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 الأمم المتحدة تعيّن المفكر السوداني"الحارث إدريس" سفيراً للسلام ..
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تم تسليم الحبيب المفكر والدبلوماسي السوداني السابق "الحارث إدريس الحارث" لقب وجائزة(سفير السلام) التي منحه إياها الاتحاد العالمي للسلام (التابع للأمم المتحدة) .مليار مبروك شرفتنا يا حبيب كدأبك دوماً وإلى المزيد من الألق والتقدم
http://alharithidrissalharith.blogspot.com/2010/11/blog-post.html
The unpacking of Sudan’s self-determination enigma: The impact of Secession on the peace order
Al-Harith Idriss Articles, Analysis & Comment - Governance & Politics
Former Sudanese diplomat Al-Harith Idriss Al-Harith, London-based writer and current affairs commentator, was recently honoured and designated Ambassador of Peace by the Universal Peace Federation, which has headquarters in New York.
Receiving the award, Mr Idriss delivered the following lecture to the South London branch of the UPF and at the end of 2011 he was awarded the title, Ambassador of Peace:
War will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, frontiers will be dead, royalty will be dead, dogmas will be dead, man will begin to live.
Victor Hugo, author, Les Miserables
The global upsurge of secessionism
Al-Harith Idriss
Antonio Cassese portrayed the notion of self-determination which has developed from a political concept to an international legal norm as "both boldly radical and deeply subversive, and could either be used, internally, as a vehicle for enfranchisement or externally, to challenge the international ancien regimes, and admit new states to the international community. The demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s earmarked the beginning of independence movements worldwide.
The ambiguous right of self-determination which has not been recognized in international law during the two world wars period; has recently become widely invoked especially by ethnic freedom fighters whose grievances and aspirations for greater autonomy, equal division of wealth, and devolution of power were not being accommodated within the structure of the African traditional statecraft or ‘ancien regimes.’
The end of the Cold War, long-standing domestic ethnic grievances and conflicts and the economic and political marginalisation underlie the new African order since the early 1990s, have thus tipped the scale towards the ethnic freedom and ethnic fighters whose liberation war had upset the old African order and will restructure it a fresh as never before. The awareness of international law and, in particular, the allure of the concept of self-determination has risen in Africa; leading to the creation of a new legal normative, reshaping the state practice, sharpening the awareness of human rights project and reactivating the dormant secessionist aspirations.
The sweeping changes in Eastern Europe and the break-up of the Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia, the implementation of the right to self-determination in East Timor, Eritrea and recently the Southern Sudan are but a few obvious examples of the impact of such a controversial notion. During the Cold War and until the independence of Eritrea the African state practice had un#####ocally accorded a high status to the international law doctrine of Uti possidetis juris. The practice regarded secessionism and changing of existing borders as issues falling beyond discussion. The State practice was then self-determination sceptic; and the African leaders were highly suspicious of it; because it could usher in many evils and could open Pandora’s box.
The Charter of the OAU has not enshrined the concept of self-determination. But apparently the world has changed since then. John Naisbitt in his book Global Paradox (1995) pointed out to the creation of a world system with 1000 countries. Why? Because: ‘Many people of the new tribalism want self-rule and every day they see others getting self-rule or moving toward it; the nation-state is dead not because nation-states were subsumed by super-states but they are breaking up to smaller, more efficient parts just like big companies, and; the revolution in telecommunications will inform and monitor the tremendous move to self-rule, and will make the character and nature of the process very transparent.’ .
I think the cases of Eritrea and South Sudan will be the basis of a new legal and constitutional normative for the liberation movements in Africa who in their quest for greater meaningful political participation and equal access to government will seek more devolution of power from the centre to the periphery and secession if need be. External factors will also exacerbate the promotion of this tendency with a view to enable African ethnic movements to freely decide their own future.
The US active involvement in Africa and the competition with China on the one hand and the speedy scramble to control the Francophone Africa and end the French influence on the other, will definitely redraw the map of Africa and set up new rules of the game. It will have a negative impact on the statecraft in Africa, by adding more paradoxes under the banner of self-determination for the control of the huge reserves of natural resources and precious materials.
