Sudanese-Sudanese Solution: Wading through Death, Wading through Mud

By: Abdullah Ali Ibrahim

If the boy is accustomed to treading water, it is easier for him to walk through mud
During the days of the 2019 revolution, Jonathan Sperber, a specialist in European history at the University of Missouri, said that Sudan seemed to him to be an exceptional case. While the world is committing the path of autocratic rule in our days, we find them going against the trend, raising the banner of democracy. This may strongly support the belief of global and regional circles that the Sudanese elite must rise up to end the war with a Sudanese-Sudanese solution.
Sudan’s heart was attached to democracy through civil struggle and for the third time through the 2019 revolution, at a time when it was being clouded by demons, even in a country that had vowed to spread it to the world. America itself is being wiped out in its democracy, which seems to be in turmoil. This ordeal is not because Donald Trump risks it, as one might think. This is what historian and editor of the Washington Post, Robert Kagan, drew attention to in a book entitled “The Uprising: How Liberal Hostility Is Tearing America Apart.” In Kagan’s opinion, although America claims to be liberal, he has never mixed this liberalism, about which there is much writing, with an illiberal trend that is not addressed in the pens as frequently as the liberal current. He said that behind this trend there are traditions, views and beliefs that are in direct opposition to the secular liberal system that was agreed upon for America in its Constitution in 1787. This illiberal current stands on a Christian and white ground. According to them, the real Americans are the 75 million who voted for Trump in the last elections, and everything else is vanity and vain. Kagan said that many people who hold this idea forget that those whose ancestors came to America, such as the Catholics and the Irish, were considered non-Americans on a different day. Theorists of this movement say that America is not a revolutionary experience because of the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence (1776), but rather because they are the heirs of the Gospel revolution that began with the formation of Israel in ancient times. For them, separating religion from the state is nonsense.
People have been distracted from the source of this illiberal tradition by the political and social developments since World War II that have empowered liberalism, such as the right to abortion (1973), ending racial segregation in schools (1954), and others. The illiberal tradition did not surrender and fought tooth and nail against those liberal gains in what was known as the American culture wars. While the Supreme Court abolished racial segregation in schools in 1965, even Congress rebelled against it and called on the states not to comply with the court’s decision and to keep segregation as it was. Rather, Congress published what was known as the “Southern Statement,” which denounced the Supreme Court’s encroachment on the powers of Congress and the states by legislating matters over which it had no jurisdiction.
What is seen is that this movement is gaining land after land in our current circumstances. It was patient for a long time until it brought judges to the Supreme Court during Trump’s presidency who prevailed and overturned his ruling known as “Roe v. Wade,” which authorized women to have abortions. In order to prevent exaggeration of Trump’s role in this current illiberal turn, it is correct to know that in his past he was not an opponent of the right to abortion, but the wind came to him and he rose to it.
It appeared from the thinking and performance of the Sudanese elite that they might be unable to save their country by themselves. As soon as the war broke out, its parties disengaged from one another far from the field, settling their historical revenge. In the first week of the war, the Islamists produced lists of their opponents in the Forces of Freedom and Change, whom they accused of sabotaging and betraying the country. “FFC” did not delay, broadcasting that the Islamists, the remnants, were the ones who started the war and dragged the army into it while it was reluctant. They did not care about the fact that, with this ruling, they made the Rapid Support Forces on the side of the just war, whether they wanted to or not. This elite intersected and conspired until the war, whose elite wanted to support a Sudanese-Sudanese solution, became an opportunity for each party to completely eliminate its opponent.
Despite “FFC”‘s demand to stop the war, it insists on removing the remnants from the face of the earth. A writer with the experience Fathi Al-Daw concludes that our war is absurd, in contrast to the wars he called “clean,” in which the famous words of Carl von Clauseweter were true, that war is politics by other means. Our war, contrary to that, has no logic, “no reasons, no motives, and no pretexts.” But Fathi soon found a reason for it, other than “superhuman effort,” as he said. It is the war of the Islamic remnants to restore the “lost paradise of the state.” Accordingly, he does not see a Sudanese-Sudanese solution, which many circles recommend. His solution is to continue the war until we see the corpse of the remnants floating at the mouth of the river. In his opinion, Sudan will not calm down except by “appropriately dealing with this oppressive group.” It is a war against them until they wake up helpless from the illusion of restoring their state.
