(continued)
The other center of Power which has risen to prominence in Sudan is the Islamic Front of Dr. Hassan Al Turabi, the brother in law of Sadiq Al Mahdi of the Ummah Party. The Brothers of Sudan were an evolution of two Islamic political currents, the Muslim Brotherhood which was founded by Sudanese Students in Cairo in 1946 as a Sudanese branch integral to the mother of Egypt. This creation was for the purpose of invigorating the advocacy to the merger of Sudan with Egypt a call long upheld and under taken by the Mirghani(Khatmiyah) party. The other current was a locally originated Islamic political movement �The Islamic liberation movement ILM�. This current was a reaction to the fear of communism by the traditional forces of society. It is perhaps illuminating to read this piece which came in the �Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World� concerning the original inclinations of these movements:
�Early adherents came primarily from the rural areas of the northern Sudan and were deeply committed to Sufi Islam and opposed to Communism. The ILM enabled them to adopt a modern Islamic ideology without cutting their ties with their families who were mostly adherents of the Khatmiyyah Sufi order. This dual loyalty did not disturb the Khatmiyyah since it did not regard the Muslim Brothers as political rivals. �
Turabi, who joined the party in 1954 came back to Sudan in 1964 after earning his academic degrees in Britain and France. A Machiavellian of the first class, a pragmatist who would cook his grand mother in soup for supper for the sake of political expediency, an opportunist and power maniac, a man who comes up with different interpretations of Islam at different times to suit his personal agenda. Turabi, took control of the party and since gave the party different names for the different stages. This was Turabi who came and took sway of the party and turned the traditional relation of the party to Khatmiyah away, and made different pacts and alliances with Sadiq Al Mahdi and brought the party closer to the Al-Ansar(Sadiq Al Mahdi) . From this point of view the Islamic Movement, as manifested by Turabi was no more than an expression of squabble between the twin traditional aristocratic-religious-feudal parties the Ummah (Ansar) and the Khatmiyah(Marghaniyah).
Turabi�s tactical alignments made him at one point in time an accomplice and active contributor in the murder of Ustaz Mahmoud Mohammed Taha the originator and funder of the Republican Party, an Islamic Party with a modern outlook, new message and fresh thought radically different than and antagonist to Dr.Turabi�s farcical militant Islam. The founder,Mahmoud Mohammad Taha, a genius and a philosopher on his own right, A visionary, described as a genuine revivalist who pioneered a modern interpretation of the Quran and Islam. The heart of his teachings if accepted could have brought the required elements for modernizing the Islamic world. He rejected what he called the religious mania (alluding to the Muslim Brothers) and condemned the politicization of religion, thus aimed at depriving the Turabis of their tool. a reviewer of one of his books wrote:
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�He despised the sway of the clergy, a word he considered foreign to Islam from the beginning, Made Freedom his ideal and considered it The pillar on which the whole faith stands. He delved into the question of woman in Islamic societies and came up with progressive solutions�..some will find him a model of religious moderation with original courage in criticizing the inherited, and in this, western researchers would admire him and look at his life as one of a variety of becoming a free thinker in a Muslim country- the exact image of Galileo in the European dark ages. He is a model which will keep growing with his execution by hanging at a late age of 76. his blood was spilled on the hands of an explicit alliance of the military represented in Numeiri and the old oligarchy represented in Turabi�. Ustaz Mahmoud Mohammed Taha was sentenced to death by hanging for apostasy and was executed in Jnuary 1985, three months before the downfall of Nimeiri. His life and martyrdom in some Islamic literature is compared to that of the The great Sufi AlHallj. His followers, the Republicans, were imprisoned and disbanded, but the influence of that great teacher and his movement still lingers.
