The Scoop on Sudan

The following originally appeared in a recent Religious Liberty Program e-newsletter. If you would like to receive our weekly e-newsletter, click here and select “Religious Liberty.”

 

Faith McDonnell speaks at the Nubia Awareness Day that IRD co-hosted with Rescue Nubia and members of Congress.

Winston Churchill said Russia was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. What would Churchill have said about Sudan? Something about contradictions, deception, and destiny, I imagine. When people ask me how things are in Sudan, I have a long answer and a longer answer. But I’ll just provide some of the bad and good news from my perspective.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the National Congress Party (NCP, formerly known as the National Islamic Front) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) is in danger of falling apart. The Islamists in Khartoum have failed to implement most of the provisions of the peace agreement and have violated many with impunity. At a recent Sudan hearing on Capitol Hill, longtime Sudan advocate and my personal hero, Roger Winter, declared that “The NCP has a 100% perfect record. It NEVER ever keeps the agreements it signs with its opponents.” At the same hearing Pagan Amum Okiech, Secretary General of the SPLM, testified that the NCP has distributed79,000 AK-47’s to volatile militia groups in the South and elsewhere. Khartoum uses these militias to destabilize the Regional Government of South Sudan, to try to prove to the world that “Southern Sudanese are incapable of governing themselves,” and, oh yes, to kill people.

Genocide continues in Darfur. American advocates focus on the plight of Darfurians whose villages have been attacked and are forced to find shelter in refugee camps. But they do not talk as much about the NCP’s reason for clearing out these villages. Tens of thousands of families from the Arab world are being brought in to take the land of the African Darfurians and create an Arab Islamist colony there.  Meanwhile, uniting the various Darfurian rebel groups would be a very helpful step in towards peace and security to Darfur. But the NCP prevents this by actually backing some of the rebel groups. Not all of the Darfurian rebels are fighting on behalf of the Darfuri. Some are actually working for Khartoum.

But the fragile state of the CPA and the situation in Darfur is not the half of it! Focusing on a specific region stunts our ability to comprehend the whole picture, which is exactly what the NCP wants. As our Southern Sudanese friends have told us – and told the U.S. government – for years, Khartoum has an agenda to Islamize and Arabize all of Sudan. Areas of Sudan in the east, the home to the indigenous Beja people, and the north, where the Nubians live, are also areas of colonization. The NCP has made agreements with other Islamist states to displace, make that replace, the African Muslim Beja and Nubians just as they are doing with the African Muslims of Darfur.

Beja friends tell me that eastern Sudan has already been colonized by Rashaida Arabs, Bedouins originally from Saudi Arabia. Now the NCP is also settling thousands and thousands of Somali Islamists in eastern Sudan, providing houses and jobs for them, according to my Beja friends. Meanwhile the indigenous Beja are living in abject poverty, dying from diseases, with no adequate healthcare system and no access to humanitarian relief from other countries, since Khartoum will not allow assistance to this part of Sudan.

In the north of Sudan, the NCP has made agreements with Egypt and China to build a series of dams in Nubia. The damming of the Nile in this manner will flood land considered sacred to the Nubians since it is the home of the ancient Kushite religion and empire. It is also the location of some of Christianity’s earliest kingdoms and of an ancient Jewish community at Elephantine.  The floods will wipe out centuries of art and culture, all the evidence of the strong Kushite civilization which once ruled over Egypt. Nubian friends tell me that as Khartoum drives out the Nubians, it is settling Arabs from all over the Arab world in Nubia. With help from radical Arab Islamists, Khartoum is preparing a new Andalusia, an Islamic Caliphate, on the banks of the Nile, the Nubians warn.

Finally, my greatest concern is how the U.S. government continues, as it always has, to believe that diplomacy will work with Sudan. My friend Deborah Martin puts it this way, “We always play ‘win-win,’ but Sudan plays ‘win-lose.’” The NCP has no intention of playing win-win with Southern Sudan, with the United States, or with anyone that goes against their agenda of Islamization. If it looks as if they are (such as in the signing of the CPA), it is only because it will aid them in their objectives sometime down the road.

Recently, the U.S. Sudan Special Envoy, Major General Scott Gration, caused great consternation when he remarked that the U.S. would consider lifting the sanctions on Sudan and removing it from the terrorist list. Particularly my Darfurian friends have expressed dismay over the Obama administration’s “equivocation.” Over the years since September 11, 2001, U.S. government officials have stated that the NCP was “cooperating on terrorism.” My Sudanese friends know better. To repeat the principle above, if it looks as if they are, it is only because it will aid them in their objectives sometime down the road. It is incomprehensible to me how we can be snookered again and again by Khartoum.

In spite of all that, there is some good news. Members of the U.S. Congress who have long been advocates for peace and justice in Sudan continue to be so. They are urging the Obama administration to formulate the right kind of policy on Sudan. And U.S. churches and advocacy groups are committed to helping achieve peace and justice in Sudan. Many are working to empower the Government of South Sudan as well as elements of civil society and the churches. Others are focused on Darfur. Now we just need to encourage advocacy for other marginalized areas of Sudan, as well as a more comprehensive focus by everyone.

Probably the best news is that all of Sudan’s marginalized people groups are realizing that they have much more in common with each other – Christian and Muslim, North and South – than they do with the regime in Khartoum. This was the dream of the late Dr. John Garang, a new Sudan where all people are equal and where there is peace, religious freedom, and secular democracy. Southern Sudanese, along with people from Nuba Mountains, Nubia, Darfur, eastern Sudan, and elsewhere have embraced that more comprehensive focus and are working together. As the time for Sudan’s elections approaches, it seems as if all of the people of Sudan may want to choose a whole new way forward, rather than continuing to live under the domination of the deformed NCP regime of Omer al Bashir. We can hope and pray that if such a change comes it might come through the democratic process and not through bloodshed. It remains to be seen whether the way forward will involve the secession of South Sudan. But even if South Sudan chooses to secede, strong ties are being built between Sudan’s marginalized peoples. So the people of Sudan and South Sudan may still go forward together.