Minorities and the State in the Arab World

Ofra Bengio and Gabriel Ben-Dor (eds.)

Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.

1999

4. Religion and Conflict in Sudan:
A Non-Muslim Minority in the Muslim State
Yehudit Ronen

 

Geographically and societally diverse, Sudan is a veritable kaleidoscope of religion, race, language, and other basic factors. Located at the crossroads of the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, it borders on nine countries of the two regions—Egypt, Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic, Zaire, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Given its long border along the Red Sea, Sudan enjoys geographic proximity to the Arabian Peninsula. Stretching more than 2.5 million square kilometers, Sudan is the largest country in Africa and the Middle East. These geographical features, in addition to Sudan’s largely artificial international boundaries—demarcated arbitrarily during the colonial era in complete disregard of racial, religious, and linguistic affiliations—created a particularly heterogeneous community. More specifically, it made the country a microcosm of the Arab Muslim world and sub-Saharan Africa.

Furthermore, every large migration, whether due to an external demographic push into Sudan or internal resettlement after natural (or man-made) disaster, further enriched and rearranged the Sudanese human makeup. The Sudanese experience, therefore, is one that contains a great “fluidity of identity.” Local and personalized group identities are integrated into broader identities that are complex and often overlap in “confusing ways.” ₁

Sudan’s diversity is so great that the various tribal and regional systems have been said to “have in common only nominal unity within a formal government structure.” ₂   But it has also been pointed out that this “unity in diversity” that gives Sudan its special character and that the interaction of all the various elements creates the special mood of Sudan. ₃   In any case, as ‘Ali A. Mazrui put it, Sudan turned out to be an area of “multiple marginality,” comprising many diverse human settings yet central to none. ₄

Against this background, one may better understand the deep religious, ethnic, and cultural schism that has unceasingly plagued Sudanese society and state, dominating even the political and socioeconomic spheres. The principal rift lies between the country’s two largest and most starkly dissimilar human blocks: the Arab Muslim majority, concentrated in the north-center of the country, and the sub-Saharan African minority, which includes Christians and animists, who live mostly in the south.

At the time of independence, the Arab Muslim community constituted less than 60 percent of the population. ₅   The elite of this community, as the sole effective player in the national political arena, considered itself the only legitimate ruler. This monocentrism drew additional strength from the legacy of Muhammad and the Arab Muslims’ historical experience. Naturally, this elite’s experience of national struggle against British-Egyptian condominium rule, and its realization of the right to self-determination, strengthened its collective consciousness, further enhancing its national solidarity and, consequently, its hegemonic inclinations.

In contrast, the large non-Arab and non-Muslim minority in the south lacked cultural, religious, or political coherence. This geographically dispersed population was plagued by ethnic loyalties and regional and economic rivalries. Furthermore, the Christians and animists of the south, though all of sub-Saharan African origin, did not share a common language. Most spoke not Arabic but one of the many vernacular, mostly African, languages, or English. These linguistic and ethnic features, although not intrinsically unifying, underscored the south’s orientation as an integral part of the sub-Saharan black African continent. The north diverges here, in that it has traditionally perceived itself as a vital, inseparable part of the Arab Muslim Middle East. Consequently, then, it is both appropriate and convenient to refer to members of the non-Muslim, non-Arab minority and members of the ruling Muslim Arab majority as southerners and northerners, respectively.

In the middle lives another non-Arab and (partly) non-Muslim minority—the Nuba sub-Saharan African people. While many are animists, large groups have converted to Islam or Christianity. This community of about one million people lives in the mountains of southern Kordofan, in the center of the country, between the Arab Muslim north and the non-Arab and non-Muslim south. ₆   The true ethnic, cultural, and religious boundary between non-Muslim sub-Saharan Africa and the Muslim Arab world runs through the Nuba Mountains, not, as commonly believed, along the informal border between the north and the south of Sudan. Notwithstanding the Nuba minority’s significant position in the ethnic, religious, political, and military makeup of Sudan, it and other non-Arab (but Muslim) minorities are outside the scope of this discussion.

