Suad Ibrahim Ahmed: “I am fighting”

Death robbed me of another ‘teacher’ this Sunday. Suad Ibrahim Ahmed, a veteran Sudanese communist, passed away in a Khartoum hospital in the early hours of 29 December at the age of 78. Born into a family of prestige and wealth, Suad chose the perilous path of the counter-effendi the moment she awoke to political consciousness as one of a few female students in Khartoum University in the late 1950s. Her father, Ibrahim Ahmed, was a distinguished politician of the Umma Party of a liberal mould and minister of finance in Abdalla Khalil’s cabinet. The daughter was raised in the shell of Khartoum’s grand and great, one she broke out of with the tool of mind. 

Suad Ibrahim Ahmed (1935 - 2013)
 photo credits Isam Hafeez

Talal Afifi, the man behind the Sudan Film Factory, introduced me to Suad. We visited her in her Khartoum (2) house, a history book by itself, for a video interview as part of a project to document the experiences of those distinguished Sudanese communists who lived through the 1971 purges and came out alive. Talal chose the title “We survived” for the series but it never saw completion, partially because of the stubborn resistance of many to speak about events they felt were still very much contemporary. It was in Suad’s house that the last meeting between the commanding officer of the 1971 communist coup Hashim al-Atta and the party chief Abd al-Khalig Mahjoub took place. Both men did not survive. Hashim was executed by firing squad in al-Shajara military base south of Khartoum and Abd al-Khalig died on the gallows of Cooper Prison in Khartoum North. Suad did survive, one of four women elected to the thirty three members Central Committee in the Communist Party’s historic 1967 general convention, next to Mahasin Abd al-Aal, Naima Babiker al-Rayah and Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim. I asked her how she landed in the communist bosom considering her background and education. She answered in the sharp tones of a militant: ‘The Origin of the Family’ referring to Engels’ book ‘The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State’. For many a feminist in Sudan, Suad was the woman to look up to, assertive, defiant and incorrigibly political. Alas, many of her admirers in recent years overlooked her politics in favour of her symbol. 

In her study, Suad had a desktop PC that she commanded with fingers severely disfigured by rheumatoid arthritis, one of several diseases she had to suffer in her later years. She was persistently in pain but brushed off sympathetic questions about her health with the answer: “I am fighting,” and a fighter she was. She was fired from government service in the statistics bureau in the early 1960s for opposing the flooding of Halfa and the eviction of its residents to make way for the construction of the Higher Dam in Egypt. The government of Ibrahim Abboud probably regretted the move, since it prompted Suad to become a full time journalist for the ‘The Voice of Women’, the surgically subversive publication of the Sudanese Women Union at the time. A Nubian herself, Suad continued to champion the cause of her people in the face of dams and displacement till her last breath, a legacy that won her the name “Mother of the Nubians”. 

Unlike many fellow Sudanese communists, Suad had the indispensable skill of making and managing money judiciously, capacities that she possibly acquired from her father, and also her husband, the late Hamid al-Ansari, one of a handful of Sudanese businessmen who associated with the Communist Party and probably funded it in its heydays. Hamid is remembered for his brave refusal to testify against Abd al-Khalig Mahjoub in the military tribunals set up by the revenge-thirsty Nimeiry following the defeat of the 1971 coup as bullets burst through the bodies of the accused officers within hearing distance. Suad spent money on the causes she believed in, a lot of it. She set up a centre to teach threatened Nubian languages in Cairo in the 1990s and continued to support initiatives and individuals in Sudan whenever need arose. Suad the Nubian will be missed by many; others will miss the feminist; some the communist. I will miss that invincible spirit, the emaciated white-haired woman seated in her study, her twisted swollen aching fingers defiantly tipping messages of solidarity letter by letter, each typo requiring excruciatingly painful repetition.

Bahnas died

Mohamed Bahnas, a dear friend, talented painter, poet and musician, froze to death this week on Cairo's streets, homeless, and isolated but from the clutter of contradictions that kept his mind ever alert. Born in Omdurman in 1972, Bahnas found refuge in artistic expression from an early age. The profession he sought most though was life itself. He chased it in the 'araki' quarters of Khartoum, the mosques of Omdurman, the conversations of the tired intellectuals of the capital, the glare of Paris and Berlin, in the company of friends and the faces of strangers. 

