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Lessons and Warnings from South Sudan
Notes from Bankie Bankie,
Gaddafi, and
Chinweizu
Dear Deng
My anxiety
remains—that most Africans are unaware of the Arab
Agenda in Africa. Some receiving this mail have yet to
be convinced of this Arab threat. It was in 1991 that I
accepted this fact. The reason we are last in the world
order is precisely because we do not know what our best
interests are. Not because we are fools—but because this
has been concealed from us or we have been deliberately
mislead by our leaders.
If this is agreed,
then South Sudan, the main victim, in the contemporary
period of the Arab plot is the best informed due to its
experiences to lead us out of our (Nkrumah’s) past
misconceptions about our Arab “brothers.”
The OAU/AU excludes the effective participation of our
diasporas in its deliberations because the Arabs want to
ensure that Africans on the continent never unite with
those in the diasporas. This is the major impediment to
African unity.
Organizations such
as the World African Diaspora Union (WADU—www.wadupam.org)
perpetuate old meaningless OAU/AU agendas. We are
trapped. Best regards—Bankie
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JEBEL MARRA
There are between
170-200 million Arabs in Africa.
The change of
government in Khartoum will happen, after which the
creation of the New Sudan would take ten years or less
to construct, which was John Garang’s project.
The Arab Jebel
Marra project started in 1990. Jebel Marra is a
particularly scenic mountainous location in Darfur with
fertile land, lots of water and a cool climate. It is
being turned into a homeland/forward base for Islamic
Jihadists from around the world. Qatar is the main
supporter/funder of this project, using revenues from
the current US$100 per barrel for petrol.
Once settled by
Arabs Jebel Marra will be used as a launching pad at any
strategic target for Islamisation/Arabisation. This is
the underlying core reason for the Darfur war. The
Darfurians are asking if the rest of Africa (e.g. West
and South Africa ) cares about this.
Some 40,000 ‘Arabs,
called Muhamid ( a mixed race/coloured people ) were
recently expelled from Niger. Along with the Arabised
Tauregs, the Muhamid are also being settled in Darfur,
in the burnt-out villages from which the Fur and other
groups have been expelled.
Libya says all
illegal immigrants must leave within three months,
including half a million Darfurians. Bankie 30/1/08
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Gaddafi warns Africa over unity—Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi has threatened to turn his back
on Africa if the continent's leaders again reject his
proposals for closer unity. . . . He said Libya would
instead look towards Europe and the Arab world.
Col Gaddafi was speaking just ahead
of the opening of a summit of African Union leaders in
Ethiopia on Thursday. He also said Libya was prepared to
move its African investments, which he said amounted to
more than $5bn (£2.5bn), to Arab and Mediterranean
states. The Libyan leader has for a long time advocated
the creation of a United States of Africa - with its
government including a foreign minister, defence
minister and minister of trade. The AU, which succeeded
the Organisation of African Unity in 2002, was conceived
by Mr Gaddafi as part of this vision. . . He said Libya
would consider more economically strategic alternatives
like Europe and the Arab world if his vision was
rejected. "The (summit) will be decisive. It will either
put an end to stalling and time wasting on the
unification of Africa or prove there is a conspiracy
which vetoes African unity," Mr Gaddafi said.—BBC
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No timetable for uniting Africa—African
leaders have ended their three-day summit in Ghana
without reaching agreement on how to establish a single
government for the continent. . . . Libyan leader Col
Muammar Gaddafi, who had called for the immediate
establishment of a single government, foreign policy and
army, left the summit before it was officially ended by
Mr Kufuor at close to midnight. . . . Uganda's President
Yoweri Museveni said he backed economic integration but
said Africa was too diverse for one government.
"Politically we should only integrate with people who
are either similar or compatible with us," he said,
according to Uganda's state-owned media. Senegal, one of
Africa's most stable democracies, backed Mr Gaddafi's
call for the immediate set up of a pan-African
government. Since the idea of African political unity
was first pushed - by Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana to
independence in 1957 - there has been little progress.—BBC
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Black African
Aspirations vs. Continental Unification—Is there any
black African, whether in the homeland or the Diaspora,
who doesn’t want, by yesterday, a Black Africa that is
prosperous, secure from exploiters and invaders, and is
respected by the whole world, like China or Japan is?