This chapter will focus on and analyze the case of the non-Muslim and non-Arab minority in the south—one of the most crucial and explosive issues on the public agenda of the Sudanese state, regime, and society. It will examine the roots of the structures and ideas that shaped the ethnopolitics of Sudan. ₇

 

Strong Conflict of Identities: North Versus South

The formal transformation of Sudan into a full-fledged Islamic republic on the eve of 1991 exacerbated the already thorny relationship between the non-Muslim minority in the south and the ruling Muslim majority in the north. ₈   Yet the new Islamization act, which formally excluded the south, was not the result of any new dramatic policy shift. The reimplementation of the shari‘a Islamic law was merely another reflection, albeit a most conspicuous one, of the deeply rooted Muslim Arab identity of the governing majority in Khartoum, and of its conviction that the postcolonial state should be molded in accordance with Islamic principles. This position drew its legitimacy from the prophet’s legacy regarding the superiority of Dar al-Islam (the Muslim society) over Dar al-Harb (the non-Muslim society) and the consequent holy duty of the Muslim Arab majority to incorporate the non-Muslim minority into its ranks.

Moreover, Sudan’s Muslim Arab identity is deeply anchored in its pre-independence history. Dating back to the Turko-Egyptian era of 1821–1881, it was significantly strengthened under the Mahdist jihadist state during the years 1881–1898. Although direct Arab and Islamic pressure on minority groups subsided during the Anglo-Egyptian condominium of 1899–1955, it was during this period that the Arab Muslim identity of “the state in formation” was consolidated. Naturally, therefore, when Sudan gained independence in 1956, the Arab Muslim elite, which was the only effective player on the local stage, defined the state’s identity as Islamic-Arab. All succeeding Sudanese regimes, whatever their ideological and political orientations, adopted this definition.

In the southern community, however, it was only on the eve of independence and in its aftermath that a native leadership began to emerge and that a distinct southern identity began to develop along with local and ethnic identities. This was the cumulative result of long exposure to both British rule and domination by the Arab Muslim north.

The British referred to the south as a distinct political, economic, administrative, and cultural unit, separate from the north but still a part of the overall Sudanese territory. The British had even considered uniting south Sudan with its Ugandan or Kenyan colonial possessions, or granting it a unique status within the British Empire. Consistent with their perception of the south’s distinctness, the British promoted, only in the south, the spread of Christianity and the English language. They even enacted a formal separation policy, preventing northerners and others from entering the south and forbidding southerners to bear Arab names or to wear Arab clothing. The British even declared Sunday the official day of worship in the south, replacing Friday, which had been the day of rest throughout Sudan. The British contributed significantly to the south’s ethnic and religious character and to the building of a young, educated, though relatively small, southern elite. Their policies provided this elite with a basic common ground and, most important, a means of communication among themselves and with the north.

The Arab Muslim north contributed more to the southern Sudanese identity than Britain. As Sarah Voll and John Voll pointed out, the sense of southern identity, over and above local group identity, has developed “especially as a product of north-south tensions and interactions.” ₉   Indeed, it was primarily the unrelenting effort of the northern elite to realize its own self-determination, a process in which the south was not a partner, and the north’s aspirations to control the state’s power centers that provoked and later fueled the south’s antagonism and sense of collective belonging. The south perceived as a serious threat the north’s determination to monopolize political and economic resources and dictate the state’s cultural and religious identity. This, in turn, rallied the south, turning it into a community of shared grievances, thus providing it with a negative basis for unity, rather than a positive common denominator. The south feared the impending Arab Muslim domination, anxious lest a new colonial regime prove worse than its predecessor. Recalling the atmosphere of the eve of independence from British rule, the southern Sudanese novelist and scholar, Francis Mading Deng, wrote about “fears of the impending return to the days of the slave trade when the Arabs of the north had raided African tribes to the south for slaves.” ₁₀

A succession of actions by the north further heightened the south’s anxiety and lent additional credibility to its concern. An important conference that convened in Cairo in 1952 to discuss the form of self-government for Sudan was symptomatic. British, Egyptian, and north Sudanese participated in the conference; the south was not represented. The southern elite responded with an ethnic mobilization to secure the south’s share in the spoils of the colonial legacy. It was at that stage that the process of “supertribalization,” as Bayo Adekson terms it, or what might more appropriately be termed “superethnization,” began to unfold. ₁₁

But the ruling Arab Muslim majority, motivated and even intoxicated by its sense of power, largely ignored this rising tide of indignation and maintained its hegemony. The south protested violently, first in a confined military uprising in 1955, and several years later in a long armed struggle that gradually escalated to civil war. This, in turn, sharpened what Huntington called the “we/they distinction,” so vital in understanding communal conflicts. ₁₂

As the armed conflict raged throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, the south presented to the central government in Khartoum a wide range of demands aimed at settling the country’s chronic strife. The list of demands included a call to incorporate the south into the state’s political and economic systems, and a call for a de jure and de facto recognition of its special religious and cultural position, providing it with some regional autonomy. Most radical was the demand to separate the south from the Sudanese mother state. But the very narrow base for this demand in the south itself, combined with outright rejection by the north and by the Organization for African Unity (OAU), which sanctified the state’s boundaries, all led to the rapid, although not final, withdrawal of this demand from the south’s agenda.

