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 Don't bank on President Bashir being tried for war crimes – there are many who would forget
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Burying the hatchets in Sudan
Don't bank on President Bashir being tried for war crimes – there are many who would rather forget
Nesrine Malik
guardian.co.uk
Driving around the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, you would scarcely imagine that not very far away in Darfur, thousands of Sudanese are suffering the ravages of war. There is little awareness of the conflict and even less concern for its victims. Through a fog of apathy and misplaced national pride there is a belief that not only is president Omar al-Bashir innocent of war crimes and human rights abuses but also that the situation on the ground has been blown out of proportion – part-fabricated and seized upon by western media egged on by western regimes seeking to undermine the Sudanese government
Claims that there is some popular support inside Sudan for the president's indictment fail to grasp the power of nationalist sentiment or – more importantly – the Sudanese tradition of political impunity. Due to a combination of incestuous monopolistic tribal and familial structures and the lack of institutionalised political processes, parties and loyalties, there is no culture of censure and punishment for crimes past. Moreover, when punishment is sought from foreign sources, resistance to the idea becomes even fiercer
Most Sudanese maintain this readiness to forgive is part of their peace-loving nature – an explanation that is hard to take seriously
President Gaafar Nimeiry who seized power in a political coup in 1969 was overthrown in a rare popular uprising in 1985 and fled to exile in Egypt. During his reign, the execution of Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, an Islamic thinker who argued against the imposition of sharia law, shook Sudanese society to its core and Taha's apotheosis as a martyr in the face of barbarism exalted him, both to his party's devotees and the nation at large. Indeed, the regime crumbled only weeks after his execution
It was inconceivable when Nimeiry fled that he would not only be allowed to return to Sudan but run for election in 2000, a senile laughing stock of a fallen despot. Taha's Republican party adherents all but disappeared, abandoning the political arena or going into exile where they continue to dine out on their political asylum status in the west
Nimeiry was followed by Sadiq al-Mahdi who personified the impotence of those who believe they are entitled to power due to ancestry and not capability. In 1989 his inept government was dispatched by a military coup amid accusations of nepotism and incompetence. Mahdi was imprisoned but then fled abroad, spending years as the bastion of opposition before he returned to Khartoum to head his own splinter of the Umma political party, joining Nimeiry and other ex-ministers for whom the worst fate is not the suffering of the Sudanese people but their own marginalisation. Indeed, Mahdi recently expressed support for Bashir in the face of the Hague indictment. His tenacity is not to be scoffed at. During his career he has been written off several times only to resurface at the hubs of power
The current government launched itself in a barrage of civil society purges, imprisonments and executions. In the wake of the 1989 coup, a counter-coup from within the ranks of the military (planned by those who viewed the alliance of elements of the National Islamic Front and the army as a danger to the military establishment) was foiled and 28 officers, some of whom were close friends and colleagues of Bashir and one of whom was my father's cousin, were executed
Those alienated by such brutal measures left the country and set up livelihoods abroad, broken by the loss of their positions or the horrors seen while incarcerated. Years later, many of these have returned, part out of homesickness and part out of disillusionment. Khartoum is a city where you run into your former jailer but look the other way for fear of making a scene
Social relationships stand in the way of retribution. Mahdi and Hassan al-Turabi, the mastermind of the 1989 coup, are brothers-in-law – a situation which precipitated an absurd political stalemate between the two adversaries
Political loyalties are changeable and alliances fleeting due to the unsophisticated nature of governance since independence where regime after regime has been truncated before processes were properly established. Only a dogged political elite remained
This created a vicious cycle where the primary concern of a fledgling government was to establish itself at all costs. In each government's wake there were victims who came to understand that the exigencies of politics in Sudan are ephemeral and shift like quicksand while the realities of survival and social credibility are less fickle
It is mostly down to this and not to some grand movement of national reconciliation or some abstract notion of the forgiving nature of the Sudanese that political memories are short and there is little appetite for seeking redress in the international criminal court
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Mohamed Omer
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست