By: Nour El-Din Madani
During my reading of the book “Years in the Paths of the Military and Politics,” published by Awraq Publishing in Cairo and authored by General (Ret.) Hamdi Jaafar Mohamed Othman, who currently resides in Australia, memories surfaced of various academic, professional, political, and societal moments in Sudan.
Hamdi Jaafar graduated from Khartoum Secondary School and joined the Sudanese Military Academy in 1971, coinciding with the Hashim Al-Atta coup, dedicating a significant portion of the book to discussing the May regime and Al-Atta’s coup.
The book contains living memories and experiences that the author had previously recorded on his Facebook page under the title “Thoughts and Memories,” covering aspects of his life, colored with love, joy, tears, and sorrow.
It is the journey of a Sudanese Nubian citizen who went through numerous military and political experiences, joining the Sudanese opposition under the Democratic Unionist Party in 1990 and becoming the head of the Democratic Alliance’s Egypt branch in 2002.
Reflecting on the trials of leaders involved in Al-Atta’s coup, he describes those days as bitter in the history of the Sudanese army and Sudan as a whole, due to the rivers of blood shed between fellow countrymen and comrades-in-arms in a proxy war on behalf of political parties and ideologies. Sadly, he notes, the bloodshed between compatriots and comrades continues to this day.
The author recounts scenes and events from the lives of the Sudanese people, particularly those from Nubia, the “land of gold.” He describes his first visit to his village, Abri, and includes verses from a poem by Sudanese poet Al-Jaili Abdulrahman that reads:
“I long for you, Abri, with a yearning that fills my chest,
And I remember your smiling era, a time of shade in my life.”
In the book’s conclusion, he writes, “Thus, I drew the curtain on my service in the armored corps after years marked by significant military and political events, which left bitter imprints on the Sudanese Armed Forces and Sudan as a whole.”
Thus, General (Ret.) Hamdi Jaafar has skillfully and objectively captured, through his firsthand experiences, some of the reasons behind Sudan’s governance crisis.
