`God-accursed wilderness'
Nick Cater
Khartoum T ike the Mandi's hordes that besieged Land then beheaded General Gordon 100 years ago this week, a ragged army today sits around Khartoum — thousands of peasants looking for food and water in the Sudan's worst drought in living mem- ory. Outside that circle of hunger are 20 million people, in Africa's largest country, much of it as poor as ever. Inside is President Jafaar Mohammed Nimeri, who has disproved regular press predictions of doom by defeating all coup attempts since his military takeover in 1969.
The temptation to forecast Nimeri's de- mise is understandable, since Sudan has every reason to fall apart: guerrilla war, bankruptcy, political dissent, ethnic and religious divisions between Arab north and African south, the drought and a million refugees — including the Falasha, whose exodus may well have been profitable in bribes for some senior people but could be costly in worsened relations with the other Islamic states.
Last week's hanging of Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, the Republican Brotherhood's 76-year-old leader, and 're- cant or die' ultimatums to four supporters, will not inspire confidence. The Republi- cans were a group of liberal Islamic intel- lectuals, perhaps a few thousand strong, pro-Camp David and basically supportive of Nimeri until his recent fundamentalist turn. Reaction to their latest leaflet criticis- ing Islamic law far outweighed their im- portance, with Nimeri railing against the heresy of this Infidel and renegade fac- tion'. The four supporters did recant, which was convenient, given the wide- spread bad publicity, but for his 'slander of Allah' Taha was refused a Muslim grave or prayers and his estate was seized.
It remains a strange and harsh place. G. W. Steevens, the Daily Mail's man with Kitchener's 1898 revenge expedition, re- velled in the challenge of its 'empty barbar- ism', but still declared:
Its people are naked and dirty, ignorant and besotted. It is a quarter of a continent of sheer squalor. Overhead the pitiless furnace of the sun, under foot the never ceasing treadmill of the sand, dust in the throat, tuneless singing in the ears, searing flame in the eye — the Sudan is a God-accursed wilderness.
Even today, if it weren't for several billion barrels of oil and the Nile's long- term potential for agriculture, no one would take Sudan as a gift. Realising this, the first accomplishments of the Sudan People's Liberation Army operating in the south last year were to stop oil production and the Jonglei Canal scheme to improve water flow. Adnan Khashoggi, from Saudi Arabia, has been given carte blanche to get the oil flowing again, and Lonrho's `Tiny' Rowland took his private jet from Khar- toum to Addis Ababa to offer Nimeri's terms to rebel leader John Garang (and came back with a flea in his ear): there is no sign that these foreign doctors will solve the Sudan's problems.
Nimeri's mistake appears to have been to treat the SPLA as if it were a revived Anyanya, the secessionist guerrillas who agreed to peace in 1972 in exchange for promised financial aid for the south and a large measure of autonomy. The SPLA maintains it is neither southern nor seces- sionist but a national movement dedicated to Nimeri's overthrow and replacement by a `democratic socialist and secular state with religious freedom and regional auton- omy'. For a liberation movement laun- ching attacks from Ethiopia and receiving Soviet-made weapons from Libya, the SPLA is remarkably vehement in rejecting any Communist tag.
The President has been his own worst enemy in the south. Mounting debts meant much of the promised aid never arrived; autonomy became the freedom to remain undeveloped. But the rumbles of discon- tent remained merely rumbles until Nimeri, eager to overcome opposition to his plan to pipe out 'their' oil to the north, split the south into three and appointed his own governors. That breach of autonomy was compounded by attempts to change the maps to put southern oilfields north of a redrawn border line. And the mainly pagan or Christian south was further alarmed when the newly-zealous Nimeri imposed Islamic sharia law to ban drink' and cut off thieves' hands, something not yet fully enforced outside northern towns. His plans to rewrite the constitution to Islamicise the state appear to have been shelved, but the Islamic alms taxation system has started.
With the religious fervour came fun- damentalist advisers in the presidential palace, who are said to whisper to Nimeri that perhaps once in every century one man is chosen by Allah to save Sudan. . . . In truth, Nimeri resembles less the Mandi of legend than the capricious and suspi- cious Gordon, imbued with mission but uncertain of direction. Leaving aside his unpredictable mood changes, caused by drug treatment for circulation problems, he is an instinctive rather than a calculating politician, not very bright but one who has learned some hard lessons trying to run his `democratic republic', a dictatorship clothed in some threadbare people's assemblies and the remnants of a single- party system.
Although his tactics are often crude, he has always been on surer ground dealing with his own people in the north, realising that many problems disappear with the right combination of repression ,and cor- ruption. Difficulties with the military, such as intelligent or popular officers, have been dealt with by early retirements on full pension, sackings further down the line, or bribery through the Military Economic Commission, which now has a hand in everything from transport to the cigarette trade.
Nimeri admits to 300 political prisoners, which until recently included the Mandi's great grandson Sadiq, but this figure is a large underestimate. Many more oppo- nents take care not to attract the attentions of the state security organisation. While Nimeri is hardly an Amin or Ayatollah, one should not forget that Idi's palace guard was Sudanese, and torture is on the increase. But several hundred thousand of the educated and skilled, the most likely recruits for revolution or coup, are work- ing in the Gulf states, making the most of the boom that beggared, their country. Almost all of those who left are north- erners, since southern education consists mainly of unpaid teachers in mud huts without books. A long-time Khartoum expatriate summed it up rather well: `Northern Sudan is like a nation of would- be exiles waiting to leave. Southerners are more committed to Sudan, it's all they've got.'
The International Monetary Fund will be crucial to northern stability. Sudan is overdue with repayments and the price of further credit for its $9 billion debt could be high. Despite the US State Depart- ment's best efforts — whatever else hap- pens, with Sudan sitting between Libya, Egypt and Ethiopia, Nimeri is still their son of a bitch — an austerity programme may be demanded. Khartoum is already suffering its worst fuel and electricity shor- tages, and lower subsidies, poor food supplies or civil servant sackings might well set off large disturbances.
The double-edged sword of drought will strike deep in east and west Sudan. Double-edged, for while Nimeri may be judged and found wanting when millions go hungry and thousands more join those already dying, people like those now being forcibly returned from the Khartoum camps to their deserted villages are unlike- ly to find enough strength from a failed crop and an empty well to protest.
© Nick Cater 1985
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