“New” Sudan: back to the future

The sight of Hassan al-Turabi in his impeccably white jellabiya, socks and shoes, seated in the front row next to Sadiq al-Mahdi and Ghazi al-Attabani, awaiting President Bashir to ascend the podium and deliver his ‘surprise speech’ on 27 January, was sufficient to signal to Khartoum’s political pundits that a grand bargain was underway in the capital’s saloons. Seated in the comfortable Chinese-built hall were essentially all the President’s love victims: Sadiq al-Mahdi the prime minister deposed in the 1989 coup; Hassan al-Turabi, the veteran sheikh evicted from power in the 1998/1999 showdown; Ghazi al-Attabani, the aspiring Islamist moderniser disciplined out of the NCP last November into the wilderness of an abortive sectarian split; Ali Osman Mohamed Taha and Nafie Ali Nafie, the sacrificial lambs of the NCP’s reform agenda, effectively purged out of government in the company of allies last December, in addition of course to the honourable Mahdi and Mirghani juniors, Sadiq al-Mahdi’s oldest Abd al-Rahman and Mohamed Osman al-Mirghani’s youngest Jaafar al-Sadiq, training on the job as assistants to the President. Order prevailed in the first and second rows, but from the third backward hierarchy was hard to ascertain, the scene closer to male congregations in a Sudanese bika (mourning house) than the audience of a state sovereign. Indeed, the event only took off when the President finished speaking and the guests could mingle at will, the well-ironed jellabiyas swooshing in tandem in the glow of the neon lamps. 

The seventy years old President strained to read what his cooks had prepared, a speech written in the artificial Arabic of the muthagafattiya, a dismissive term used to refer to pretentious intellectuals obsessed with convoluted form, and peppered with words dug out of a medieval dictionary as a measure of Islamic ornamentation. Had the President been in the class of an Arabic teacher of an old mould he would have surely failed ‘reading’, the vexing sentence structures and demanding grammar had him almost prostrating were it not for the intensive air-conditioning. Turabi, grimly composed, could not hide his disregard for the dyslexic officer seated above at presidential distance, grimacing in his distinctive manner in response to the embarrassing flow of errors. The backbenchers just chatted the time away undeterred by the passage of the cameras. The press had primed the public for a ‘surprise’, speculations founded on a remark by the former US president Jimmy Carter during his visit to Khartoum a week before and actively nourished by the NCP’s high priests. Carter told reporters after meeting President Bashir that the President would soon make “important” decisions. Predictions were that the President would resign and pass the baton to his new deputy Bakri Hassan Salih as head of a ‘transitional’ all-parties government. Apart from the injunction to place national interests above petty partisan concerns, ripped out of the pages of the ‘patriotic education’ curriculum that Sudanese pupils had to endure under Nimayri’s reign, the President offered the political club gathered under his watch an abstract invitation to dialogue with the ruling party on reform of the political system through the drafting of a new constitution and multi-party elections scheduled for 2015, peaceful resolution of armed conflicts in the country, economic reform, and closure on the contentious issue of Sudanese identity. 

The President’s speech brought “nothing new”, lacked a diagnosis of the country’s problems and offered no fundamental solutions, Turabi told the press afterwards, comments that were notably carried by the official Sudan News Agency (SUNA). NCP enthusiasts hailed the speech an “intellectual breakthrough” and the declaration of a new regime of peace and prosperity. The NCP’s deputy chairman, Ibrahim Ghandoor, who sat next to the reading President offering corrections, said President Bashir would deliver a follow-up talk to the less equipped masses to explain the first intended for a superior political audience once he returns from the African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa, but retracted the statement a day later. The best argument however was made by Amin Hassan Omer who said President Bashir did not wish to dictate dialogue mechanisms or outcomes on the political parties with the conviction that concrete propositions should be allowed to emerge from the very process of dialogue. Since the ‘surprise speech’ the chatter of the political class in Khartoum has been conducted predominantly in ‘dialogese’. Ghazi al-Attabani accompanied by trusted captains in his newly formed NCP-breakoff, aptly named the ‘Reform Now Movement’, trotted from one meeting to another as if on commission, first Hassan al-Turabi and his Popular Congress Party (PCP); then Sadiq al-Mahdi and his National Umma Party (NUP); leaders of the Unionist Movement, a runaway faction of Mirghani’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) that refused alliance in government with the NCP; the sheikhs of the pre-Turabi Muslim Brotherhood, and a new umbrella organisation christened the ‘National Movement for Change’ led by the presidential uncle Tayeb Mustafa. Attabani’s propagandists made sure that each meeting produced an official statement of consensus and a stylised photograph of the ‘leaders’ posing standing and seated in two neat rows in good old effendiya fashion. 