Meanwhile, successive Sudanese governments persisted in maintaining tight control over state power and identity. They did, however, make some attempts to involve the south in the state’s political institutions and to allow it a share of its economic resources. Nevertheless, these were basically symbolic gestures that failed to defuse the south’s bitterness.

By 1972, after more than a decade of bloodshed, the two warring sides had reconciled themselves to the limits of their power. Recognizing their inability to win on the battlefield, they accepted a political compromise. This took the form of a peace agreement that endowed the south with regional self-government within a unified state. The “regional self-government” arrangement was aimed at providing both sides with a political and constitutional model for coexistence, notwithstanding their enduring enmity, different basic characteristics, and conflicting interests.

It was not long before strong tensions re-emerged. Toward the end of the 1970s, southern circles became increasingly frustrated over the central government’s nation-building, or national unity, policy, with its declared aim of integrating the non-Muslim and non-Arab southern minority into the power centers of the state. This policy failed to satisfy the south’s aspirations. The north’s self-interested policy of “unity in diversity,” on its own rigid terms, clashed with the south’s growing pressure for a greater and unconditional share of the state’s economic resources and political management, fueling the conflict. In effect, the nation-building process had achieved the opposite of its intent, forming subidentities and sharp divisions rather than a united Sudanese society. Growing political and economic pressure upon the regime and social and economic pressure upon the whole of Sudanese society further intensified the strain and animosity between and within the societies of the south and the north. In the early 1980s Sudanese president Ja‘far Muhammad al-Numayri, in power since 1969 and the leader who had signed the peace agreement with the south, shifted emphasis from the country’s management to religious and personal affairs, mainly as a result of accumulating political fatigue, further eroding these relations. Though stated in a different context, Alfred Cobban’s reference to a society’s transition from “state making to . . . state breaking,” seemed to be increasingly applicable to Sudan. ₁₃

 

Religion in North-South: Relations and State Politics

For years, conventional wisdom held that the religious factor, namely the enforcement of Islam, had played a crucial role in rekindling and fueling the south-north war. Although this assumption wrongly ignored or minimized other important sources of strong mutual enmity (such as sharply conflicting political interests, acute economic inequalities, the lingering sense of deprivation in the south, different cultural and ethnic affiliations, and diverse social structures), nothing quite touched the nerves of both communities like the religious issue. Not surprisingly, therefore, religion tops the country’s public agenda, often serving as a litmus test for other, no less important, aspects of south-north relations. Thus, the prominence of the religious issue on the south-north, or minority-majority, axis and on Khartoum’s political stage, and its eclipsing, albeit unjustly, of other critical bones of contention, justifies a special discussion.

In early September 1983—several months after the re-eruption of the war in the south—Numayri imposed the shari‘a Islamic law as the core of a new legal system throughout Sudan. It was the first time in the short history of the state that such a move had been made. The president embarked on a series of demonstrative actions to dramatically inculcate the Islamization spirit to the public and reap political gains at the same time. Most interesting of these was the release of 13,000 prisoners who had not been convicted in accordance with Islamic law. Though approximately 3,000 non-Muslim southerners were among those released, this amnesty did not ease the south’s chronic anxiety regarding the Islamization process. ₁₄   Wishing to head off the shari‘a law, while at the same time manipulating it to mobilize moral and political support for its cause within secular circles in Khartoum, in sub-Saharan Africa, and especially in the West, the south forcefully announced its opposition to the shari‘a implementation. To shore up their opposition, southerners staged demonstrations in Juba and other places in the south. Southern students at Khartoum University—one of the south’s most politically conscious elites—went further by accusing Numayri of “selling the country to the Muslim Brothers [who] have been pointing their fingers at the south,” saying that the south’s “existence as a distinct entity with African cultures, beliefs and morals poses a danger to national unity and a stumbling block to the expansion of Arab neo-colonialism in Africa.” ₁₅   The southerners’ fears of the powerful Muslim Brothers were understandable in view of the latter’s prominence in Sudanese politics, Numayri’s political dependence upon them during the first half of the 1980s, and their demand to turn Sudan into an Islamic state.

