Newsletter No. 353
Editorial-Opinion
August 7, 2006

 

The following opinion piece was contributed by John Edward Philips (Shingetsu Member No. 1) of Hirosaki University in northern Japan. Although this piece doesn’t deal directly with Japanese policy, Philips wants to call renewed attention in Japan to the crisis in Darfur, which has recently been overshadowed by the crisis in Lebanon.

We profiled the Japanese role in Darfur back in May in Newsletter No. 267. It seemed at that time that Tokyo might get actively involved in helping Darfur, but little has been heard since then. It is also interesting to compare Philips’ Africanist view of the Sudan with that of Toshiya Hoshino, which was presented in Newsletter No. 230 in April.

TROUBLES IN THE SUDAN ARE BASED ON A LONG HISTORY OF CONFUSED IDENTITIES
By John Edward Philips

The ongoing crisis of the Sudan is caused not only by a particular political situation there but also by the history and present nature of post-colonial Africa. European powers set up the contemporary African states over a century ago for their own purposes. Current African borders are now older than European borders, and are not random lines on a map. They were created to facilitate divide and rule policies of outside manipulation, not because European colonialists necessarily had evil intentions, but because such policies were necessary for their conquest of the existing African states and societies. European diplomatic unity had triumphed over African division, and the colonial states were set up by dividing major existing states, and lumping traditionally hostile peoples under one government.

These colonial states were generally organized around a core area, often on the coast, and a periphery in the hinterland, where colonial rule was both more recent and more tenuous. Historical processes of expansion, conquest and social evolution that had been going on in Africa were interrupted, and the colonial states introduced new processes. These new states had little loyalty from their subjects. Africans who did not continue their loyalty to pre-colonial social structures (ethnic, religious, clan or other) usually came to have loyalties to the continent as a whole, and worked for the independence of their states as part of a Pan-African movement for independence and unity. As African unity became more and more unattainable, however, the rulers of postcolonial states gradually tended to become more and more corrupt, trying to get more and more benefits for themselves and their families at the expense of their states and their people.

As governments became more corrupt but failed to create a sense of nationalism, so many of their citizens have passively withdrawn from participation that many African states have begun failing. Those post-colonial states that have begun failing usually have begun unraveling from the hinterland, where a government in the capital city had little incentive to enforce its rule in the absence of important mineral or agricultural resources. Eventually, in a few cases, the rot reached the capital city, and the entire state has collapsed.

Sudan was unique in having had two colonial masters, Britain and Egypt. The core of the colonial state was in the Nilotic north and center, inhabited by speakers of Arabic and Nubian. The periphery was in the east, west and south. In the east and west non-Arab Muslims predominated, but non-Muslims who were the most different from the dominant groups of the society inhabited the south.

The dominant Arab and Nubian groups were a minority but were considered "white" (or at least relatively whiter) in the racial hierarchy of British colonialism. Although the Sudan became independent in 1956, it was granted independence as an Arab state, not an African one. Thus Ghana in 1957 laid claim to being the first "black African" state to gain independence from colonialism, despite the fact that "al-Sudan" means "black people" in Arabic, and that most "Arabs" in the Sudan were very dark in complexion, by any standards. Arab identity is linguistic, not racial.

That the majority of the population was marginalized and that an ethnic minority dominated the society did not prevent the Sudan from joining the Organization of African Unity. The OAU was unconcerned with democracy and was derided by its critics as a dictators' trade union. Its principles of unity were based on an absence of external colonialism and an absence of racial discrimination. South Africa could not join despite its lack of external colonial rule because its apartheid policy was based on racial discrimination. Portuguese colonies were excluded on grounds of external colonialism despite the fact that Portuguese assimilation policies were based on cultural, not racial, discrimination. However much the British may have understood "Arab" as a racial term, discrimination and Arab supremacy in the Sudan was cultural and linguistic, not racial, in form and intent. In fact the last Sudanese census to ask ethnic questions, conducted by the departing British colonial regime, defined as "Arab" anyone who answered "Arab" to the question of ethnicity.

The nature of discrimination in the independent Sudan was less of a problem for non-Arab Muslims than for southern Christians. Unlike Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and other Arab states, the Sudan had almost no Christian Arab population, and Islam became a more obvious unifying force than Arab ethnicity, however defined. The south had no way to identify with the Sudanese state and was most marginalized. Therefore two guerrilla wars broke out in the south, the first aimed at secession and the second at making the Sudan into a multi-ethnic non-Arab country. This turned out to be a goal which attracted significant northern support, even from Arabs. Not everyone in the south supported it, and the northern government was able to create its own southern militia by promising a referendum on secession, which was still the goal of many in the south. The peace accords recently signed incorporate that eventual referendum on secession for the south.

With the southern issue seemingly settled, the north started unraveling from the fringes. Darfur, one of the most marginalized areas in all the Sudan, became the flashpoint. In order to maintain control over the area, inhabited by many different ethnic groups of farmers and Arab nomads, the central government sponsored an Arab nomad militia, the Janjaweed. These nomads, from only a fraction of the Arab tribes of the Darfur region, have so terrorized the region that the number of refugees fleeing across the border has strained not only the government of Chad but also international relief agencies. The government claims to have lost control of the Janjaweed, but if they have, have they also lost control of Darfur? Does not the African Union or the United Nations now have a duty to intervene?

Meanwhile, Islamism, which began as an ideology of some members of the western-educated elite in the core area of the Sudan, has been spreading to the non-Arab Muslim areas. The Justice and Equality movement, which has refused to sign the Darfur peace accord, is one such Islamist movement in the non-Arab Sudan. What will happen to them, as they become isolated in the region, remains to be seen. If the Janjaweed continue to attack villages, and the Islamists are the only effective opposition, they may grow in influence. Certainly Islam, if not Islamism, would be a more effective basis for northern Sudanese unity than ethnic Arab nationalism.

Ultimately the people of the Sudan have to decide together what kind of a state or states they want to live in: Arab nationalist, Islamist, traditional Muslim, African nationalist, or something else. Federalism might be a good option, but in the Arab world federalism is not well understood. If it can work in Iraq perhaps that will have a good demonstration effect on the Sudan, but on the other hand, an Iraq escalating into sectarian and ethnic conflict would certainly not be a good role model for the Sudan.

The ongoing conflict also has implications for the rest of Africa. If the African Union cannot intervene to stop genocide, what good is it for the people of Africa? If it cannot prevent the unraveling of the Sudanese state, what good is it to its constituent governments? If the contemporary, post-colonial African states are really unraveling, would not a Pan-African federation fostering a Pan-African identity better serve them and their people? The economic gains alone from creating an African federation would justify any costs involved. Fostering a Pan-African sense of identity would certainly be easier than attempting to create nationalism around the colonially created states that administer Africa today.

Africa today is 53 states in search of a union. If they don’t hang together they will all fall apart separately.