Confront them in the Field.. and entered the Door in the Negotiation Rooms
Al-Obeid Ahmed Marawih
For more than ten years, the People’s Movement, led by the late John Garang, continued to negotiate with the Salvation Government, and fight it at the same time, and the movement’s strategic decision was “not to reach an agreement”!!
A questioner might ask, why the negotiations if the intention was not to reach a peace agreement, and the answer that many knew was that the People’s Movement was using the negotiations as a platform for public relations, and did not want to lose a mediator or give the impression to international and regional public opinion that it was standing as a stumbling block in the way of stopping the war and alleviating the suffering of the citizens for whom it claims to be fighting.
SPLM did not make its strategic decision to negotiate seriously and with the aim of reaching peace until it received a strong signal from the external sponsors.
The sponsors estimated that the separation that occurred within the ruling party and the Islamic movement might constitute a favorable opportunity to obtain gains for the movement’s project, either by secularizing Sudan or separating the south, while the Salvation – before and after the separation – was prepared to enter into negotiations seriously and to wage war with the same seriousness, and its strategy in that was to make the external sponsors fail, no matter how much support they provided, in imposing a political agenda by means of the gun.
The external world that supported the opposition to the Salvation regime, both in the south and the north, both military and political, and which succeeded, after thirty years, in creating a revolutionary situation that brought down the regime, is the same outside world that continued to insist that the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC)rule us without elections after April 2019, and it is the same outside world that wanted – later – for the Rapid Support Forces RSF to rebel and overthrow the authority that it controlled in many of its joints, under the pretext of returning power to those unelected “civilians”.
It did so because it wanted to complete Sudan’s subordination to it, and for regional mediators to manage it through local agents. After this plan failed, and the coup turned into a hybrid and barbaric war, in which all forms of atrocities, crimes and violations against human rights and international humanitarian law were committed, the “outside” found itself in trouble, as large sectors of the Sudanese rose up to defend their honor and dignity and rallied around their army, which the first intention was to defeat and dismantle by force after it refused to extend its neck to be slaughtered with the knife of the framework agreement! The stigma of the violations that the Rapid Support RSF Militia boasted about embarrassed the American sponsor with its regional allies/agents/friends who rushed to peel the skin of the Central Council group in the Forces of Freedom and Change and dress it with a disguise under which they called it the “Coordination of Political and Civil Powers” to remove some of the embarrassment from them in front of Western public opinion under the pretext that these are the ones who responded to the “aspirations of the Sudanese people for civilian rule.” Despite the agreement that was signed between the leader of “Taqddum ” and the leader of the militia whose truth is questionable, at the beginning of this year, the militia failed its civilian wing and continued the violations in a more horrific manner, and the situation in Sudan turned into a record humanitarian situation in every type of side effect of wars.
The numbers of displaced persons, refugees, kidnapped and forcibly disappeared, raped and starving women, children and the elderly shook the conscience of the world and embarrassed the sponsors and agents, and everyone began to search for a way out to preserve what remained of their image in front of the world and find a way A foothold for the political wing of the militia and perhaps for the remaining fighters in the future of the Sudanese state.
With this background, we can understand the overall picture of the intensive diplomatic movements that have been organized in the region to put an end to the war in Sudan.
The official sponsor of the Sudan war, I mean the United States of America USA was convinced that the estimates of its agents of the results of the war did not come to what they wanted, and that these agents, despite their continued provision of all forms of support to the militia, their goals for which they turned their failed coup into a hybrid and barbaric war, are getting further away from them every day.
It is likely that the opinion was formed to reach an end to the war before American voters go to the ballot boxes next November, since although foreign affairs constitute only a small part of the interests of the American voter, the failure of the Biden administration to achieve any degree of achievement in favor of international peace, as in the case of the war between Russia and Ukraine and the Israeli war on Gaza, makes it believe that the project to stop the war in Sudan is an incentive to improve its image and to ensure the continued support of African Americans and some pressure groups that have always considered the situation in Darfur to be an internal issue!!
The regional and international momentum that has been building since the Paris Conference on Humanitarian Issues last April, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the outbreak of the war, and the subsequent meetings between the parties in Geneva and Helsinki, passing through the Cairo Conference, which was the most comprehensive and highest representative of political and civil forces, and the influx of delegations of regional actors to Port Sudan since yesterday, then the diplomatic movement witnessed by the capitals of the African Union (AU)and IGAD, all come to save what remains of the face of the agents and sponsors and to save what can be saved of internal tools, military and political, represented by the militia and its political wing, so that they can be used on later occasions if necessary. Any classification of the war that the Sudanese people and armed forces have been waging since mid-April 2023, other than that it is a war of independence against the tools of external powers that want to rob our people of their national decision, and that the Rapid Support RSF Militia and the Coordination of Civilian Forces “Taqddum ” are two sides of the same tool of the international hegemonic powers, is an incomplete classification and a premature description, if not to say wrong.
In light of this classification, the political forces that are not involved in the militia alliance must take their positions.
Some of them did so early on, and they knew and adhered, and joined the military, defending the independence of the homeland and its survival, with money, life and children. Others are still on the norms, hating the militia and its political wing, but they do not mind dealing with their sponsors, to the extent that they hope to advance to the position of “Taqddum “!!
My message here is first to the people of customs and to those searching for the spoils of war: choose the correct position in history and side with the independence of your country from the forces of domination and dependency. Secondly, to the forces that understood the nature of war correctly and chose the independence of the homeland over its dependency, so they mobilized their members to fight alongside the armed forces to preserve the country’s independence and the people’s dignity, and to return the usurped rights to their people, or they are pardoned.
To all of them, I say: Do not fear the negotiation platforms whenever you sense a reasonable degree of seriousness and neutrality from the mediators.
Do not allow your political opponent to place you, before local, regional and international public opinion, in the category of those who reject peace and do not care about the suffering of your people.
Know that no force on earth can impose upon you a peace that it failed to impose through war. If you sense wisdom in some of your countrymen who are used as pawns for the outside, do not help the devils of mankind against them.
If they insist on their misguidance, confront them in the field. And also bring them into the negotiating rooms, so that the world may witness that they are the advocates of war, its criminals, and the violators of human rights.