The First Southern War 1955-1972 1955 – 1972
Based on the above analysis of the nature of the political-ideological debate, it seems to us that the First Southern War, which broke out on the eve of independence, embodied the result of the dominance of the advocates of the deconstructionist movement over government formations after independence. To understand the real reasons behind the outbreak of that war, it is not enough just to hide and conceal ourselves as one looks at one’s own faults in others, insisting that the divide and rule policy followed by the British colonialists was the direct cause of the outbreak of the war. The report of the Commission of Inquiry into the rebellion in 1955 stated, “For political, financial, geographic, and economic reasons, northern Sudan was able to develop rapidly in all fields: local government, irrigation systems, health, higher education, and industrial development. While the South lagged behind in all similar fields. This marked disparity between two different groups living in one country creates, without a doubt, a feeling among the backward group, whether real or imagined, that they have been deceived, exploited, and subjugated by force.”[Francis ding]. Most importantly, the committee pointed out in its report a very important fact: “We found sufficient evidence confirming that the real problem in the south is a political problem, not a religious one. Christians and southern Muslims all participated in the events, and some of those who led the anti-North propaganda were southern Muslims.” Francis Deng
It seems to us that it is necessary to take a look at the role of the Sudanese educated elite in the north and south that led the anti-colonial political movement and activated it in a massive popular movement that led the country to declare independence on January 1, 1956. It may surprise you that we begin by discussing the First Southern War. Excerpts from a research written by a Japanese researcher, Yoshiko Kurita, entitled “Ali Abdel Latif and the 1924 Revolution: An Investigation into the Sources of the Sudanese Revolution,” in which it was stated, “It was somewhat surprising.” Doesn’t the issue of these tribally bred Negroes (referring to Ali Abdel Latif and some of his companions) attract sufficient attention in the field of Sudanese studies, because the study of these people, who were uprooted from their local indigenous community and found themselves making their way in the northern cities, may reveal to us in the first place a more exciting aspect of the changes that affected Sudanese society due to modernization, and on the other hand the study of these blacks seems indispensable for understanding Sudanese patriotism or identity” [Al-Sir Makki]. The secret is Makki
Truth be told, Kurita touched on the truth by saying that the issue of tribally bred Negroes has been ignored in the study of Sudan’s modern or, if we like, contemporary history. We must be aware of the role played by the colonial administration in marginalizing the position of the cultivated Negroes, such that they were no longer effective after the 1940s. We believe that the policy of the South aimed to crystallize marginalization, such that this marginalization became an indicator of the completion of the division into North/South, and thus to the explosion of the crisis after preparing the ground on the eve of independence, a crisis that came to the surface as an embodiment of what has become the problem of Sudanese identity.
The armed uprising of 1924 was a living embodiment of the call for national unity that would accommodate all Sudanese, regardless of their diversity and diversity. Abdul Latif did not present himself as a Dinka, but only as a Sudanese. This was the case with those of purely local origins, who were living, after they had separated from their original tribes and regions, in the cities of the north. As a result of the acculturation process, the regional tribal element dissolved, and a number of outcasts, such as Ali Abdel Latif, Abdel Fadil Al Maz, and Zain El Abidine Abdel Tam, became involved at the social and political level in organizations that included the forces of modern civil servants and officers.
Anyone who follows the course of the colonial administration’s policy will not miss the fact that this policy in the period 1920-1930 was characterized by a clear force of division between the two parts of the country by stoking the spirit of tribalism in both parts. During that period, religious and tribal feelings were intensely inflamed, which paved the way for framing the political movement in the country socially and economically within sectarian frameworks by exploiting the same methodology proposed by Lugard, which concerns recognition, not legitimacy. Rather, it was due to the will of the British officials to leave small matters to the traditional local leaders so that these leaders would be able to contain the anti-colonial movement. We do not say this merely for theoretical analysis, as historical evidence indicates that the sectarian leaders submitted a memorandum to the colonial administration in which they recorded their condemnation of the armed uprising.
The response of the educated elite after the strike of the uprising was represented by the isolation of the northern elite in its literary societies, and the movement of the exiled people to their tribes and regions and the call to organize their people on ethnic lines. The educated northern elite was divided into literary societies, the most important of which were the Abrouf School and the Al-Mawradah School. The Iberuvians, despite their claim to belong to Fabian thought calling for liberalism and socialism, had fallen into the clutches of Islamic Arabism, moving away from the issue of ethnic cultural diversity, as was expressed in the works of its most prominent figures, Hassan and Hussein Ahmed Al-Kadd, and Khidr Hamad. As for the Al-Mawradah School (later Al-Hashmab), some of its thinkers, such as the brothers Muhammad and Abdullah Ashry Al-Siddiq, waged an intellectual struggle against Muhammad Ahmad Mahjoub, Muhammad Abd al-Halim, and Ahmad Yusuf Hashim, who insisted on adhering to the abolitionist Islamic Arabist tendency. Thus, by the eve of independence, the northern educated elite and religious sectarianism had helped to form a northern conscience and mind that refused to recognize other ethnic and cultural groups, calling them barbaric, pagan, and so on. Thus, a transcendental and Stonian mentality was replaced by the Western British colonial mentality.
The sectarian forces and the educated northern elite had sheepishly agreed to the decisions of the Juba Conference in 1947, although Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi recently tried to justify the repudiation of those decisions by saying, “The strongest expression of this policy (meaning southern autonomy) was embodied in the Juba Conference held in June 1947, in which, in addition to British Sudanese government employees and northern employees, southern employees and a number of southern tribal leaders participated in it, in addition to one northern tribal leader.” The conference ended with a decision In two matters: that the North and the South shall be one state, and that the proposed Legislative Assembly must represent all of Sudan. A quick glance at the minutes of the conference sessions shows that there were basic reservations expressed by the representatives of the South, but they were not heeded by the British representatives because the decisions of the conference had been prepared in advance. These reservations can be summarized as follows: Firstly, the South cannot decide on the issue of a single state, and secondly, the South is not yet prepared to participate in the Legislative Assembly, as is the case in the North Al-Shanqeeti - the highest-ranking northerner in attendance - made several guarantees and statements, but despite her good intentions, she cannot be considered a representative of the North or binding on it.
This disavowal, which Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi emphasizes, is a justification for specific positions that Al-Sadiq adhered to, regardless of fluctuations and changes, and it is not permissible to hide the fact that it became a adherence that led to the escalation of Sudan’s current crisis. Historical reality indicates that, prior to independence, the northern powers agreed to the demand for federalism or self-rule for the south, which was the demand put forward by the organized political forces in the south, including the educated elite and the sultans. However, the northern deconstructive political forces, no matter how al-Sadiq tried to justify their position, immediately began to disavow the agreement they had concluded and signed, which prompted the northern unifying forces to warn of the dangers that could result from such a disavowal. This is how Al-Sarha newspaper reported to us on the morning of September 28, 1954, with a statement issued by a faction of the Tawhidi Movement, the Anti-Colonial Front (the predecessor of the current Sudanese Communist Party), in which it indicated its objection to signs of disavowal, stressing that if the proposals for autonomy for the south were not accepted and implemented, the unity of Sudan would be in danger. The Front saw that the problem of the south has more than one face, and that this problem is one face of many regional problems facing Sudan, proposing that all problems be solved at the same level. In its statement, the Front described Sudan as a state with multiple nationalities, indicating that regional autonomy is the only appropriate solution, and that this type of autonomy must not weaken a unified Sudan. In the same statement, it called for bridging the development gap between the two parts of the country and called for narrowing the educational gap between the two parts and for equal wages.
Despite the dangers alluded to in the Anti-Colonial Front's statement, the advocates of deconstructionism insisted on their position and continued to escalate their foolish deconstructionist policy. The northern educated elite of deconstructionists, immersed in and identified with their applied functional anthropological visions, saw only and only their right to adopt Arabism and Islam, closing their eyes to the need for this to grow in an atmosphere of peaceful cultural movement away from coercion cloaked in the guise of the majority and aiming to liquidate other ethnic structures as minorities. The advocates of decolonization in the North failed to see the fact that the refusal to belong to inferior and barbaric cultures, a refusal that was expressed through the process of decolonization underway at that time, had led the educated southern elite to demand two main things that seem contradictory if we look at them in the abstract, but they are actually complementary in terms of their meaning. Their rejection of negative cultures in the face of Western practices and outlook led them to reject colonial indirect administration as a form of Western discourse that leads to alienation, or as an expression of a Western pattern of relationship with colonized peoples belonging to the past. Thus, the southern elite saw in the northerners’ disavowal of the agreed-upon autonomy for the South as a form of return to the policy of indirect administration, a form of discourse this time, Arab-Islamic that leads to alienation and as an expression of a subordination relationship imposed on them before. The Northerners, therefore, rejected the principle of replacing Arab-Islamic cultural sovereignty with Western colonial cultural sovereignty, which was required by the process of decolonization.
The sectarian educated elite did not attempt to approach the essence of the basic national issue, the issue of ethnic and cultural diversity and the sharing of power and wealth. In this regard, Joseph Garang, a member of the Political Bureau of the Sudanese Communist Party, wrote in his book “The Crisis of the Southern Intellectual,” which means that a group of southern intellectuals emerged in 1953, such as Pauline Aller, Isaac Day, Santino Deng, Ton Aterbar, Vincento Bazian, Circeo Ero, and Rod Tito Onzezi. They shared the northern powers’ hostility to British colonialism, and therefore they allied themselves with the anti-colonial forces in North. But the first northern national government with which this group was allied did not address the basic issues raised by the group: economic development, the principle of equal pay, the abolition of the royal tax, raising the standard of living of the southern citizen, and participation in state agencies. This was frustrating for that group and was in the interest of the advocates of Afrocentrism who called for the separation of the South.
The war broke out when the inclusion of the civil service in the south was confirmed, and that was with the rebellion of the army garrison in Torit in 1955, four months before independence. This rebellion was a declaration of the beginning of the Anyanya movement (1) and the first southern war, which lasted seventeen years, and reached its ideological climax during the rule of the military government during the era of Ibrahim Abboud 1958-1964, when military operations escalated in their ugliest forms and Abboud declared his complete rejection of federalism with determination. He sought unity within the framework of a central government system, and tended to spread Islam and the Arabic language by force of arms. He issued a law in 1962 prohibiting Christian proselytization. He also began to reduce the number of southerners conscripted into the army.
Thus, a complete return was made to the previous colonial policy that adopted the principle of proselytization carrying civilization, with the difference that the former was Christian while the latter was Islamic. The military government did not realize the shortcomings of its policy and remained far from what Girault had indicated, namely the impossibility of imposing uniformity. The military government’s authority says that colonialism drove a wedge in relations between the North and the South by dedicating the South to a closed area where it built churches and did not allow Muslim preachers to compete among the pagan tribes. Since these tribes remained languishing in backwardness, in order for them to have the opportunity to rise, the dominance of the Church must be stopped and the way opened for Muslim preachers to spread alone, armed with the state’s ideological and non-ideological weapons, to Islamize these discordant tribes, ignoring their ancient heritage. and local cultures, traditional African religions and their own value systems. However, the policy of replacing Christian missionaries with Muslim preachers did not provide anything in the field of development, health, or education for those ethnic groups. Rather, the policy of preachers adopted the same goals of civil evangelism and used its same tools.
After the 1964 uprising that overthrew the military government, the Round Table Conference was held in March 1965, and the monotheist forces stood up again and announced their vision through a speech stating the necessity of developing the country’s resources in all regions of Sudan so that the forces of modern production can grow and thus broad and effective democratic forces are formed in all regions of Sudan. That speech said that when Arab-Islamic culture came to this country, it did not find it empty, but rather found it based on cultural roots that had been established for thousands of years, and therefore it was influenced by what it found and in return influenced by what it found.
In 1965, during the government headed by Mohamed Ahmed Mahjoub as head of the Umma Party, the military leadership in the south liquidated a number of southern intellectuals in Juba and Wau, usually making them a fifth column for the Anyanya armed movement. This heinous crime led to an angry mass movement led by the unifying forces, which resulted in the formation of what became known as the Committee of Twelve in June 1965, from six representatives. for the southern parties and six representatives for the northern parties. There were many points of disagreement, the most important of which was the insistence of the representatives of the southern parties on the necessity of adopting the principle of recognition of cultural pluralism and the development of different cultures. However, the advocates of Islamic Arabism in the committee insisted on refusing to approve this principle, and their panic even reached such an extent that they could no longer bear to hear the voice of the advocates of the monotheistic tendency, so their decision was to dissolve the Sudanese Communist Party and expel its freely and directly elected representatives from Parliament under the cover of an argument that they fabricated falsely, slanderously, and without shame. Regarding this decision, Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi came out after a silence that lasted for years to finally say a shy word of sincerity in his lecture in Kampala, “What happened was one of the unfortunate events in the history of Sudan. It demonstrates the arbitrariness of using the mechanical majority without foresight. The dissolution of the Communist Party had serious consequences. The party appealed to the judiciary against the decisions of Parliament, and the conflict between the legislative authority and the judicial authority resulted in a serious weakening of the democratic system of government.”
The second democracy, like its predecessor and the military government of Abboud, ended as a result of its racist puritanism and its adherence to a deconstructive project stemming from an Islamic Arab tendency that saw in the South and other marginalized ethnic regions nothing but minority entities that must submit to the will of the majority and accept the dissolution of their cultural identity.
