Bashir's call for "holy warriors" in Sudan: an insincere and muted speech
"We order the legitimate sons of the people to open their camps... not to declare war but to be ready," declared Omar Bashir on the 18th anniversary of his religious militia, National Popular Defence Forces in the town of Medani.
"We will not seek war, but if imposed on us we are ready," al-Bashir told a rally in Medani.
On Abyei he said, "We will not give an inch, not so much as an ant's body," in a televised address in Arabic. "We say Abyei's border is the border of 1905."
Here we go again, the language of detrimental religiosity and duplicitous being of a dichotomized ancient heart! The disingenuous heart thinks it has been disenchanted with what is enforced on it, the coercion of the strong, "monsters and tyrants." The deceitful heart has given his critics and adversaries a window to get in and dismantle the ingenuously, clandestinely pre-proposed and structured engine of deception. The belligerent tone has also given the opponent reasons to say, "Ah, the true colors are now showing!"
Be it as it may, the 18th anniversary celebrations of Bashir's militia came as no surprise to any Sudanese. Beshir was at his best, his true being as a Muslim brother, the unpretentious muhjahid. It might be a little astonishing to the myopic world and some Sudanese perhaps. What are we to be surprised for? What are we supposed to say instead? We should allow politics to play!
Beshir's rants bring to heart many confusing conclusions. One can dismiss them as only the last kicks; "that he's only acting the part of his adopted culture” the culture where you die with a knife inches deep into your heart still assuring the observers "you're okay." But let's remember that Beshir's choice is only and only that. Can Beshir see SPLM officials running to Washington and lauds, "Ah, I don't think we can fight this war any more. We are weak?" Or can Beshir believe in the CPA above what defines him: the Archaic Muslim Fundamentalism? We don't think so!
He carries on with his deceitful speech, "We told our brothers in the SPLM, that neither America, Britain or Europe are more keen for peace than us.
"America, Britain and Europe are liars and hypocrites who want our resources and that's why they stole our children to sell in a slave market in Europe," he said, referring to a French group's attempt to fly children out of Chad.
Beshir is only acting his "being." We could take his words as empty rhetoric meant to console the inconsolable brothers in their not-so-consolatory idea of "holly war." This talk reminds us of the words of the thirty-fourth president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower who once said this of someone defending something with no regard for internal concerns: "The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without."
Beshir is obviously aware of this when he says that anyone should not think, "We are weakened because we signed the peace and there is a war in Darfur." And this is an obvious fact: Beshir will not use the same forces he's been using to fight the 21 years of north-south civil war. There'll be no Darfurians to coerce and blackmail into killing their brothers in the south, and no empty-headed Southerners to use against themselves, comes another war, as they are all against him. He should not ignore enemies in form of internal dissatisfaction and hate of war. They are there!
However, we should not downplay the political implication of what Beshir said. We are assured that he's "committed" to the Comprehensive Peace agreement (CPA), but his call for holly war as an element of “defence†is a mischievous child play. Even an amateur politician cannot buy that. War is always at the back of our mind. The rants only make one think clear: SPLM/SPLA has to be ready for war. We have no hope for the peace that the two partners have been singing since the signing of the CPA.
In response to Bashi's rants, SPLM S.G. Pagan Amum categorically said the tirade amounts to a "declaration of war", as quoted in Miraya FM website. "The talks about opening the camps for the Jihadists and the resumption of Jihad show a step backward from the language of peace, or may be that talk about peace was just a maneuver and insincerity.†He added that "Neither the SPLM nor the SPLA intend to be involved in war and if that happens we will just be defending ourselves."
The SPLM's position is a clear indication that war is always in the back of our minds. But is Beshir true to his words? Can Beshir afford another two decades of reversed-development and ‘holly war?"
Let us hope Beshir is only doing the obvious: protecting the weakened position.