That, I believe, is the basic aspiration driving the
desire for Continental African Unity, as attempted
through the OAU/AU, and now through this proposed
USAfrica. Let me give three reasons why the continental
union government approach to our aspirations hasn’t
worked, won’t work, and is very dangerous for Black
Africans.—USAfrica:
A Mortal Danger for Black Africans—A Black Power
Pan-Africanist Viewpoint (Chinweizu)
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9th JANUARY 2008,
THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF THE SIGNING OF THE
COMPREHENSIVE PEACE AGREEMENT (CPA) – TOWARDS A NEW
SUDAN
The 9th January 2008 was
a public holiday in South Sudan. There was little to
celebrate. Even though the Comprehensive Peace Agreement
(CPA) bough peace between Juba,
capital of Southern Sudan and
Khartoum, capital of Sudan, after a period of 50 years
of intermittent war between the South and Khartoum, the
‘peace’ is at best shaky and uncertain.
Khartoum has signed peace
agreements in the past. Each one it has dishonoured.
As at the 9th January
2008 outstanding for implementation are :-
The redeployment of the Khartoum
army north of the border between north and south Sudan
The main area of petroleum
extraction is Abyei – whether Abyei falls in north or
south Sudan should have been decided by now
The demarcation of the border
between the north and south Sudan should have been
completed by now
The population census is far behind
schedule in its planning and execution due to the denial
of funds by Khartoum
The preparation for the 2009
elections is behind schedule, this will effect the 2011
Referendum to be held in the south to determine if the
south will opt to be independent or remain a part of
Sudan.
On the 21st
December 2007 135 people were brutally massacred in
Northern Bahr El Ghazal State, in Southern Sudan. This
unprovoked attack by the National Congress
Party/National Islamic Front (NCP/NIF), the ruling party
in Khartoum was backed by the Missirya and the Popular
Defense Force (PDF), burning down settlements,
massacring defenceless citizens, looting properties and
livestock and capturing civilians. Yet again, the
Misseriya people are being used by Khartoum against the
south, just as the Apartheid regime used people to fight
its proxy wars, in Namibia, Mozambique and Rhodesia. In
this situation all the marginalized people in Sudan need
to stand together to defeat the machinations of northern
hegemony.
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EDITORIAL FROM THE JUBA POST OF 16-23 NOVEMBER 2007,
PUBLISHED FROM JUBA, SOUTH SUDAN, ENTITLED , ‘ WHAT IS
THE NATIONAL CONGRESS PARTY ‘?
The whole world is closely
following the deliberations at the current National
Congress Party convention.
The party is that
is now known as the ‘National Congress Party ‘ was
formed during the regime of President Omar El Bashir.
But its manifesto reflects that of the National Islamic
Front. It is therefore obvious that it is the same party
that has disguised itself with another name. Perhaps
this is so for reasons that if it remains with the same
name it will sound sectarian and lose regional and
international support. The National Islamic Front
struggled for power but initially did not succeed due to
its unpopularity. It found a chance to rule in a
military coup that toppled Prime Minister Sadiq El Mahdi.
Since then, the
policy of the party, towards the South, has been to
Islamize the people of Southern Sudan, to fit them into
an Islamic Nation that they had always wanted and dreamt
of creating. Although all the traditional parties in
Northern Sudan have the strategy of promoting Islam in
the Sudan, and to Islamize the South, only the National
Islamic Front, or now the National Congress Party,
believe in the ‘use of force approach’ to Islamize the
South.
The 21 year period
of war in the South, witnessed the pouring into the
South of jihad fighters from within Sudan and from
Islamic countries. The Sudan Peoples Liberation
Army/Movement was branded an anti-Islam movement. But
the fact that there were Moslems in the Movement made it
difficult to justify the claim. The leadership of the
party ( National Congress ) did not believe in all
Moslems, but only those of fundamentalist stock.
However, the party
leadership managed to solicit funds and arms from the
Islamic countries in the name of transforming the Sudan
into an Islamic nation, and to advance Islam in Africa.
During the war period, the South witnessed the pouring
in of Islamic NGOs and Institutions, to carry out
Islamic activities in the South.
