Re: [Marxism] Good article on Darfur

[glparramatta <glparramatta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

     How Sudan's northern elite rules


From: http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/659/659p23.htm

If peace is ever to be achieved in southern Sudan (not to mention in 
Darfur, in eastern Sudan and other parts of the country) it will require 
Sudan’s northern ruling class to give up its monopoly on economic, 
political and military power. Its record does not inspire optimism.

Since independence in 1956, a small ruling class dominated by the groups 
near the confluence of the two Niles (the awlad al bahar — people of the 
river) have steadfastly maintained a stranglehold over Sudan. Under the 
British, economic development, education and health services were 
concentrated in Khartoum and this rich agricultural region. The colonial 
power groomed the more educated and literate awlad al bahar elite for 
power. The regions to the south, west and east — populated by mainly 
non-Arab and/or non-Muslim peoples — were starved of economic and social 
development and brutally kept in check by the British military.

After independence, the awlad al bahar-dominated ruling class entrenched 
this neglect and justified it by ethnic and cultural discrimination 
against the mostly non-Arab outlying regions. Educated northerners took 
over the local administrative posts in the garrison towns in these 
areas; Arabic became the official language, which excluded from power 
the few literate locals. Resources and taxes were violently extracted 
from these regions to fuel the northern economy.

Under the guise of imposing an ideologically defined “Arab culture” on 
non-Arabs and enforcing strict interpretation of Islam upon Muslim and 
non-Muslim alike, every move by the peoples of the oppressed outlying 
regions for political and civil rights and a fair share of national 
wealth has been brutally crushed by the Sudanese military and armed 
state-sponsored gangs.

The “scorched earth” military tactics, mass rape and ethnic cleansing 
that has so terribly ravaged Darfur in recent years is a more public 
repetition of Khartoum’s war methods that have been perfected against 
the people of the south between 1983 and 2004, and in Bahr el Ghazal in 
1986-88, in the Nuba Mountains in 1992-95 and in the Upper Nile in 
1998-2003.

From Green Left Weekly, March 8, 2006.

Bob Wood wrote:

> This may present an accurate analysis of the Washington rally and the 
> forces behind it - hard to judge from this side of the Atlantic, but 
> as far as the situation in Darfur and the Sudan is concerned it is 
> riddled with inaccuracies. I don't have time to list them all, but 
> here's couple for starters. al-Turabi is linked to only one of the 
> rebel movements, the Justice and Equality Movement. And far from 
> supporting the rebels, President Deby of Chad is being attacked by the 
> opposition for not giving sufficient support. His regime has been 
> destabilised by incursions by Sudan government supported forces. No 
> equals sign should be put between the janjaweed and the rebel 
> movements. Whatever their deficiencies, neither the SLM nor the JEM 
> are responsible for the massive displacement and ethnic cleansing that 
> has taken place.


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