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�My way of Joking is to tell the truth. that�s the funniest joke in the world.� Muhammad Ali
I The much expected, least spoken of, incident has taken place! A betrayal by the Sudanese state to Eritreans taking refuge in its territories, has once more taken place. This was not only a new stabbing -on- the-back, but a link in a long chain of betrayals and abuses by the successive Sudanese regimes. The new thing is that the scene this time is one of a rare view at the absurd and the inexplicable at work in the open: a surrender of sovereignty of jurisdiction on the part of the Sudanese Republic to a foreign invader, though the invaded is an accomplice in the invasion.
The situation would have been conceivable had it been that the Sudanese themselves were the ones rounding up the Eritreans and then extradite them to the tyrant across the boarder. But, that, of course, would have deprived us the wisdom gained by seeing the obvious: this Sudanese Government, like all its successive predecessors, lack the faculty of discerning the tactical from the strategic to the extend that one would, legitimately, wonder at what price offered to such a government, could make it pass sovereignty of the entire of Sudan to other powers, since it now seems that even this, is for trade and bartering. One, further, wonders what if, in the next expedition of the belligerent army of Issayas Afeworki, was somehow ambushed and losses inflicted on it , Is the Sudanese State, then, to defend the violators of its sovereignty and incriminate the other, self-defending, party? This is an interesting scenario, between many Scenarios, which considering them, may enrich those who take the African political practice as their field of interest.
The Sudanese State is, perhaps, hoping that appeasing the tyrant across the boarder is the ticket to resolving its problems which the Eritrean regime has exacerbated in the first place. But in this, the Sudanese have only admitted themselves into a mirror house full of surprises. It is no wonder, nor is it unique in the Human experience, to see the victim appeasing and awarding its tormentor exactly the same way the Sudanese State is trying to bail itself by bribing its tormentor, innocent of the other, but uglier, possibility that that may only enrage the beast's appetite for more. That is why, Franz Kafka, a novelist, enshrined and condensed this situation in one of his parables when he wrote: �One cannot pay the evil one in installments, and yet one perpetually tries to do it�. The turbans and the glittering brasses, the Turabis and the Beshirs may now be celebrating and justifying their deed to themselves and their victims. Still Kafka foresaw this and perceived as to complete his parable in saying: �The afterthoughts with which you Justify your accommodation of the evil one are not yours but those of the evil one.� Eritreans can not blame the Sudanese State for this policy of perfecting life in a world of perpetual tactics which it believes and thinks serving its interests. The best that one can do for the moment, is to ask and study why the Sudanese state takes such an aggressive position against refugees of a brotherly people time and again since decades. This may require a glance at the power relations in both Sudan and Eritrea and the effect of the former on the Eritrean revolutions.
And when it is said here revolutions, it is meant that Eritrea had, not only one revolution, but two opposing revolutions, one was expressed in the ELF fighting Imperial Ethiopia and the other, a manifestation of negation of the former, the EPLF,formed and created in response and reaction to the armed national revolutionary movement�s emergence. The EPLF was created by self appointed aristocratic oligarchy of high Eritrean officials collaborating, associating and identifying itself with the Imperial regime. Wary of the successes of the ELF, the EPLF was created and aimed at aborting the successes of the ELF. A glimpse of this and a foothold for those who want to expand on this point along this line is Dr. Tesfasion Medhanie�s book �Eritrea : Dynamics of a national question�.
It is more than symbolic that Eritreans who occupied high posts in the Ethiopian Imperial regime, Eritreans who spent their lives defending the old Empire, where also the ones who were assigned to write, the now defunct, post independence Eritrean constitution and tailor it to fit the idiotic vision of the traitors and the collaborators of yesteryear. Is it not also true that this, in practice, extends credence to the line of interpretation offered in this essay.?
These Aristocrats� means and ends were in complete unity of identity. the means and the ends were one and the same. The mission was short and simple; to preserve the status quo, not as much as of loyalty to the old Empire, but of love of power and the wealth which it brings with. It was A party without the familiar paraphernalia of parties. The end was power to be preserved through naked power. What the offspring of such a doctrine may possibly produce is only clear for all to see.