With the signing of
the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), their
activities to Islamize the South, by force if necessary,
have been halted. The CPA, which grants all citizens in
the Sudan rights and freedoms, and secularism, is not in
the interests of the National Congress Party. How will
they explain to those who have funded them to fight what
they call idolaters and transform the country into an
Islamic Nation?
It is, therefore,
not surprising that the National Congress Party fights
so hard to kill the CPA. But the reality is that the
kind of ideology being nursed by the National Congress
Party is not applicable in a multicultural,
multi-religious, and multi-racial country like the
Sudan. The National Congress Party is trying to impose
on the Sudan what will always foster conflict.
The CPA has come
to stay for as long as it is the only way for the
realization of true peace in the Sudan. Threats of
violence will not solve any problem. You can kill
people, but you can never kill the will of the people.
They will continue to come up for their rights. History
has taught us just that.
The National Congress Party must
implement the CPA in good faith, if they are for peace
in the Sudan.
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KI-MOON-DARFUR CONFERENCE : WHICH WAY TO GO?
National collaborative strategies for the UN in
Darfur
By Mahgoub El-Tigani
The Islamists’ escalation of the
crisis : escalating ethno-administrative cleansing
The current NIF
government is directly responsible for the ethnic
cleansing of the non-Arab people of Darfur. According to
O’Fahey, ‘The ethnicisation of the conflict has grown
more rapidly since the military coup in 1989 that
brought to power the regime of al-Bashir, which is not
only Islamist but also Arabic-centric. This has injected
an ideological and racist dimension into the conflict,
with the sides defining themselves as ‘Arab’ or ‘Zurq’(black).
Despite this racist attitude, which is the major reason
Sudanese regions have revolted one after the other
against the central government, several writers have
wrongfully reduced the crisis to a matter of tribal
feuds or scarcity of natural resources.
But as opposition
activist Suliman Hamid al-Haj emphasizes, ‘Darfur’s
crisis is a fully fledged state conspiracy plotted by
Hassan al-Turabi (Secretary-General of the NIF party,
the National Congress; Speaker of the state parliament,
the National Council; and thus top guide of the NIF
political bodies) and subsequently pursued by Arab
militias in full collaboration with the Sudan government
and its ruling party, the National Islamist Front’.
It is thus the
government, to a much greater degree than the militias
it established and systematically manipulated, that is
squarely responsible for the crisis in Darfur and the
heinous atrocities resulting from it.
According to
Hamid’s documentary, ‘Wad al-Nuqat fi al-Hurof, Hassan
al-Turabi, at the height of his power with the NIF
regime, issued a degree clearly stating the following :
the Islamists of Negro tribes became hostile to the
Islamic Movement. The Islamic Front aims to support the
Arab tribes by these steps: forced displacement of the
Fur from Jebel Merra to Wadi Salih, followed by complete
disarming of the Fur people, for good: they are to be
replaced with the Mehairiya, Itaifat, and Irayqat (Arab
tribes). Arms must never return to the Zaghawa, who must
be moved from Kutum to Um Rwaba (North Kordofan State);
the Arab tribes should be armed and financed to act as
the nucleus of the Islamic Arab Alliance.
This official fatwa
is the basis of the state plot in Darfur. It has been
literally executed, as revealed by current events in
the region, even after al-Turabi was purged from the
party. ‘This plot represents the class interests of
Islamised capitalists, which include strata of the Arab
tribes as well as some of the Zurqa ( tribes of
non-Arab descent ). The majority of Arab tribes have not
participated in this scheme; they have not rejected it
; but actively resisted it since it was first
implemented’, claims Hamid. Only the few Zurqa who share
class interest with the ruling party have taken part in
the government’s plot.
A great many
Sudanese consider the NIF military government
disqualified to rule the country. ‘ They have no
heritage of political leadership and their ideology is
alien to the Sudanese people, particularly in the rural
areas’ writes Ahmed. But the NIF government ‘started
from day one to find a niche in the Sudanese society
through which to impose “ the civilization, the
Islamisation and the Arabisation of the Sudanese state
and society”.It requires that the total Sudanese
cultural, political and religious heritage that had
cumulatively taken shape since time immemorial be
abandoned and a new political culture based on NIF
ideology be adopted’.