In 1948 the US representative to the Security Council in advocating the admission of Israel to the UN said: we are all aware that under the traditional definition of state in international law, all the great writers have pointed to 4 qualifications: there must be a people, a territory, a government, and a capacity to enter into relations with other states of the world. Be that as it may the 2000 ethnic and tribal entities in Africa are all qualified by securing the requirement of statehood; and the solid fact is that there is already a new shifting paradigm in play and the long-standing claims for secession will not only become more and more prominent but also legally substantiated. Frontier disputes between new sates and parent ones will be spiralling, after the attainment of independence, henceforth threatening the stability of the African peace order.
The self-determination heritage
The History of modern Sudan has been largely and recently shaped by the end of the long-fought civil war and the dominance of the CPA brokered by the US, international and regional actors. The ensuing peace dividends, by and large, have been confined to the two warring parties to the conflict: the government and the SPLM. The settlement has excluded the national parties, secular stakeholders and civil society in both the North and the South.
The civil war has created an unparallelled bitterness, fomented racial hatred and widened the divide between the two parts. The Naivasha agreement signed in 2005 has reversed that trend by incorporating the idea of external self-determination which at the end resulted in the formation of the new state of the South Sudan few months ago. It has also made the South & North come face to face with a view to confronting their mutual antagonism and distrust and engage in a mutual peace-making process. But, at the end, given the turbulent status quo, the international community have relegated the peace and order in Sudan to an irreparable condition.
The CPA had set up a benchmark for the unity in diversity. It contrived the ‘attractiveness’ criterion of unity that combines an aesthetic and political overtones. The right to ‘extensive self-determination’ which turned out to be external had been accorded to the south; with a consultation mechanism tantamount to internal self-determination had been granted to two peripheral areas. The CPA was a political ethnic agenda for a regime change and reconstruction of what it described as the old Sudanese order.
The external actors have not adopted a holistic approach towards the peace-making process in the Sudan. Its mechanism of power and wealth sharing was also confined to the south only; leading to the disenfranchisement of popular political parties and other civil society groups, and undercutting both the envisaged democratization and nation-building.
Therefore, one can argue that post-conflict power and wealth-sharing regimes, especially those associated with ethnically-defined or confined peace agreements, are not likely to lead to sustainable peace. The recen military confrontation in South Blue Nile and South Kordofan areas are good examples of the post-war relapse. Professor Paul Collier works as quoted by Dr. Ibrahim Elbadawi have shown that economic growth is, by far, the dominant factor in reducing post-conflict risks; while democracy is at best an unstable influence. That the high risks of civil wars and coups are more likely due to recent developments associated with a combination of commodity booms in weakly governed poor countries; proliferation of democracy across low-income countries; and the large number of negotiated peace settlements, which tend to have a history of high risks of relapse.
Sudan's ambivalent nationhood
The term ‘nation’ has been defined as ‘an imagined political community’ (Benedict Anderson, 1991). Gellner in his book Thought and Change contended that nationalism ‘invents nations where they do not exist.’ The Encyclopedia of Social Sciences defines ‘nation’ as either synonymous with state or its inhabitants, or else denotes a nation as ‘a human group bound together by common solidarity or a group whose members place loyalty to the group as a whole over any conflicting loyalties’ Unity and common sympathy will make them cooperate with each other more willingly as John Stuart Mill has pointed out.
Emerson goes beyond the past and present to attach a futuristic partnership as he considers a nation any ‘...community of people who have the feeling of belonging to each other in the twofold manner of possessing a common cultural heritage and a common future destination’. Norbert Elias pointed out that ‘societies will assume the characteristics of a nation if the functional interdependence between its regions and its social strata, as well as its hierarchic levels of authority and subordination becomes sufficiently reciprocal’.
Accordingly states are primordial origin of nations, and nation-state is the last stage of human survival unit, and as such state is a very specific type of society whose formation have been marked by the pacification and integration processes . This process requires different stages and qualitative leaps. To what level then can we describe the post-independence Sudan as a full-blown nation where all its units have an equal and shared sense of belonging? Apparently the Sudanese constitutions have prescribed time and again the state as unitary; but undoubtedly this has remained only a mere legal construct.
Emergence of modern Sudan
Modern Sudan had emerged to contain many tribes and ethnic groups which remain the major cause of the dichotomy; 'a continent more or less, ambivalent in its Arabo-African culture, identity, integration and social stratification. Raging political conflicts between the North and South that continued for over 50 years had made it too difficult to achieve the last stage of Elias’ nation.
