Clarifying the Motives for War in Sudan
by Wells Staley-Mays
In the 21-year-long civil war between the largely Muslim Arab north of Sudan and the Black African Christian and animist south, all of the dead (currently estimated to be about two million) were killed by weapons originating in the United States. While the U.S. officially labeled Sudan a "rogue" nation and therefore placed sanctions on arms sales to that country, our government sold weapons to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which supplied the Muslim fundamentalist Arab-dominated northern government, as well as to Eritrea, Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya, which supplied the rebels, the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA). Human rights abuses have been horrendous at the hands of both sides in the ongoing war.
Just as the war seemed to be coming to a negotiated peace in early 2003, a conflict arose in the western province of Darfur. Recently, that conflict has captured center stage in the U.S. media. The Arab-dominated northern government, which is Muslim fundamentalist, has been arming and supporting Arab militias in Darfur which have been killing, raping, torturing, and making refugees of the largely Black African Muslim tribes there. Current estimates are that 191,000 people have been killed; one million have been made homeless; 200,000 have fled to neighboring Chad. As lighter-skinned Arab militias have brutalized Black Africans, particularly raping Black African women in order to "improve the race" and lighten the skin of their children, it is clear that race plays a central role in the strife in Darfur.
"Darfur" is an Arabic word which means "land of the Fur." The Fur is the largest tribe in the western province of Sudan. The recent events in Darfur have been described by one United Nations official as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. The Arabist/Islamic philosophy of the northern government highlights and widens ethnic divisions. It is closely associated with the prevailing school of Islamic thought in Saudi Arabia known as Wahabism. Wedded to this brand of fundamentalism is a racism based on the privilege of lighter-skinned peoples (Arabs) over Black Africans. The combination is lethal to everyone. Many mosques and Muslim holy sites have been destroyed by the Arab militias, who have declared the Muslims of Darfur to be heretics. Darfur is overwhelmingly Muslim.
The Sudan government has its own reasons for stalling at the peace talks and for extending the war. The Darfur war provides a pretext for the extension of emergency laws and other repressive policies. War enriches the northern elites and the security forces. With the slowdown of the war in the south and a possible peace a new source of profiteering is welcomed by many in the northern government.
Members of Peace Action Maine have been very active in one south Sudanese organization, ASERELA, which is made up largely of people of the Acholi tribe and supports a school built through contributions from Maine in the Kiryondongo refugee camp in Uganda. In recent years, ASERELA has made a conscious effort to expand the base of its membership to include members of other tribes in Portland, most notably Azande and Dinke. Peace Action Maine also gave some organizational assistance to a Portland- based community organization of Sudanese from the Nuba region. The Nuban are largely Muslim Black Africans who had been declared heretics by the fundamentalist Muslim government. This designation justified the Sudan army's destruction of thousands of lives in the Nuba mountains and burning of mosques and Korans. The fact that Nubans were largely Muslim demonstrated clearly that the civil war was not a war between northern Muslims and southern Christians, a perspective which has had a lot of coverage in the United States because of the right-wing Christian fundamentalist support for the Sudanese People's Liberation Army and its leader, John Garang.
The pleas from humanitarian organizations for peacekeeping troops to be sent to Darfur have frightened many of us who are wary of military responses by the United States to regional crises. Those of us who suspect the motives of the United States can point to the recent discovery of oil in Darfur as yet another excuse for U.S. support of the rebels in Darfur. The United States Congress has passed resolutions in both houses, supported by large bipartisan majorities, calling the atrocities and ethnic cleansing in Darfur "genocide." This has only increased the frenetic debate over what legally constitutes genocide. The Balkanization of Sudan would give the United States strategic advantages in the south. While the debate rages, so, too, do the killings.
August 25 was an international Day of Conscience for Darfur called by the Save Darfur Coalition, a national coalition of 84 sponsoring organizations. In Portland, Peace Action Maine and the Fur Cultural Renewal held a vigil in Monument Square. Participants pointed to the fact that international response to the crisis in Darfur has been divided and ineffectual. The Sudan government has gained time to pursue a devastating counter-insurgency strategy against two rebel groups in Darfur and a wide swath of civilians by playing on those divisions and a desire of the leading states in Sudan not to put at risk the comprehensive peace agreement that is tantalizingly close between the government and the Sudanese People's Liberation Army.
Western governments have played directly into the Sudan government's strategy. They have given total priority to the peace talks while only quietly engaging the Sudan government about Darfur in an effort to secure incremental improvements in humanitarian access. They have refrained from directly challenging the Sudan government even while attacks continue and access to areas of Darfur which are controlled by the Arab militia is continually impeded. But a failure to resolve the catastrophic Darfur situation will undermine not only the last stages of peace negotiations but also the prospects of implementing whatever agreement is ultimately reached there.
We are sorry to see that the observer states at the peace talks (United States, United Kingdom, Norway and Italy) have continued to show infinite patience with the Sudan government's lies and procrastination. We believe that the observer states' policy has made a successful peace agreement less, not more likely. We call upon the observer states to adopt a new strategy to make a high-level push, including through a Security Council statement or resolution, to bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion. If this fails and the deadline passes, the observer states should downgrade their participation in the peace talks for a time and focus on the Darfur agenda, both for its own sake and to change the dynamic of the peace talks, which have encountered endless delays since January 2004.
A new immigrant organization in Maine, the Fur Cultural Revival, is working to publicize the current crisis in Darfur. The group demonstrates on the corner of Middle and Exchange Streets in the Old Port on Fridays from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. We welcome all who are concerned to join us.
Back to Peace Talk Index, Autumn, 2004