In the meantime, he painted profusely, wrote fresh poetry in a language made from the chatter of the streets turned into eloquent verse with a purpose, he cursed, made friends and enemies, disgusted many, and broke a few hearts. A 'malamati' of his age, Bahnas cycled restlessly between beliefs, convictions and fragmentary philosophical notions without ever finding a mental home as it were.

The last time I saw Bahnas was in December 2012. He sat at a distance from the loud crowd of the Goethe Institut's cafeteria in Khartoum drawing a self-portrait. We exchanged the usual greetings and then drifted into a full-blown discussion of 'Islamic' morality. He had just returned from a lengthy 'khalwa' committed to a form of mystical belief that he could not well explain. He corrected his sentences as he spoke unsatisfied with the shadows cast by his words, dropping one for a close synonym as he explored clarity in vain. Failing to reach consensus we exhanged jokes, laughed and drank the habitual teas of Khartoum's evenings as old friends just do. All the while he added a line and another to his drawing. 

The self-portrait I did not see completed, but I suppose he has just delivered his last drawing to the world, his own body flung on a Cairo street, resting forever in the cold of night. I have only words to mourn you ya my friends, farwell.

Sudan’s NCP: reshuffle and recharge

After months of wrangling within the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), the government declared its greatest ‘makeover’ since the split with Hassan al-Turabi in 1998/1999. Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, the long-serving First Vice President, in office since 1998 with an interlude as Vice President during the period of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), 2005 – 2011, was replaced by President Bashir’s confidante Bakri Hassan Salih, the only remaining member of the cohort of officers who led the 1989 coup in the circle of power. Hasabu Mohamed Abd al-Rahman, a native of South Darfur who served as commissioner of the Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC) during the height of the Darfur conflict and lately as Minister of Federal Rule, took over as Vice President from al-Haj Adam Yusif. Nafie Ali Nafie, the NCP strongman and assistant of President Bashir, lost his post to Ibrahim Ghandoor, and a majority of cabinet ministers including NCP stalwarts who had long recycled in the cabinet like Awad al-Jaz, Abd al-Haleem Ismail al-Mutaafi and Amin Hassan Omer were replaced by second-tier officials mostly promoted from administrative positions in the same ministries or called in from the states. Notably, the last remaining negotiators of the CPA and cooperation agreements with South Sudan, Idris Mohamed Abd al-Gadir and Mohamed Mukhtar Hussein, both state ministers, vacated their positions for new appointees. Likewise, the relatively younger al-Fatih Izz al-Din assumed the position of speaker of parliament instead of Ahmed Ibrahim al-Tahir who had held the post since 2001. Issa Bushra, the departing Minister of Science and Education was named as deputy speaker instead of Hajo Gasm al-Seed. Three prominent ministers though maintained their posts, Abd al-Raheem Mohamed Hussein in defense, Ali Karti in foreign affairs, and Mohamed Bushara Dousa in justice. Hussein has long been a target of severe criticism even within the NCP and in the officer corps of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) but continues to enjoy President Bashir’s confidence comparably only to the new First Vice President Bakri Hassan Salih. Hussein, like the President is indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes committed in Darfur.

The perception that the reshuffle marked the strengthening of the grip of the military over power at the expense of the civilian faction of the regime seems overrated since the two military figures in the inner circle of power, Bakri Hassan Salih and Abd al-Raheem Mohamed Hussein, never lacked influence over decision-making, and certainly always had the trust of the President. Rather, the reshuffle, particularly when considering appointments at the level of state ministers, is suggestive of a shift from the ‘old guard’ of the historic Islamic Movement to cadres groomed under the reign of the NCP, a demand that has been repeatedly voiced within the party. Nevertheless, the promotion of Bakri Hassan Salih to First Vice President, preceded by his recent appointment in the leadership council of the NCP and the higher leadership of the NCP-loyal Islamic Movement lends credence to the idea that he might be picked as President Bashir’s successor. Such a transfer of power, although only a speculation, would secure an exit for President Bashir without the risk of delivery to the ICC. 

While the opposition including Ghazi al-Attabani’s new ‘Reform Now Movement’ dismissed the reshuffle as a cosmetic measure and reiterated the demand of a ‘transitional government’ and the resignation of President Bashir himself, the government overhaul is likely to be welcomed by the rank of file of the NCP, particularly that it stresses the possibility of upward mobility for home-grown loyal cadres who do not compare in prestige and standing with the ‘old guard’, distinguished by their foreign doctorates and international exposure. This regenerative ability, limited as it might be, challenges the opposition parties on a level that the parties would probably wish to ignore, namely the long reign of their own leaders. That said, the response of the mainstream opposition was generally one of bewilderment, much like the reaction to the coup in 1989 mythologised by Tayeb Salih’s question in an Op-Ed published in the Saudi magazine al-Majalla in the early nineties “Where did they come from?” 