Sudden change is rationally impossible, there is nothing in nature in which change takes place in one whole chunk; it is always gradual, unnoticeable increments of infinitely small jumps over a relatively long time depending on the type of change sought for observation. The sum or the integral of these changes is the force which produces the noticeable change seeming ostensibly a sudden change. To arbitrarily divide the history of the EPLF/PFDJ pre and postwar stages remains also what it is, arbitrary!. The reality is that those who claim that this entity has suffered a sudden change because of the war are only arguing against reason. What we see now of the PFDJ was there in the EPLF all the time, it was not visible because it was in the stages of development and progress; For There can appear nothing from nothingness, and there can appear nothing to being which was not there originally in some form or another. PFDJ nature, now, is not alien to its origins and ancestry. It remains what it originally was created for; preserving power and wealth to an exclusive Aristocracy with no vision or insight except acquiring pure power and more power.
As a subject of controversy, the EPLF/PFDJ experience and role in the Eritrean history cannot be seen with the truth represented only by the accounts the EPLF/PFDJ propaganda machine; it is perfectly fair and even outright scientific to introduce all the other reasonable possibilities which give plausible interpretation of the present and consider it as equal candidate for possibly claiming the truth as long as these possibilities are rooted on a firm ground of observation and reason. It is only in this way that one comes to the understanding of the EPLF, and how it was in reality a revolution against the Revolution, with the birthmarks of its ancestry all too clear.
Through the process, that treacherous Aristocracy which created the EPLF/PFDJ lost control over it, as we can now clearly see, and the tool developed into what it was inevitably to be: a shapeless, and formless one-man-Dictatorship akin to that of Idi Amin, Mobutu and Bokassa, and certainly uglier than all the successive oppressors of Eritrea, not only in that it is indeed so objectively, but worse that the day to day co-existance with its now rulers Eritrea is reminded how duped, betrayed, humiliated and all along used, it was.
Why this reiteration of a well-known history?
Well, mainly it is only for drawing attention to the similarities of internal power relations in both Eritrea and Sudan and the possible influences it may produce to the ever changing relations between the regimes of Eritrea and Sudan, now. As for the relations of the two peoples one choose to go no further than to point to what a Sudanese thinker and writer, Al-Tayyib Mustafa, wrote� in the context of defending his persuasion of the necessity of an absolute divorce and complete Secession of the North and Southern Sudan:
�The core of the problem is, in addition to the historical considerations and the policy of colonial Britain (the law of closed regions of 1928), the lack of unifying factors between the Northerners and the Southerners including differences in Religion, Language, Ethnicity, customs and culture, and even the common emotional sympathy which exists between the members of related peoples. These lacking qualifications here, are abundant there between the Northerners and the people of Chad on one side and the Eritrean people on the other. The same may be said about the Northerners and the Egyptian people. The Southerners are emotionally closer to Ugandans and Kenyans.�
The above quoted line of reasoning was brought into this essay not to endorse, challenge or even to own an opinion on it, absolutely not, It is enshrined here only for the purpose of taking in evidence and consideration of what has been stated to the effect of that the Sudanese people are different than the Sudanese State. It goes here without saying that the Eritrean people�s feelings are in reciprocation to the Sudanese people�s in contrast to that of the States which invariably throughout stood at odds with both peoples� will. Eritreans are used to rain praise on Sudan and describe it as a generous and sisterly country. This is not the view of the few; it is that of the majority if not the totality of Eritreans, all across the whole spectrum of their political affiliations, religious and ideological persuasions. They all parrot gratitude and thanks for the assistance and brotherhood shown by that country during the wars of liberation. That point of view is challenged here and more over dubbed na�ve, simple and blind. This writer adheres to a long standing conviction, based on observation, discern and objectivity. A conviction built on observation of acts rather than the gratifying sensational and lofty words uttered at every corner of the Eritrean struggle history.
It should, however, be understood here, that the words Sudan and Sudanese state are used interchangeably and it is worthwhile to point that both words denote the Sudanese State. Blaming the brotherly people of Sudan is not, at all, entertained or intended here; for the Sudanese People are with us in and through the same paradox.
