The state in Sudan has exerted by its various repressive
and ideological apparatuses (military, security, police, schools, mosques,
etc), different forms of violence against its subjects, groups and individuals.
The most severe form of state violence, however, is the one inflected upon
the country’s ethnic minorities, mainly in southern Sudan and Darfur.
For more than 25 years of continuous war in southern Sudan (second wave of
this war), more than 2 millions persons have perished while almost the same
number of people have been displaced internally or crossed the boarder to
the neighboring countries where they are living under very harsh situations
in which the minimum standards of human living is lacking. Moreover, the
war has contributed to the complete destruction of the cultural and societal
structures of these societies to the extend which it is almost impossible
to rehabilitate them in any foreseeable future.
Currently, the state has deployed its various forces to inflect the people
of Darfur. Accordingly, more than 300,000 persons have been killed, 2 million
displaced and more than 200,000 fled to the Republic of Chad. In addition,
thousands of villages were burned to the ground, hundred of herds were killed
or looted, etc. Has not the international community intervened, the situation
would have been more catastrophical .
Working on the information about the current genocide in Darfur, this paper
attempts to read state violence in Sudan which is directed against its ethnic
minorities within the premises of necro-politics. Moreover, it suggests that
state violence is deeply inherent in its institutions and hence can not be
understood in isolation from its historical “rise” and development in Sudan.
As an ‘alien’ entity, the state has been super-imposed to the new reality
of Sudan merely to serve the interests of the various colonial forces, which
had never hesitated to use all kinds of violence and coercion against the
indigenous population. After the country’s declared political independence
in 1956, the “national” elites which inherited the state machinery failed
to build a national state which would respect the differences of its
peoples. Instead, they adopted certain ideological discourse based on “narrow”
reading of the Arabic and Islamic culture and rendered it as a major criteria
for “national” identity and sharing of country’s power and wealth,
and hence contributed in the creation of the “Other” from those who do not
“fit” within its limits. This “other” has become the historical enemy of
the state and its “object” of violence. The paper, therefore, suggests that
this development accounts for the state violence in Sudan, and hence will
be dealt with in details.
Why has the Arab World Buried the
Truth about the Manmade Tsunami in Darfur?
Gamal Adam
University of Toronto
With the exception of few human rights related organizations, the Arab World
has dismissed the manmade Tsunami of Darfur either as Judo-Christian a conspiracy
led by US and Israel against the implementation of Sharia in Sudan and spread
of the Arab culture in Sudan and beyond or as a foreign plan both by western
and some neighboring countries to expropriate Sudan’s abundant potential
resources. This is the position which most of those who have access to media
and press in the Arab countries took after the problem of Darfur that began
since the second decade of the last century finally captured the attention
of the international community in 2003 and became one of its foci ever since.
The seriousness of this crisis forced many leaders of foreign governments
and international organizations, including, interalia, the US Secretary of
State and the UN Secretary General, to visit the region and support its victimized
population, but the seriousness of the same problem forced Arab leaders and
directors of their regional organizations to visit Khartoum and pay their
support to the government; and representatives of few Arab organizations
who visited the region went back to their countries with information that
deny the facts that others who visited Darfur came out with.
With a particular focus on what has been written in the press or said in
the media about Darfur, I will attempt to find answers to the question: “Why
has the Arab world buried the truth about the crisis of Darfur?” Although
Islam says: “Muslims are like pillars of a building that support one another.”
Different theories of nationalism will be utilized to investigate the question.
The Sudanese state victimized Southern Sudanese for over 50 years but their
victimization made little supportive echoes in the Arab world probably because
many of them identify themselves as Christian. Although until recently Darfur
was acclaimed in many parts of Arab and Muslim worlds as the only Sudanese
region whose population was “all” Muslim, as a region which used to dress
the Kaaba (in Mecca), and as a region that had ruwwag “residence” for its
disciples at al-Azhar, the victimization of its indigenous population made
echoes no different from the ones the crisis of the southern Sudan had in
the Arab world. However, Sudanese regardless of whether they identified themselves
as Arabs or indigenous Africans, Muslims or Christians were officially brought
by the policies of the Sudanese state closer to the Arab world than to any
other parts of the world but it seems that Arab nationalism, both with its
Islamic and Socialist wings, pushed indigenous Darfurians outside the walls
of the Arab world.
Explaining Non-Intervention in Darfur
Howard Adelman
Canada
The paper will begin by summarizing the key findings and recommendations
of the Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the
United Nations Secretary-General pursuant to Security Council Resolution
1564 of 18 September 2004, 25 January 2005. To what extent did it fulfill
its mandate? Were its findings both on individual criminal responsibility
and on not characterizing the atrocities as genocide justified? Given the
American opposition to using the International Criminal Court, a major recommendation,
what are the prospects of any criminal indictments? Given that the Report
recommeded that no other action be taken, what is the explanation for that
recommendation especially given the American and Kofi Annan proposals for
sanctions that seem to run contrary to the report's emphasis on only using
the criminal court route? What are the implications of the report?
Summary of Background on The Report:
In September of 2004, the Security Council (SC) passed resolution 1564 that
requested the United Nations Secretary-General (S-G) to “rapidly establish
an international commission of inquiry in order immediately to investigate
reports of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights
law in Darfur by all parties to determine also whether or not acts of genocide
have occurred, and to identify perpetrators of such violations with a view
to ensuring that those responsible are held accountable.” The Commission,
thus, had four tasks: 1) an investigation task re the truth of reports of
violations of humanitarian and human rights law; 2) an interpretive task
to ascertain whether or not acts of genocide had occurred; 3) a task of identifying
individuals responsible, and 4) a policy role requiring the commission to
suggest how those identified should be held accountable.” The Commission
was not asked to recommend how genocide, or breaches of human rights law
and humanitarian law should be mitigated or prevented. This was an accountability
and not a prevention/mitigation commission even in retrospect.
Self Image and Otherness: Darfurian
Oral Literature as a Source for Conflict
Isam Wadai
Elfashir University, Sudan