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Will Sudan Keep its Agreement with the SPLM - Part 2?

Oxford scholar and Sudan expert, Bona Malwal, discusses the conflict in Sudan and in particular the encouragement of slavery by the North Sudanese Governement:

Bona Malwal: Slavery was never fully eradicated in Sudan. The British colonial authorities outlawed it in the early twentieth century. They closed off South Sudan to the Arabs of Northern Sudan to stamp out any illegal trafficking in slaves from the South. All the same, there were still occasional cases reported, and those Arab individuals involved in these cases were routinely prosecuted. This continued to the mid-1960s when apparently the attitude of the government in Khartoum towards the enslavement of the people in South Sudan was developed as a weapon of war.
In 1983 the then military regime of General Jaafar Mohamed Nimeiri, triggered the current phase of the civil war when he abrogated the autonomy of South Sudan and imposed Islamic law. Southerners were forced to take up arms against the central government. General Nimeiri promptly authorised the formation of Arab tribal militia, ostensibly to defend themselves against the rebels from the South. The government of Sudan provided training, weaponry and supplies for this new fighting force outside the national army. But General Nimeiri was overthrown in early 1985 while the Arab militia force was still in its formation. A year later, the rebels of The Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) from the South became an aggressive fighting force that was threatening the authority of the central government all over the South. Then the newly elected democratic government of Prime Minister Sadiq El Mahdi took power in June 1986, following parliamentary elections. Prime Minister El Mahdi brought into his government as Minister of State for Defence, the man who organised the Arab militia force for Nimeiri - Major General Fadalla Burma Nasir, a fellow Baggara Arab from Southern Kordofan. Prime Minister El Mahdi retained the portfolio of defence for himself. There was no doubt in anyone's mind at this point about what general Fadalla Burma Nasir's assignment in the government of Prime Minister Sadiq El Mahdi was supposed to be. Very quickly, the arming of Arab tribal militia and incorporating them into the war policy of an elected democratic government was established. The new government was hell bent on defeating the rebellion in South Sudan, using illegal and undemocratic methods. This policy was becoming clearer and clearer every day. Unleashing the Arab militia on the civilian population of South Sudan became a state policy. Not only that but looting any moveable property from the South including taking slaves now became public, as an unannounced government war policy. It is in the wake of such a public policy that the new surge of slavery as a weapon of war and policy erupted.

The government of Sudan was motivated by the need to subdue the South and to win the war against the rebels in the South. All means had to be used to achieve that. Nothing could be regarded as untouchable if it could lead to a victory over the rebels in the South. The strong desire and urge to win the war against the rebels in the South was therefore the main motivation in the government's revival of slavery in Sudan.

It is perhaps important to bear in mind that the government in 1983, and indeed the current one, which overthrew it by a military coup, had no cultural inhibition towards slavery. Being Muslims and Arabs, it seemed culturally acceptable and religiously legitimate to these governments to enslave those who are at war against them. This is why the present government of Sudan proclaimed at the very start of its military campaign when it first ceased power in a military coup in June 1989 that it was engaged in an Islamic holy war in South Sudan. In an Islamic holy war, slavery is an apparently legitimate war policy if not wholly legal.

My main reason for quoting this excerpt is that Malwal ties the state religion of the Sudan Government to the action it took against civilians in the South. This action included terrorizing villages, bombing churches and enslaving the defenseless.

Since it was the cultural and religious beliefs of the Government of Sudan that catalyzed the civil war in 1983 by imposing Islamic Law on the South, one has to wonder what has changed in the GOS' belief system that will enable the unification of North and South Sudan. I've found nothing to indicate that Khartoum has changed or is capable of keeping an agreement.

In addition, from a historical perspective the only time the country had a single centralized government was when it was colonialized by a single external power. Is it really possible for the Islamic extremist North Sudanese Government to work cooperatively with the Southern animists and Christians? Is the Khartoum government, which is guilty of genocide in Dafur, capable of sharing power and working cooperatively with the SPLM?

Already the Sudanese Liberation Movement (of Western Sudan) is warning the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (of the South) that the GOS cannot be trusted.

But one of the two main Darfur rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), said in a statement: "We warn of the regime's record of violating agreements and promises.

"We would stress that the implementation stage is the most difficult and our recent experiences ... with the Khartoum government confirm that the easiest thing is to sign but the agreement remains ink on paper, or rather is liable to collapse before the ink is dry." - Reuters

While the SPLM is well aware of the treachery of the North, the SLM warns that "the war will take new forms." The concern being that what Khartoum could not accomplish by terrorizing the citizens of the South it may be able to achieve at the bargaining table via a political slight of hand - a new form of war.

Posted by tim at January 2, 2005 4:05 PM

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