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Title: Blood, Water & Oil Author: Michael Schmidt Date: May 14, 2007 Language: en Topics: Sudan, war, anarkismo Source: Retrieved on 5th August 2021 from http://anarkismo.net/article/5584
The Darfur War has been described as the worst conflict in the world
today — and yet despite intensive media coverage, many aspects of the
conflict are misunderstood because of the propaganda battle that runs in
tandem with the war on the ground. The view from the ground offers
different perspectives.
Much has been written on the crisis in Darfur, the three arid
westernmost provinces of Sudan, so I will not repeat it here.
Suffice to say that the USA alleges genocide against the Fur, Masaalit
and Zaghawa tribes by Khartoum-backed Janjaweed militia – an interest
spurred no doubt by Washington’s desire for access to Sudan’s oil
reserves which are currently being exploited exclusively by China and to
a lesser extent, Malaysia and India.
On the other hand, Nafi Ali Nafi, the deputy leader of the ruling
National Congress Party admitted that Khartoum armed and trained a
“popular defence force” from among civilians to be used to support the
Sudanese Defence Force in its battle against rebels in Darfur, while
denying any genocidal campaign.
Sudan remains, in World Bank terms, a highly indebted poor country. But
oil is changing all that: by 2006, oil accounted for over 25% of Sudan’s
gross domestic product. However little of the wealth from that 120,000
barrels of crude a year finds its way into an economy propped up by
Bangladeshi guest workers lured to Sudan on false promises (winding up
sweeping floors for about US$100/month), or into neglected extremities
like Darfur.
The International Monetary Fund has been pushing the fatal policy of
privatisation in Sudan, which has on the one hand adopted unpopular
austerity measures at home, while joining the initiative for a Free
Trade Area for east and southern Africa abroad.
Also, by last year, it was estimated that up to 200,000 people had died
in Darfur either directly or indirectly as a result of the war and
2,2-million people have been displaced. There is no known oil in Darfur,
but the China National Petroleum Corporation is keen on laying a
pipeline through it to connect Port Sudan on the Red Sea via Sudan’s
oil-rich Abeyi region to new reserves in Equatorial Guinea. But there is
also a giant aquifer, which runs from the Libyan border under Darfur to
the Nile, and groundwater will soon, I predict run a close second to oil
as a valued commodity, as sustainable use of the Nile reaches capacity.
After spending time in el-Fasher and Nyala, the capitals of North and
South Darfur respectively, last month, I offer these brief thoughts on
the situation in Darfur that I hope will shed a different light on the
war:
Darfur it is patently obvious that such distinctions, while embraced by
a minority of the people, do not hold up in fact because those so
defined all speak Arabic, dress identically and have the same culture.
Within the same family, facial features express the mixed heritage of
Darfurians. The differences that do exist are rather tribal than ethnic,
which begs the question of why the Darfur question has been racialised
in the Western media? The conflict in south Sudan could easily be used
emotively for geo-political ends by the West by suggesting it was a
battle between an oppressed southern Christian culture and a dominant
northern Islamic culture. The same argument cannot be applied in Darfur
which has a largely homogenous population – and yet a subtle, dishonest
version of it (of Arabs versus Africans) continues to be peddled in the
West. This can only be about the demonisation of Arab and Islamic
culture by America’s Christian fundamentalist lords of the New Crusades.
starting in 1983 under a previous regime of certain aspects of shari٬a
law and of a policy of Islamisation that technically only applied to
northerners, Sudan’s Islamic tradition is overwhelmingly Sufi with its
emphasis on personal, ecstatic communion with Allah. The austere
Salafist Islam that has produced groups like al-Qaeda remains a minority
tradition within Sudan and of very little social and political effect
(even though Osama bin Laden lived in Khartoum in the early 1990s). In
politics, the long-lived Umma Party may recall the anti-colonial mania
of the Mahdist Revolt of 1881–1885, but in reality, it remains merely
the hobby-horse of the Mahdi’s grandson, Sadiq al-Mahdi. Meanwile, the
Muslim Brotherhood was not consulted (as it should have been according
to the shura principle of shari٬a) on the Islamisation policy of the
government, and some aspects of the legal code were in direct conflict
with shari٬a so the legal code remains unacceptable to many Sudanese –
Muslims included.
rebels took up arms because they saw that route as the only way (based
on the apparent success of the southern struggle) to convince Khartoum
to devolve power and resources to the Darfurian backwaters. But of
greater general concern is the implacable eastward march of the sands of
the Sahara, at a rate approaching 10km a year. For example, as recently
as 1992, the edge of the desert stood a good 120km west of Nyala. Today,
the desert is only 5km from the city limits. So desertification and
environmental degradation – exacerbated by the decimation of Darfur’s
trees by wood-sellers – has compressed the tribes into ever-smaller
areas where they bicker and battle over shrinking water resources and
grazing land. Modernisation since the Nimeri era (see below) also eroded
traditional methods of dispute-resolution, and as in Somalia, the
addition of automatic weapons has spiralled tribal bloodletting beyond
its normal bounds.