Aware of the south’s importance as a source of backing for the regime, as evidenced by its significant support of Numaryi during the serious coup attempt of July 1976, the Sudanese president tried to soothe the southerners’ tempers. Though never doubting the righteousness and legitimacy of the imposition of shari‘a, he stated:

we shall maintain the rights of non-Muslims who will enjoy peace, protection and benevolence. We will not tolerate any violation of the non-Muslims’ rights or any violation of their personal freedom or of the principles of justice and equity. . . . We will not allow incitement of religious antagonism and conflicts. . . . We will maintain coexistence of Muslims with all believers in other holy books. ₁₆

In an October 1983 statement, the president’s office emphasized to the south that “non-Muslims are not subjected to punishments outlined in the new penal code for offences such as drinking alcohol, adultery, and adultery libel. . . . Penalties for those offences are imposed only on Muslims.” However, the statement added that “the new penal code has prohibited alcohol drinking for Muslims and intoxication and causing disturbance for all people irrespective of their religions. Dealing in alcoholic drinks is also prohibited for both Muslims and non-Muslims” (emphasis mine). ₁₇   The ambivalence in the president’s statements, combined with the Muslim Brothers’ demand that Islamic laws be enforced “on all Sudanese citizens, even on the non-Muslim minorities, with no exception,” further alarmed the south. ₁₈   The first amputations to be carried out according to the shari‘a law, in 1983–1984, and the case of an Italian Christian citizen who was flogged, fined, and imprisoned on the charge of dealing in alcoholic drinks in late spring 1984, intensified anxiety in the south. ₁₉

Sharp dissent over the implementation of shari‘a law soon became the driving force of war between the south and the north. Yet both sides were fully aware that the underlying cause of hostilities went much deeper.

In a way, it was the south that, in spring 1984, accentuated the religious issue, eclipsing other, more crucial sticking points between the two communities. The south found this issue morally and politically expedient in furthering its cause against the north.

The political and military force leading the south’s renewed struggle against the north in 1983 was the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement and Army (SPLM/SPLA). Led by John Garang De-Mbior of the Dinka (the largest ethnic group in the south), the SPLM/SPLA originally defined itself as a unionist movement dedicated to the creation of a secular, united Sudan. The only significant representative of the south, it clearly wished to resolve the conflict within the Sudanese political sphere. Garang’s movement, later known mainly as the SPLA, has since raised the flag of a national struggle, involving all Sudanese, irrespective of religion.

Despite its frequently stressed opinion that religion must no longer be used for political aims, the SPLA itself continued to wave the banner of religion while fighting Khartoum. The SPLA accused Numayri’s government of lies regarding the nonapplication of Islamic penalties to Christians. In spring 1984, for example, it claimed that “four Christians from the south were among those who had their hands cut off in Khartoum.” ₂₀   Numayri’s statement that “the state has the right to punish the wrongdoers whether they are Sudanese, foreigners, or non-Muslims,” further agitated the south but also served to justify its struggle against the north. ₂₁

After the overthrow of the Numayri regime in April 1985, the Islamization process was plainly neglected. During the one-year transition rule of General ‘Abd al-Rahman Muhammad Hasan Siwar al-Dhahab, the shari‘a controversy was virtually, though not formally, shelved, due mainly to the new leadership’s preoccupation with consolidating its power, coping with the immediate, distressing economic problems, and stabilizing Khartoum’s political arena. Nevertheless, the south continued to demand, among other things, the immediate formal repeal of the shari‘a law as a condition for opening any dialogue with Dhahab, and that Khartoum refer to the armed conflict as the “problem of Sudan” instead of “the so-called problem of southern Sudan.”

On another level, talks were held toward the end of Dhahab’s rule between the SPLA and the Alliance of National Forces for the National Salvation of Sudan—a grouping representing the professional elite and various political parties that emerged on the political scene on the eve of Numayri’s overthrow. The talks produced an agreement, known as the Koka Dam Declaration, in March 1986. Among its points was the agreement to repeal the 1983 shari‘a law and all other laws that restricted freedom. Another noteworthy demand was the abrogation of military pacts concluded between Sudan and Libya, and Sudan and Egypt, which the declaration’s signatories thought impinged on Sudan’s national sovereignty. ₂₂   For some obscure reason, the SPLA failed to include the south’s otherwise explicit demand for a greater share in the national economic and political pie. In any case, it was clear once again that the shari‘a issue was neither the sole nor primary source of antagonism between the two communities. Reached on the eve of a new government in Khartoum, the Koka Dam agreement, as well as the shari‘a dispute, lingered on into the next political era.