The Military Council of the May coup had appointed Joseph Garang as Minister of Southern Affairs, and Joseph Garang proposed a draft policy for the south that contained nine points, which Sadiq al-Mahdi described as characterized by political awareness. However, the Revolutionary Command Council did not care about that policy, so the war continued. In 1972, the Mayo military regime found itself forced, under the pressure of the bleeding war, to conclude the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement on the basis of autonomy for the south. The SPLM delegates described the agreement as “a deal between the northern and southern bureaucratic bourgeois elite. The northern elite dictated the terms while the southern elite bargained with the interests of the masses for the jobs they had long been deprived of. Thus, the southerners were finally granted the jobs they desired in 1956 in 1972, and the price was a million and a half souls. That is why the agreement was destined to collapse because it ignored the real interests of the masses.”
In July 1983, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement Manifesto was announced, which expressed goals that had been formulated long ago by the advocates of the monotheist movement, especially the left in the north and south. The movement announced that its goal was to reformulate political and social relations within Sudanese society, and stressed that the primary goal of the movement and the Sudan People's Liberation Army "is not to separate the south, as the south is an integral part of Sudan, and Africa has been sufficiently fragmented by colonialism and modern colonialism, and that more... “Divisionism will only serve Africa’s enemies.”
In confirmation of this principled position, the leader of the movement, John Garang Mabior, announced in a paper defining the general policy of the movement, which was issued on March 3, 1984, that “decay, moral erosion, and all of Sudan’s diseases cannot be addressed except within the framework of a unified Sudan.” Thus, on the twenty-second of March, the goals of the political movement were defined as follows:
First, the movement’s commitment to the liberation of all of Sudan and the unity of its people and lands;
Second, the commitment to creating a new, democratic Sudan;
Third, the commitment to address Sudan’s national and religious problems in a way that satisfies all Sudanese within a democratic and secular framework;
Fourth, standing for true autonomy or a federal system for all regions of Sudan;
Fifth, commitment to the process of radically rebuilding the authority of the central government in a way that definitively and fundamentally addresses the concentration of power in the hands of any group.
After the elimination of the Mayo military regime, the sectarian parties did not take the goals announced by the movement seriously and began, as usual, to cloud the political atmosphere with accusations, rumors, and doubts about the SPLM’s sincerity and commitment to the unity of Sudan, forgetting that its own sincerity is questionable since it renounced its repeated promises, as we alluded to.
What is striking is not the insistence of the now ruling Islamic Front to continue with the same plan, since spreading false rumours, accusations and slanders has been a feature that has distinguished it since the beginning of its history, but rather it is the return of Sadiq al-Mahdi once again to the basis of the deconstructive Islamic Arabist tendency with determination after his separation from the National Democratic Rally, which he claims to have founded! He began talking about what he called the hidden agenda of the Popular Movement, knowing that we are fully convinced that he knows very well that this hidden agenda is nothing but the rational, democratic new Sudan project for which all Sudan’s unified political forces, including the Popular Movement, will continue to fight. Anyone who follows the course of the political debate during the Third Democracy from 1985 to 1989, which Sadiq al-Mahdi had the honor of presiding over its entire life, cannot help but notice the movement’s adherence to its national agenda and its failure to claim a monopoly on setting the details of the process of political reconstruction of Sudan. It was content only with defining the basic structures, principles, aspirations, and basics of national reconstruction. The Popular Movement, like the unified forces in the geographical north, spoke only about pluralistic freedoms, decentralization, and unity. These are the same principles that the Umma Party, headed by Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi, signed in Asmara in the Declaration of Principles of the National Democratic Rally in 1995, a declaration that Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi disavowed and was accompanied by Mubarak Al-Fadil’s signature and in his presence of an alternative declaration of principles between him and the head of the Salvation Government, Omar Al-Bashir in Djibouti.
In March 1986, the Popular Movement and the National Democratic Rally for the Salvation of the Country agreed to announce a proposed program for national action that became known as the Kokadam Declaration. The two parties agreed that the main requirements that will create a climate leading to the holding of the proposed Constitutional Conference are:
That all political forces and the current government (the Siwar al-Dhahab transitional government) declare their commitment to discussing Sudan’s main problems and not the so-called problem of the south;
Lifting the state of emergency;
Repeal the laws of September 1983 and all other laws restricting freedoms;
Implementing the 1956 Constitution, amending 1964, including the regional government;
Canceling military agreements with other countries that affect the national sovereignty of Sudan.
The two parties also agreed that the current government would dissolve itself and be replaced by an interim national unity government representing all political forces, including the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army and the armed forces, which is a necessary requirement for holding the Constitutional Conference, which the two parties agreed to hold in Khartoum during the third week of June 1986.
It is unfortunate that this agreement, which made peace almost impossible, was violated and found its way into the corridors of procrastination and political maneuvering. The Umma Party, despite having signed the agreement, evaded the repeal of the September laws, which its president, Sadiq al-Mahdi, had previously said were not worth the paper on which they were written. As for the Democratic Unionist Party, it did not participate in Kokadam, while the National Islamic Front was dissatisfied with those laws because they were not harsh enough.
The monotheist forces in both parts of the country continued to call during the years from 1983 to 1989 for the necessity of holding a constitutional conference to secure the unity of Sudan. This was while Hussein Abu Saleh, Minister of Culture and Information and the official spokesman for the coalition government of Sadiq al-Mahdi with the Democratic Unionist Union, declared to the press, saying: “The majority of those who die in the south are southerners, and the schools, farms and hospitals that are being destroyed are all in the south, so it is in the interest of the movement, not the government, to Put an end to this war."
The monotheistic forces, represented by the left in the north and the popular movement in the south, remained alone in the tireless search for just peace, equality and dignity for all the peoples of Sudan, regardless of the circumstances of ethnic or religious affiliation. Finally, after the SPLA transferred its operations to Kurmuk and Qaisan, the head of the Democratic Unionist Party, Muhammad Othman al-Mirghani, interacted in late 1988 and took the initiative to sign an agreement with the leader of the SPLM, John Garang, an agreement that became known as the Sudanese Peace Agreement (which Omar Nour al-Daim, Assistant Secretary-General of the Umma Party, hated calling it a peace agreement) in which the two parties reached “since the establishment of the Constitutional Conference is an urgent national necessity that requires all Sudanese political forces to work diligently and sincerely.” To create the appropriate climate for the establishment of the Constitutional Conference.” The two parties reached complete conviction that the basic and necessary factors for creating the climate are to take a step towards the September Laws. “Since the movement’s consistent position is to abolish the September Laws and replace them with the 1974 Laws, however, at this stage - in line with its keenness to establish the Constitutional Conference - it agrees with the Democratic Unionist Party, and until the Constitutional Conference is held, to freeze the border articles and all articles related to the September Laws.” 1983, and that no party shall issue laws containing such articles until the Constitutional Conference is held and the issue of laws is finally decided.”
