Hopes high but more still at stake!
Withdrawal of Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) from the South should be seen as the first best thing to ever happen in Sudan’s known history. It is a making of history as Pagan, SPLM secretary general said. One would still remain skeptical but hopeful. Unlike the blackmail of 1972, such withdrawals, at least, give a glimmer of hope to South Sudanese that the struggle has not been in vain. It’s still a struggle but it’s a struggle that has got clear direction. The voices have been heard, and the north has seen the seriousness of the people of the land. ‘We don’t hate you, but we need you to treat us with the deserved respect’. This is what every South Sudanese wants from the North. Is it hard for the Northern Sudanese? It looks that way, but should it be? No! Absolutely no!
The withdrawal gives African Sudanese a voice, strength to guard their borders and a window to peek outside and scream: ‘we have a land’. It also contradicts what an American diplomat, John Danforth, once said of South Sudanese; that they don’t have a direction—that they don’t know what they want. Well, Mr. Senator, they know and have done what they wanted. They are still doing it.
NCP has seen that ‘ke wan aci bere nyo!’ Not again! They have seen that these people are not the same breed they have cheated in the past. They are not the one who can easily contend with ‘marry out daughters’ dictum. And they are not, certainly, less informed. We have to assume that this knowledge and admission has educated our northern brothers and sisters in the strictest terms. A vain struggle and mentality fueled by vain religiosity takes us back a thousand years. It certainly serves nobody any benefit. Co-operation is yielding more than it was thought it would. But more is still at stake, more still needs to be braved for. These are the most critical of what we’d call ‘deadly topics’.
Commissioning the border demarcation body to establish the 1956 borders, the issue of Abyei border, census and the destruction in Darfur are still at the heard of the struggle. Abyei issue has been left with the presidency. This leaves a lot of room for concern. But we should give credit to NCP for the bold step they have taken. Bold enough to assure the South we are heading somewhere, yet, not bold enough to warn all the fundamentalists and Islamic saboteurs that South Sudan means business.
The South has opened the window. It has given a voice to fundamentalists like Dr. Hassan El Turabi to wrench their guts out. Whether it is a political game or truth that is being played by Turabi, he’s broken the unbreakable chain of Sudan’s Islamic being. His tirade of terse ‘useless usefulness’ appeared in Asharq Al-Awsat. Turabi was South Sudanese problem only to be turned by events anointed by South Sudanese struggle to lift the veil pressed by Islamic indoctrination. Corruption? Who knew Turabi would say that? Where would Turabi get the guts to scream his all out had it not been what used to be assumed South’s useless, meaningless and baseless struggle? I hope we see the point.
The South will keep on pressing until these obstensible impossibilities become realities. We either have an independent South Sudan, or we have a United Sudan secular Sudan where Allahu El Akbar and Alleluia are distant from the governance in Khartoum; or until confederacy is agreed upon as suggested by some officials. Confederacy would serve us all if all at Sudanese changes are honest. Even the neglected Nuba Mountains would be served better by confederacy.
