britain and France have solid interests in Africa's oil. France could use its military base in Djibouti in any future military intervention in Sudan. According to the Sunday Independent, the British 12th vehicle infantry division, consisting of 5000 soldiers, are ready to intervene in Darfour, through neighboring Libya and Chad. The newspaper confirms that the British have confidence in Libya’s recent change of heart. France has already strengthened its garrison in Chad with more troops. Most of the French force there has moved to the borders with Sudan.

Although the American and Western objectives in the region are clear cut, the events on ground in Sudan cannot vindicate the ruling military regime there. In November 1989, General Omar El Bashir's regime seized power after a military coup, with active political support of the Islamic Front and its leader Sheikh Al Tourabi (now detained by the militarists). The militarists overthrew the civilian democratically elected government of "Al Sadek Al Mahdi", the successor of one of the most two popular political families in Sudan. Since then, the regime rejected all calls for dialogue with the political, social, tribal, or ethnic entities in the country. The militarists resumed the civil war in the south, ignoring all local or regional initiatives for reconciliation or for putting an end to the shedding of blood. When the military regime was coerced by US and international pressure to sign a treaty with the southern rebels to end the war, Sudanese civilian political parties demanded to participate in the peace negotiation. The majority of top officials of the military regime responded negatively, saying that negotiations are to be held by those carrying guns. That statement was interpreted predictably: as a call for those seeking their share in power to carry arms. Many, particularly in western and eastern Sudan, answered the call.

It is not colonialist conspiracies – U.S. and Western Europe - that are solely responsible for these and those crimes against humanity. Successive despotic regimes of Sudanese militarists – the existing regime being one of them – have systematically denied recognition of ethnic and cultural diversity in Sudan, and confiscated their human rights, trying arbitrarily to reduce identity of the country into a racist, mono "Arabized Islamic" one. These regimes are anti non-Arab, anti non-Moslem. They are as mutually condemned with these crimes against humanity as the imperialist powers. This racist approach and this imperialistic undemocratic policy are the culprits. The Sudanese Military Regime set the theatre for criminal international conspiracies and undertook an active role.

The darkest side of the case is that, instead of seeking a democratic peaceful settlement between all Sudanese social, ethnic and cultural elements, the ruling regime still holds the same policy, confronting international interventions and internal disobedience by seeking to agitate an Arabic and Islamic mobilization at the diplomatic and mass levels for backing its maneuvers. It is the same policy Saddam took, leading him to full fledged defeat and people of the region to more aggravated disasters.

If there is any hope left, it won't depend on any of the global, regional or local undemocratic forces, whose interest flourishes during violent conflicts and crisis.

Could we imagine building a front for the potentials of peoples and democratic movements in Sudan, hurt and disaffected by war, with the solidarity of the global antiwar movement, to impose democratic mechanisms caring for the interests of oppressed Sudanese communities, races, cultures and classes, against the rapacity of interests of US and Western European Imperialists? Could this aim be possible? Is it promising for the global justice and peace movement to regain its momentum, instead of supporting undemocratic authoritarian and fundamentalist forces, this time in Sudan, under the title of allying with whomever is against the American Empire?

The authors are editors of kefaya.org and translators of ZNet into Arabic.