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Show Page 12 The Ogden Valley news Volume XIV Issue XV May 15, 2007 A History of Power Politics in Darfur and Southern Sudan By Shanna Francis Note: This is Part II in a three part series. Darfur and its Powerbrokers In an examination of power politics in the Darfur and southern region of Sudan, we see firsthand the plight of thousands of casualties caught in a struggle that has been labeled both religious and ethnic. But a review of politics in the region indicates that, above all else, it has been, and continues to be, a struggle for power. National Islamic Front (NIF) The legal government of Khartoum, Khartoum being the capital of Sudan, is administered and controlled by northern Muslims. Since 1989, the ruling government has been represented by the National Islamic Front (NIF). Repressive policies have been used by the NIF regime to ensure that its governmental leaders remain firmly in power, and to maintain control of rich oil and mineral fields located in the Upper Nile province of southern Sudan—a main source of economic power. Control of this invaluable revenue source provides a disincentive for Khartoum to settle its dispute with southern rebels—chiefly African Christians and animists—that have combined to fight for an independent South Sudan. The NIF, which originated as an Islamist student movement in the 1960s, evolved into an Islamic Charter Front known as the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970s, modeling itself after Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. While the NIF has campaigned for the application of sharia law and uses Islamic sloganeering as a way of garnering societal political support, formal religious deference by the NIF represents only a small portion of its Islamic political thought. In 1989, the NIF was behind the military overthrow of the elected government of Sudan headed by Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi. Today, the NIF employs the use of power politics to ensure its survival, using unprecedented levels of physical violence. While on the surface the NIF may appear as an organization involved in political and even religious activity, it has evolved into a paramilitary force utilizing arms and trained loyalist militias. Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Sudan’s President today, is supported by the NIF, and is regarded more as a figurehead than as a powerful individual political actor. Janjaweed Darfur’s Arab militia (Islamist jihadi) is called by the name “Janjaweed,” which means armed horsemen. The Janjaweed are funded by the Sudanese government to keep the southern rebels at bay. This has enflamed Arab-African tensions in Darfur, causing the regime of President Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashire to turn a competition for scarce resources following a prolonged drought in 1983, into, according to a Council on Foreign Relations special report, “. . . a large-scale violent confrontation tinged with serious racial and ethnic overtones.” In addition to the country’s southern oil resources, control of the region’s irrigation water, which flows northward through the Nile River, is just as important as a natural resource, a natural resource that is vital to survival in the region. Both the Sudanese government and Egypt worry that an independent southern Sudan led by the rebels would interrupt or interfere with these valuable waters that flow through the Nile, and are currently protected by a treaty between Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Uganda that disallows the development of the upper waters of the Nile without agreement from all parties. Khartoum and its Muslim supporters are thus apprehensive about allowing southern Sudan, which controls the headwaters of the Nile, from becoming independent. An independent southern Sudan is a threat to Muslim control in the region. Also at risk is the hydro-electric dam on the Blue Nile located near Sudan’s eastern border. Since the early 1990’s, the Sudan Alliance Forces (SAF) under the direction of Abdel Aziz Khalid, a northerner, have been growing in strength. The SAF has played a major role in the opening of a new war front in the east since 1997 after combining with the SPLA and additional smaller groups Arab Nomads For decades, Arab nomads traversed the Sudan region twice a year using established routes that took them through southern farmlands in their search for arable land and the pastures they support. This limited regional asset is a necessary source of feed for the herdsmen’s cattle and/or camels during the dry season. Today, this natural resource, arable lands and limited water supplies, have been overtaxed, creating tensions among the varied groups who utilize the land as a means of survival. Rebels from the southern area of Sudan—Black Christians, animists, and Nubian Black Muslims—are loosely aligned in rebel organizations called the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/ Army (SPLM/A) and its military arm, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army; the Southern Sudan Independent Movement/ Army (SSIM/A); and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which have been actively engaged in attacking government targets in central Darfur as part of their strategy in acquiring the political autonomy they are demanding. While the SPLM/A was initially instituted in 1983 to achieve a secular, pluralistic Sudan that would support Sudan-wide human rights, the group now questions the idea of unity and has shifted its efforts toward gaining self-determination and political separation of religion and state (Justice and Peace.org). Southern African ethnic groups, traditionally farmers, are represented primarily by the Masalit, Fur, and Zaghawa peoples. Though mostly Muslim, these three groups practice a form of religion that is infused with Sufism and animism, which is held in contempt by the Arab Islamic government of Khartoum. SPLM/A and JEM receive much of their support from these groups. While an expert in African history at the University of Santa Barbara, California, Robert Collins explains the situation in Darfur in religious and ethnic terms, stating, “The ethnic cleansing in Darfur is a combination of wanting to convert Muslims who are looked on as going astray, and driving them off the land,” by burning villages and conducting large-scale massacres in the Darfur region, I believe that the instinctive “us versus them” mentality is being used as a tool to generate credibility and support for a quest of self determination and internal locus of power compatible with SPLM/A, SSIM/A, and JEM’s goals. Sudan People’ Liberation Movement/ Army (SPLM/A) Various military wings of various opposition groups in southern Sudan combined under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel John Garang, who, in 1996, was appointed chairman of the military command of seven groups affiliated with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the main Khartoum governmental opposition group in Sudan, who were sent to quell a mutiny in Bor of 500 southern troops who were resisting orders to moved to northern Sudan. Garang was supportive of the mutiny and encouraged similar actions in other garrisons, setting himself up at the head of the rebellion against the Khartoum government. The SPLA, the military wing of the SPLM, was organized in 1983, and has fought against the northern governments of Nimeiri, Sadiq al-Mahdi, and current President Omar Bashir. The SPLA is primarily composed of southern Sudanese Christians. Its publicized aim is to establish a secular, democratic Sudan with the SPLM as the leading party in control of the southern areas. In contrast, many other southern Sudanese call for complete independence—their own independent state of South Sudan. The SPLA’s leader, John Garang, holds a doctorate degree and was militarily trained in the United Sates where he took a company commanders’ course at Fort Benning, Georgia. He is from the Dinka tribe, Sudan’s largest ethnic group (Who’s Who, FAS). The SPLM is the primary recognized political and insurgent arm of the SPLA, and was created by the SPLA (FAS). Internal politics and power plays within the party headed by Dr. Riek Machar TenyDhurgon and Lam Akol led to an attempted overthrow of Garang. The attempt failed DARFUR cont. on page 17 |