(Your Voice in a World where Zionism, Steel, and Fire have
turned Justice Mute)
Darfur, the
new American-French Protectorate.
By Abu Iskandar as-Sudani.
Translated by Muhammad Abu Nasr from Al-Hadaf. Damascus, No.1365, May 2005, pp. 22-25.
Intro to the translation by FAV editors:
Most everything that has appeared in English about the situation in Darfur, the Sudan - indeed particularly in “progressive” publications in English – for the last year or so has related one basic “story.”
According to this story the Sudanese government, using armed militiamen, has been massacring Black African Muslim peasants in Darfur, trying to drive them out of the country because of their race. This story has been presented as a humanitarian and political crisis that requires urgent intervention by the “great powers.”
Indeed, the position taken by many confused “leftwing” publications has been that the US government is “not doing enough” to impose “civilization” on the Sudan. These publications, dazzled by the talk about a 'humanitarian disaster' and horrified by the talk of “racist genocide” have thus turned themselves into cheerleaders for further imperialist expansion.
As people familiar with the situation in the Sudan are aware, the reality is markedly different from the propaganda version of “racist genocide” presented by the western media.
But the vast gulf between reality, on the one hand, and the specter of "racist genocide" conjured up by the western media, on the other, is not a matter of simple ignorance or misinterpretation of data. The disconnect between western media myth and the reality on the ground is what we have seen when the west grabs hold of an issue to make use of it for its own ends.
What are those imperialist aims in the Sudan and how does the “racist genocide” story serve them?
Fundamentally, the situation in Darfur cannot be viewed separately from the unfolding Zio-American plan to break-up the Arab states along the lines of the strategy for a “Greater Middle East,” in which imperialism and Zionism latch onto sectarian, ethnic, and other sub-national identities to try to change forever the Arab identity of the region and to fragment and weaken the Arab states which have now outlived their purpose, as far as imperialism and Zionism are concerned.
In 1916, British and French imperialism drew up the notorious Sykes-Picot agreement, dividing the Arab Nation into the small states that we know today, and making room for a Jewish Zionist colony in Palestine as an obstacle to any Arab effort at genuine self-determination and unity.
Today, a new Sykes-Picot arrangement is being devised for the whole region under the signboard of the “Greater Middle East” strategy. A decentralized, federal Iraq made up of three distinct entities – Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shi‘i Arab – is one link in that chain. Driving a wedge along sectarian lines between the Maronites in Lebanon and the Sunni, Shi‘i, Druze and other groups in that state and between Lebanon and Syria are another link in that chain. Attempts to incite violence between Muslims and Copts in Egypt, and between Arabs and Berbers in North Africa follow the same pattern of “divide and conquer” which is the essence of the American “Greater Middle East” strategy that masquerades as a drive for “humanitarianism” and “democracy.”
Far from solving problems, this approach is a formula for disaster for the local people, for once governments are organized along sectarian lines, it’s only a matter of time before tensions explode over shares and prerogatives – as they did in Lebanon in the mid-1970s.
But if ethnic and sectarian divisions spell disaster for the people concerned, they are a time-tested arrangement guaranteed to facilitate imperialist and Zionist domination and “management” of the region.
For more on this, please see the following link in FAV (which includes a part about breaking up Sudan by the way):
http://www.freearabvoice.org/ZionistConspiracy_DivideTheArabWorld.htm
We oppose the strategy for a “Greater Middle East”
because it is clearly a Zio-American imperialist plan for hegemony in the Arab
Region that is based on two pillars:
1) A cultural pillar: changing the identity of the region from Arab-Islamic
into a mosaic of
mutually exclusive mini-identities, and
2) A geopolitical pillar, breaking up Arab states, especially the larger
ones, into mini-fragments to ensure that “Israel” dominates
the region as the “biggest fish” in the “Middle
Eastern” pond.
In the Sudan, as in Iraq, imperialism and Zionism are
deliberately playing the “minorities” card to achieve this goal.