The surprise, if any, came with the PCP’s declaration that it accepts unconditional dialogue with the NCP in line with the President’s reform agenda. Kamal Omer, the party’s political secretary and spokesman of the opposition alliance, the National Consensus Forces (NCF), slipped as if on a banana peel from the antics of ‘overthrowing the regime’ to slick ‘dialogese’. Kamal accused the allies of yesterday, primarily the Communist Party and fractured remnants of the Nasserite and Baathist parties, of unwarranted recalcitrance and wished for a reunion of the parties of the historic Islamic Movement, the NCP and the PCP, in a heavenly gush of Islamic accord. Turabi’s deputy, Abdalla Hassan Ahmed, went further stressing that the PCP holds no grudges against the fellow ikhwan ([Muslim] brothers) of the NCP, not even against Taha and Nafie. Reporters close to the PCP ‘leaked’ stories of reconciliation bids between the eighty two years old Turabi and his most capable disciple, the seventy years old Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, the latest victim of the dyslexic officer, followed by reports that preparations for a meeting between Turabi and President Bashir were diligently pursued by keen mediators. NCP jellabiyas sought Turabi’s counsel in the dark of night but made sure to leave Manshiyya (the Khartoum neighbourhood where Turabi resides) before the break of light, it was claimed. 

President Bashir did eventually deliver a follow-up speech in free style but to the NCP’s Shura (Consultative) Council in the humbler ‘Martyr Zubeir Hall’ where he reiterated commitment to dialogue with the political parties and the armed opposition. The NCP instructed its coalition partners, an assortment of breakoff factions from almost the entire political spectrum, on the requirements of the new era; and a few days ago President Bashir received Sadiq al-Mahdi and a high-level delegation of his party joining the opposition-hardened Sara Nugdalla, chairwoman of the party’s politburo and a favourite of the gender-sensitised activists crowd, in the presidential guesthouse. The two sides agreed to deliberate on a mechanism and agenda for dialogue, said a statement after the meeting. The seventy eight years old Sadiq al-Mahdi, on his part, boasted to European Union (EU) ambassadors in Khartoum of taming the aging regime into democracy, and in similar fervour dismissed calls to step down from leadership of the NUP, a throne that he jealously occupies since the 1960s, as the fantasies of “spiteful and corrupt detractors”. 

The NCP’s calculation, it seems, is to entice the ‘Islamic’ opposition, primarily the PCP, the Reform Now Movement of Ghazi al-Attabani and the NUP, in addition to its minor Islamist allies in the cabinet, the pre-Turabi Muslim Brothers and Ansar al-Sunnah, into a broad alliance that would eventually determine the terms of a new constitution and form a safe majority in the upcoming elections. With this approach, the NCP in all likelihood wishes to proceed with a managed democracy, i.e. consensually partitioned constituencies in the upcoming elections, which would satisfy international beholders without running the risk of surrendering power. Such an arrangement of forces would confront the insurgent Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement in North Sudan (SPLA/M-N) and the holdout Darfur armed movements with a consolidated mainstream political class committed to some form of sharia rule and resistant to any substantive transformation of power, but would nevertheless allow the government to claim the desired fruits of ‘democratisation’, namely relief of Sudan’s international debt, lift of sanctions and definitive rapprochement with Western countries, primarily the US. The SPLA/M-N, in talks with the government in Addis Ababa, responded with a similar rationale inviting disenchanted stars of the opposition parties and armed movements as ‘experts’ irrespective of the position of their home organisations in a bid to stretch its national mantle and forge a counter-bloc to the NCP and its mainstream dialogue partners. Expectedly, the government announced that it is not in Addis Ababa to negotiate with ‘experts’ but with the SPLA/M-N proper over South Kordofan and the Blue Nile and tabled an offer that fell short of admitting a national mandate for the SPLA/M-N pushing the aspirant contender of central power to the local squabbles against NCP-allies in the two areas. 