However, the terms of the agreement were not, it seems, satisfactory to the Sahih and Islamist dismantling parties, and the war continued to crush the soldiers of the armed forces and the youth of the Popular Movement. National jealousy prompted the leadership of the armed forces to submit a memorandum to Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi on February 20, 1989, which stated: “Based on our national, national and historical responsibility in this delicate stage that the country is going through, and in consideration of the dangerous security conditions that the country is witnessing in some of its parts, and after... A careful and in-depth reading and study of the current situation, and our anticipation of future prospects with all the possibilities it contains that may lead to a coup that would lead to a threat to the territorial integrity of the country and the fragmentation of the Sudanese nation and its democratic path that the people have accepted and included in its charters and constitution is an option that has no alternative...”
Looking carefully at these phrases that topped the memorandum, the form of the unifying discourse that distinguishes it becomes clear. The Supreme Command of the Armed Forces announced its fear of the fragmentation of the Sudanese nation. However, Mr. Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi, the Prime Minister at the time, did not want to understand the content of the memorandum, which he later confirmed after the coup occurred, the possibility of which the memorandum mentioned. “I asked them (referring to the leadership of the armed forces) to meet and issue a recommendation on the necessary policies to carry out the necessary reforms (what is meant is developing military capabilities to continue the war). Instead, in defense of their performance, they politicized the issue, avoided military accountability, and came up with the February memorandum.” 1989.. “How easy is the justification, because we are fully convinced that the Prime Minister was aware, through his experience and intellectual transparency, of the meaning of that memorandum.
Only under pressure exerted by the unified forces in their various political, union and military sectors, the Prime Minister agreed to the interim program signed by 29 parties and unions with the exception of the National Islamic Front, and the way was paved for the agreement that would lead to the convening of the Constitutional Conference, for which the date was set for September 18, 1989. However, the Islamist politicians decided to block the path to the peace process, and Turabi went, as he put it, to prison and Al-Bashir to the palace on the 30th. From June 1989, political power became in the hands of the most puritan factions of the deconstructionist movement with their program called the Islamic civilizational orientation. It is a satanic, Satanic project, as Naqdallah puts it, that can only lead, if it continues, to one of two things that have no third: permanent war or the separation of the south, with what this means from the beginning of the comprehensive dismantling of the mosaic of cultures and ethnicities that make up the Sudanese identity and the exclusion of nowhere to build the project of the Sudanese nation.
In the face of the insistence of the ruling territorialists in Khartoum on their dismantling project, the Supreme Military Command of the Popular Movement decided, for the first time, at the Torit meeting in July 1991, that the issue of the right to self-determination for marginalized areas in Sudan be raised in all future negotiations in the event that the territorial Islamic military government insists that unity be based on the Arab-Islamic identity. The issue of the right to self-determination occupied most of the time and effort in the two rounds held in Abuja, Nigeria. The right to self-determination became one of the two main issues in the IGAD (joint governmental authority for development issues) negotiations, while the second issue was the role of religion in politics. In May 1994, the IGAD Declaration of Principles came, announcing seven basic points through which peace could be established in Sudan, and the possibility of excluding the principle of the right to self-determination, if these points were agreed upon:
First, Sudan is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural Qatar.
Secondly, complete political and social equality between all Sudanese;
Third, adopting self-government on the basis of federalism or autonomy;
Fourth, establishing a secular, democratic state, separating religion from the state, in which legislation on personal and family status is based on religion and customs;
Fifth, the appropriate distribution of wealth;
Sixth, adopting internationally recognized human rights in the country’s constitution;
Seventh, adopting the principle of judicial independence in the country’s constitution.
Then the Declaration of Principles declared that in the event of disagreement between the parties on the above-mentioned principles, those affected have the right to self-determination. We have no doubt at all that if the power to make political decisions had been in the hands of the monotheist forces in both parts of the country, it would not have taken longer to approve these principles than the moment they were signed in full and in detail.
In 1994, the leadership of the Umma Party began to become restless with their presence outside power after the failure of many of the attempts they made to convince yesterday’s allies, the leaders of the National Islamic Front, of the necessity of not continuing to monopolize all power and of the necessity of returning to democracy. Then some leaders of the Umma Party sought to build a bridge with the People’s Movement that could be used to move to a new language of dialogue with the uncompromising Islamic Front. Thus, the Shaqdum Agreement was signed between the Umma Party and the People’s Movement on December 12, 1994, in which it was affirmed that the principle of the right to self-determination for the people of South Sudan was affirmed, based on the recognition of the right to self-determination as a basic right for humans and peoples. It is a phrase that whoever dares to reveal, even secretly, is considered a communist, a heretic, and a traitor whose representatives have no right. Those who are legally elected are to be present in the Arab Muslim Parliament of Sudan... Glory be to God, the Changer of conditions.
The Popular Movement in Chadum insisted that the Umma Party recognize the right to self-determination for the people of the Nuba Mountains, the people of Ingasna, and the people of the Abyei region. However, the Umma Party refused to recognize the right to self-determination of any group outside geographical South Sudan. Hence, from an anthropological standpoint, the agreement raises some legitimate questions. As long as the two parties started from their recognition of the right to self-determination as a basic right for humans and peoples, this indicates the recognition by both parties of the Human Rights Document, which defines the people anthropologically... that is, an ethno-cultural group. This is the case. The Nuba, no doubt, as well as the Anqasana and Abyei Dinka, each of them constitute an ethnic and cultural people, just like the Shilluk, Nuer, Dinka, Tabosa, Zande and other peoples of the geographical south. So why does the Umma Party stingy with them in exercising their rights as well? We believe that the explanation for this is that the Umma Party negotiators adopted two different discourses. The first was anthropological in which they recognized that the inhabitants of the south constituted a people (which is correct, peoples), and the second was political when it came to the Nuba, Anqasana and Abyei Dinka, who refused to recognize their rights, considering them part of the geographical north.
Thus, the essence of the speech indicates a position that views the Sudanese crisis within the same old, outdated frameworks, north/south, completely unaware of the fact that the crisis is much deeper. It is a confrontation between the concept of the new Sudan on the one hand and the old Sudan on the other. The old view is no longer capable of resolving the current Sudanese crisis. There is no alternative but to accept the reality of the distinctive ethnic and cultural diversity and multiplicity of Sudan as a whole and to move away once and for all from confining the crisis to a geographical north facing a geographical south... The Nubians in the far north, the Beja in the east, the Fertit, the Zaghawa, the Fur and many others have the right to exercise the right to self-determination not only in accordance with the principles of IGAD, but also in accordance with the Declaration of Asmara Principles, which allowed other minorities the right to self-determination in the event that they feel that they are harmed or if they feel that there is a deviation from what was declared. Principles, that is, more clearly defined if the Islamist advocates of deconstruction and other advocates of mono-Arab identity insist on the survival of the old Sudan, that is, Sudan according to what these deconstructionist elites managed over a period of nearly half a century.