And not only in Sudan and Iraq! The rest of the Arab World is supposed to
follow. Yugoslavia in Europe was just a rehearsal for what will come in the
Arab World. And just as there were
some fools in the Arab world who actually thought America loved the Muslims in
Bosnia, so today there are confused and deluded people who imagine that America
and the Zionists are now concerned over a “humanitarian disaster”
in Darfur – a “disaster” it turns out, which very largely is
a product of their propaganda!
As is evident from the following article taken from the Palestinian magazine al-Hadaf, the ethnic and tribal makeup of Darfur is bewildering and many local and regional forces have had a hand in creating the situation that is now the subject of international “concern.” But the principal contradiction is that between Zio-imperialism on the one hand and the people of the Arab region on the other, as the one strives to divide and conquer, while the other struggles for its self-determination, unity, and integrity.
Text of the translation:
For a long time the talk of war in the Sudan has related to the long struggle in the south of the country, a struggle that many thought was without end. But just as a formula for ending that conflict by peaceful means seemed at hand, there was a sudden and dramatic escalation in the events in Darfur – in the west of the country this time – according to the saying, ‘one war breeds another.’ Quickly, as a result of massive and very controversial US and European media coverage, Darfur became the background and focus of increasingly inflammatory statements in Europe and America in which western leaders expressed their “outrage” over the inhuman situation in the area and over the great danger that they said threatened millions of Sudanese refugees.
Darfur: history, location, and climate.
Darfur is located in the southwest of the Arab region of the Sudan. Its history has been much like that of other regions in central Africa. Numerous kingdoms and sultanates arose there over a period of some 5,000 years. Eventually a series of Arab and Islamic kingdoms took shape there, the most prominent being the Sultanate of Darfur, the foundations of which were laid by Sultan Sulayman I (1445-1475 CE). After him came a succession of leaders until in 1640 Sultan Sulayman Sulun, the most outstanding of the Darfur Sultans, came to the throne. Sulayman Sulun was steeped in Arab and Islamic culture and during his rule the Arab and Islamic identity of Darfur deepened as trade and educational exchange with the rest of the Arab world expanded and interpersonal connections between Darfur and the surrounding Arab and Islamic cultural centers in the Hijaz, Egypt, Syria, and Arab North Africa expanded. This era was discussed by the Arab historian Muhammad ibn ‘Umar at-Tunisi (1789-1857) in his book “Tashhidh al-Adhhan bi-Sirat Bilad al-‘Arab wa-as-Sudan.”)
Like all the Arab regions, Darfur was a stage on which colonialist powers battled each other as they swept over northern Africa, particularly after the Turks were able to occupy the area under the Albanian Khedive Isma‘il of Egypt in October 1874, whose army then occupied al-Fashir, the capital of Darfur. Far from bringing stability to the area, the arrival of the invaders only aroused the hostility of the native population and the Darfur people played an active role in the resistance to the Turks and British as part of the revolution of the Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad. ‘Abdallah at-Ta‘ishi, the Mahdi’s “Khalifah” or successor, who took over as leader of the independent Sudan when the Mahdi died in June 1885, was a native of Darfur. In the last years of the nineteenth century as imperialism was completing its division of the world, the British returned to seize control over the Upper Nile by conquering the Sudan and killing the Khalifah ‘Abdallah in battle in 1899. The British occupied Darfur by fire and sword and the region became another province of the colonial Sudan until independence was proclaimed in the Sudan on 1 January 1956.
Military geography: the Darfur battleground.
The stage on which the struggle in Darfur is taking place is characterized by the following:
1. Natural conditions. There are four main factors at work.
a. Topography. The soil throughout most of Darfur is sandy. There are deserts in the north of Darfur. In the center and south are lowlands, with the Jabal Marrah mountain peaks in the west of Darfur standing out more than 10 thousand feet high as a major elevated landmark in the region’s topography.
b. Water Resources. There are no rivers in northern Darfur, only in the central and southern parts of the region, and most of them in the south. There one also finds numerous wide dry riverbeds that fill with water during the rainy season.
c. Vegetation. Grassy lowlands and grazing areas are located in the central part of Darfur. The south of Darfur has heavy year-round jungle and thick undergrowth.
d. Climate. The average temperature is high in northern Darfur, moderate in the south, and lower than average in the Jabal Marrah area in the west of the region. Similarly there is little or no rainfall in northern Darfur. But the average amount of rainfall increases as we head to the south, where the rainy season accounts for six months of every year.
