Three months after the birth of South Sudan, how is the northern
neighbor of the world’s newest nation faring?
The country, witnessing minor demonstrations, generally
managed to escape the large-scale protests that have swept across
the Middle East and North Africa since last winter, but
as the Financial Times reports,
Sudan’s economy has been hit severely by the secession of the
south, which was by far Khartoum’s largest source of oil
revenues.
Indeed, the oil boom in the early 2000s made Sudan one of
the fastest growing economies in Africa. Yet owing to a 75 percent
drop in oil revenues since July, the Sudanese pound — Khartoum’s
currency — has dropped by up to 60 percent on the black market,
while annual inflation reached 21 percent last month, with the
price of meat now reaching $10 per kilogram. Of course, these
developments could well re-ignite popular protests.
Meanwhile, the ruling autocrat Omar al-Bashir
has vowed to adopt a constitution completely in
accordance with Sharia (Islamic law). As Bashir himself put it,
“Ninety-eight percent of the people are Muslims and the new
constitution will reflect this. The official religion will be Islam
and Islamic law the main source [of the constitution].”
This statement neatly fits in with his outlook elaborated
on in December of last year,
when he declared: “If south
Sudan secedes, we will change the constitution and at that time
there will be no time to speak of diversity of culture and
ethnicity.… Shari’a and Islam will be the main source for the
constitution, Islam the official religion and Arabic the official
language.”
This will naturally pose problems for the million or so
southerners still residing in the north, as well as the Christian
populations residing in Sudan’s southern border states of Blue Nile
and South Kordofan, both of which were granted a degree of autonomy
on religious and cultural issues as part of the 2005 peace deal
that recognized the “cultural and social diversity of the Sudanese
people.”
While the Catholic Church in Blue Nile did not hesitate to
voice its anxieties back in February over a potential extension of
Shari’a law, it is disconcerting to note that Bashir’s initiative
apparently has strong
support from local Muslims in Blue
Nile.
In fact, Blue Nile and South Kordofan merit special
attention because the Sudanese government is still waging an
active, indiscriminate bombing campaign in these areas against
rebels who, consisting of Christians and some Muslims, belong to
the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N). South
Kordofan, situated in the Nuba Mountains, contains a substantial
proportion of Sudan’s remaining oil reserves, and by August had
already seen the displacement of nearly 400,000
civilians, amid claims of rebel advances against
government troops.
As for Blue Nile, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
estimates that
more than 27,000 refugees have fled into
neighboring Ethiopia as a result of the conflict, and state media
are reporting that the Sudanese army is closing in on the rebels as
it has seized control of the town of Sali, just 5.6 miles north of
the rebel stronghold of Kurmuk, which has been almost completely
emptied of civilians. On the other hand, the SPLM-N is denying that
this event has occurred.
Precise information as to the balance of power in the
fighting in Blue Nile and South Kordofan is difficult to obtain
because aid agencies have been denied access to both areas. Hence,
the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan — Princeton Lyman —
has called on Khartoum to allow “credible”
international NGOs to reach the two states to assess the
humanitarian situation.
In any event, it is clear that the events in the two
border-states could well provoke a war between Sudan and its
southern neighbor, with the former accusing the latter of
orchestrating the rebels’ activities. South Sudan denies this
allegation, but may feel compelled to support the SPLM-N in the
near future should Khartoum’s forces overwhelm the rebels and carry
out mass killings on a similar scale to what happened in
Darfur.
At this point, many are inclined to dismiss the role of
the Sudanese government’s Islamist and Arab supremacist ideology
behind its policies in South Kordofan and Darfur. Granted, there is
a desire to secure a monopoly for Khartoum itself (where much of
the wealth from the oil boom years was spent for the benefit of the
Arab elite in the capital city) on the country’s remaining
petroleum reserves.
However, the regime’s key goal of imposing Islamic law and
Arabization on the Christian and black African Muslim ethnic groups
in the country is evident from the statements made by the Sudanese
elite. Bashir’s desire to extend the realm of Sharia and enforce an
Arab identity over the entire country has already been
noted.
When it comes to Darfur, where an
inflow of arms from Libya could now revive
the Darfuri rebels’ fight against the government, Sudanese
officials and Janjaweed militias have consistently defined their
actions of ethnic cleansing against the native population of the
region as “jihad” against peoples perceived as insufficiently
Islamic and Arabized. For example, as armed forces spokesman
Mohamed Beshir Suleiman put it in August
2004, “The door of the jihad is still
open and if it has been closed in the south it will be opened in
Darfur.”
As Sadiq al-Mahdi, a leading opposition figure in
Sudan,
summed up: “The catastrophe
that afflicted our country began with the takeover by a minority
party that imposed an Arabic Islamic identity on a country of
diverse religions and cultures, treating whoever did not agree with
it as a renegade to be fought by jihad.”
And so it is today that activists in South Kordofan and
Blue Nile point to the real solution required if Sudan is ever to
move forward. In the words of
Amar Amoun, a Nuban MP from South Kordofan,
there must be a “democratic, secular Sudan where we all have
rights.” Yet the international community at large seems unwilling
to acknowledge the role of jihad theology and Arab supremacist
attitudes behind Khartoum’s behavior.
In the meantime, where are the calls for a
UN-mandated no-fly zone over South Kordofan and Blue Nile? Where
are the demands for a NATO bombing campaign against Sudan’s armed
forces? Answer: they do not exist.
Why? Because, unlike Gaddafi, Omar al-Bashir has not been
abandoned by the Arab League, which
gave him a red-carpet welcome at the group’s
summit in Qatar in 2009; nor have members of the Gulf Cooperation
Council, which is increasingly
replacing the Arab League as an inter-Arab
political body, thought it necessary to denounce the Sudanese
president. Such is the racist hypocrisy of the Arab governments,
which have similarly failed to condemn the horrific treatment of
black migrant workers in Libya at the hands of militias that were
fighting against Gaddafi.