The logical question that comes to the mind of the average Sudanese citizen after the SPLM’s position in Shaqdum is: Has the movement changed its position and sided with the African deconstructive forces? To answer, we say that a careful reading of the movement’s political literature and its actual movements indicates that it has modified its speech for the sake of clarity and impact, that it wants to say to the advocates of Islamic Arabism that by their attempts to change the effective language of history, and by their attempts to withdraw all of its connotations, they have created among the non-Arab and non-Arabized peoples of Sudan, that is, among the marginalized groups over the course of nearly half a century, the age of our independence, the need to build the meaning of an attribute that will be their strength now and in the future. The policies of the advocates of Islamic Arabism have harnessed nature for plunder, and have interfered in all areas of politics, language, and art, cultivating their unilateral will. The entire Sudan has become, so to speak, an indication of its content, and this has been presented by time in the form of a struggle for liberation and renaissance, or cultural re-creation, and this has taken the form of every Sudanese problem...the present Sudanese crisis.
The original framework of the popular movement, as we indicated, was that it was fighting for a new, unified, secular and democratic Sudan in which equality and justice would be achieved for all, regardless of race or religion. However, the advocates of the deconstructionist movement stuck, in the words of Stephen Wando, to one word and neglected the rest of the phrase. The definition of the new Sudan in the movement’s literature and in the literature of the Sudanese left in general before it and still does, even under another name, always included a point that says that in the absence of democracy, rationality, equality and justice, there will be no unified Sudan, and perhaps there will be no Sudan at all. Anyone who follows the main SPLM speech in Abuja will notice, as Stephen Wando pointed out, his emphasis on the fact that unless there is a willingness and desire among the northern elite to abandon racism and religious tyranny [Steven Wando], it is better for Sudan to end. Therefore, we can say with great specificity and complete clarity that the concept of a unified Sudan has always remained for the Popular Movement a non-absolute concept. It is a concept that is conditional on achieving a revolutionary and radical paradox of the Arab-Islamic hegemonic tendency that has characterized all governmental formations and formations since independence until today.
The advocates of the monotheistic movement in both parts of the country have been playing one melody since the eve of independence... the melody of the new Sudan, despite its various names, a melody that the deconstructive forces have always ignored as a melody issued by weightless forces. The advocates of the monotheistic movement did not deviate from their project or change it despite the bombing and the sound of cannons in the south, and despite the torrent of accusations directed at the monotheistic forces in the north of collaborating with rebellion, atheism and secularism. Now that the most extreme advocates of dismantling have plundered power and driven away yesterday's comrades of moderate, more liberal dismantlers, the tune of the new Sudan has begun to find its way to the ears of the latter. It was a recognition of the principle of ethnic, cultural and religious pluralism, which they opposed at the Conference of the Twelve in 1965, but it is a partial recognition by some of the liberal dismantlers, especially those who announced the freezing of their work in the National Rally organizations. Democrats are outside at the beginning and inside at last. It is clear that they are still, in the words of Stephen Wando, “singing a single curse while ignoring the basic phrase of the entire melody” [Steven Wando, op. cit.].
Thus, Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi wrote in a way that expresses his recent adoption of a new discourse, as usual, without indicating that he did not discover Rome and that what he is saying now is what the advocates of the monotheistic movement have been repeating since the eve of independence: “There is a second problem, which is the presence of national groups in Sudan belonging to different identities. This problem arose due to the retardation of national growth in Sudan and took its historical form in the confrontation called the problem of the south and the civil war that it produced, but it is present to different degrees in every country.” Sudan because it is a problem of interaction between the national group that has the greatest political and economic capabilities and other national groups.” This transition was imposed, in our belief, by the experience of addiction and failure, necessary for the Arab-Islamic elite, which possesses “the greatest political and economic capabilities” since the eve of independence. Al-Sadiq gradually began to accept the more clear discourse of the advocates of the monotheistic movement in diagnosing the Sudanese crisis, but in his own way: “The majority of Muslims and Arabs in Sudan, or the majority of those who belong to the Arab-Islamic entity in Sudan, see that Sudan has Arabized and converted to Islam peacefully, and that the inevitability of this is for all of Sudan to become a member of this Arab-Islamic entity. This perception is the one that prevailed among the majority of those belonging to the Arab-Islamic entity in Sudan. Of course, others who do not belong to this The entity has a different opinion and they see that the political and economic conditions led to their marginalization and that they do not accept this integration into the Arab-Islamic entity. Their rejection, along with other economic and political factors, amounted to a civil war.”
Looking at such a form of discourse, it can be noted that “Sudan becomes affiliated with the Arab-Islamic entity” represents a concept instilled in the political conscience by the educated elite with an Islamic Arab tendency and supported by the educational machine formulated by the British colonial administration, not arbitrarily, but rather within its declared policy of divide and rule. We disagree with Al-Sadiq in his statement that the marginalization of other ethno-cultural groups was only the result of “economic and political conditions.” This is because we believe that it would be more appropriate to say that marginalization is the result of specific political behavior and biased economic policies practiced by national governments since independence, and these are governmental formations dominated by the elite identified with their Islamic Arabism. Al-Sadiq tries in vain to make marginalization the result of “circumstances” and not “policies,” the result of a “collective action” of the people of the North and not the result of the practices of a specific elite. He says: “I became convinced that we - the people of the North - marginalized the non-Islamic and non-Arab elements, and we believed that it was our duty to establish and confirm our Arab-Islamic identity, regardless of the feelings of other entities, and in the opinion that in doing so we committed a great negligence, and did not take that into account, and therefore they took up arms in another way to denounce this position... I think we must We acknowledge this shortcoming, and that the identity and interest of the non-Islamic elements are not determined by us, but rather by them who define it in a form that we agree upon together, in order to reconcile the requirements of our subjectivity and theirs.”
Why resort to such a distortion of the facts? Or does Al-Sadiq not see the others who have been announcing what he is talking about only now since before independence as “Sudanese citizens from the north,” so he resorts to blaming all the people of northern Sudan for wrong policies into which the Arab-Islamic elite, whose governments he personally headed more than once?
Al-Sadiq tried to shift to a clearer and more precise discourse due to the changes imposed by the historical process in order to demarcate the boundaries between the program of Islamic awakening that he adopted and the program of the Islamic civilizational orientation of the National Islamic Front. “The Arab Islamic forces that can be classified as democratic and non-coercive, in my opinion, have developed their position in the face of this basic and historical ordeal. The development has come instead of us representing an Arab Islamic entity that is inevitably excluded from others and integrated into them through stages, to the necessity of recognizing diversity. Cultural multiplicity, coexistence between these cultures, and giving different national groups their right to identity and culture, as well as to national wealth, I believe that this was one of the greatest achievements or leaps in our modern history.”