2. Social features. The social makeup is extremely complex. The population of Darfur is about 6 million people. They have a high birthrate due to extensive practice of polygamy among the various tribes of the region. The following characteristics may be observed among the residents of Darfur:
Ethnicity. There are 95 major and minor tribes in Darfur, among them 23 main large tribes, the rest being small. There is considerable intermixing and intermarriage among the region’s tribes. It is therefore difficult to point to any specific ethnic features unique to the different tribes, other than some superficial differences.
Religion. One hundred percent of the residents of Darfur are Sunni Muslims. The an-Najati Sufi order is widespread among the residents of Darfur. The tribes in the region who are of “African” origin are considered the more zealous in their practice of Islam than the other, “non-African” tribes.
Language. The residents of Darfur can be divided into two groups linguistically. About 50 percent of the tribes speak Arabic as their mother tongue. The other 50 percent speak regional dialects, but at the same time use Arabic as a second language. On that basis, these tribes are considered “African.” The residents of Darfur who speak Arabic as their mother tongue are concentrated in the interior areas of Darfur. The tribes that speak Arabic as their second language are to be found in the border regions adjacent to Chad and the Central African Republic.
3. Economic characteristics. There are two types of natural resource in Darfur. Surface resources, which is to say agricultural crops and animals and the vast pasturelands that extend throughout the lowlands of the area. The second type of resources are those buried underground, specifically oil, iron, and copper – the fourth largest deposit of copper in the world – in addition to deposits of high-purity uranium, of which it recently was learned that they represent one of the three largest such deposits on earth. Because of the weakness of development in the region, it has remained largely without an infrastructure, a factor inhibiting its integration into the economy of the Sudan. Economic activity is therefore of a rural character, as a result of which 85 percent of the population are either nomadic herdsmen or rural farmers.
4. Political characteristics. On the basis of the current federal administrative division of the Sudan, the Region of Darfur is currently made up of three states (Wilayat): North Darfur, West Darfur, and South Darfur. Each of the three Darfur states has its own Legislative Assembly and its own Governor with a cabinet of state ministers. These officials constitute the executive authority in each state. Thus the status of each of these three states is the same as that of all the 26 states making up the different regions of the Sudan. They enjoy a large degree of self rule, functioning as mini governments. They are tied to the Federal Government in al-Khartoum on the basis of the Law of Federal Rule, whose provisions distinguish between the executive authority of the states, the legislative authority of the states, and the matters covered by the sovereignty of the Federal Government. Each state, in turn, is divided into three administrative districts (Muhafazat). Thus, speaking of Darfur’s internal borders, the region lies adjacent to the Bahr al-Ghazal in the southern Sudan, to North and South Kurdufan in the central Sudan, and to the Northern Region. The states of Darfur have international borders with Libya, Chad, and the Central African Republic.
A study of the modern history of the area reveals that political activity in Darfur began as a part of the Sudanese patriotic movement in the time of the struggle against the British colonialists. There were various Sudanese political parties represented in Darfur, specifically: the al-Ummah Party, led by Sadiq al-Mahdi which had the support of about 70 percent of the region’s population; the Islamic Movement, which claimed 20 percent of the people as supporters. Ten percent of the region’s population supported the regional Darfur Struggle Front, which appeared in 1964 as a political movement led by Ahmad Ibrahim Durayj with a program that consisted of economic and social development for the region. Later, Durayj joined the al-Ummah Party and became the leader of the parliamentary opposition bloc led by the al-Ummah Party during the second period of democracy during the second half of the 1960s. The population of Darfur remained heavily influenced by the al-Ummah Party and the Islamic Movement. Durayj has now returned to political life once again, founding a political organization that he calls the Sudanese Democratic Federal Coalition which proclaims four political goals: Ending the civil war; Establishment of a federal or confederative political system in the country; Abiding by the principle of non-discrimination among citizens; Separation of religious from political institutions. Durayj, however, rejects the idea of self-determination for the region because that would threaten the unity of the Sudan, and he also rejects the use of military means to solve the crisis, regarding that as ineffective.