If the SPLA/M-N’s perspective is to wind back to the six years relay of the CPA where it had the opportunity to invent the politics of the ‘New Sudan’ but failed, the NCP’s fantasy is to resurrect a political order that it has aggressively dismembered through the long years of its reign. A bloc joining the historic Islamic Movement and the NUP with Sadiq al-Mahdi and Hassan al-Turabi as bedfellows guarded by a president of military stock, whether Bashir or Bakri, seems an echo of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi’s third and fourth coalition cabinets (May 1988 – February 1989) between the NUP and the National Islamic Front (NIF) under Hassan al-Turabi and his able deputy Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, the NCP’s immediate ancestor. The coalition that flouted the opportunity to engage the SPLA/M under John Garang in negotiations with a constitutional process as their favoured channel preferring instead tactical rounds of sharia blackmailing. This time around, if such an alliance does materialise, Sadiq al-Mahdi enters the calculation as the junior partner and the SAF command preserves a presidential veto over its products. 

In fact, the SPLA/M-N in the long run might prove the ‘tamed’ partner that the NCP and its allies should actively welcome into the political club when compared to the more than real armies of the Sudanese hinterlands. As the President and his guests were exchanging niceties after the ‘surprise speech’ militia forces hired by the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) to fight against the SPLA/M-N in South Kordofan and the Blue Nile had camped outside al-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan State, seeking recuperation and reward. The state governor, Ahmed Haroun, organised on 12 January a welcome celebration for the gallant fighters, rebranded the Rapid Response Forces, to showcase their victories. SUNA identified the commander of the fighters as Brigadier-General Mohamed Hamdan Dalgo, better known as Himeidti, the lean commoner who announced himself back in 2010 a war chief of the Rizeigat of North Darfur. When asked how he ended up fighting the government’s counter-insurgency war in Darfur Himeidti said his herds had been rustled and his kin taken hostage by rebels while en route to Libya. I traded between Sudan, Chad, Libya and Egypt, and as far as Nigeria, he said at the time, the standard itinerary of the adventurous smuggler in Sudan’s western realms. By 2013 Himeidti had established himself as commander of the Darfur ‘Border Guards’, furniture businessman and prominent real estate owner in Nyala. He served as security advisor to three consecutive governors in South Darfur, Ali Mahmoud Abd al-Rasoul, Abd al-Hameed Musa Kasha and Hammad Ismail until his dismissal under the latter, a decision that Hammad was to regret considering the havoc Himeidti allegedly unleashed in Nyala forcing the central government to intervene and replace the besieged governor with the military officer Adam Mahmoud Jar al-Nabi. 

Himeidti’s Rapid Response Forces, five thousands according to conservative estimates, had troubles managing anger as they waited for pay, rather bored in al-Obeid’s dry environs. Gangs of militia fighters attacked their host villages in the first February week, looted a local market, and managed to kill at least four people, including a shopkeeper who refused to hand over the cash-starved fighters the money they demanded by the gun. Ahmed Haroun, rather struck by the fiasco, offered the people of North Kordofan an apology announcing that the Rapid Response Forces were not regular troops but a rogue militia of “herders” resistant to discipline, recruited by the NISS operations department. President Bashir, while still in Addis Ababa, reportedly had to communicate his displeasure to Himeidti and offer a satisfactory price for restraint. Accordingly, Haroun announced to the aggrieved kin of the slain shopkeeper, who carried the body of the deceased to the government’s headquarters in al-Obeid in protest, that the Rapid Response Forces would withdraw from North Kordofan within seventy two hours. Government media reported nervously that the the Rapid Response Forces are about to withdraw, have started withdrawing, are in the process of withdrawing, but never where to, until the deputy governor of South Darfur Mahdi Bosh declared on 12 February that the government in Nyala had completed preparations to receive the militia, news that signalled coming disaster for the crime-stricken city. If precedent is any measure, South Darfur is likely to witness a surge of ‘tribal’ battles, considering Himeidti’s main complaint. We don’t have land, he told an interviewer in 2013. In South Darfur, we are hosted by the Fur chief Abbakar Issa, whom we protect with our gunfire. I wonder whether Himeidti and his men, come the 2015 elections, would surrender to the authority of a NUP envoy to South Darfur, or rather carve an own autonomous space with their Fur ally and continue the business of selling their fighting power at the best price available. 

