This past week actor George Clooney has directed world attention to the dire situation in Sudan, from which he had just returned with John Prendergast of the anti-genocide Enough Project. He was ubiquitous on television. He testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was arrested at the Sudan Embassy. (A photo of the arrest is on the front page, above the fold, in my local newspaper today.)
Now that the Clooney-led wave of attention to the humanitarian crisis in Sudan has crested, I'd like to refocus some attention to this remarkable part of the story so lost amidst the story of the horrors, and the sadly necessary celebrity culture. Here is the relevant section of my article:
In 2005, a peace agreement appeared to have ended two decades of civil war in which some two million people died. The agreement provided that a vote take place to determine whether the southern part of the country would be allowed to peacefully secede. But before and since the vote to secede president Bashir has remained clear about his vision of Islamic nationalism as the future of the north, as violence continues to escalate. “If south Sudan secedes,” he promised prior to last year’s vote, “we will change the Constitution, and at that time there will be no time to speak of diversity of culture and ethnicity… sharia and Islam will be the main source for the Constitution, Islam the official religion and Arabic the official language.”
Such statements have provided opportunities for those seeking to impose a Manichaean narrative on the conflict of Muslim persecution of Christians. But even as Khartoum does in fact target Christians, the broad struggle is more accurately seen as one between rising state-sponsored Arabist Islamic nationalism, against racial and religious pluralism. Episcopal Bishop Andudu Adam Elnail of South Kordofan testified to Congress last year, that Khartoum’s ethnic cleansing campaign has not singled out Christians so much as anyone who happens to stand in their way, and he cited the compelling example of an SAF rocket attack on a mosque in Kauda.
Omer Ismail, a Sudanese activist from Darfur who participated in the drafting of the Declaration provided RD with a rare glimpse into the process of formulating a vision for a new society. He said that the document was the creation of scholars and activists in Sudan and the Sudanese diaspora. It was created largely over email, before being put into final form by a core group.
The John Hancocks on the document are leaders of factions of the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement, North (SPLM-N). Asked why more of the authors’ names aren’t on the Declaration, Ismail explained that the larger group did not want it to be about them but about the vision itself.
The Darfur-based Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) was set to sign onto the Declaration at the time, but withdrew because, as Ismail told RD, some elements of JEM “were not ready to abandon a role for Islam in public life.”
The Political Declaration of the Alliance of Sudanese Revolutionary Front, announced in August 2011, indicates that they intended to draft a Constitution that would guarantee citizens the rights of freedom of expression, association, assembly, belief, and thought, to “ensure all are equal before the law,” and to embrace “cultural, ethnic and religious diversity.”
These goals are to be carried out in accordance with three broad features of governance: First, there would be three co-equal branches of government—a legislature, executive, and judiciary; then the new Constitution would proscribe “discrimination on the basis of religion, race, culture, or gender,” and “protect the religious, intellectual, and cultural freedoms and ensure peaceful expressions of them.” Finally, the Constitution and laws would be based on the Jeffersonian ideal of “the separation between religious institutions and state institutions to ensure no exploitation of religion in politics.”
Ismail, currently a Senior Policy Adviser to the Enough Project, an anti-genocide group launched as a project of the Center for American Progress in Washington DC, confirms published reports that the Declaration was put on the back burner in November in order to accommodate Islamic factions in JEM, and perhaps other groups the SRF would need to engage in order to topple the Khartoum regime. So while the Kauda Declaration, which announced the more formidable military alliance (which now included JEM) made world news in November, it made no mention of the political visions of August. “The military guys want to minimize our differences,” Ismail said, “and get on with the military activities.”
The coalition politics of a revolution can be tricky. Eric Reeves told RD: “Of the SRF, I would say, very briefly, that it brings together such diverse actors, including the Islamist elements within JEM, that I wonder how long any statement of principles would govern discussions in a new political order.”
Ismail acknowledges the challenge of reconciling religious identity with the demands of religious freedom in a religiously plural society. “It will take courage,” he says, “to say to the people, as Christians or as Muslims, ‘I am going to advocate for a secular Constitution, and that this is what I want to see in the founding documents.’”
He also adds that racial differences loom large over the nation and may take “decades” to resolve. The Arab Islamic nationalists in Khartoum are historically at odds with the Black Africans, including African Muslims. Ismail says that this history can be overcome so that one day everyone “can identify as Sudanese.”
The authors of the Political Declaration do, however, want to continue the discussion. “We have not yet created the tools of making it operational, and to make it the rallying point,” notes Ismail. “But everyone agrees: It is the Bible for where we want to go.”