Demanding
allegiance to the NIF and its ruling junta, the new
administrative system of the regime in Darfur and
Kordofan is known as the Emirates. Ahmed continues, ‘
Such traditional tribal titles as King, Demangai, Nazer,
Omda and Sheikh have been cancelled and replaced by ‘Amir’.
But the local tribes are used to their old system of
native tribes, which automatically convey a lot about
the tribe, rank and status of the holder’.
The Massalit
exemplify the resentment among Darfurian Africans toward
the Muslim Brotherhood and the Arab emirate system. The
Massalit administrative system, Ahmed writes, has been
divided into 13 emirates, five of them belonging to
migrant Arab tribes in accordance with a decree
proclaimed by the NIF Wali (governor) in March 1995
The Massalit feel
that they are the ones targeted by this policy, which
aims at balkanizing their teritory and giving away large
portions of land to migrant Arab tribes. This is the
real cause of the violent conflict, which recently
erupted between the Massalit and the Arab tribes in
their area. The regime- organized peace conferences have
been ineffectual because the regime really never
addressed the basic causes of the conflict. Intead, it
turned them into its sloganeering and sweet talking
without really solving the disputes in issue.
In May 1991,
members of the Zaghawa tribe presented a political
memorandum to the President of the Republic. The
memorandum referred to the recent events which took
place in the areas of Chazzan Jaded, Sheridan, Argo,
Await and Um Kato, all of which were tribally motivated
and were aimed at undermining the security situation in
the region. We hold the Governor of Darfur Region
responsible for these incidents, together with the
security committee, the commanders of the military
convoys and leaders of the native administration in the
area. There were indications that these incidents were
planned.
The document ended
with ‘ urgent demands ’for immediate government
attention ‘ to 1) bringing to justice the culprits who
perpetrated the above-mentioned crimes, involving
massacres, burning of homes and property, robbery,
looting and torture targeting our tribe: and 2) ending
the state of siege imposed around thec water points’.
The Darfur Rebellion
Early in 2003, with
the NIF’s escalation of the Darfur crisis, the Sudanese
political arena witnessed the emergence of two Darfurian
non-Arab parties: the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) lad
by lawyer ‘ Abd al-Wahid Mohamed Nor and the Justice and
Equality Movement (JEM) led by the Turabi disciple
Cahill Ibrahim, a former minister in the Bashir
administration. Seeking to establish immediate
autonomous rule, independent from Khartoum, both the
SLA and JEM advocated armed struggle to force the NIF
government to allow a politics of self-determination as
well as fair wealth sharing.
While the SPLM/A is
strongly antagonistic to the NIF‘s Islamist ideology,
many members of the SLA and JEM, by contrast, were once
part of the NIF ruling systems.
In addition to the
hegemony of Khartoum over the Darfurian native system,
according to Lobbing, ‘ there are many long standing
economic grievances that precipitated the SLA and JEM to
initiate this round of fighting’.
The NIF government
responded by unleashing the Jonahed/Janjaweed on the
rebels, side by side with the PDF and the army troops.
Since then the Jonahed, formerly known ar the mural, or
Beggar horse riders, have been accused of widespread
killings, rape, abduction, torching of villages and
crops, and cattle looting aimed at black Muslims in
Darfur. Aid agencies say up to 50,000 people have died
from the conflict, while more than 1.4 million have been
displaced. About 170,000 of these have fled into
neighboring Chad for fear of being attacked by the
Jonahed. The indigenous people’s resistance to the NIF
assaults on native administration and land ownership was
sporadic before the emergence of the SLA, which opened a
massive offensive by twice seizing a major town in
Northern Darfur in Febuary 2003.
Unable to
cope with the rebellion, the Government opened
negotiations but quickly breached the cease-fire. In
retaliation, the SLA now joined by the JEM, attacked
El-Fisher, Melee and Kutum. The capture of large numbers
f troops from El-Fisher and north of Kutum forced the
Government to sign a cease-fire and agree to
negotiations in Apache, Chad on 3 September 2003.
The author is a sociologist at the Department of Social
Work and Sociology in Tennessee State University,
Nashville, TN, USA. He can be reached at
emehawari@hotmail.com
NIF = National Islamist Front
Source: Extract
from page 3 of The Citizen of 3rd October
2007, Vol 2, Issue No 254, Published Khartoum/Juba,
South Sudan
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posted 31 January 2008
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