The political class in Khartoum might succeed in forging a future of mutual accommodation under a SAF sovereign, plagiarised from its past endeavours, but it is by all means a brittle one, much like time travel, precarious and full of surprises, Himeidti’s land hunger aside, the government, no less eager to appropriate land for its own rent purposes, declared recently a plan to form a national land authority with the power to acquire 'unregistered' land, trade it off to investors, and adjudicate on land disputes between locals claimants and foreign investors supported by a separate prosecutor office and police force. The last time the government attempted to grab worthwhile land, namely the Jebel Amir gold mines in North Darfur, it precipitated a months-long war that eventually had even Musa Hilal, Himeidti’s cousin and role-model, calling for ‘reform’.

يا عادل: معاداة الامبريالية تموت تخلي

سخر عادل الباز في كلمة السبت الماضي من عبارة نسبها لفاروق أبو عيسي معلقا على اجتماع النادي السياسي "المحترم" بين يدي الرئيس البشير قبل أيام، كلهم استعداد كما يبدو للوثوب، الأعمى شايل المكسر. كتب عادل أن فاروقا قال: "الجمع الذي حضر خطاب الرئيس يعبر عن محاولة لحماية مصالح أميركا والامبريالية العالمية." عد عادل عبارات فاروق هذه، وهي أصدق ما قال ربما، مجرد شعاراتية بائدة، وتوجس من عودة فاروق لتبني مواجهات الستينات بين قوى اليمين "الرجعية"، الأمة والاتحادي والأخوان، وقوى اليسار "التقدمية". ختم عادل كلمته بالقول أن تحالف المعارضة الذي يمثل أبو عيسى لا يملك سندا جماهيريا يسد به شارع الستين ناهيك عن طريق الامبريالية التي أطاحت بالاتحاد السوفييتي.

إن تورط فاروق في تهم دعائية، "يستطيع أي صبي سياسي بلا قيمة أن يدمغ بها مخالفيه" كما كتب عادل، فقد تورط رئيس تحرير الرأي العام الواثب في تبخيس لا يليق بحجة ظاهرة، أعادها بعبارات ألين من حديث فاروق صفوت فانوس أستاذ السياسة. كتب صفوت عن القلق من تشكيل حلف يجمع الأحزاب ذات المرجعية الدينية، الأمة والإتحادي وتنظيمات الأخوان الثلاثة، الوطني والشعبي والإصلاح الآن، في مواجهة غيرهم، لكن استبعده بشاهد أن الشقاق بين الإسلاميين، بين الشعبي والوطني ثم الوطني وجماعة غازي، لم يكن بسبب مسائل مسائل فكرية وإسلامية وإنما بسبب السلطة والحكم، هي لله، هي لله!

منطق صفوت، إن أخذته إلى منتهاه، يصرف الدين عن الإسلاميين ويردهم إلى الاقتصاد السياسي فحركتهم السياسية "علمانية" واحتجاجهم بالإيمان كذلك، خلافاتهم لدى صفوت لا شرح لها في العقائد وإنما في الوقائع. بذات المنطق، إن تخاصم الإسلاميون على السلطة فمدعاة اتفاقهم الخوف من ذهابها بالمرة. إن كان من طريق إلى الصلح (أو الإصلاح) بين الإسلاميين إذن فيمر حتما بمقاعد السلطة، لا بحلقات التلاوة، يشكها ويوزعها ولو بعد حين، هذه المرة تحت خيمة الرئيس، يدعو إليها حزب الأمة لينضم إلى الحزب الاتحادي الديمقراطي الممدد منذ زمن في ظلها.