The opposition simply had no idea who these new ministers were. In the press, only al-Intibaha’s al-Sadiq al-Rizeigy offered biographical profiles of the new statesmen. Rizeigy hit a nail on the head with the remark that the calculus of rule in Sudan had changed from the domination of the urban ‘effendiya’ proper, the types picked by the late Nimeiry over the main evening news bulletin from the power-spoiled Khartoum University staff, to the ambitious elites of rural Sudan. In the style of the Justice and Equality Movement’s Black Book, Rizeigy noted the increased share of Darfur, Kordofan, eastern Sudan and Gezira in the central government at the expense of the ‘traditional’ excess allotted to the River Nile and the Northern region. Salah Wansi, Rizeigy explains, lived most of his life in Kadugli and other towns of Kordofan. Simeih, the Minister of Industry, hails from South Darfur. The new Minister of Interior, Abd al-Wahid Yusif, comes from tiny Ghibeish in West Kordofan, Yasir Yusif, the new State Minister of Media, is a Gedaref lad and Farah Mustafa, the new Minister of Federal Rule, calls the eastern Jebel Marra home. From Darfur also are the state ministers Fadul Abdalla Fadul and al-Sadiq Mohamed Ali, the first at the Presidency and the second at the Ministry of Labour. Mutaz Musa, the new Minister of Electricity and Water Resources who displaced Osama Abdalla, considered a favourite of President Bashir, and Ahmed Mohamed Sadiq al-Karuri who replaced Kamal Abd al-Latif as Minister of Mining, both served under Osama Abdalla in the Dams Implementation Unit. 

The NCP, expectedly, celebrated the reshuffle as an unprecedented and bold undertaking with no comparison in the Middle East and Africa, undeterred by the obvious fact that the overhaul also demonstrated the centralisation of power in the hands of President Bashir and the military officers at his side with the exit of all potential competitors from the scene. It must be noted that Taha, Nafie, al-Jaz and other prominent NCP seniors continue to hold seats in parliament as well as positions in the leadership council of the NCP. The new deputy chairman of the NCP, Ibrahim Ghandoor, spoke optimistically of a new era of dialogue with the opposition, stressing the government’s readiness to resume negotiations with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement in North Sudan (SPLA/M-N), a new push for peace talks with the Darfur armed movements, and the NCP’s willingness to settle for a consensual elections law to govern the 2015 vote. Commentary in the Sudanese media focused on the ability of the new cabinet to tackle the country’s economic crisis as a condition for the success of the change agenda. In any case, the last time the government underwent such a makeover, following Turabi’s ouster, the CPA followed. It remains to be seen what concessions President Bashir and the officers at his side are ready to make this time to secure the reign of a regime that has arguably just undergone its third major mutation, the first being Turabi’s breakaway and the second the CPA and the secession of South Sudan. Nafie Ali Nafie expressed the ambitions at play in a speech to the NCP lawyers bloc bracing for elections of the bar association with Ibrahim Ghandoor, the man who just assumed his positions, at his side. Ingaz (the Salvation regime) has just reset its mileage to zero and started a new cycle, and will do so repeatedly till Azrael (the Archangel of Death) calls for the Apocalypse, he boasted. Nafie’s florid language could not dispel the ‘fatigue’ that has eclipsed over an Ingaz that has surrendered its ideological grit and organisational advantage, born of the experiences of the Islamist vanguard, to rely solely on the secular calculations of patronage and accommodation tied obviously to the promise of ‘developmental’ reward. Nafie’s script, it seems, was copied from the learning materials of the Communist Party of China, the NCP’s main interlocutor and model in party organisation. Unlike the Chinese rulers though, the NCP is yet to invent a retirement scheme for the Bringi (the number one), decorated with his ICC diploma. President Bashir who has effectively outmanoeuvred both Turabi and Taha, the sheikh and his captain, is the indispensable liability of the regime, Azrael indeed!