Causes of Conflict in Darfur.
The natural and human environment in Darfur is characterized by a group of factors that act as active instigators of conflict in the region.
1. Natural instigators. The elevated region of Jabal Marrah, which is characterized by hard-to-travel, rough, rocky heights and is covered by thick trees and brush, presents an ideal natural environment for the establishment of guerrilla bases. Also conducive to this is the fact that Jabal Marrah is well watered and offers fruit and vegetables year round. In addition, the residents of Jabal Marrah are entirely of the al-Fur tribe, so that every guerrilla movement that gains the support of the clans of the al-Fur will have ready permission to set up bases in this strategic area. This is what the Sudanese Liberation Army movement, most of whose members are of the al-Fur tribe, has done. In addition in the south of Darfur are the thick jungles and undergrowth, the rivers and deep, rocky riverbeds where every guerrilla movement can find ample room to maneuver and move about. Northern Darfur is taken up with desert, which greatly facilitates maneuver and rapid movement. Rebel movements in Darfur have used four-wheel drive Landcruisers to get around and the desert areas have greatly helped them advance and move around quickly, penetrating deep into the interior of the region from the north, allowing them to go around and then mount surprise attacks on targets from the east – the direction from which no one expects attacks to come.
2. Economic instigators. The weak economic development and lack of infrastructure of the area, as well as the dependence of the vast majority of the population on agriculture and herding for their livelihood have resulted in the virtual economic isolation of the region and its non-integration into the Sudanese economy. The lack of infrastructure means that normal economic ties with the rest of the country are weak, but at the same time smuggling along the borders is very widespread and has facilitated a rise in corruption, chaos, and confusion, all of which further drains the resources of the region.
3. Social instigators. The complex ethnic and tribal makeup of the area, in which half the residents are herdsmen and the other half farmers, means that clashes can easily and frequently break out and then quickly turn into tribal feuds which political movements rush to take advantage of, mobilizing and politicizing the clashes. Another social factor that promotes conflict are the nomadic tribes that cross unchecked over the borders between the Sudan, Libya, Chad, and the Central Africa Republic. This has greatly promoted a lack of social order and control as members of rebel political groups move about with consummate ease between the Sudan and the other countries in the area. In addition, members of the tribes that regularly cross the borders from the neighboring countries can readily take part in fighting inside the Sudan.
4. Political instigators. Numerous factors can be cited here, including the lack of authority in the region due to its vast expanses and remoteness from the capital and the central government and the fact that it is wide open to influxes from neighboring countries. To that can be added the fact that for many years the central government has been preoccupied with the civil war in the south of the country. All these factors combined to prevent the central government from extending its control over the region. As a result, for the past 50 years, Darfur has been a refuge for armed movements active in the neighboring countries, in particular Chadian groups. Chadian President Hissen Habré formed his army in Darfur, launched his movement there, and went on to seize power in Chad. Current Chadian President Idriss Déby did the same thing, beginning with the forming of an armed movement on Darfur territory. As a result, every regime in Chad keeps its eyes wide open to the possibility of a threat to its authority arising on the territory of Darfur. With respect to the administrative political system, Jaafar an-Numayri’s decision to dissolve the system of local rule by tribal leaders, and replace it with a civil system, had negative results. The tribal rulers were not ready, at that time at least, to set up a civil system. It was not possible to organize herdsmen in trade unions or in the Councils of the Union of the Working People. As a result, the system of tribal control broke apart to be replaced by chaos and total disorder in social life. Furthermore, Sudanese political parties have tended to mobilize tribal and ethnic groups, drawing strength from their tribal leaders as they seek to settle political scores and feuds with the civil and military rulers of the country. As a result, negative types of divisive mobilization have spread throughout the region at the expense of the interests of the Sudan as a whole, and this in turn has reinforced feelings of political marginalization in Darfur. For their part, various Sudanese regimes have also committed errors that pushed matters to the brink of disaster in the region. Numerous arbitrary decrees have been taken in al-Khartoum and then imposed on the people of Darfur by brute force, in particular in the drawing of the boundaries of the districts and states within Darfur and in the appointment of officials – none of which was done in consultation with local popular figures. The division of Darfur itself into three states was one such arbitrary decision that split up several tribes into different states. As a result, the Fur tribe, the largest in the region, raised the banner of rebellion against the activities of central government.