During Sadiq al-Mahdi’s democratic government (1986–1989), the struggle over the status of the shari‘a took a new turn. Once polarized along the south-north axis, the dispute had spread laterally to entangle the politics of the north. In effect, it became the focus of Khartoum’s political life, obscuring other major domestic issues, including the most alarming economic turmoil and the war in the south. The centrality of the shari‘a issue stemmed not from its religious significance but from its political impact on the state’s leadership.

Mahdi, the democratically elected prime minister and veteran leader of the strongest political force, the Umma Party (UP), inherited the Koka Dam agreement. Though he praised it, he could not meet the agreement’s demands. Repealing the shari‘a law would have been costly in both the short and long term. Such an action would have most probably provoked the militant National Islamic Front (NIF), led by Hasan ‘Abdallah al-Turabi. A breakaway faction of the Muslim Brothers in the aftermath of Numayri’s downfall, the NIF had become the third most significant force in Khartoum’s politics, persistently demanding the reinforcement of the shari‘a nationwide. Moreover, he could hardly afford to cancel the military agreements with Egypt and Libya while Ethiopia was increasingly supporting the SPLA.

While Mahdi did not dare take any formal steps to change the virtually stalemated status of the shari‘a law, by his inaction he further neutralized the Islamization policy. In spite of strong pressures, he did not endorse the agreement signed by the southern SPLA and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP, the second most significant force in Khartoum’s politics) in November 1988. This agreement emphasized the two sides’ eagerness to convene the national constitutional conference on 31 December 1988, on condition, above all, that the government formally freeze the implementation of the controversial shari‘a law until that time. Mahdi knew that meeting this condition would infuriate the NIF. The latter opposed the SPLA-DUP agreement and insisted upon the immediate reinforcement of the shari‘a law. NIF leaders repeatedly declared their determination to continue “the battle” until the Mahdi government’s fall “or until it changes its decisions to obstruct the shari‘a.” ₂₃   All in all, Mahdi’s government was helpless against the NIF, as it was on all other domestic fronts. On 30 June 1989, Brigadier General ‘Umar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir launched a military coup and seized power in Khartoum.

Soon after seizing power, Bashir announced his objection to the Koka Dam and SPLA-DUP agreements. In other words, he unequivocally objected to the repeal of the shari‘a law. Instead, he offered to hold a nationwide referendum on the divisive issue of the shari‘a if the problem could not be resolved through negotiations. The SPLA flatly rejected Bashir’s offer, stating that “it is blasphemous to say that God’s laws should be judged by human beings.” ₂₄   This argument did not necessarily reflect the SPLA’s real stand. It might have been merely a tactic to eliminate the referendum idea. In any case, a fair plebiscite seemed impossible, owing to more than the chaos in the south. Because more than half of the Sudanese population were Muslims, the results of a referendum were predictable, that is, to the non-Muslim south’s clear disadvantage. Nevertheless, an attempt was made to negotiate in Addis Ababa in mid-August 1989, but the negotiations promptly broke down, in part over the inflexible views on the shari‘a issue. The SPLA consequently stated that the collapse of the talks exposed the real nature of the new rulers, being “Muslim fundamentalist.” ₂₅

In 1990, a more self-confident regime felt free to expose its militant Islamic orientation, virtually identical to that of the NIF. Turabi even stated that his party had engineered Bashir’s coup and that the NIF would devote itself to turning Sudan into a strictly Islamic state. ₂₆   The government soon adopted an Islam-inspired punitive policy, as evidenced by several executions for illegal currency, drug dealings, and floggings. In addition, alcohol was banned; shops and public buildings were closed during jum‘a (Friday) prayers; government banks were ordered to conduct business only with Islamic banks; women’s employment was allegedly limited mainly to the welfare field; segregation of the sexes in public transport was instituted; and Sudan’s traditionally liberal, secular civil servants were systematically replaced by NIF activists. Masses of NIF affiliates joined the army, reflecting the increased role of Islam in public life. The imposition of Islam on many facets of public and private life accommodated the core assumption of the Sudanese Islamic movement that only through strict and uncompromising adherence to Islamic principles can society achieve social and economic progress and political autonomy. As expected, the regime in Khartoum refused to consider a repeal of the shari‘a law. The south continued to demand the repeal of the shari‘a as the prerequisite for any negotiation.

In early 1991, more determined than its predecessors to fortify the state’s Muslim Arab identity, the Bashir regime reinforced the shari‘a law, suspended since Numayri’s overthrow. Trying not to aggravate tensions with the non-Muslim south—a thorn in the regime’s side—Bashir stated that the legal system in the south would remain unchanged “in the meantime.” ₂₇   However, Bashir did not specify how long this would be, nor did he clarify whether the shari‘a would apply to the non-Muslims, mostly southerners, living in the north (roughly estimated at two million to three million).