The weakest thing for the elite is when they compare their politics, war, and state to the conditions of other countries in order to seek wisdom from comparison. The elite is in a state of displacement in the search for comparison, from which one expects a revelation from which the discerning person will benefit from understanding his conditions in order to manage them well and plan ways out of them. One would expect, since crime and politics have merged in our war, that the elite would demand knowledge of what happened to us in Latin America. The criminal gangs, which grew up in the incubators of the parties there, prevailed over politics and disputed over the state until they eliminated it in the case of Haiti and became its ruler.
In recent weeks, the news of Latin America has been full of facts about the turmoil of gangs in it and its repercussions on its democratic systems, which was well known to an elite whose war is testing whether or not to exist when “rapid support” prevails in it.
* The “Gulf League” gang, which controls 11 of Colombia’s 32 municipalities in the northwest of the country, announced a strike in its areas of influence from the morning of May 5 to May 9. Protesting the government’s extradition of Dairo Antonio Joseca, its leader, to the United States to stand trial. It is a strike “under arms,” meaning that the gang was the one that burdened the people with it. It ordered people to stay in their homes or else they would be killed, closed shops, closed roads, and cut off transportation.
This resulted in a shortage of fruits: food and gas. Hospitals suffered from a shortage of staff. During the strike, 309 violent incidents occurred, 26 streets were closed, and 118 vehicles were damaged. One of them said that the “Gulf League” shows them that it is the one who has the power to terrorize, and that it is the authority, not the government. Indeed, the state stood idly by and did not help citizens in their days of terror.
* With the reports received about the imminent Mexican elections, we noticed the extent to which the drug cartels, which are always closely linked to political circles, have control over them. The gangs want the elections to place politicians among their friends in local and national politics. It turned the elections into a war zone, literally. They began intimidating the electoral campaigns of non-friends, and assassinating some of them. They killed 24 candidates, 200 of whom were forced to withdraw from the elections in fear, and 400 of them requested protection from the state.
Reports revealed the forms of protection for an anti-cartel candidate who rode during his election campaigns in a bullet-proof car, surrounded by muscular guards, and followed by a tanker carrying National Guard soldiers. He even said in disbelief that this was the body of someone who wanted to run to represent citizens in the Senate. The life of someone like him is in danger every minute. This candidate was forced to stay away from his family other than to talk to them on the phone:
– Daddy, I prayed for you (his seven-year-old child)
– 30 days and you will return to us (his nine-year-old child smiling in front of the phone camera) I hope you win the elections. The candidate said: What is the matter with my children? His voice shook and he took a large drink of water.
* Those who said that organized crime gangs are putting democracy in Latin America on a precipice are correct. People seemed willing to sacrifice some of it for the sake of safety. In a referendum on April 22, Daniel Noboa, President of Ecuador, obtained authorization to use tools that may not be entirely democratic to pursue the gangs that have ravaged the country with violence in recent years.
Including that the referendum authorized him to use the army to control internal security. A comparison is being made here between him and Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador, who went to extremes in security measures in the face of these gangs to deviate greatly from the norms of democracy. His campaign for the presidency was the result of a harmful popular anger against the spread of horrific crime, the corruption and stagnation of the traditional parties.
Bukele succeeded in reducing crime significantly with strict measures that were not considered the limit of democracy. He even used hideous gangs in a secret alliance to reach his goal. He called himself the brilliant tyrant. Therefore, it was said about Noboa, who was not free from criticism from civil organizations for what they saw as a violation of human rights, that he is still aspiring to democracy. They praised the model he presents to the region of controlling gangs without sacrificing the values ​​of democracy in his war against them.
They say bad things afflict good people. The war in Sudan is a bad thing that has befallen a people who are excluding the demand for democracy, and it is on the verge of a pit even in its early stages. It waded through the waters for it, but its elite did not make the matter easy, which was wading through extremely mud. Although there is no despair that its elite will wake up to the Sudanese-Sudanese solution that is placed on their shoulders by those who have good faith in them, we still need the world to stop the war in ways that they have not yet understood them. That’s another story.