President Bashir: an historian at large

A confident President Bashir addressed a jovial crowd on Saturday in Garri, just north of Khartoum to celebrate what state media described as the 500th anniversary of Sudan’s first Islamic state, by all means an invented date marking invented statehood. Going back five hundred years brings the calendar to 1513, well into the legends of the pre-colonial Sudan. According to the President though, five hundred years ago, Abdalla al-Quraynati al-Qasimi, better known a Abdalla Jamma’, i.e. the Gatherer, managed to unite the ‘Arab’ tribes of central Sudan and forged a peaceful alliance with Ammara Dunqus, Makk (Lord) of the ‘African’ Funj. The alliance according to President Bashir the historian delivered the first Islamic state on the banks of the Nile in the homeland of the Abdullab around Garri. 

Jalal Yusif al-Digeir, the President’s aide and head of the ‘registered’ Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a breakoff from the Khatmiyya-based mainstream DUP that draws largely from the Hindiyya religious order, the Khatmiyya’s historical minor ally, prepared the ground for the President’s pronouncements in fine effendi style. Digeir announced Abdalla “the first to lay the foundation of Sudan’s modern civilisation,” and “a pioneer who contributed greatly to the consolidation of the Arab-Islamic identity in Sudan, allayed tribal and local allegiances and united the Sudanese under a singular banner.” Whatever Digeir had in mind, his creativity is certainly remarkable, sufficient to astonish Abdalla himself. 

The rhetoric served a purpose though. Confirming a lively rumour, the President told the crowd that his deputy, the First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, had indeed resigned his post “to make way for the younger generation”. Taha’s resignation is a foretaste of the government ‘makeover’ expected to be announced on Sunday, a process in the making for several months that has provided continuous fodder for speculations and fantasies in the Khartoum press. Whether Taha gave up office willingly or was forced to resign is guesswork. President Bashir in any case denied any strife within the leadership of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) stating further that Taha is in fact the engineer of the entire operation to refashion the NCP and its government for the future, in Taha’s own words the ‘second republic’, the political order of the rump (north) Sudan born out of the secession of South Sudan. 

Why invoke Abdalla the Gatherer then? Once Hassan al-Turabi’s deputy, Taha assumed authority over the Islamic Movement after he managed to mastermind the eviction of his mentor from its political party, the NCP, in 1999. Taha was named First Vice President in 1998 against the will of Turabi who favoured Ali al-Haj, today a German citizen residing in Bonn, for the position. The arrangements of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement gave Taha’s position to the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement’s (SPLM) late chairman John Garang and his successor Salva Kiir. Taha became the Second Vice President until the expiry of the CPA in 2011 when he bounced back to his former post. With Taha’s resignation not a single ‘veteran’ Islamist of standing remains in the khalwa of power, at least none who has earned the title of ‘sheikh’. Neither Nafie Ali Nafie, Deputy Chairman of the NCP and President Bashir’s senior assistant, nor Bakri Hassan Salih, the Minister of Presidential Affairs, the two men rumoured as candidates to replace Taha, have the material of a sheikh, the first a foulmouthed bully and the second a military officer on silent mode with no record of marketable ‘piety’ to speak of apart possibly from an alleged passion for ‘bango’ (weed). 

Taha’s resignation arguably implies the final exit of the Islamic Movement proper from power, a process heralded by Turabi’s ouster, and its full replacement by the NCP mass. Rather than surrender the Islamic cloak to the likes of Ghazi al-Attabani and the other ‘loud’ intellectuals of the Islamic Movement seeking a future apart from the NCP, the President’s gamble is to appropriate the ‘Islamic’ trademark and popularise it under his sultanic authority, a strategy that has hitherto freed his power from the eclectic ‘internationalism’ of Hassan al-Turabi and the machinations of his lesser heirs. The investment in an appropriately Sovietised biography of Abdalla the Gatherer as a model statesman of the Islamic periphery serves precisely that purpose. 

The President dismissed the available historical record of Abdalla the Gatherer as “Orientalist” garbage, and promised the crowd in Garri government-led efforts to correctively rewrite Sudanese history, then announced the establishment of an Islamic centre in Garri carrying the name of Ajeeb al-Manjuluk with the aim of countering the vices of drugs, illicit sexual behaviour, Westernisation and the internet. 

The Funj Chronicle, arguably the only surviving ‘Sudanese’ primary document from the age of Abdalla the Gatherer, credits Ammara Dunqus, Makk of the Funj, with establishment of Sennar, a city-state that expanded to become a Moslem kingdom, after crushing the Christian rule of Alawa around the year 1505. Ammara Dunqus sought the services of Abdalla to fight the Anaj who competed with the Funj for the grazing grounds of Gezira in the vacuum of authority that followed the collapse of Alawa. In reward, Ammara Dunqus appointed Abdalla chief in Garri, the Chronicle says. The Funj maintained capital in Sennar, while the Abdullab, the descendants of Abdalla the Gatherer, transferred their royal residence to Halfaya, a dynasty consolidated by Abdalla’s son Ajeeb al-Kafuta, known by his Funj title as Ajeeb al-Manjuluk. Ajeeb was appointed viceroy in the north upon his father’s death by Amara II of Sennar. 