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The other party with a modern outlook was the communist party. The communist movement in Sudan, like the Muslim brothers movement, has its origins in the Egyptian communist party of Henri Curiel, a legendary personality in the Egyptian communist�s movement evolution. But the Sudanese communist party didn't enjoy much influence except among the workers of the Sudan Railway, worker's of the Aljazeera project and university students. The party challenged the old order of the state and tried a coup in july 1971 which failed through the influence and intervention of Qadafi of Libya and Egypt�s Sadat. Abdu-lkhaleeq Mahjoub, Joseph Garang and Alshafie Ahmed were some of the famous heads which rolled against the backdrop of that coup. The party took a hard hit then and was gone underground reduced into a ghost of itself. The party is now not as strong as it once used to be but it never ceased to exist.
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These old feudal stagnant centers of power naturally fret and disdain change and novelty. It is, they believe, their duty to prevent or at least control, whenever possible, any change around them and uphold the status quo claiming that this is the best possible of the worlds that god has created, themselves, of course, always at the top . An Eritrea of the people and democratic, is not in the interest of the Marghania or the Ansar or the military. This was specially obvious in the last few years when the Sudanese Rasputin Hassan Al Turabi was the main player in the Sudanese political life.
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Behind the wars
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The history of the Sudanese State was in effect a history of successive changing hands of power between the two aristocratic feudal sects. When none of the two is not in power at any time in post-independence Sudan, there will certainly, be a military regime which after a year or so hands power back to the old order in an ostensibly democratic elections the outcome of which would most certainly bring one of the contending sectarian twins to power. Even when a popular rebellion unseats a military government and a new so called democratic process ensues, the old regime of the feudal sectarian forces is magically back to power until the squabbling of the lords starts anew inviting back the Army, to close the cycle, an operation predicted with a Swiss-clock precision.
The reason behind the war in Southern Sudan is said to have been the deficit of resources in favor of the North. This, while true, is partly so, because It is also true that that deficit in resources was not in favor of the North in its entirety. That deficit, in reality, was between the Northern Ruling Groupies in charge of both the North and the South, in exclusion of the vast majority of communities in Sudan, both North and South. This ill-distribution of wealth was a structurally built-in device rooted in the old social and sectarian feudal traditions and practices of the North.
Betrayals and power recycling
The real infiltration and breakthrough of the Ethiopian Intelligence into the Eritrean National Movement, and the ELF fiber in particular, was through a Sudanese famous Journalist of the second half of the sixties By the name of Tayfour(طيفور) . A sympathizer of the Eritrean revolution, volunteered and spent time in Eritrea with the fighters to come at the end with a book, widely published at the time, in which he argued for the non-viability of Eritrea as an independent political entity citing its ethnic, cultural and religious differences coupling it with what he termed as the structural enmities pervading each and every component of the projected entity. The book, because of its wide publication, pushed a wedge between the ELF Leadership and its ranks. His acquired intimate knowledge of Eritrea and Eritreans, his mastery of Tigre, himself being from a Tigre speaking tribe of Sudan, all that, helped his book to foment trouble for the ELF and drive a wedge between the political leadership and the fighters of the Liberation Army . His sophisticated bogus and unsubstantiated claims sowed the seeds of discord and divisiveness in the ranks of the ELF and its supporting power bases in Sudan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Though the leadership was not absolutely blameless, it was so in virtue of other reasons which should have not justified for the putsches and purges which took hold on the Eritrean political scene since then. These, in the end, gave the opportunity to Eritreans collaborating with the Ethiopian Imperial occupation, who were wary of the situation and saw the inevitable downfall of the Occupation, to create the EPLF and to promote and try create their version of Eritrea under their control since the Imperial power was waning and showing cracks which may very well cause a crumble under harder expected hits.