Encouraged by Turabi’s NIF, Bashir and his media projected the impression that the country was entering a new, promising phase. They depicted the people as being swept up by a powerful Islamic wind. Stirring Mubaya‘at (oath-of-allegiance ceremonies) for qa’id al-Umma (the leader of the Islamic nation) swept the country and heightened the euphoric atmosphere of Islam ascendant. The reimplementation of the shari‘a had turned the Sudanese state from one merely governed by a Muslim majority to a full-fledged, formally Islamic one—a dramatic change of status both de jure and de facto. The change clearly came at the expense of the non-Muslim minority in the south. It also minimized those universal elements of the modern nation-state that generally accommodate minorities and, in this case, had benefited secular Muslim circles in the north. Hence, Islamicizing the country once again threatened the sensitive religious status of the south.

Meanwhile, new developments affected the south-north axis. In mid-1991, the SPLA lost its sole source of political and military backing, the Ethiopian regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam. This was a serious blow, as the SPLA lost its headquarters in Addis Ababa, its rear bases, and its supply routes. It could no longer broadcast from its radio station on Ethiopian territory. Hundreds of thousands of southern Sudanese refugees fled Ethiopia, as did the top SPLA officials, including Garang who escaped to Kenya. This dramatic turn of events rapidly weakened the SPLA’s position. The ensuing power struggle and ideological and ethnic rivalries plagued the southern movement, significantly reducing its ability to fight Khartoum in general, and the repeal of the shari‘a law in particular. During the first half of the 1990s, the effectiveness of the shari‘a law had become a fait accompli, but Garang’s SPLA had no choice but to shift emphasis from this issue to the more immediate struggle for political survival.

 

The South’s Call for Self-Determination

The shari‘a controversy reappeared from time to time on the south-north agenda of talks; however, neither side changed its position. During the Abuja (Nigeria) negotiations of 26 May 1992 to 5 June 1992, for example, Khartoum pledged to exempt the non-Muslim south from the shari‘a law. This did not satisfy the south, whose representatives insisted that the political structure of the country should be “based on multi-party democracy, secularism and equality of all people before the law,” not on religious law. Failing this, Garang’s mainstream SPLA warned, it would seriously consider self-determination. ₂₈   The breakaway SPLA faction under Riek Mashar’s leadership appeared even more radical at that stage, professing that the only solution to the south-north conflict was secession. In September 1994, Mashar’s faction went so far as to rename itself the South Sudan Independence Movement (SSIM), with its military arm to be called the South Sudan Independence Army (SSIA).

It bears mention here that secessionist demands do not necessarily lead to separation. They may instead pave the way to a redefinition of the relationship with the central government, on the basis of a greater share in the state’s power. A case in point involves the Anya-Nya, the southern movement that fought the northern “Arab enemy” throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. Initially it declared the right of self-determination as the clear and straightforward goal of its struggle but eventually compromised on the formula of regional self-government for the south in 1972. ₂₉

Since late 1993, however, the SPLA’s call for the right of self-determination has steadily gained momentum, precipitating a growing political radicalization in the south. The declaration signed in Washington in October 1993 under the formal aegis of the United States by the SPLA clearly attested to this trend. It stressed, for the first time since the rekindling of the war a decade earlier, “the right of self-determination for the people of Southern Sudan, Nuba Mountains and marginalized areas.” ₃₀

Garang’s call for self-determination in late 1993 and early 1994 raised the question of motive: Did it indicate that he was abandoning the long-held preference for the reunification of the south with the rest of the country if certain conditions were met? Or was the new position merely a tactic aimed at improving Garang’s political standing in the south, in his own movement and vis-à-vis Khartoum? After all, it was the principle of self-determination that was winning increasing popularity for Mashar’s splinter group, possibly prompting Garang to adopt the same principle in order to regain political support in the south. Moreover, by advocating self-determination, Garang moved closer politically and ideologically to the splinter faction, hoping thereby to eliminate, or at least reduce, his rival’s political attractiveness and motivation to continue opposing him. Adopting self-determination could also placate critics in Garang’s own faction, who pressed for a radical secessionist stand. Garang may have also hoped that this ideological turnabout would increase the pressure on Khartoum. His movement’s growing radicalism would presumably draw a more conciliatory tone from the regime at the negotiation table. At the same time, however, one cannot dismiss the possibility that Garang’s newly professed self-determination principle marked a real ideological shift and revised perception of the south-north conflict.

