“Unity” Not an Option

Click here to read Marial’s full prayer guide for the upcoming Sudan referendum.

IRD friend, the Rev. Samuel Galuak Marial, a Sudanese literacy and translation consultant now doing post-graduate work at Trinity School for Ministry, has provided us with a short prayer guide for the upcoming referendum, January 9, 2011, in South Sudan. Marial not only gives information about what is happening right now, but offers a brief background on the country. This guide will help to explain why the people of South Sudan would want to secede from the Islamist regime and not opt for “unity.”

Of Sudan’s independence in 1956 Marial writes:

But when power was transferred from the Anglo-Egyptian government in 1956 to the hands of Muslims in the north; Sudan was now on the verge of moving from bad to worse and it was never the same! All the leaders or the presidents who ruled the country, starting from Ibrahim Abboud to Omar al- Bashir in present days never meant good for southerners who are predominantly Christians.

He also speaks of why Southern Sudanese distrust the Khartoum government: “too many agreements dishonored.”

Anyanya One managed to strike a peace deal, known as the Addis Ababa Agreement, with the northern Islamic based government in Khartoum in 1972, in Ethiopia. The peace accord was intended as a fair avenue of settling contentious issues reflected in diverging ideas in a multicultural country. Southerners in good faith, despite continued disappointments, strived whole heartedly for a sincere peaceful settlement of socio-economic, political differences embedded with religious ideologies in Khartoum, just to name a few.

The reward the southerners got was the massacre of innocent paramount chiefs, mostly Dinka, in a range of three years (1967-9) before the Addis Ababa Agreement came to being, and the killing of prominent leaders like William Deng Nhial and others. Khartoum has repeatedly continued to prove its unfaithfulness as one of the principal partners to keep a peace accord.

Further confirmation of why the Southerner cannot trust the Arab Islamist government in the North came from the former president of Sudan, Ja’afar Mohammed Nimeiry, himself. Marial writes that Nimeiry declared, “”Addis Ababa Peace Agreement is not Qu’ran or Injiil.”” In other words, since the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement was not the Qu’ran (or an agreement that was made under the tenets of Islam), it could be violated. Khartoum was engaging in taqiyya (the Islamic practice of deceiving the infidel to further the cause of Islam) when the agreement was signed. Southern Sudanese know that still today there is no “good faith” with the Islamic regime, only expediency, the same expediency that forced them to sign the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

In spite of all of this evidence of bad faith by Khartoum, there are those who are urging unity. Many fear the violence that well could follow a decision to secede, or could follow trumped-up results in the vote that prohibit secession. Others have less noble reasons for wanting the South to remain part of the Islamist regime. Still others, the marginalized and oppressed black African people groups that comprise some 87-90% of the country, along with young Arab Sudanese in the North who are disgusted with the elitists running the police state in Khartoum, understand the Southerners desire for freedom, but wish that they could all remain one in their resistance to Khartoum. The solace is that the people of South Sudan do consider themselves one with the people of Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile, Abyei, as well as with the Nubians of the far north, the Beja of eastern Sudan, the Darfurians who have experienced a genocide similar to their own – and one with all those who want peace, freedom, and a secular democracy. After secession, South Sudan would continue to have unity with these Sudanese.

As we pray for the upcoming referendum and all of the associated events, please remember to pray that peace, freedom, and justice will come for all of the people of Sudan.