5. Military and Security Instigators. One of the most important of these factors has been the spilling over of armed conflicts from bordering countries into Darfur. The escalation of the civil war in Chad, for example, led to the spread of weapons in large quantities in Darfur. Chadian militamen and individuals fled across the border into Darfur to use its territory as fixed bases for launching attacks back into Chad and as a staging area where they could maneuver and carry out attacks from advantageous directions. Chadian rebels also fought one another, settling political and military scores on the territory of Darfur. Darfur was also an operational area for the Islamic Brigades, a force of some five brigades set up by Libya during the time of its war with Chad, and which received support from the Sudanese government of Sadiq al-Mahdi. When the Libyan war with Chad ended, the Brigades – most of whom were recruited from Darfur – and their military equipment and armaments remained in Darfur. Along similar lines, when the regime of Ange-Félix Patassé collapsed at the end of the civil war in the Central African Republic in March 2003, all the armed forces of the regime fled to Darfur with their arms and military equipment. Not to be out done, a succession of Sudanese governments in al-Khartoum recruited and armed their own tribal militias in various parts of the region. The government of Sadiq al-Mahdi created the al-Maraheel militia out of loyalists to its regime in the south of Darfur, a force of about 70,000 fighters, and equipped them with arms and materiel. The current government created and supported the Peoples Defense Forces in Darfur, a militia of about 100,000 fighters. The Arab tribes in Darfur created the Janjawid militias – totaling some 70,000 fighters. Against the backdrop of all this militarization, Darfur became a hotbed for foreign forces, a regular landing strip for foreign military transport planes of mysterious origin, and a warren for foreign organizations operating under the cover of “humanitarian aid agencies.”
The Dynamics of the Struggle in Darfur.
Between the year 1956, when the Sudan gained its independence, and the year 2000 about 48 armed conflicts were fought in Darfur; sort of small civil wars. The largest of those conflicts, in terms of intensity and the number of casualties, took place from 1980 until 2000. Those conflicts can be described as:
1. Arab-Arab tribal conflicts, the most prominent of which was that between the Bani Hulbah and the ar-Ruzayqan in 1982.
2. Arab-African tribal conflicts. Five such conflicts took place, the most prominent among them being the feud between the al-Fur tribe and a group of Arab tribes in 1987.
3. African-African tribal conflicts. About eight such conflicts took place, and these were the most violent of the conflicts in the province in terms of intensity and number of casualties.
4. One conflict that was exceptional in which one Arab tribe and one African tribe joined forces against another tribe. This took place in 1983 when the Arab az-Ziyadiyah tribe joined with the African al-Barti tribe in a war against the al-Kababish Arabs.
It is noteworthy that about 80 percent of the conflicts took place in southern Darfur and the intensity and casualty figures in those conflicts increased during the annual dry seasons as the herding tribes from the north of Darfur moved south to the greener areas in the south, raiding the agricultural areas and seizing access to water.
