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Memo to the Arab League
His Excellency Amru Musa,
Secretary General of the
Arab League, Cairo
Egypt
Your Excellency,
We, the undersigned Southern Sudanese in the Diaspora; -Having been shocked and dismayed by the recent communiques issued by the Arab League on June 14, 2001, expressing forcefull and unequivocal support and solidarity to the ruling Islamic fundamentalists government in Khartoum, and which was subsequently followed by a similar communique issued by the Arab Information Ministers meeting in Beirut on June 19 , 2001;
- Recalling that the Arab League , after remaining insensitive for years to the plight of the Southern Sudanese as well as to the war of attrition which has been waged against them for decades, adopted a similar position in September last year, condemning the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), and accusing it of destablising and threatening the unity of Sudan;
- Alarmed by the fact that your organisation is bent towards dividing Sudan along racial and religious lines by encouraging the fundamentalist Islamic regime in Khartoum to continue its Jihad genocide against the African people of the Southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains and the Southern Blue Nile;
- And cognizant of the fact that the Africans and Arabs have lived together for centuries and therefore need to support one another rather than engage in a futile and hideous racial confrontation over the Sudan issue.
Hereby deplore and strongly condemn the Arab League position which, in our view, is clearly steering the Sudanese conflict into an abysmal racial polarisation.
Your Excellency,
We find the Arab Leagues pledges to mobilise political, material and media resources in support of Sudan and its unity , as you personally stated in your pronouncements which were widely reported in the Arabic press on June 15th, as very unfortunate, unwarranted and devastating because:
(I) You are mobilising the entire Arab World behind a regime that is very unpopular at home and deeply resented by all the Sudanese, including your fellow Arab and Muslim Northern Sudanese, who are opposed to the current theocratic and racial state in Sudan, imposed and forcibly maintained by only a tiny faction of the National Islamic Font (NIF), led by Lt. Gen. Omar Al Bashir, Ali Osman Mohammed Taha, Mustafa Osman Ismail and other Islamic fundamentalists who masterminded the assassination attempt of President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1995.
(II) All the Sudanese (Northerners and Southerners) who are opposed to oppression, dictatorship, injustice and racism, have forged an opposition to the fundamentalist regime in Khartoum , in a historic political understanding never seen before in modern Sudanese history. This understanding is now visible in the form of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Now, by vowing to support the ruling fascists in Khartoum, you are not only siding against the vast majority of the Sudanese people in favour of a small band of racists who are bent on destroying their own country, but also destroying the very unity which you purportedly want to maintain.
(III) The recent upsurge of fighting in Southern Sudan, which prompted this unfortunate reaction from the league, was precipitated by a genocidal government campaign in the Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile and Southern Sudan in January this year. During that campaign, thousands of civilians were either killed or displaced by the governments Antinov bombardments and indiscriminate killings perpetuated by the ground troops and their Islamic militiamen (the Mujahideen).While the government heightened its campaign of terror against innocent civilians, the international community and the international relief agencies raised concern and appealed to the government to stop bombings and killings. In contrast, the Arab League did not raise or even show an iota of concern until the SPLA fought back, repulsed and defeated the government aggression and consequently liberated the towns of Raja and Deim Zubeir, a former slave concentration camp where the notorious Arab slave trader of the 19th century Al Zubeir Pasha Rahma , used to collect slaves from Southern Sudan.After its crushing defeat in all the war fronts, the government then claimed that there was an external assistance and that some foreign planes were used in countering its dry season offensive.
It also launched a frenzied media propaganda campaign in and outside the country, pitched by a highly racial and outrageous overtones. Internally, the National Television of Sudan as well as the daily Khartoum newspapers, never ceased to incite the Arab and Muslims Sudanese against what they called (infidels and satans), a phrase frequently used in the Sudanese media and TV to refer to Southern Sudanese citizens. Externally, the regime went out of its way to solicit Arab support, ostensibly that Arabism and Islam were endangered. Dr. Ghazi Salah El Din, Ex- Information Minister and now peace adviser to Beshir, told the Arab Information Ministers meeting in Beirut on 19th June, 2001 that (the Problem of Southern Sudan is not only a threat against the Arabs of Sudan. It is a threat against the very existence of the Greater Arab Nation. The war in Sudan is part of the Arab Israeli conflict). Al Rayalaam newspaper Khartoum , Sudan TV and Radio Omdurman, June 20th).
Response from the Arab world to this unscrupulous and wild propaganda was stunning. The Arab League convened in an emergency meeting on June 14, at the behest of Sudan, after which you Mr. Secretary General, issued some misguided pronouncements about the unity of Sudan and promised to visit Khartoum at the end of June. You also made Sudan and Iraq top priority issues in your agenda in any future Arab meetings. The Arab Information Ministers meeting in Beirut expressed support and solidarity with Khartoum. Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa Miro made a public statement in support of Sudan, and so did the Egyptian Foreign Minster Ahmed Mahir. The Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) also issued a strong condemnation against the SPLA at the end of its meeting in Jeddah on June 25.