As time elapsed, and despite Garang’s sporadic statements throughout 1995 that the SPLA was not fighting for “a separatist state” but for “a united Sudan,” the SPLA seemed to increasingly lean toward the self-determination option in the meaning of secession. ₃₁

Throughout 1994–1995, Garang continued to wave the banner of self-determination while Khartoum reiterated its refusal to negotiate that demand. Garang’s SPLA and a wide spectrum of the northern opposition produced a declaration of political agreement in Asmara, Eritrea, in December 1994, wherein all parties agreed that the self-determination principle would have to be the basis of any long-term political solution to the south-north conflict.

In June 1995 those same parties met again in Asmara for a weeklong conference. There they declared their commitment to the future implementation of the right of self-determination for all the people of Sudan, not only for the southern population but also the people of Abyei District, the Nuba Mountains, and the Igessina Hills—mostly of sub-Saharan African origin and partly of non-Muslim affiliation. Thus, the south retained the option of either voting for separatism or maintaining the confederal pattern of relations with the central government in Khartoum at a future referendum. They intended this confederation to be implemented at the end of an interim period of no more than four years from the anticipated fall of Bashir’s regime. During this interim period, the agreement further stressed, Sudan would be ruled on the basis of decentralization. The south “will have a confederal relationship with the central government in Khartoum, while the regions of northern Sudan will have a federal relationship with the center,” it proclaimed. ₃₂

The SPLA call for self-determination was apparently influenced by the case of neighboring Eritrea, which won independence in 1993 after a long armed struggle. Southerners pointed to Eritrea’s success as an obvious precedent for southern Sudan. The saliency of ethnicity and other related topics in reshaping the political life and the status of the state in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, led by the collapse of the Soviet Union, enhanced the appeal of the self-determination option to the southern Sudanese. As one might expect, Bashir’s government has categorically rejected self-determination for the south, regarding it as a slippery slope that would inevitably lead to the division of Sudan.

Whatever its underlying causes, this shift in the SPLA’s position illustrates that political, rather than religious motivations have driven the south-north conflict. Below the surface lies a broad cluster of issues pertinent to pluralistic societies undergoing a process of national integration. Still, the centrality of Islam to all Sudanese regimes should not be underestimated, nor the divisive impact of having an overwhelmingly Muslim north and non-Muslim south. Islam has been the common denominator for the otherwise diverse northern population, whereas opposition to Islamization served as a primary rallying point for the non-Muslim, extremely heterogeneous society of the south.

In the mid-1990s Bashir’s regime was enthusiastically furthering its radical Islamic ideological goals by applying the shari‘a law to nearly all aspects of life. This, combined with repeated statements that the implementation of Islamic law was nonnegotiable, made academic the issue of whether the process was legitimate.

To sum up, the minority-majority, or south-north, conflict is essentially a struggle between two starkly different societies to define the state’s identity and, as far as the south is concerned, to maintain its own in the face of the rising tide of Islam. Chronic stratification, primarily in the realm of political and economic power, has fostered and prolonged the conflict.

It could be defined as a struggle between Africanism and Arabism, or in the words of a southern Sudanese scholar, a conflict between “two identities with differing perspectives on the universe.” ₃₃   Nevertheless, the religious component of identity is central to both.

Charles W. Anderson, a scholar who examined crises in religiously pluralistic societies, concluded that religion, though often not the primary cause of a conflict, might “by positing a divine imperative for communal identity, remove differentiation from the plane of human rationality or debate. Then, conflict can become invested with a mandate from heaven and be pursued as a holy duty.” ₃₄   It seems, to a great extent, that this was the case in Sudan in the 1990s.

 

Endnotes

Note 1: Sarah Potts Voll and John Obert Voll, The Sudan: Unity and Diversity in a Multicultural State (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1985), p. 7.  Back.

Note 2: Harold D. Nelson, Area Handbook for the Democratic Republic of Sudan (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1973), p. 1.  Back.

Note 3: Voll and Voll, The Sudan, p. 1.  Back.

Note 4: ‘Ali A. Mazrui, “The Multiple Marginality of the Sudan,” in Y. F. Hasan (eds.), Sudan in Africa: Studies Presented to the First International Conference Sponsored by the Sudan Research Unit, 7–12 February 1968 (Khartoum: Khartoum University Press, 1971), pp. 240–255.  Back.

Note 5: Oliver Albino, The Sudan: A Southern Viewpoint (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 3–4, quoting Sudan’s 1956 population census. The southerners constituted 30 percent of the total population of 10,231,507. According to various estimates, this proportion is still valid.  Back.