It is quite clear when you examine the words the tendency of Arab condescension that possesses Al-Sadiq. He talks about Arab Islamic forces confronting national groups, the former of which gives other national groups their right to identity and culture. To my life, it is a speech that carries a degree of condescension that is no different from the colonial discourse that used to describe the peoples of the colonies as national groups. We do not believe that such a discourse helps much in resolving the Sudanese crisis, no matter how good the intentions are as a starting point for it, as long as we see that the greatest achievements are In our modern history, we, Arab Muslims, have the right to grant other non-Arab Sudanese the legitimacy to survive. This is the content of the speech!! From an anthropological standpoint, the new discourse of Sadiq al-Mahdi is nothing more than a timid formal attempt to move away from the categories of the functional school, which formed the theoretical base of the ruling Arab-Islamic elite from the dawn of independence until now, to the categories of relativistic anthropology that announced since 1947 the Charter of Human Rights, which stipulates that man achieves his personality through culture, that respect for individual differences leads to respect for cultural differences, and that respect for cultural differences is legitimate.
Thus, the course of the political-ideological debate in Sudan since the eve of independence has been a struggle between two currents standing on different intellectual anthropological grounds: a deconstructive trend that stems from an Arab-Islamic-centric tendency on the one hand, and a counter-African-centric tendency on the other side, and a monotheistic current that stems from a Sudanese tendency. Even when Al-Sadiq decided to acknowledge this actual nature of the debate, he colored it in a different color than it was. “Now there are the following options or scenarios with regard to dealing with this cultural issue: There is the unilateral vision that sees the Arab-Islamic entity inevitably prevailing over the country and it must do so, whether this is voluntarily in civil and democratic circumstances or involuntarily in military circumstances. In contrast to this, in my opinion, a unilateral and counter-trend has grown that rejects this premise and sees the establishment of a Sudanese identity that excludes all Other private identities and establish a system that can be classified as secular and takes a position that expels all different identities in order to establish what can be called a Sudanese identity.”
Thus, Al-Sadiq’s complete rejection of the concept of unity in diversity becomes clear, and he considers it a secular concept that repels other identities. He calls for a project proposed in the political and cultural arena, and he stood against it while he was in a position of power. He calls it his alternative project, “to abandon unilateral proposals and say the necessity of mutual recognition of all cultures, and to create what I call a Sudanese cultural charter in which there is mutual recognition, mutual respect, and peaceful coexistence between the cultures of Sudan, considering that this is the only thing possible.”
But we wonder, isn't this alternative project taken entirely from the Sudanese project, which it considers secular and expelling other identities? Or did the anthropological intellectual base of Sadiq al-Mahdi not melt into an ideological language in a mere interpretation of history, a language of arrogance and teleology when he had complete and undiminished authority, arrogance when circumstances forced him to transcend abolitionism, and finally transcending abolitionism when the winds turned in the opposite direction? In the end, it is not easy to say that his Arab-Islamic theses gave arrogance its special character. He was arrogant and teleological at first, then he quickly asserted himself and ended up feeling guilty. This transition to the categories of relativistic anthropology is not enough, because relativism has today become a reactionary anthropological call, as Vivas put it: “Relativism is an ideology, if it has proven its usefulness and for a specific time, as the conditions that led to its emergence are still effective, but the circumstances have now changed, and in its ideological capacity, relativism has become a reactionary school, and primitive peoples no longer need its protection.”
Cultural relativism according to Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi is closer to the concept of adaptation as a recipe for becoming, according to which the elements of controlled national cultures are transformed towards a state that is compatible with the form of the dominant Arab culture (with a kasra ta’), and during the process of acculturation, the crushed cultural groups are in a purely reciprocal relationship. This is in contrast to what advocates of Sudanese aim at, who refer, using acculturation, to the patterns according to which a certain cultural aspect is accepted in another culture so that it fits and adapts to it, which assumes cultural equality, even if relative, between the culture that is given and that which is accepted, which is what our late poet Salah Ahmed Ibrahim expressed when he said:
To the Bush, each of them is guided
But fondly
His little thing
Likewise, does not the completion of a draft Sudanese cultural charter mean the necessity of abandoning the concepts of relativism and moving to new evolutionary concepts that measure the progress of societies by the percentage of an individual’s consumption of calories, not by the percentage of Arab or Negro blood that runs in his veins, nor by the percentage of dominance of this or that religious idea over his mind, which are criteria that are difficult to measure? Al-Sadiq touched on this concept when he acknowledged the reality of the ethnic composition of the Sudanese, “In this sense, I know that there is an Arab entity in Sudan composed of Arab Arabs - those who inherited it - and Arabized Arabs who took Arabic as their language of communication, regardless of the amount of Arab blood in their veins. In any case, in this regard, I believe that the Arabism that exists in Sudan is cultural Arabism, and there is no reason for it not to coexist with other cultures under an agreement agreed upon between the various parties.” for common cultural coexistence.
Therefore, does not achieving a “Sudanese cultural project” in this last sense necessarily mean the existence of a rational (secular) state...a civil state that separates religious and political practices, between the ideological sanctity and political effectiveness, which is what the great Sudanese king Arkamani realized was necessary at the end of the third century BC, a state that seeks to achieve equality, justice and democracy? Doesn't this ultimately mean eliminating all forms of narcissism and superiority of Islamic Arabism through joint action aimed at completely eradicating Islamic fundamentalism and opening the way for cultural, ethnic and intellectual pluralism instead of devoting effort to saving its medieval rescue project?
A vision for the new Sudan project
We say at the beginning that the writings on the pages of Sudanese and Arab newspapers about the Sudanese crisis derive their intellectual base from theses that have emerged on the scene of contemporary Sudanese writing, which study an issue that falls on the unifying border between theoretical thought and lived historical reality, which is the issue of “Sudan’s Arabism and Islam.” We must begin by saying that such basic propositions in question reveal a doctrinal approach to “falsifying” history and practice arrogance over history in order to market belief and gain historical legitimacy. There is no doubt that a position like this prevents any practical reading or self-knowledge, and even threatens to exacerbate the Sudan crisis. With complete disregard for the reality of Sudan’s unique status, which truly makes it the African-Arab melting pot. Thus, most of these writings were far from providing a scientific analysis of the reality of the current Sudanese crisis. Therefore, this book is nothing more than an attempt to transcend the immediacy or submit to the “necessities of the situation” in an effort to present an anthropological vision of Sudan’s current crisis, which is exacerbated by obstructive intellectual tendencies, from a perspective that stems from the reality of Sudan, considering it to be composed of one nation characterized by a unique diversity that is the fabric of its past, present, and receptive unity. Dr. John Garang had pointed out in a lecture he gave at the end of 1979 in Cairo to the fact that Sudan was distinguished by two forms of diversity. The first he called historical diversity, while the second he called contemporary diversity, and that the challenge facing Sudan, in his opinion, “is to fuse all the elements of historical and contemporary diversity in order to create a Sudanese nation that creates a national bond that transcends these localities and benefits from them without denying any of these components. So, the unity of our country, unity.” What we are talking about must take these two components of our reality into consideration in order to develop a social-political bond that has its own specificity and is based on these two types of diversity, a social-political bond that we feel includes us all, a unity that I am proud to belong to, and that I am proud to defend.” Mansour Khaled is right in saying that it is necessary to move away from “seeing Sudan as a gateway to the extension of Arabism to Africa. The error of this view lies in the fact that it contains a confusion between Islam and Arabism that is justified only by the desire to arouse religious sentiment and nationalist sentiment at the same time. The extension of Islam is a matter that concerns Muslims alone, while Arabism - an ethnic or cultural bond - goes beyond the people of one religion. There is no way to achieve any national unity if we do not succeed in transcending the dualities. Intersecting, horizontally and vertically, the horizontal division at the level of the nations and the vertical division at the level of the nation. On the other hand, the vision is wrong because Sudan is not a gateway to Africa or a bridge through which Arabism crosses to Africa. These are two negative roles. Sudan must be viewed as a melting pot in which Arabism blends with other cultures, and from which Islam supplies the abundance of other religions. What confirms the credibility of such a proposition is that thanks to the spontaneous flow of the Arabic language through religion and trade, the Arabic language has contributed A major contribution to the development and enrichment of African languages in non-Arab countries, such as Swahili, the language that unites the people of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and parts of Rwanda and Burundi, and Sudan’s success in this assimilation process is what qualifies it to perform its historical role.”