ما علاقة الامبريالية بهذه الغاغا إذن؟ كأي "صبي سياسي بلا قيمة" ظني أن قوى النادي السياسي التي تنادت إلى الرئيس تريد "الدبارة" لا تخالف بعضها في الإذعان لتوجيهات صندوق النقد والبنك الدوليين، الشروط المطلوبة لإعفاء ديون حكومة السودان ثم مدها مجددا بالقروض، بما في ذلك "إصلاح" البيئة السياسية والقانونية حتى تواتي هوى الاستثمارات الأجنبية المباشرة بخلاف الصينية. كما لا شجار بين قوى اليمين هذه يستحق الذكر على صلاح النموذج الاقتصادي التي فرضته حكومات الرئيس البشير المتتالية ولا يشغلها الرابط الموضوعي بين شراسة التراكم البدائي المحروس ببنادق الدولة في أطراف البلاد حبيسة الاقتصاد المعيشي غالب الأمر، بما في ذلك نزع الأرض  وتهجير السكان متى جذبت بمواردها عين الحكومة الحارة، وبين تصاعد الصراعات المسلحة واستمرارها المزمن. بهذا القياس، إن كان النادي السياسي لا يرى غضاضة في موالاة الامبريالية، كما كتب عادل، فإن الذين خرجوا على الحكومة في حارات العاصمة في سبتمبر الماضي لا تروق لهم روشتاتها "الإصلاحية"، سيلتئم جمعهم بالضرورة بالتضاد مع جمع الجلاليب "البيضا مكوية" في قاعة الصداقة، والفورة ألف.     

النادي السياسي: ساهي لاهي وسكري

اجتمع النادي السياسي بصمة خشمه عند الرئيس البشير في قاعة الصداقة، صفوف من الرؤوس معلقة بين العمم والجلاليب، بذقون وبغيرها، فخطب فيهم كما مدير المدرسة في طابور الصباح. شكر الله وصلى على خاتم الأنبياء ثم صرف لهم من النصح "الوطني" ما تيسر في ساعة الليل تلك وبعض البطون تصوصو لا بد في انتظار العشاء، ماذا سيكون الليلة يا ترى؟ استحضر أحدهم، وصوت الرئيس يعذب الميكروفونات تعذيبا، ميقات الدواء فمد يده إلى جيب الجلابية، أسكت حس السمارت فون بحركة أولى فصمت الواتساب عن الجكي جك، جكي جك، وبحركة ثانية ضغط الحبة البيضاء خارج قصديرها، تتك، ثم مدها بسرعة إلى فم مفتوح بحركة تثاؤب متحضرة وألحقها بماء "صافية" لا يغشاه عكر. "لا بأس عليك يا شيخنا"، قال السغيل البصاص من خلفه؛ رد عليه "جزاك الله خير" واستعدل في جلسته. مد ذراعا يكرش ظهر ساقه ثم سحب قدما والأخرى خارج الشبشب اللامع لتغوص في موكيت القاعة البارد، يا سلام، قاتل الله وجع الرجلين.

كان الرئيس وقتها قد وصل "أحابيل" بعد "كلالة" فانتبه صاحبنا يراجع أذنيه، هل هو الشمع يا ترى أم الشعيرات الطويلة التي طالما رفض قصها، شوشت على سمعه. نظر من حوله فرأى الرؤوس تحيط به، هذا يسنده كف أحاط منه بالحنك وذلك قائم على أطراف الأصابع، تومئ بالإيجاب الرزين والعيون تبحلق في غياب، فأومأ هو كذلك برأسه يخشى أن يفوته من المهرجان شئ. لم يستطع التركيز أكثر فدغدغة الموكيت في باطن قدمه فرضت عليه نعاسا لينا حاول الفرار من شركه بتوجيه نظره إلى حيث أصحاب الكاميرات عله يجذب بقوة النظر أحدهم فيرى "الجماعة" صورته في التلفزيون. ندم على الـتأخير الذي فرض عليه الجلوس في هذه الصفوف الخلفية، بعيدا عن برق الفلاشات. قال في سره: "كلو من المرة النكد دي، نقتها أكتر منها" ثم شكر الله على نعمة "الجماعة".

"والسلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته"، قال الرئيس وقام مبتسما، عندها هب صاحبنا من مقعده الخلفي مسرعا يجرجر الشبشب ويلعن الموكيت، فقد حانت ساعة "الجد". أسرع إلى المقدمة فصافح نافع بحرارة لم يلاحظها الأخير، ومنه جرى بيده الممدودة إلى الترابي، "شيخ حسن... السلام عليكم"، ثم استدار نحو غازي "يا دكتور.. يا دكتور"! "ده شيخ علي؟" قال بصوت عال وربت بيده على كتف الرجل المشغول عنه. أدار بصره كرة أخرى حول الجلاليب تهفهف من حوله فمر على ود الصادق ثم ود الميرغني، "يا سعادتك.."، "يا مولانا.." ثم قفل راجعا خطوة والثانية ليصطدم بظهر منصور خالد، "يا دكتور..حصل لينا الشرف والله". نادى بكري القريب منه "سعادتو.. ما باركنا ليك، كنت مسافر والله، أول ما رجعت ضربت لي مدير مكتبك، انت غيرت النمرة ولا شنو؟" أكمل دورة أخرى من السلام، جلاليب الدرجة الثانية والثالثة، ثم استعدل عمته. أخرج السمارت فون والمفتاح من الجيب العميق، ثم شد الخطوات نحو الباب بهمة رئاسية. رفع يده بالتحية وهو يعبر شباب الحراسة، "سلام عليكم يا أخوانا، ساهروا بيكم الجماعة ديل الليلة.. قلت ليكم، كورة مانشستر انتهت كم بالله؟"    

Rift Valley Institute Field Courses 2014

The Rift Valley Institute's field courses on Sudan and South Sudan, the Horn of Africa, and the Great Lakes take place from May to July 2014. Now in their eleventh year, the courses provide a basis for understanding current political and developmental challenges in the region. They are taught by teams of leading specialists—from the region and beyond–and offer a unique opportunity to spend time with an outstanding group of specialists, away from routine distractions. RVI courses are designed for policy-makers, diplomats, investors, development workers, researchers, activists and journalists—for new arrivals in the region and those already working there who wish to deepen their knowledge. A dawn-to-dusk programme of seminars, lectures, group discussions and special events examines the key social, environmental, political and cultural features of each of the three sub-regions.

Horn of Africa Course

31 May - 6 June 2014

The 2014 Horn of Africa Course, held in Kenya from 31 May to 6 June, will cover Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Somaliland, Puntland, and northern Kenya. The course offers a multi-disciplinary examination of the crises afflicting the Horn and explores continuity and change under new political leadership at the national and sub-national level across the region. 

Sudan and South Sudan Course

14 - 20 June 2014

The Sudan and South Sudan Course will also be held in Kenya, from 14 to 20 June. New rebellions and ongoing civil war in both the Sudans have put social and economic development in jeopardy. Understanding the history of state formation and conflict in the two countries is more important than ever. The course addresses the challenge of working in this complex, fluid environment, linking analysis of current events to contextual understanding of history, politics, war, society and economy. 

Great Lakes Course

28 June - 4 July 2014

The Great Lakes Course Course, held in Burundi from 28 June to 4 July, will cover Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Director of Studies is Jason Stearns. The 2014 course will examine the ongoing violence in the Kivus in the wake of the defeat of the M23 rebel group, and the prospects of institutional reform in the DRC as the country prepares for local elections. In Burundi, it will examine the challenges facing the country in the run-up to the 2015 elections. For Rwanda, the focus will be on the tensions between political liberalization and the top-down approach to economic and social development. The course is in English and French with simultaneous translation.

To apply online—and to obtain further information on courses, staff, and locations—please visit www.riftvalley.net/key-projects/courses and download the 2014 Field Course Prospectus. Applications are considered in order of receipt. Places are limited. You can apply here.