Note 6: Sudan: Country Report, no. 4 (London: The Economist Intelligence Unit, 1992).  Back.

Note 7: For a comprehensive discussion of ethnopolitics in the Middle East, see Gabriel Ben-Dor, “Ethnopolitics and the Middle Eastern State,” in Milton J. Esman and Itamar Rabinovich (eds.), Ethnicity, Pluralism, and the State in the Middle East (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 71–92. Back.

Note 8: For more details on Sudan’s transformation, see Yehudit Ronen, “Sudan,” Middle East Contemporary Survey (MECS), vol. 15 (1991), pp. 643–644.  Back.

Note 9: Voll and Voll, The Sudan, p. 7.  Back.

Note 10: Francis Mading Deng, The Cry of the Owl (New York: Lilian Barber Press, 1989), p. 45.  Back.

Note 11: Bayo J. Adekson, “Ethnicity, the Military, and Domination,” Plural Societies 9, no. 1 (spring 1978), p. 100. For another interesting discussion on the role of ethnicity in mobilizing postcolonial societies in Africa to “fight” for their share in the state’s resources, see, for example, Pierre van den Berghe, “Ethnicity: The African Experience,” International Social Science Journal 23, no. 4 (April 1971); Nelson Kasfir, The Shrinking Political Arena: Participation and Ethnicity in African Policies with a Case Study of Uganda (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), chapters 2–3.  Back.

Note 12: Samuel P. Huntington, “Civil Violence and the Process of Development,” Adelphi Papers, no. 83 (1972), pp. 10–11.  Back.

Note 13: Alfred Cobban, National Self-Determination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), p. xi.  Back.

Note 14: Al-Nahar Arab Report and Memo (Beirut and Zurich, weekly), 10 October 1983; Al-Majalla (London, weekly), 8–14 October 1983.  Back.

Note 15: Africa Now (London, monthly), November 1983.  Back.

Note 16: Sudanese News Agency (SUNA, Khartoum official news agency), 13 October—Foreign Broadcasting Information Service: Near East and South Asia, Daily Report (DR), 14 October 1983, Numayri’s speech to the nation.  Back.

Note 17: SUNA, 17 October—DR, 18 October 1983.  Back.

Note 18: A statement by Dr. Hasan ‘Abdallah al-Turabi, veteran leader of the Muslim Brothers, in al-Sahafa (Khartoum, daily), 2 October 1983. Since the advent to power in a military coup of the Bashir regime, Turabi has been considered the force behind the throne. In 1996 he was elected speaker of the National Assembly.  Back.

Note 19: Al-Siyasa (Kuwait, daily), 1 June 1984.  Back.

Note 20: A statement by Joseph Oduho, a senior southern politician, in Paris, Le Monde (Paris, daily), 27 April—DR, 3 May 1984.  Back.

Note 21: SUNA, 20 July—DR, 23 July 1984.  Back.

Note 22: For the full text of the declaration, see Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), 28 March—British Broadcasting Corporation, Summary of World Broadcasting (SWB): The ME (Middle East) and Africa, 1 April 1986.  Back.

Note 23: Al-Fatih ‘Abdun, a central NIF figure, al-Sharq al-Awsat (London, Jidda, and Riyadh, daily), 4 May 1989.  Back.

Note 24: Yehudit Ronen, “Sudan,” MECS, vol. 13 (1989), p. 620.  Back.

Note 25: Radio SPLA, 3 September—DR, 7 September 1989.  Back.

Note 26: Al-Qabas (Kuwait, daily), 26 March 1990, interview with Hasan ‘Abdallah al-Turabi.  Back.

Note 27: Al-Inqadh al-Watani (Khartoum, daily), 5 January 1991.  Back.

Note 28: Sudan Democratic Gazette (London, monthly, close to Garang’s SPLA), July 1992.  Back.

Note 29: Anya-Nya: What We Fight For, Anya-Nya Armed Forces, South Sudan Liberation Movement, 1972, p. 10.  Back.

Note 30: For the text of the document, see Sudan Democratic Gazette, November 1993.  Back.

Note 31: The Beirut-based daily al-Safir, 23 June 1995, and Middle East Broadcasting Corporation Center (MBC) TV, 10 November—SWB, 13 November 1995.  Back.

Note 32: Sudan Democratic Gazette, August 1995.  Back.

Note 33: Dunstan M. Wai, The African-Arab Conflict in the Sudan (New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1981), p. 1.  Back.

Note 34: Charles W. Anderson, Fred R. Von der Mehden, and Crawford Young (eds.), Issues of Political Development (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967), p. 26.  Back.