It is not difficult, however, to see and follow the fact that there always has been an invisible umbilical cord which bound the Sudanese State throughout its existence with the successive oppressors of the Eritrean people. The paradox is that there is at the same time an open and conspicuous umbilical cord binding the Eritrean and the Sudanese peoples. This puts the Sudanese and Eritrean peoples on one side facing the Sudanese State and the Eritrean people�s oppressor on the other. It is not, then, strange to see that a Sudanese thinker and writer, Al-Tayyib Mustafa, in the context of defending his persuasion and call for the divorce and complete Secession of the North and Southern Sudan, writing:
�The core of the problem is, in addition to the historical consideration and the policy of colonial Britain(the law of closed regions of 1928), the lack of unifying factors between the Northerners and the Southerners including differences in Religion, Language, Ethnicity, customs and culture, and even the common emotional sympathy which exists between the members of one nation. These lacking qualifications here, are abundant between the Northerners and the people of Chad in one side and the Eritrean people in the other. The same may be said about the Northerners and the Egyptian people. The Southerners are emotionally closer to Ugandans and Kenyans.�
The BazaarSudan�s different regimes, were, at all stages of the Eritrean liberation struggle�s history taking the full role of the Bazaar Sheikh of merchants �شهبندر التجار�who makes every occasion an �interests exchange� opportunity, and so was with Sudan and the new developments. In retrospect, it is not, now, difficult to imagine the millions of dollars made from the interception, by the corrupt regime, of the UNHCR assistance to Eritrean refugees in the camps of eastern Sudan. Or think of the money made from both the Eritreans and the UNHCR. The economical effect of the presence of Eritreans is not an element to overlook also. Remittances coming to many Eritrean Families from the oil rich Persian Gulf States was fuelling local economies like the boarder town of Kassala and in Khartoum itself. The controllers of the Sudanese state was the actual gate through which the Saudi intelligence was exerting its destructive influence and that must have been for a price paid to the corrupt officials running the state. Think about any thing with a looks of an �Eritrean-foreigners� relations of those times, and you will see the tilt to the Sudanese coffers. centers of power To the contradiction which rests on the discerning of the Sudanese people from their governments, one has to refer this to the obvious, arguing that the Sudanese People were always, and from the first day of their Independence, forced into absentia, exactly like Eritreans, making it possible for a clever oligarchy to perpetuate itself monopolizing power, wealth and decision-making away from, and without the real contribution of the broader masses of the Sudan. But, one may still ask why is the Sudanese State behaving in this shameful way? Why is it that Sudan seems keen on giving an image of itself that of a trader in human misery? The answer is simple! It is the historical legitimacy crisis suffered by the Sudanese State since its inception. Here, one have to see and understand that, regardless of the numerous military cliques or the ostensibly Democratic ones, the ruling elite remained the same, static, stagnant through and through. Curiously, these elites are the same who controlled the different parts of Sudan before the arrival of the European colonizer. These are the aristocratic-feudal-religious sect of �Al-Ansar� controlled by the Mahdi House of western Sudan. These are mainly composed of the warlike Arab �Baggara Tribes� who thrived on slave hunting and trading for a long time of their stay in that part of the world. The Baggara, live side by side with the larger African Fur tribes. The name of Dar Fur is the Arabic for the house of Fur. The Janjaweed Militias committing atrocities now against the Africans of Darfur are the Arab Baggara tribes, an echo of the Arab army of Zubeir Pasha of the 19th century. When the Egyptians were controlling Sudan in 19th century, they chose to govern the Sudan through its cruel, chaotic, old devices of tribal and sectarian arrangements. The Darfur Area, for instance was assigned to a northern Sudanese who claimed to be a descendant of the prophet, Zubeir Pasha, who, later, lobbied the Khdeiv Ismail of Egypt and bribed him in return of an issuance of an edict installing him Sultan of Darfur, a thing which could have happened if not for the interference of Gordon Pasha. A traveler, August Shweinfurth, who visited the court of Zubeir wrote: ��The huge spaces of Bahr-l-Ghazal and Darfur were his hunting ground. Here, in the dry clear antiseptic air of the desert and the Marra mountains, he disposed of a private army of Arab horsemen whose face have the beauty and the predatory cruelty of hawks. They raided like Mongols for hundreds of Miles into the interior and spread a special sort of terror absolutely ruthless.� The other old and equally powerful center of power in Sudan is the feudal-aristocratic-religious sect of the Khatmiyah controlled by the Mirghani family. The Khatmiyah sect has a strong presence and influence in parts of Western Eritrea which waned during the days of the ELF but was resurrected now during the EPLF/PFDJ era. It is worthwhile to mention that when the British conquered Eritrea during World War II they carried with them Sittina Alawiyah, (a holy woman!) from the Mirghani family to influence the Muslim Population of west Eritrea. The Mirghani family is not really an indigenous family to Sudan. The family claims that it descends from the prophet Mohammed, but this is highly unlikely since the name Mir-Ghani itself indicates to their origin in the Indian Sub-continent. Before independence, the Khatmiyah were strongly advocating for merger with its northern neighbor and until today the Mirghani family keep strong ties to Egypt. Its nemesis, the Ummah party, meanwhile, was advocating for a royal Sudan or a kingdom under the British crown. To be continued.
� الأهرام-مركز الدراسات الأستراتيجيه � فبراير2004
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