clear that the very establishment of camps for “internal displaces” all
over Darfur works in favour of Khartoum. The camps, like the one at Abu
Shouk north of el-Fasher where 50,000 displacees live, are run by the
regional governments, aided by a plethora of United Nations and other
aid agencies, and policed to a degree by the African Union. But though
life in the camps is relatively good, with everything from cellphones to
cosmetics on sale and health rates that appear better than the towns (at
least in my comparison of Abu Shouk and el-Fasher), they remain
concentration camps in the original sense of the term. That is, they
forcibly concentrate formerly nomadic tribal peoples in an artificial
“town” for years, urbanising them and exposing them to the seductions of
the market – and of course, removing on-the-ground support from the
rebels. The deployment of UN blue-helmets will most likely merely
reinforce this pattern, which heavily favours Khartoum at the expense of
Darfur.
That said, Darfur is clearly occupied territory, with Sudanese Army
“technicals” (Toyota trucks with heavy machine-guns mounted on the back)
much in evidence, with Chinese helicopter gunships at el-Fasher and MiGs
on the runway at Nyala – and with a strong plain-clothes National
Intelligence and Security service presence.
We anarchist-communists naturally need to condemn Khartoum’s brutal use
of proxy forces – and its cynical use of displacee camps – to control
the civilian political process in Darfur.
But we also need to reject both the racialisation of the debate by the
Western media and the false solution that an armed UN presence would
bring. We should also appreciate the environmental and tribal roots of
this complex war and see that, as the Darfurian rebels appreciate all
too well, the only guarantor of a modicum of democracy in Darfur is the
devolution of power to the people armed (though this is not to be read
as an endorsement of any rebel platform).
The obvious question then becomes, what is the alternative? For that I
will turn to a brief overview of the Sudanese left. The Sudanese
Communist Party (HSS) was founded in 1946 during the global postwar
upsurge of anti-colonial sentiment, and got its first brief taste of
power in 1964 when a transitional government embraced all factions
including the Muslim Brotherhood. But after elections in 1965 were
followed by serious fighting by southern secessionists, the government
swung rightwards and the HSS was outlawed.
The party was reinstated in 1969 thanks to the coup by Colonel Gafaar
Mohammed Nimeri, who struck a military-HSS alliance and laid the
groundwork for a one-party Soviet-aligned state. But in 1970, Nimeri,
Libya’s Muammar Gadaffi and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat announced they were to
unite the three countries in a federation. This was unacceptable to the
HSS and it staged a coup under Major Hashim al-Ata which ousted Nimeri –
but he was restored to power within three days and the HSS was driven
underground again.
Nimeri’s political orientation meanwhile swung towards the USA in the
wake of the 1981 assassination of Sadat, who had displeased him by
reaching a separate peace with Israel. In 1985, a general strike brought
Khartoum to a standstill and precipitated the fall of Nimeri who was on
a visit to the USA, in a bloodless coup. Dr Gizuli Dafallah, a trade
unionist prominent in the strike action, was appointed prime minister by
the transitional military council, an indication of the growing power of
the Sudanese trade union movement.
But the government proved unstable in the context of the emergence of a
new secessionist force in the south, the Sudan People’s Liberation
Movement / Army (SPLM/A) and with deepening divisions over Nimeri-era
Islamicisation of the legal code and in 1989, Brigadier Omar el-Bashir
staged a coup in the name of the Revolutionary Command Council for
National Salvation.
The left nationalist SPLM/A enjoyed the support of the Stalinist regime
of Mengistu Haile Mariam in neighbouring Ethiopia, but he himself was
overthrown in 1991, echoing the general collapse of the East Bloc and
the liberation movements it backed.
In 2001, the Bikisha Media Collective in South Africa – which went on to
form the core of today’s Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation – had
contact with a major who was a rebel commander within the National
Democratic Alliance (TWD). Formed in 1989, the TWD was based in exile in
Eritrea, embraced 11 northern and southern opposition groups including
the HSS, SPLM/A and various trade unions, and aimed at replacing the
el-Bashir regime with a parliamentary democracy.
The TWD major asked: “With great respect as comrades at arms, I would
like more information regarding the revolution for it is the right of
everyone to fight for freedom which we have been denied as peace-loving
Africans since we have remained prisoners mentally…”
He went on to request information on the “best formation” and “defined
techniques” necessary for victory and we directed him to the
Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists. Although contact
was later lost, this demonstrates there was a hunger for the sort of
practical politics that anarchist-communism can deliver.
This is not to overstate the potential for an anarchist-communist
project in Sudan today. For one thing, the drawing of the SPLM into
government through the comprehensive peace agreement struck in 2005 has
undercut the potential of its more radical tendencies (and dissidents
within the movement tend to be ethnically-based).
Legalisation has seen the old Stalinist edifice of the HSS fracture,
however, with several “ultra-left” tendencies breaking away, primarily
among students at the University of Khartoum. Although these mostly have
a Maoist flavour, influenced as they are by conditions of rural warfare,
the potential remains for anarchist-communism to make inroads here with
fresh ideas. And the trade union movement, though heavily urban, remains
strong, which is a good sign for any who wish to see an empowered
Sudanese working class.