The
role of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of the
From the beginning, Garang and his movement sought to benefit from the crisis in Darfur by transferring their struggle from the south towards the north of the country. Garang’s first attempts in this direction took place in 1991 when Garang teamed up with Dawud Yahya Bulad, one of the scions of the Sultans of the al-Fur tribe, to put together a military campaign massing 10,000 fighters who marched from the south of the Sudan north along the border with the Central African Republic and Chad in a drive to reach the Jabal Marrah area where they would build base areas and launch a guerrilla war in the western part of the Sudan. Sudanese government forces, however, intercepted the fighters in southern Darfur before they could reach Jabal Marrah, and completely wiped them out, crushing the force and killing their commander, Dawud Yahya Bulad. Garang continued his attempts, however, managing to unite again with elements in the al-Fur tribe who formed the Sudan Liberation Army which is considered a carbon copy of Garang’s Popular Movement for the Liberation of the Sudan in terms of their armament, internal order, program, and slogans. Garang has been seen on Jabal Marrah among the Sudan Liberation Army soldiers dozens of times. Garang’s helicopter has been observed taking off from areas under his control in the south of the Sudan and landing in areas controlled by the Sudan Liberation Army in the Jabal al-Marrah mountains. The last such flight was observed on 21 March 2005, that is, after the peace agreement – proving that Garang’s movement, despite the negotiations and agreements, is continuing to pursue its own hidden agenda.
Besides Garang and his movement, the dynamics of the conflict in the area involve the negative activities of the militias that were formed in Darfur. Although successive Sudanese governments created these loyalist militias with the aim of keeping peace and order in the province, the leaders of these groups have used their forces to pursue other aims, employing them in tribal feuds, in plundering smaller tribes, in seizing control of fertile lands and water sources, all in a region that is largely outside the control of the central government, turning Darfur into a zone of indiscriminate violence.
External foreign involvement in the region has remained one of the main factors behind the dynamic of conflict in Darfur. A state like “Israel” could not find a better place than Darfur in which to operate and spread its poison. It has not been slow or hesitant to exploit the opportunities presented by the situation in the province. The Zionists provided military training on their bases in Eritrea. They have strengthened their relations and ties with the Chadian regime, making use of them for direct transport of weapons into Darfur.
The United States had been using the problem of the southern Sudan as an excuse to bring pressure on the country. But as soon as a peace agreement between the government in al-Khartoum and Garang’s movement began to crystallize, the US surprised everyone by effortlessly transferring its concerns from the south to Darfur as it continued its practice of pressuring the Sudanese regime. Many believe that the transfer of America’s focus from the south to Darfur was caused by the fact that the conflict in the south appeared to have reached a stalemate, with a local balance of power – or balance of violence. In that situation if the US had persisted along its accustomed course, it might even have found itself obtaining results that were the opposite of what it wanted. Washington therefore had to look for some new spark that could ignite flames of conflict in the Sudan, and it found the object of its desires in the Darfur problem. That way the Americans could continue doing what they had got used to doing, only now with a new vantage point and with new sharper and more modern tools.
It is clear that there is an “Israeli” – American – West European accord at work in Darfur with the aim of rescuing the plan for splitting up the Sudan and restructuring it within the framework of the new so-called “Greater Middle East” strategy which would give the American Administration and “Israel” control of the agricultural, petroleum, and mineral resources of the country and facilitating their plunder of its uranium deposits, while leaving some crumbs to keep their friends Britain and France happy – countries that have grown very agreeable to America’s plans throughout the Arab Region and Africa.
Finally, it should be observed that all the international powers have become embroiled in the Darfur conflict. “Israel” and the United States have become active on the ground in the region. None of this would have happened if the Sudanese government had not followed the strategy of trying to hide the conflict, not recognizing the ramifications of the symbols and practices of violence in the region. It would also not have happened if the opposition parties had not recruited tribal and ethnic groups in Darfur for use in settling their scores.
It appears that the latest UN Security Council resolutions have placed Darfur entirely under international tutelage, whether the Sudanese parties like it or not. Darfur is on the verge of becoming an American-French protectorate – run from behind the scenes by the hidden hands of “Israel,” which has opened offices for itself in the refugee camps in Chad, and whose cabinet held a special session solely to deal with a discussion of the Darfur crisis. All this is going on at a time when many people in the Arab world are just now wondering, “where is that Darfur place, anyway?”