We Lived through War but Missed the Meaning (2-2)

By: Prof. Abdullah Ali Ibrahim

There have been repeated calls for the involvement of the civil political class in negotiations to end the ongoing war in Sudan and the arrangements for its aftermath, the most recent of which came from Thomas Perriello, the American envoy to Sudan. The question may have arisen here, whether there is a point in this involvement of this class that has isolated itself from the war by turning it into a popular strife between its right and its left. The war in their speech is no longer the war seen between the armed forces and the “Rapid Support forces (RSF)”, but rather it is their “Bassusian” war from the era of sessions in universities and schools in a different way. It a matter, which we will detail in the article, that both the right and the left of the political class accuse the other of being the ones who ignited the war, as if the army and “RSF” were merely pawns at the table of their historical conflict. Thus, it was necessary to fear that the deep lesson of this war would be missed by this class, just as it would miss the lessons of less danger and deeper significance that passed by them unwittingly, until T. S. Eliot’s quotation came true on them: “We had the experience but missed the meaning.”
The biggest reason for this failure is the refusal of this class to consider the jurisprudence of war in alignment with the chosen rifle, however agreed upon.
The greatest aspect of “Taqaddum ” in the jurisprudence of war is in holding the parties to the war accountable for their violations. If it justified the “RSF” to go to war in self-defense, as we have seen, it stumbled greatly in taking it harshly for its violations against civilians, if not permitting it. It neglected the principle of discrimination in war, which limits targeting in war to the military. The principle requires the warrior to ensure that the target he chooses is a military man, not a civilian, and to refrain from striking the latter altogether except with very complex controls.
The “RSF” war could only be a war against civilians as much as it was a war against the military as long as it targeted politically, and even regionally or ethnically, specific civilian groups such as the northern Nile Sudanese groups behind the 1956 state, that is, those who appropriated the goods of the independence state without them in the margin. The greatest manifestations of the RSF violations were the occupation of elite and non-elite neighborhoods, plundering their money and cars, and forcing them to evacuate them through direct violence or intimidation. The writers of Taqadum did not find these violations in violation of the discrimination law, that’s distinguishing between the military and civil target.
It seemed from these writers that they considered the plundering of these houses, and people used to call it “Al-shafshafah,” as spoils of war without a doubt. Someone writes that the “RSF” occupied it by force, and whoever wants to take it back, he should be ready for show, because what was taken by force can only be regained by force. This is a critique on the army, which they accuse of abandoning its duty to protect the land and honor. Another finds justification for the “RSF” occupation of homes, as they took refuge there to protect themselves from the lava of army aircraft. And when the army stopped bombing them, he said, they would leave these homes safe with the spoils taken. A third believes that the army’s insistence on the “RSF”‘s eviction from homes and headquarters is merely a “Kizan excuse” to prolong the war in the hope that they will be victorious and return to their first rule in power. Thus, these writers of “Taqaddum”, the civilians found out a way for RSF crimes as if the law prohibiting harming them in war had not yet been established. Rather, you find those who describe fighting carried out by RSF as “honorable” compared to fighting carried by the vile army. Or another says that they are “tribal arrogant” who were corrupted by the “Ingaz Regime.” This may suggest that they have now regained their noble race and are fighting those who corrupted them at his home.
Other writers of Taqaddum recently found another way to spare RSF from the sin of the violations against civilians that people blamed on it. They referred most of the “rumored” things about these violations to others who wanted to tarnish their reputation. They broadcast that there are those who are masquerading as “RSF” and committing corruption. The “RSF” uniform, they said, is available to paramilitary Islamist organizations such as Popular and Student Security, Military Intelligence, and Operations Authority forces. Gezira State, which was disturbed by what happened in its villages and its people after the “RSF” occupation of it, was, in their opinion, the scene of the crimes of these remnants who falsely and slanderously assumed the status of “RSF.” They added that the “uniform of RSF was possessed even by habitual criminals who left prisons before the end of their sentences at the beginning of the war and in the circumstances of the collapse of state systems. Their crime corrupted and smeared the “RSF” in ways it was not expected.
Islamists like Taqaddum have a great deal of ignorance about the war they are waging with opinions and weapons, unlike Taqaddum, which is content with opinion. One wonders how they did not measure this war according to their jurisprudence, to which they did not stop referring every incident to it, such as democracy, for example. Dr. Ashari Ahmed Mahmoud, professor of linguistics, previously alerted them to the fact that there is something in the characteristics of the ongoing war that warrants the term “combat warfare” and not “war.” This is a chapter on war and culture praised by one of the academics by saying that what we want from studying a war that took place in a non-Western country is to study how these non-Western armies fight their enemy, not how they should fight. As a result, he asked restore culture to the battle field and its theories in order to provide us with a deeper insight into the reasons for war and fighting in it. The Islamists refrained from proposing opinions on Haraba (Banditary) to our ongoing war, knowing that our saying that what we are waging is a war with awareness of its global term has hidden from us the criminal energy behind it. It is a crime that political scientists agree is a feature of contemporary politics in Third World countries in which the line between crime and politics has blurred or almost blurred. Politics in the form of the state collapsed in Haiti, for example, only to be abused by gangs.
One is surprised that we have no use for a term given the affliction we are in, and our Islamic jurisprudence is rich. The criminal energy in the “RSF”, as it has become clear to everyone now, is what we as Muslims have termed “Haraba”, which is coming out to take money or kill, by way of openly showing arrogance, relying on force while staying away from relief, and fighting according to Al-Sarkhasi is the custom of people who have strength and influence to defend themselves and humiliate others by power over others with their strength, and taking money by force, that is, by kidnapping, not stealthily like a thief. Much jurisprudential ink has been spilled about “far from relief,” which means that there should be no relief present for the one attacked by the warrior. This condition made the jurisprudence limit the occurrence of Haraba in the deserts, not in the cities where the Sultan is present, and who seeks relief from those seeking help. As a result, “banditry” became exclusively the work of bandits. But like Abu Hanifa, he said that banditry occurs in the countryside and in the cities if relief does not come to both of them for any reason. Rather, you find those who say that it occurs in cities, such as kidnapping, murder, theft, plundering, and burning of shops and homes, is a worse crime because the warrior underestimates human gatherings, so they are terrified by those offenders, daring and indifferent with the power of the expected relief. This is our situation. Neither El Geneina nor Khartoum nor Madani nor anyone else had any help when the “RSF” appeared to take the money arrogantly and relying on force. Even the army has been limited to defending its leadership and weapons to this day. If this is not “Banditry”, what is it?
I do not know what the political class, in all its spectrum, will bring to the negotiating table for peace and the arrangements for what comes after it if its unreasonable talk that we mentioned above is everything it has been learned and tasted from the war. It is clear that the war with which we are fighting did not occur according to the discourse of the political class, as they think , or it occurred but as a mere echo of the speaker. They, in their fierce struggle, did not want to avoid it. In light of this, it is difficult for one to imagine the usefulness of people like them in negotiations to end a war they have had experience it but missed its meaning.