It is difficult to deny the fact that our Sudanese nation, which has been “sweet in taste” throughout history, has now been afflicted by God with a plight that was “made locally but intellectually came from a non-local, cross-border environment.” With which our tolerant nation is going through a stage of dramatic labor, or even a crisis with multiple dimensions: social, economic, political, and even ecological.
When looking at economic relations, we cannot ignore “economic marginalization” as an element that characterized development policies in post-independence Sudan and its impact on the governance systems that allowed the dependency networks in the state to enter into a struggle over ever-diminishing resources (such as land, but also development aid). However, we do not aim to limit the conflict to a material source, as we realize that this would be misleading. In reality, we are facing a crisis of “social structures” and “authority”, a crisis of “state authority” as the instrument of governance in Sudan, in other words, the failure of those institutions that are supposed to lead the process of change and prevent violent clashes.
The ambition of Sudanese advocates was to announce the end of the colonial period as the beginning of a more dynamic phase in the growth of Sudanese nationalism towards building the nation, which represents an ambitious project to establish the principle of our unity in our diversity, and the development trends that follow from that, and an endorsement of the principles of democracy stemming from the experiences of the ancient history of our Sudanese nation. But from the beginning, nation-building was necessarily directed by the elitist “Mesotonilian” state, which tended to have the flag, which was supposed to express the nation’s aspirations, raised in a mass celebration by the elected government and the opposition leader only, as if the space under the sari would not have allowed for others - through whom the distinctive diversity of an ancient nation was embodied, while its struggle for its independence and the expulsion of foreigners was limited to only one of its components. The structure of colonial power, characterized by authoritarian bureaucracy, the appropriation of surpluses, market control and coercion, all remained essentially unchanged after Sudan’s independence in 1956. In practice, the nascent national state apparatus remained the main axis of wealth accumulation, transforming the national economy into hereditary networks of political elites, severely destroying the productive side of the economy, and did not bring about any form of balanced development. Instead of investing in a development project that serves the general interest of the Sudanese nation “as a nation” and creates an independent and effective bureaucratic state apparatus, the ruling elites attempted to manipulate the material benefits of state sovereignty to strengthen their narrow personal and regional political power. After less than one decade, post-colonial governments began to re-glorify the colonial state. Therefore, the way in which the political systems continued to operate in post-independence Sudan must be analyzed according to their actual value and not as an imitation of Western state models.
Sudan has remained independent for nearly half a century and we must rule out the possibility of establishing, under current circumstances, a Max Weberian model of the Western state and democracy here. If we are to strive to analyze the various conflicts in the post-independence period, and in the last decade in particular, then instead of insisting on saying that Sudan has failed to match Western democracies, we must abandon Western definitions and begin to ask how the people of Sudan conceptualize the concepts of social political organization, identity, and governmental responsibilities. Comparing the state structure in Sudan with general theories of state structure, based on Western paths, represents nothing more than a misleading simplification.
Since the end of the 1960s, the practice of the hereditary approach to monopolizing power by specific elites based on a sectarian religious basis has become subject to growing opposition due to diminishing internal resources and the new conditions of external sovereignty, which announced the end of broad-based patronage networks in many parts of Africa, along with the end of the old post-colonial system of containing elites. The national state model of development in Sudan may have sought, in theory, to achieve national unity and integration, but the way in which resources and power were distributed has concentrated the seed of competition over diminishing resources. Informal political networks based on the rule of "heredity" were no longer able to protect the interests of the controlling elites after the global transformations at the end of the Cold War created new trade possibilities, mainly using illicit methods, forcing these elites to search for "new strategies" to extract resources. While we acknowledge that declaring a value judgment on the way successive political regimes have operated in Sudan is politically incorrect, we cannot ignore the high social cost of patrimonial policy and the disaster it has caused for small producer economies. The collapse of the state as a “system of power and order” represents one of the most dramatic aspects of the Sudanese crisis.
We then face a double problem. At the “descriptive level,” there is a need for new models to look at systems of power and governance in post-independence Sudan. Looking at the political developments in post-colonial Sudan only as a failure in the process of state-building and democracy will not help us understand the dynamics that govern Sudanese society and its political groupings. In fact, we have a limited understanding of the way in which “power is created, reproduced, and exercised” in Sudan. In addition, theories that focus only on state failure usually neglect the facts on the ground. Sudan is currently experiencing its own modernity, and the new, more “hereditary” political ruling elites, in their struggle for survival, are trying to exploit the dysfunctions to which the state is exposed.
Now that times have changed in this era of globalization, it has become necessary to reintroduce the concepts of “space” and “time” again into our political visions. Our study of our Sudanese issue must strike a balance between the “structural” and “selective” approaches. In other words, while it is not permissible to view Sudan as an island isolated from global transformations, it is also necessary to look at the specific way in which these developments are manifested in Sudan (i.e. the cultural forms of the political and economic crisis). Sudan is not a victim of its past: the politics of elite inheritance, ethnicity, etc., which are modern phenomena. In response to modern transformations in both our scientific thinking and in the formation of international policies, we need to link structurally determined local data with national and global transformations and stop dealing with Sudan as a “model of racial discrimination” practiced by the people of central Sudan on the peripheries. While Sudanese identities were historically formed, as we indicated through our historical presentation, in response to comprehensive historical transformations (internal population movements in various historical stages, and Arab migrations that produced a radical shift characterized by a degree of permanence in the ecological balance between desert and cultivated land, in addition to causing a major change in the structure of local Sudanese cultures), the way in which these identities manifest themselves can be very diverse. Cultural differences, however, should not mislead us as long as they are more than just a hint of more important content.