In Abdullab legend, Ajeeb is celebrated as an ‘Islamising ruler’ who appointed sharia judges in his territory and made land grants to holy men. Ajeeb’s ambitions extended to the Funj throne. In 1606 he led an army against Sennar forcing Abd al-Qadir II to flee to Chelga on the route between Sennar and Ethiopia’s Gondar where he found protection by the Ethiopian emperor. Abd al-Qadir’s brother and successor, Adlan I, rescued the throne after defeating and killing Ajeeb at the battle of Karkuj around 1612. Ajeeb’s heirs fled to Dongola. Reconciliation between the two sides was mediated by Sheikh Idris Mohamed al-Arbab whose tomb and mosque still stand in A’ilafoon, east of Khartoum. Two years ago, a bunch of Salafi enthusiasts set Sheikh al-Arbab’s tomb ablaze and dug up the grave of the holy man. President Bashir is doing the same with history, digging up ‘Arabs’ and ‘Africans’ from a fragmentary record of warriors, adventurers, kings and holy men.

Ghazi and his president: love lost

Ghazi Salahuddin al-Attabani, once an aide to president Bashir and head of the ruling party’s parliamentary caucus, declared his breakaway from the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) in a press conference held in his Khartoum home on 26 October and his intent to form a new party that would “bring new hope to Sudan”. Ghazi’s decision came in reaction to a ruling by a disciplinary committee formed by president Bashir, the NCP chairman, calling for the dismissal of Ghazi and two of his close associates, Hassan Osman Rizig and Fadlalla Ahmed Abdalla, from the party and the suspension of several others for a year. The cohort of NCP figures, chief among them Ghazi, had issued an open letter to president Bashir at the height of the September riots in Khartoum protesting the brutal security crackdown and calling for the reversal of the government decision to lift fuel subsidies. “The legitimacy of your rule has never been at stake like it is today,” said the letter addressing the brother president. 

Besides discipline by dismissal, a task he entrusted to the parliament’s speaker Ahmed Ibrahim al-Tahir and the oil minister Awad al-Jaz, president Bashir addressed the split in his party with the routine tactic of assuming the rhetoric of his adversary. “Reform and change is a daily process for us” he told parliament on 28 October in a speech marking a new session of the house. ‘Reform’ is the key word that Ghazi and his supporters from the NCP have been throwing around for the past two years, while ‘change’ is the favourite term of the secular-minded opposition, as in ‘hope and change’, the slogan of Yasir Arman’s aborted presidential candidacy in 2010, ‘Change Now’, the association of younger political activists advocating for the overthrow of the regime, and the online newspaper ‘Change’ that hosts a number of Khartoum’s barred journalists, blocked from publication in the printed press by order of the security service. 

President Bashir’s greatest investment however remains the alliances that carry the NCP in rural Sudan, a terrain that Ghazi al-Attabani as well as the Change Now activists seem badly prepared to navigate. Challenged in the capital, the president sought refuge in North Kordofan, at his side its new governor Ahmed Haroun and the minister of electricity and dams Osama Abdalla. The first he fondly called his “batch” in the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the second a man he can trust to carry out duties when others falter. A jolly crowd welcomed the stick-waving president in dusty Um Bader where he inaugurated a new water dam on 25 October. For his enemies the president expressed only contempt. “Bandits”, “saboteurs” and “infiltrators” responsible for leaking information against him to the ICC they were. Since the September protests the president has made it a rule to bring up the ICC in almost all his public appearances, priding himself in the claim that he looked the lion in the eye and the lion blinked in reference to the US refusal to grant him entry visa to attend the sixty eighth session of United Nations General Assembly in New York. 

It is may be time to think again the politics that grew out of president Bashir’s indictment by the ICC. The arrest warrant transformed the demand of justice for crimes committed in the government’s counter-insurgency campaign in Darfur to one of regime change. As an indicted head of state president Bashir’s foreign travels and diplomatic standing were severely curtailed but not sufficiently as to strangle his crucial regional relations. Each of his trips abroad was portrayed by the regime as a national achievement, a snub at international justice and more haughtily a challenge to an inherently unjust international order. 

