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In this letter, I could tell you about how the marginalized African people groups of Sudan – 85% of the country’s population – are coming together in a movement to work for the transformation of their country. I could tell you about how people groups that had been kept separated from each other and used against each other by the Islamist regime in Khartoum are now in solidarity with each other. I could explain how they are speaking out not just about the issues in their own region, but about the issues in the regions of their fellow Sudanese who have been oppressed and persecuted by the regime.
But I would rather let you see for yourself some of the representatives of this movement. On April 18, I accompanied friends Daowd from Darfur, Khalid from Nubia, and Ibrahim from Beja Land (eastern Sudan) to meet with U.S. Representative Christopher Smith and one of his key staff members, Gregory Simpkins. Smith is the Chairman of the Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights Subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He is one of the staunchest advocates for the persecuted around the world, for life, and for human rights. We revealed to Congressman Smith the multi-faceted opposition to the Khartoum regime of Omar al Bashir and the National Congress Party (NCP), stretching from corner to corner of Africa’s largest country. Now we are working on ways to make information about Sudan’s many ancient and varied people groups, and their marginalization by the small minority of Islamists in power in Khartoum, more widely known.
Currently the regime is engaged in perpetrating a genocidal war against the people of the Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile State, and Abyei. Over half a million people, hiding from aerial bombardment in Nuba Mountain caves, are threatened at this moment with government-orchestrated starvation unless the United States and/or the world community defy Khartoum’s ban on providing food aid. Although our friend Gogadi, from the Nuba Mountains, was unable to join us at the meeting, we also discussed the urgent need for intervention to save the Nuba, as well as measures to counter Bashir’s agenda for Blue Nile State and Abyei.
We were accompanied by our friend Dr. Walid Phares, the author of last year’s The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East. In the book, Phares uncannily predicted coming uprisings to topple tyrannical regimes. He warned that for true democracy and freedom to succeed, the United States and other freedom-loving nations must support the real pro-democracy/anti-Jihadist movements and not allow their resistance and sacrifice to be used and taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists. Of course this is just what has happened in such countries as Egypt and Libya. The Coming Revolution was released just weeks before the start of the “Arab Spring.” Unfortunately, powerful Islamist factions took over the efforts begun by the young demonstrators in Tahrir Square and by Libyans seeking legitimate relief from the regime of Gadhafi.
There is still an opportunity for a different outcome in Sudan. With every passing day, Khartoum’s actions become more egregious. Now the regime is threatening war with the newly independent Republic of South Sudan. Even the worst of the benefactors of moral equivalence, who scold the marginalized peoples’ forces who fight to protect the people who the regime is attempting to exterminate, and who mutter platitudes that they don’t even believe themselves about “both sides working out their differences at the peace table,” can’t remain in denial much longer. We must urge our government to take a comprehensive, action-oriented approach to end the suffering of the marginalized people of Sudan and to support those who would bring peace, freedom, and equality for all Sudanese.
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