But, on the other hand, can we limit ourselves to describing how Sudan is now experiencing a state of disintegration? Is it not possible to make a scientific contribution to the “possibilities of building a state” and stopping the civil war from a reading different from that presented by the elites with an obstructive vision, through new, more creative thinking on the issue of rebuilding the state? If constructive discussions about governance and state authority are possible in other regions, why is this not possible in Sudan?
We believe that Sudanese advocates can and must engage in discussing how the political structures in Sudan can be developed. The draft Charter of the National Democratic Rally, which calls for the establishment of a new Sudan, provides a wonderful model of the possibility of resolving ethnic differences within the framework of a unified Sudan. This model shows that it is possible to combine guaranteeing the rights of ethno-cultural minorities with regional governance based on benefiting from local Sudanese experiences over historical periods extending deep into history to the era of the Kush state of Kerma, Napata, and Meroe and the medieval Christian Sudanese kingdoms. Why is it not possible to engage in a constructive discussion of our previous experiences, which succeeded in establishing institutions that eliminated conflicts and worked to establish peace and stability in Sudan for nearly thirty centuries? Avoiding entering into a discussion of this merely means postponing such basic questions, which leads to the dominance of obstructive deconstructive theses and the emergence of multiple deconstructive theses.
We say, yes, there is a problem of forming a unified national state in Sudan according to the vision of the advocates of the Islamic civilizational project or the Islamic awakening project. The concept of “national belonging” is important, and Sudanese advocates must work to achieve a more in-depth understanding of how we, as Sudanese, define our political affiliation to society. The historical content characterized by the increasing movement of ethnic groups due to environmental fluctuations has led to the crystallization of the “comprehensive Sudanese identity” through the emergence of intermarriages and the emergence of new identities, which can transcend the state (such as ethnic identity and a series of religious beliefs). The concept of patriotism, which is based on a centrism and Islamist political tendency, for example, must be re-evaluated in view of the reality on the ground. We must be aware that matching nationalism and the state is not possible in every case (or necessary). Beyond patriotism and nationality, other identities, such as gender, ethnicity, and race, have acquired new political importance, which forces us to formulate visions that include the concepts of space and time, far from the narrow concept of identity and nationalism that is characteristic of the Mediterranean ethnocentric horizon. However, the concept of the state as a political structure alone is what lies at the heart of the current Sudanese crisis, because Sudanese identities that are marginalized ethnically, culturally, and economically have begun, due to a long history of Middletonian ethnic and cultural supremacy, to define themselves in the face of the religiously and culturally unilateral state. The issue of identity, due to ethnic intransigence, eventually became the backbone of a political movement aimed at restoring natural rights by force. This reaction, which if it is permissible to call it “homesickness” in its constitutional sense, the stolen legal homeland, has become a flower whose nectar is absorbed by the advocates of “One Nation Sudan” who were determined in Massawa to continue on their journey, chanting:
This path, my daughter, is exhausting for the walker
It was paved with the remains of victims in the blatant struggle
And on its sides, wolves and snakes roam without conscience
If you want to love with a noble and pure heart
He will see me by my side in the struggle, and with your smile I will be rewarded
But if I choose to flee, that is not my fate
I will walk until victory, despising every lost love
For advocates of Sudanism, it is necessary to achieve a precise understanding of the relationship between social identities and the state and how political groupings were formed. While there are indications that social identities may lose their ethnic territory, there is another development that is usually neglected or forgotten, namely the forced removal of residents from their ethnic homeland, as is the case today in the Nuba Mountains and in the so-called oil safe zone!!
Increasingly intense competition for scarce resources also calls us to think better about environmental management (such as forest resources, oil, and agricultural land). It is necessary to rethink the role of the state (in the face of transcontinental companies and local capitalism associated with them and in the face of the population) in the field of natural resource management and environmental protection. Sudanese advocates must equally develop a more dynamic understanding of the relationship between social identification and the regulation of natural resource tenure. Much of the violence in Sudan has been linked in many ways to the struggle over scarce resources, and will increase if things turn out this tragically.
Sudanese advocates must implement a cultural work project that purifies the Sudanese mind of the prevailing belief established by deconstructive elites that there is a relationship between ethnic affiliation and personality. The Sudanese cultural project must emphasize the denial of any relationship between ethnic affiliation and personality and the claim that any cultural trait or any element of culture such as religion and language is in any way a lineage trait. Then it is shown that racism is the belief in the superiority of one race over another, and that it is linked to behaviors characterized by discrimination and discrimination towards those who are considered to belong to an “inferior” ethnic group, and that such a racist belief is usually based on the claim that certain population groups possess “lesser” mental abilities and faculties, and this belief extends to include, in addition to that, the moral and ethical character of the “inferior” ethnic group. This racist trend is characterized by its claim that mental, moral, and moral abilities are traits. Inherited. Sudanese advocates must emphasize the fact that such racist ideas are due to several elements: such as colonialism, religion, value and moral systems, economic activities, technology, or all of them combined. Only through diligent, careful and objective cultural work, far from the restrictions imposed on the Sudanese mind due to the dominance of various forms of taboo, can Sudanese advocates succeed in revealing the truth of the current crisis imposed by the dominance of a reactionary mind whose roots extend to the era of the Blue Sultanate, and then work tirelessly to liberate the mind of our people in the north and south, in the east and west from such as what is promoted by the blocking project of the advocates of dismantling.
The Sudanese cultural project must clearly state that racism is a cultural phenomenon with no genetic basis, and that a Sudanese ethnic group is the best or the lowest mentally and morally is a concept that advocates of deconstruction are trying to instill as long as racism is a phenomenon whose roots extend to the economy, politics, and society [for more on racism, see Biocultural Development]. Biocultural evolution
Taking these points into account, the Sudanese cultural project must emphasize the fact that cultures change, that these changes have a specific direction, and that some cultures endure and grow while others become extinct. If we are to understand in a meaningful way anything about our Sudanese cultures, this is only possible through studying those cultural elements that make up each individual Sudanese culture in their interconnection and dialectical interaction with Sudanese cultures as a whole.
The urgent question is how the Sudanese cultural project, as well as this, can resist and thwart the medieval cultural ideological pressures exerted by the thought of the deconstructive elites? It is clear that these dangers are the greatest and that they are created by these elites: intellectual repression, political embargo, ethnic cleansing, racism, and so on. It is equally clear that the applicable answers are in turn cultural. As people, we as Sudanese have the ability to reshape our Sudan, whether for better or for worse. The choice is up to us. "Let us open up, as Dr. John Qartaq says, because any society based on premature components cannot endure or live for long. This is what the history of humanity tells us. An open society that includes and accommodates all its citizens is capable of life and growth and is able to adapt easily and derive strengths for its continuity and survival. There are small things that divide us, things that are not difficult to find solutions for, and we can also address big issues."
The SPLM's vision for a new Sudan