One immediate domestic consequence of the indictment was the marginalization of the question of justice in Darfur in the political arena, amplified as it was in popular depiction to become an element in the regime’s confrontation with its international enemies. Politically, the president’s international indictment became another in a list of teasers that the opposition employs to challenge the government. The regime, on the other hand, framed the issue as a question of national sovereignty, and as a side-effect managed to drown the demand for domestic justice in Darfur in an excess of propaganda particularly that the African Union (AU) effectively sanctioned the position taken by Khartoum. In the process the quest for justice for crimes committed in Darfur became almost irrelevant. In a perverse sense the ICC indictment of president Bashir justified the blanket immunity that his juniors going down to the singular army and militia fighter already enjoyed, the argument being ‘If he can get away with it why not we’.

Following the independence of South Sudan president Bashir reached out to the larger mainstream opposition parties with the outlook of negotiating a post-secession power-sharing arrangement. On the agenda of these negotiations was the condition that whoever wishes to partner with the regime must commit to secure the president from international prosecution, rephrased the president must live and die in office; power could be traded and sliced but not transferred. Mohamed Osman al-Mirghani’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) accepted these terms and joined the NCP in the cabinet, and Sadiq al-Mahdi of the National Umma Party (NUP) is yet to make up his mind.

Today, the gravest risk facing the president comes not from the mainstream opposition but from within his very own NCP. Conscious of the possibility of a re-arrangement of blocs and loyalties inside the ruling party that could challenge his position, president Bashir reacted swiftly to the machinations of the ‘reformers’ in whatever garb they came. In that regard, the president’s antennae were well sensitised to memoranda intrigue by the precedent of Hassan al-Turabi’s ouster from the NCP back in 1999, an oedipal melodrama in which Ghazi al-Attabani and others shoved the dagger in Turabi’s back. 

As veteran leader of the Islamic Movement and mastermind of its rise to dominance Turabi thought himself safe from such backstabbing. The ‘brothers’ as Sudan’s Islamists refer to each other proved to be Turabi’s truest disciples though, and plotted his elimination from the scene of power when he became more a liability than an asset. The dagger was a ‘reform’ plea, dubbed the ‘memorandum of the ten’, authored by Ghazi al-Attabani and nine others and delivered to a session of the NCP’s Shura Council on 10 December 1999 chaired by president Bashir in full military dress, the rather symbolic party chairman at the time, in preparation for the eviction of the all-powerful secretary general Hassan al-Turabi. 

President Bashir, I suppose, with the ICC scales occupying his vision, fears such a scenario, pious intrigue by the Islamist ‘brothers’. When Ghazi al-Attabani and associates advocated for independence of the Islamic Movement from the ruling NCP ahead of the movement’s November 2012 conference in an attempt to secure an own platform, the president and his loyal officers responded with ‘reform’ measures uniting leadership of the party, movement and government in one office, the president’s. Exactly such centralisation was Ghazi al-Attabani’s demand in the ‘memorandum of the ten’ back in 1999 when he and others complained of the drawbacks of dual leadership, split between Turabi and Bashir, siding with the officer against the sheikh. Convenience eventually caught up with Ghazi who today cries for escape from the long shadow of the president he helped crown uncontested autocrat. 

As he welcomed Ghazi al-Attabani out of the NCP, Tayeb Mustafa, leader of the Just Peace Forum (JPF) and president Bashir’s uncle, offered a formula that would secure the president in office and yet offer the Islamists dissatisfied with the NCP’s politics a horizon for action. In order to break the political deadlock in the country, Mustafa called on president Bashir to withdraw from the NCP and announce himself a national figure above partisan politics at the head of a ‘national’ government that oversees a transitional period which ends with free and fair elections, a proposition that mirrors what the NUP leader Sadiq al-Mahdi has been long advocating excluding the notion of a constitutional conference. 

Paradoxically, the multiplicity of NCP breakaways, the Popular Congress Party (PCP) of Hassan al-Turabi, the JPF of al-Tayeb Mustafa and now the dissidents around Ghazi al-Attabani and the circle of intellectuals around al-Tayeb Zain al-Abdin, chairperson of the National Islamic Front’s Shura Council disbanded by Hassan al-Turabi following the 1989 coup, is generating a situation akin to what Turabi imagined would be the nature of an Islamic republic. In 1998, Turabi as speaker of parliament drafted a law that fell short of approving full-blown multi-party politics under the name of ‘al-Tawaly al-Siyasy’ (political allegiance). Under al-Tawaly, associations of a political nature would be permitted to compete for office as long as they committed to the primacy of sharia and the Islamic character of the state. 