Accounts of previous years’ courses can be found here, and testimonials from previous course participants can be read here. In the coming months the RVI will be sending out updates on the courses, including on teaching staff and locations. In order to receive these, please subscribe to the RVI mailing list. You can also follow the Institute on Twitter and Facebook.

The RVI Nairobi Forum - South Sudan: Is Peace Possible?

The crisis in South Sudan: swapping partners

When asked by the New York Time how he imagines the current crisis in South Sudan to end Jok Madut Jok, one of the country’s leading intellectuals, answered with obvious resignation referring to President Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar: “The two men will eventually sit down, resolve their issues, laugh for the cameras, and the thousands of civilians who have died will not be accounted for.” Jok might well be right, the question is rather when, or at the price of how many lives? Indeed, the South Sudanese negotiators from the two sides started talks about talks in the Ethiopian capital with keen hugs. The dead, alas, cannot share in the tokens of good will on display in Addis Ababa’s Sheraton. 

As things stand, two interlocking factors are likely to determine the timing of the awaited respite: the balance of military power on the battlefields between the two men and the nature and extent of regional involvement in the South Sudanese theatre of war, with the second factor probably overdetermining the first. In the record of old Sudan’s wars, of which the current conflict in independent South Sudan constitutes a continuity, as much as a break, there are no victors, only the dead, and the negotiators and their ‘peace’ agreements, and of course books, some good ones with ignored lessons, and many that lay or rather renew the ideological ground for new wars. 

Under the category ideology one should also consider media coverage of events in South Sudan. Ominously, mainstream Sudanese press and Western media, apart from some sane exceptions, shared the same outlook, namely the notion of atavistic drives devouring a country constituted of tribal hordes not peoples. Reports of the insurgency in southern Sudan always ended with the line that the war was between a Muslim Arab north and a Christian and animist African south. This time around, the standard wisdom was confrontation between the Dinka and the Nuer, or a variant thereof, usually the more qualified reminder that President Kiir is a Dinka and Riek Machar a Nuer, with the note that the Dinka constitute South Sudan’s largest ethnic group. ‘Quick descent’ from a power struggle between President Kiir and his former deputy to a civil war pitting the Dinka against the Nuer is then declared but left to the trusting consumer to fathom. Assuming the above reasoning to hold, the mystery is rather how is it at all possible that the Nuer and the Dinka are not at each other’s throats all the time, battle-keen as they are supposed to be. 

If the on-going insurgency in Sudan’s South Kordofan and the Blue Nile is a tangential off-shoot of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed between the Sudan government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), unsettled business as it were, so is the current crisis in South Sudan. Liberal peace-making efforts at the time consciously divorced between the necessity of ending the war and the condition of restructuring state power to secure peace, termed rather euphemistically ‘democratic transformation’. The outcome was reproduction of the National Congress Party (NCP) autocracy in Khartoum and the implantation of its precarious double in Juba under banners of the SPLA/M turned into a ruling party, argument being that only those with the capacity to wage war deserved to dictate the terms of peace, and so they did. The contradiction, so dear to the ‘experts’, between the Arab Muslim north and the African Christian animist south was resolved by an international border of terribly poor resolution. The contradictions that sustained the war however, primary among them the capture of the state by “bourgeoisified bureaucratic elites” to use John Garang’s eerie terminology, adding the adjective militarised in the case of South Sudan to account for the legacy of the liberation struggle, as opposed to the rural mass of the population, were accepted as destiny if not actively encouraged to facilitate ‘peace’. Consider in that regard how the 2010 elections, the landmark event of ‘democratic transformation’ under the 2005 CPA, were internationally delivered to the NCP in northern Sudan and the SPLM in southern Sudan without even the grace of acknowledging their farcical nature aloud. Yasir Arman’s aborted presidential candidacy on a SPLM ticket was the dramatic entertainment offered to the indulgent, a non-event to square the ‘bi-partisan’ deal. A long-time Garangist, Yasir is yet to come to terms with the secession of South Sudan, his politics remain a hangover from the days of the big man. 