Mr. Tayfour, though, later disgraced in his country after the disclosure of his relations to the Ethiopian intelligence and the Ethiopian embassy, remains near the top of the list of those individuals who influenced the Eritrean struggle negatively. However, many, later, thought that Tayfour couldn�t have appeared and evolved the way he did unless he had the support of some Sudanese centers of influence, if not the State itself. It is noteworthy to mention here that the Journalist�s adventure didn�t come to be, out of the blue sky; it had its ancestry and precedents. Precedents, which later, through the years, developed into a full blown industry in the service of the Sudanese State�s foreign policy. the use of refugees as bargain chips and tools for political expediency in times of urgency is now a major Sudanese foreign political tool of preference. Eritreans were not the only victims of this notorious practice, there were also other nationalities although Eritreans owned the lion�s share of this inhuman practice. Carlos the Jackal must have ran of options as to shed his sense of security and hang it on an illusory and treacherous Sudanese refuge which in the end turned him into a bargain chip in the hands of the retarded state and be extradited to France. This is not to say that Carlos was not a cold blooded killer, No, he was a criminal but the idea here is to question the morality of a state indulging itself in the business of trading in human misery.
Dr. Tesfasion Medhane has written a small big book �Eritrea In The New World Order�, in it there is a list of abuses of Eritrean and Eritreans including illegal military intervention:
�-Upon the liberation of Eritrea EPLf in May 1991 demanded the closure of the Eritrean opposition forces in the Sudan. The Bashir/Turabi regime closed down the offices, halted the political activities and confiscated the property of these forces.
�-The civilian and military intelligence departments of the Sudan collaborated with the EPLF authorities in hunting down, Arresting and kidnapping members of the Eritrean opposition organizations. It was in collaboration with the Sudanese security Department that in April 1992 the EPLF kidnapped the leaders of ELF-RC and took them to Eritrea where they are still kept in prison.
-Earlier in January 1992 the EPLF military attacked the opposition forces in western Eritrea. According to the ELF-RC, a contingent of the Sudanese government forces gave actual support to the EPLF in this offensive. In this offensive the Sudanese crossed the border, moved in Eritrea, and attacked Eritrean opposition forces.�
If the above listed seem strange take this one from the small big book:
�in 1990 the EPLF took part in the war between the Sudanese regime and the SPLA which was demanding secularization and democracy.�
What do all these tell? A situation of political and moral bankrupt of a state? Selling the soul of a nation for the sake of perpetuating a corrupt petrified arrangement of power monopoly?
The regime of General Abboud (1958-1964) was the first of the successive Sudanese governments to round up members of the ranks and leadership of the ELM (መሕበር ሸውዓተ) and extradite them to the oppressing regime of Haile Sellasie. This same regime of General Abboud was also the one which brought about the infamous accord of �Exchange of Criminals� between Sudan and the Ethiopian Imperial regime (as if they needed to formalize it!!).
The exchange started vigorously and continued through, smoothly, except for a small anomaly: it remained conspicuously one way; Sudan to Ethiopia , and the criminals were, invariably always, Eritrean exiles affiliated to the organizations resisting the Imperial occupation, the ELM or the ELF. This arrangement was enforced meticulously through, until a popular uprising, in October 1964 (the qurashi revolution), swept the General�s regime away, and a popular transitional government was put in place, this time headed by an obscure technocrat, �Sirr-el-khatm al Khalifa�. The new government soon distanced itself from the 'criminals exchange' accord and gave clear indications of its alignment with the Eritrean People. This was the one and only time when truly any Sudanese government showed a heartfelt support and consolation to the Eritrean people and that was the only time when any Sudanese government upheld the spirit of neighborliness. This, alas, was short lived and came abruptly to an end a year later. The Sudanese popular revolution was eventually aborted and buried, because the intellectuals of the nation were aligned with the corrupt traditional power arrangement in the Sudanese society. The old regime went out of the door and came back through the window in a seemingly democratic show of elections which re-instated the ruling machine onto the firm control of the old oligarchy. The prime minister and the guru now was a familiar face long infatuated by the royalty of the Abyssinian Empire, a hardened feudal lord, Sadiq Al-Mahdi, the grandson of Mohammed Ahmed Al Mahdi leader of the Darawish Army which defeated Gordon Pasha in Khartoum and Emperor Yohannes IV in Metemma. The grandson of the Mahdi, however, was no match to his grandfather, he was ever anxious to show his loyalty and support to the Empire of Ethiopia in its oppression of its peoples and the people of Eritrea. This was clear every where in Sudan at that time ( it is also about this time that some Sudanese artists showed interest in having Ethiopian fans, and set up open concerts in Addis Abeba not forgetting to sing Ikhwan..Ikhwan....Ethiopia was sudan). But the real opportunity to reassure his loyalty to the old Empire that came across his way was the seizure of a Plane load of Military Hardware which was brought into Sudan for transit to Eritrea in compliance to a previous arrangement between the ELF and the government of Sudan. This, in fact was not the first load, there were a number of them, and all went through smoothly prior to the last confiscated one. This must bring images to the mind as this sounds like and echoes like an early play of the 1981 grand sale when the ELF was betrayed and forced to give up its arms to the Sudanese Army to confiscate it.