The Islamic Movement dispatched a committee of five of its veterans to Ghazi last week to re-negotiate his allegiance, the mediation effort is supposed to close the gap between the NCP’s official reform process steered by Ahmed Ibrahim al-Tahir and Ghazi’s richly televised version. It was al-Tahir who recommended Ghazi’s dismissal to the NCP leadership council headed by president Bashir, which in turn approved the disciplinary measure but will hand it down to the Shura Council next week for a final decision, since only the Shura Council has the authority to dismiss members. The NCP after all is a party of institutions, isn’t it? Ghazi al-Attabani in any case was its secretary general between January 1996 and February 1998.

شئ لله يا حسن: الحركة الاسلامية مقطوعة الرأس

رحب الطيب مصطفى، صاحب الانتباهة، بخروج بطله غازي صلاح الدين العتباني من حزب الرئيس البشير، داعيا في ذات الوقت البشير سيد الشي إلى الخروج هو كذلك على حزبه، وإعلان نفسه شخصية قومية فوق الأحزاب، تأتلف حولها قلوب المحتزبون في الحكم والمعارضة لفترة انتقالية كالتي يدعو إليها الصادق المهدي تنتهي بانتخابات حرة نزيهة كالتي وعد بها الرئيس في خطابه أمام البرلمان. الانتخابات القادمة، متى جاءت بالصفة التي طالب بها الطيب، ستتنافس فيها خمسة أحزاب على الأقل خرجت من صف الحركة الإسلامية فاقد الرص، المؤتمر الوطني (الأصل) لصاحبه البشير، والمؤتمر الشعبي (الأكثر أصالة) لصاحبه حسن الترابي، والسلام العادل لصاحبه الطيب مصطفى، والحزب الجديد "بدون عنوان" لصاحبه غازي صلاح الدين، والحركة الوطنية للتغيير لصاحبها الطيب زين العابدين، فمن تختار يا ترى أيها الحركي، أحزب الرحمن أم حزب الشيطان؟ إن لم تكن هذه صورة "التوالي السياسي" الذي وعد به حسن الترابي في 1998 فما هي؟ 

تلعثم أحمد الدعاك، حوار غازي وشريكه، عند مواجهته بالسؤال على شاشة التلفزيون عن احتمال الحلف بين حزب غازي وحزب الطيب مصطفى، فاحتمى بالتقية لا يريد أن يربط لسان جماعته في "قوى الحراك الإصلاحي" (سابقا) بحلقة الباشمهندس. غازي كما يبدو لم ينطق في هذا الخصوص ببنت شفة، إلا أنه كرر احتجاجه القديم على سلام نيفاشا كونه انتهى إلى انفصال جنوب السودان وهو المفاوض القائد الذي وقع على وثيقته الأولى، بروتوكول مشاكوس الذي أقر استفتاء مواطني الجنوب عندئذ على تقرير المصير. وقتها قال غازي للجزيرة أن خللا في منهج التفاوض دفعه إلى الاستقالة وصمت عن المزيد. أكد غازي للجزيرة، بعد أن صدر قرار لجنة محاسبة المؤتمر الوطني بفصله من الحزب وقبل إعلانه الشروع في إنشاء حزب جديد، أن جماعته لم تعقد أي اتصال بالجبهة الثورية المقاتلة ولا يجوز لها فهي تعمل في إطار القانون. طريف إذن أن يتعفف أحمد عن الحلف مع الطيب مصطفي فغازي يبكت على الوطني بنيفاشا كما الطيب ولا يستسيغ مراسلة الجبهة الثورية لخروجها على القانون، قانون بالقاف؟

ميز أحمد الدعاك حزب غازي عن المؤتمر الوطني بقوله أن "شريعة" الإصلاحيين غير، مضيفا أن جماعته بصدد جهد فكرى يجمر تجربة الحكم الإسلامي بالنقد الشديد. سوى ذلك لم يفصح أحمد في جلابيته البيضاء المكوية وعمته السنية عن شئ، فما صمة الخشم؟ قال أن حزب غازي سيتكون بالديمقراطية الملزمة، حرية ساكت، من القاعدة إلى القمة، ثم تكشم، هي..هي، الأمر الذي استقبله محاوروه بتكشم مقابل، هه..هه! والأمر كذلك، وقع على الحركة الإسلامية ما يقع بقوة الشريعة على البيوت التي يرثها خلف متشاكس كل بمتره فرح، هد الحيطة دي وأبني هنا، مصاعب منزلية في العبارة الأفرنجية، كل ذلك والأب بعد على قيد الحياة، فإلى من نردهم يا قاضي الدين؟   