In northern Sudan, the 2010 elections proved the main catalyst for the renewed insurgency in South Kordofan, a count of votes, contested and corrupted, could on no account address a situation where a ‘national’ army was in a haste to do away with combatants still in command of an arsenal and territory. In southern Sudan, the now forgotten insurgency of George Athor who lost the bid for the gubernatorial post in Jonglei State when the SPLM endorsed the candidacy of Kuol Manyang Juuk was arguably a foretaste of how electoral politics operate when the ruling political party doubles as an army. Athor died in disputed circumstances in December 2011. Riek Machar, yesterday’s vice president and today’s rebel, claimed Athor was killed in a clash with a border patrol unit after crossing back into Equatoria following a trip to Rwanda. For enthusiasts of the Dinka-Nuer rivalry George Athor was a Padeng-Dinka. In terms of agreements, South Sudan had its own ‘protocols’ to add to the CPA, comparable to the rushed and ill-fated CPA protocols on the Three Areas, South Kordofan, the Blue Nile and Abyei, namely the 2006 Juba Declaration signed with the South Sudan Defence Forces (SSDF) led by the late Paulino Matieb. An umbrella of militia formations comparable in size to the SPLA itself, the SSDF trace their evolution back to the 1978 Anya Nya II of Upper Nile but were born out of the 1997 Khartoum Peace Agreement signed with the South Sudan Independence Army/Movement (SSIA/M) of Riek Machar, the SPLA/M-United of Lam Akol, the Equatoria Defence Force (EDF), Kerubino Kawanyn Bol’s own SPLA/M and ‘other groups’.

The SSDF were arguably the SAF’s greatest asset in the war against the SPLA/M. Oil production in Western Upper Nile (aptly renamed Unity State) would not have been possible without Paulino Matieb’s soldiers, under subcontract of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) military intelligence. If South Kordofan and the Blue Nile were the SPLA/M’s south within the north the SSDF were the Khartoum government’s mobile north within the south. The CPA stipulated the dissolution of the SSDF, a prospect that John Garang probably considered in earnest but did not survive to test. Garang died in July 2005, and his successor Salva Kiir opted for absorption of the SSDF into the SPLA, a decision that found expression in the 8 January 2006 Juba Declaration. Accordingly, the ageing Matieb was appointed deputy commander of the SPLA, but “integration”, “unity” and “reconciliation”, the key words of the declaration, were ripped out of a military dictionary not a political one. Former SSDF commanders including Peter Gadet, Gordon Kong and others, kept the revolving doors of the SPLA busy in cycles of mutiny and pardon. In that regard, Riek Machar’s return to the “bush” as prince over old company spikes an established trend, so far as to plateau in Addis Ababa’s Sheraton. 

It should come as no surprise then that President Kiir turned to his CPA partner President Bashir for counsel with the oil arteries of the twin regimes at stake. President Bashir landed in Juba on Monday accompanied by the chiefs of his military-security cabal to pronounce that no forces opposed to the Juba government will be allowed to operate out of Sudan, and Sudan’s Foreign Minister Ali Karti claimed that Juba had asked for talks on deployment of a joint force to guard South Sudan’s oil fields. Military intelligence in Khartoum obviously has more to offer to counterparts in Juba than Kampala ever can. The rebellion in South Sudan comes at a time when the SAF is engaged in its widest counter-insurgency campaign in South Kordofan and the Blue Nile since the resumption of war in 2011, and offers Khartoum the opportunity to seal the security pact it always wished for, sanction to operate behind the lines of the SPLA/M in North Sudan and its allies in the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF). The pro-government press in Khartoum prepared public opinion for the shift from ‘friendly’ to ‘brotherly’ South Sudan with reports attributed to anonymous South Sudanese military experts that forces of the SRF were fighting alongside Riek Machar’s allies in Unity State. On a more composed note, officials maintained that Machar had recanted on his pledge not to disturb oil production. Ironically, it is Khartoum that is now invited to stabilise the SPLA/M regime in Juba, the Chinese to mediate between President Kiir and his former deputy, and Lam Akol who faces Machar’s delegates as Kiir’s negotiator. The Prendergastians must be aghast. In this world, say Omdurmani grandmothers, you might even get to witness your own mother’s bridal dance, if that’s any solace.

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.