5 February 2008: Sudan: Resistance in the Most Unlikely Places

The news of thousands of Gazan’s taking down the Rafah border wall in an attempt to free themselves of the life-sized prison that is Gaza comes as a small victory over the ongoing oppression of the Palestinians by the Zionist Israeli state. The continuous sanctions and economic isolation have crippled the daily lives of Gazans whose crime has been to elect Hamas as their political representatives. And while the Palestinian crisis seems to have faded from the collective global consciousness, with the major media outlets covering the conflict as ‘more of the same’, solidarity with the Palestinians has come from the most unlikely places.

This week a group of protestors took to the United Nations compound that dominates the suburb of Riyadh in Sudan’s capital Khartoum, to demonstrate against Israeli actions in Gaza and to call on the UN to intervene in the crisis. According to media reports the demonstrators were mainly students affiliated with the major Student Unions in Khartoum. The protest ended with the handing over of a letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon that called for an end to the Israeli blockade.

From a research and political analysis perspective it has been extremely interesting to observe the radical changes that have taken place in Sudan since 2005 and the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the political representatives of Northern and Southern Sudan. Since 2005 the crisis in Darfur has diverted attention from the implementation of the agreement, and has also introduced a more public face to the schisms within Sudanese society. Yet, despite these problems the support for the Palestinian cause by Sudanese is a reflection of their feelings that the international system continues to play a double game when it comes to human rights and responsibilities. Why should the UN be adamant in gaining entry into Darfur when it is blatantly emasculated when dealing with the daily breaches of human rights by the Israeli political and military establishment? Why has Darfur become a poster child for the new ‘responsibility to protect’ maxim that is now the parlance within international foreign and military policy circles?

By asking these kinds of questions Sudanese civil society groups and intelligentsia are not denying the atrocities in Darfur nor the unjust distribution of resources in Sudan. What they could be doing is possibly suggesting that any forward movement in Darfur would require the mediation and assistance of a credible international broker, of which there are currently very few.

What is perhaps more interesting than the actual demonstration is the responses to the online article about the event in Khartoum. One writer had this to say about the protest:

“Look at Arabs! how can one see bad behaviour of another person leaving his own? The world is now so concern about the lives of Darfurians who are being killed daily by Sudan Government and Arabs dip their heads in sand pretending they do not see anything wrong going on in the Country.
Please, Ban Ki moon, let you not be confused by these so called Arabs. Put your head up and do what is just for the well being of all. The main aim of those who carried out that demonstration is to confuse International communities and UN not to concentrate on what is happening in Darfur now.
If those demonstrators are just, why they never conducted same demonstration to stop the killing of Darfurians by Sudan Government?”

The point about opposing injustice no matter where it occurs remains true, and the fact that there has not been enough discussion about Darfur in Muslim communities around the world suggests a degree of cowardice on our part. However, the characterization of the protestors as “Arabs,” part of a group of homogenous ‘race’ that determines their political affiliation, completely denies the political agency of the majority of Sudanese who for the most part barely eke out a living - despite the ‘oil boom’ that has so benefited the elite. Yet despite their hardships they maintain solidarity with the Palestinians against injustice and have thereby made a statement of their own need for social justice.

By describing the protestors simply as “Arabs” the letter demonstrates the need to characterize opposition as irrational, emotional or ethnic rather than address the sense of injustice and outrage in what continues to be an oppressive domestic and international political system. This lack of understanding between Sudanese themselves does not bode well for the fragile remaining years of Sudan’s interim period, which is set to expire in 2011.

Mariam Bibi Jooma, Researcher: African Security Analysis Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)