كفى بك داءً أن ترى الموت شافيا

وقبور التلاميذ الذين قضوا برصاص الدولة رطبة ما تزال، الضلوع  تهشمت بالنار الحكومية والأكفان لم يجف منها دمع الأمهات السخين، خرج البشير في كامل زينته في محفل للجند، طاؤوس مخضرم، ليغسل الدم عن كفيه لا يشغله شئ. اتهم الرئيس الغائب عن كرسي العرش منذ مؤتمره الصحفي المشؤوم متربصين مخربين باستغلال الأوضاع لممارسة أعمال القتل والنهب والتخريب بداعي التظاهر والاحتجاج على قرارات الحكومة، وفق ما نقلت عنه الشروق. ترحم الرئيس على القتلى وأعلنهم "شهداء" من علياءه العسكري، ثم عاد يشكر حكومته ويثني عليها.

كان الرئيس قبل شهور، وقت فاجأه المرض فأسكت حلقه، أعلن التوبة بالحجاز، على مقربة من الحرم الشريف، وطلب من "الرعية" العفو على ما بدر منه في ماضي حكمه الطويل. ولعله ظن التوبة لا بد مقبولة، وهو الرئيس الذي لا يرد له طلب، فعاد إلى كتابه يخط فيه جديد الذنوب، مضاربة فوق مرابحة. أطلق جبروت الدولة الذي بيده على التلاميذ الذين خرجوا عليه بالهتاف فحصد من الأرواح الجموحة ما يرضي غروره، كأنه الفرعون يطلب قرابين. وأمر بالرصاص على من اتبع سنتهم فاجتمعت في حوشه الجثث، جروحها حية فائرة احترقت منها الأطراف وفقع من الأجساد باطنها، أحمر اللحم وأبيض العظم ولين الأحشاء.

الرئيس كما يعلم كل تلميذ، الحي منهم والميت، لا يعاف الميتة ولا ينتهي عن الدم، جديده هذه المرة أن نقل آلة القتل التي بيده من أرياف البلاد الملتهبة إلى ميادين حرب تصورها في حارات أم بدة والثورة والسامراب والكلاكلة. قال له غمار الناس الغاز والعيش فرد عليهم الصندوق (صندوق النقد الدولي) قال لي، ولما دعوا عليه "حرام عليك" أنزل فيهم سوء العذاب، هؤلاء أولادكم وبناتكم قتلتهم الضحى الأعلى، خذوهم عني واروهم ثم هُسْ. هُسْ أيتها الأم وإن طار منك القلب بالقهر والألم، هذه السنة لن يمتحن أيمن شهادة ثامنة ووفاء لن تجلس للشهادة، شهادتهم مسموعة عند عزيز مقتدر؛ هس أيها الأب، كتب الله عليك أن تحمل صلاح إلى القبر لا أن يحملك؛ هس أيتها الزوج، كفاك من هيثم هذا الرضيع عند صدرك؛ وهس أيها الشعب هس!

لمن أبى أفسح الرئيس الزنازين، استقبلتهم بالمئات، وقال الرسميون سيحاسبهم القانون، ينزع ببنوده الغليظة هذه الألسنة الطويلة عن لغاليغها، يكسر هذه الأقلام الجانحة ويلجم هذه العقول، لا يترك طايوقا. عاد تلميذ من الذين اتهمهم الرئيس بالتخريب إلى حضن أمه بعد ساعات في الحبس يحكي لأهله معجزة حريته. قال التلميذ أن ضابط بوليس فتح باب الزنزانة ليرى شلة مراهقين عيونهم تضج بالسؤال الصعب فانتهرهم "يلا أطلعوا من هنا جري قبل ما يجو يكتلوكم." ركض حفظه الله كما لم يركض من قبل، ركض حتى أتى الدار، قلبه يحاكي الطبل المجنون، فمرحى للحياة! سترت الأرض الشهداء، ضمتهم واحتفت بهم، والزنازين أسمعت المعتقلين من طوبها حبا وكرامة، فما يسترك الساعة، كلك عورة، عورة بنياشين!