The regime of Sadiq Al Mahdi was a couple of years later toppled and a military Junta, who claimed socialism and ended up calling for Islamism, was installed under the thumb of a colonel (later, out of generosity, gave himself the honor of promoting it to a field marshal) Ja'ffer Nimeri on 1968.
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In fact, this coup, like any other coup in Sudan, was executed to end an irresolvable situation which rose among members of the ruling elite: the religious aristocracies of the traditional feudal alliance. The army, a monopoly of the northern Arab tribal nobilities, is the guarantor of peace between the thieves and is of course the member with the biggest muscles in this unfair power sharing arrangement Wikipedia.org, Arabic version, had this to say about the coup of General Aboud:
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�His coup d�etat was in reality a handover of power from the prime Minister at the time, Abdallah Khalil, when the differences of the Sudanese parties in themselves and with each other, exacerbated. This step of handing over power to the Army was an expression of differences inside his party in the one hand and with the other parties in the other. And when Abboud secured his hand on power, the religious leaders of the two biggest religious groups, Mr. Abdul-rahman Al Mahdi of the Ansar sect (the Umma party) and Mr. Ali Al-Mirghani of the Khatmiya sect (People�s Democratic Party) publicly blessed him and his coup.�
The reign of Nimeiri is one of strangest in the Sudan annals. It was a time when bribery and kickbacks was the law. Numeiri himself was a corrupt and shameless leader. It is a sobering experience to read about a regime of Sudan, that of General Numeiry, so involved in the smuggling and transfer of Jews Ethiopians, the Flasha, making multi million dollar gains, stashed in banks in the Bahamas, from the transaction while at the same time demonizing colonel Mengistu for the barter which he never took part and which the Sudanese were, exclusively, engaged in the first place. Numeiri was also the man who ended the first war in the South (Anyanya movement) when he signed a peace agreement with the chief of Anyanya, William Deng in 1972.
This same agreement was annulled by Nimeiri himself in exchange of an alliance with Turabi and the introduction of sharia laws for Sudan, an action which caused the renewal of the struggle of the south which was not consulted in the introduction of such a drastic move.
The Numeiri regime collapsed under the weight of a popular uprising, a transitional government headed by a retired general was installed for a year. The story repeated itself after a democratic looking elections the old feudal guards once more installed until the Turabi men in the Army came up with the coup and set fire in every corner of the country as is visible now for every one to see.
Where are the knowledgeable, the intellectuals of Sudan in all these?
Perhaps part of the answer to this question lies in that controversial novel written by the Sudanese, AL Tayib Saleh, � Season of Migration to the north�. The novel in general is a dramatic analysis of colonial politics. The story is told through a narrator who is also a co-protagonist. Once the narrator, who was a graduate of a British university like the protagonist, with his childhood friend who never left the village. The friend asked the narrator : �and you, what are you doing in Khartoum? What's the use in our having one of us in the government when you are not doing anything for us?
The narrator can only reply pathetically: � Civil servant like me can't change anything�.
This is pretty enough for an answer.
to be continued