(IV) Your mobilisation at this point in time raises a myriad of questions. By pledging to support a regime which claims to represent the Arabs and Muslims, is the league really convinced that Islam and Arabism are indeed in danger and that it is now time to intervene? Why didnt the Arab League raise a single voice of concern when thousands of African Sudanese were killed in the 1950s and 1960s, in Southern Sudan, and again in the 1980s and 90s, and more recently when the government intensified its genocide in the Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile and Southern Sudan? Why didnt the league condemn the numerous massacres perpetuated by the successive regimes in Khartoum against the Black Africans of South Sudan? Why didnt the League advise President Nimeri in 1983 not to abrogate the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972, which led to the outbreak of the current war? Why has the League failed so far to advise the fascists government in Khartoum to abandon their current racist agenda and accept other races of Sudan? Why would outsiders such as the Arab League moblise against one side of an internal conflict, instead of supporting peaceful settlement?
Your Excellency,
Our Arab friends who are now mobilising material , financial and perhaps military support to the regime in Khartoum must understand that the current conflict in Sudan is simply a war about justice, equality, freedom and democracy. It is the government in Khartoum that insists on imposing segregative policies in the country. Christians are constantly prosecuted, while non-Arabs are marginalised and denied justice and equality. Thousands are forced into slavery and servitude. The oppressed people of Sudan are therefore fighting for a new, united, just, democratic, secular, multi-racial, multi-cultural,multi-lingual and multi-religious Sudan. These objectives and values are consistent with the universal human rights and principles. There is no threat to the unity of Sudan in calling for these values. There is no threat against the Arabs too.
Why then would the Arab league side with the Khartoum government which refuses to recognize these values.
Moreover, it has been suggested that since the ruling Arab clique have proven themselves to be incapable of extending justice to other non Arabs and non-Muslims within a united Sudan, they should be left to keep their presumed racial, religious and cultural supremacy as part of a confedral Sudanese State.
Those whom they regard as sub-humans, can peacefully live in the other part of the confederation while Sudan remains as one country. If this confederation does not please our Arab masters, then we should be given the right to self-determination to decide our own fate.
Your Excellency,
These three options of (1) New Sudan that is free from racism and religious and cultural oppression, and(2) Confederate Sudan, where Arab supremacists will have their own state and (3) self-determination for those who do not wish to be part of an Islamic state, have all been rejected by the Sudan government. That is why there is no peace in the Sudan. You can gauge this fact from the following statement by Lt. General Omar Al Beshir: Sudan has undertaken to create an Islamic state in the era of globalisation. The world will ultimately belong to us. The task of bringing out humanity from darkness to the light of Islam is a daunting one It only takes men of principles to achieve it. (Remarks made by Beshir on Friday 22, June at the opening of Al Shaheed Mosque in Khartoum, in the presence of Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed Al Qassimi who sponsered construction of the Mosque).
You can see from this and other numerous statements made by Beshir to this effect that there can never be easy peace in Sudan. Recently when five African heads of states converged in Nairobi to discuss peace in Sudan, it was Bashir, out of sheer arrogance, who refused to meet and discuss peace with Dr. John Garang. He insisted on imposing his religious state while at the same time denying us the right to quit his diabolical state. Would Bashir have done this if five Arab heads of state had requested him to discuss peace with his adversary ?
Your excellency,
We assure you that the people of Southern Sudan and Nuba Mountains that the Bashir regime wants to wipe out from the surface of human existence with the support of the Arab League , using resources such as oil, will continue the struggle against injustice, oppression and racism. No rung of racial polarisation and mobilsation will ever deter us.
If the Sudanese regime and their brethrens in the Arab League assume that they could just blot us off from the chart of human race while the rest of the world looks on, then we can assure them that we will well survive on our own as we did some centuries ago. We are the same people about which the Bible, in the book of Isaiah , have spoken about.
In Isaiah Chapter 18 we are the land of Kush, the land of the black beyond the Mountains of Ethiopia, a land of brave, fierce and proud tall smooth-skinned people that sent ambassadors to Jerusalem with expensive gifts, a people that conquered Egypt and pushed into Palestine and were only repulsed by the combined armies of the Assyrians and Hycos. Ancient Rome called us African, meaning the land of the blacks, while to the Greek historian, Heroditus, we are Ethiopia, meaning the land of the blacks. In later days, the people of the Arabian Peninsula called our country “Bilad El Suda, meaning “Land of the blacks from which we now derive the name of our country the “Sudan.
We are certain that the degradation of the black race in Sudan will be defeated as it was done in Apartheid South Africa. We are aware that our task is even harder because , unlike racial Apartheid in South Africa, ours is a cultural , religious and racial Apartheid.
Thank you for taking the time to listen to us.
June, 30, 2001
Signed: Southern Sudanese Community in the Diaspora,
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