The Sudanese identity is characterised by ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic diversity which its elites have failed to manage. The colonial legacy had widened the gulf between the south and north with the outcome of severing the natural existing bonds between the two entities. Sudan had been colonised by the Turks (1821-1885) and the Anglo-Egyptians (1898-1956). The Northerners were not allowed to forge their mutual relationship with the south due to the closed district act promulgated by the British colonial power. The new South Sudan State has hardly attained nation-hood, it is the sum total of 61 tribes divided along 567 sub-groups who speak around 180 languages and dialects, having a pidgin-Arabic as a lingua franca.
Keeping the peace order in the post-independence period requires a degree of monolithic consensus because active domestic schisms and tribal fighting are a bound. The functional interdependence between the two regions of the country did not occur due to the British Colonial policy whose main drive was ‘divide and rule’. The official colonial policy had engendered a ferocious discouragement to integration between North and South, exacerbated the regional disparity, thus, impeding any sensible cultural integration, those policies have caused an even process of differentiation .those policies had culminated in 1922 by promulgation of the ‘Closed District’ laws.
The situation was made worse by the post-independence civil war in (1955-2005); with except for the short period between (1970-1985) where a peace accord stopped the war and the south was accorded the regional autonomy under a unitary Sudan. The Sudan independence in 1956 was ‘less than a complete break with the past’ and it is but ‘an imposed, alien, and relatively piece of state–building’ according to Professor Peter Woodward, 1990.
The economic structure was tailored to achieve the colonial interests and thus kept the dualism alive. Tim Niblock argued that economic policy was the main cause for the imbalance in the inter-region interdependence. The uneven distribution of the development schemes had fanned further regional political disgruntlement, which later, developed into an ardent pursuit of secession.
The post-independence and ethnically divided Sudan mirrored the deep regional disparity between a core-dominating North and a disenchanted and unruly South. Identification Stratification, as such, has been crystallised in a prevalent warring context. The process of identification varied according to the time and place determinants, but was not incongruous with the pre-existing realities or the primordial bonding. According to Francis Deng it was "proudly acknowledged, jealously guarded and reluctantly surrendered."
In a nutshell the uneven power balances, the shallow political consciousness and failure of the Sudanese modern elite have negatively affected the forging of bonds of unity between the regions of modern Sudan. The lack of useful interdependence and functional regional integration had weakened the nation-wide social cohesion.
Redrawing the map of the Sudan
The new state and the parent state require a genuine resolution for border deadlock that is a move from rigid to soft borders with a view to alleviating the rigour of the differing views about the demarcation of borders between the unity state in the south and south Kordofan in the north, and northern borders between the Upper Nile state in the south and the White Nile state in the north.
Does Bahr Al-Arab mark the border between Bahr Elghazal in the south and Darfur in the north? In addition to the flux status of the borders; issues concerning the cross border arrangements, grazing rights for the pastoral Arabs of messeiria in S. Kordofan, and sedentarist Taaisha and Nazzie, and the roming Rufaa in Jebelein area in the White Nile, and the extradited Fulani from the south to Darfur and the situation of the contiguous zones, border communities, overlapping tribes and the new forcibly emigrated citizens from the north to south and vice versa are all hot issues that require immediate and effective resolutions.
The secession has generated an immediate and large scale relocation of people on ethnic grounds. It has also frozen the smooth order of ‘laisser-faire laisser-passer’ of the border trade, the movement of chattels and the existing and mutual economic benefits.
The Sudan has lost in the aftermath of the secession 30% of its population, 30% of its land mass, 40% of its national income, 25% of its GDP, 75% of its exports and 55% of its budget revenues. Yet the state of peace between the two states is not in good order. The oil, its environment of production, transport and export, are also ambiguous and divisive issues as the new state will requisition all the oil revenues of the south oil which were divided between the two parties before the secession. The future of the Nile waters' existing regime remains to be seen; where Egypt controls the most volume of the Nile waters according to what it claims to be her well-established and historical rights. Issues of state succession loom large. Will the new south Sudan State ratify the 1959 bilateral agreement between Sudan and Egypt or is it going to challenge its legality with her East African and Grand lakes neighbours and kick-start a fresh conflict in respect of the Nile waters?
The parent–prodigal son reciprocal accusations
The south accuses the north of waging an economic war by not honouring a bilateral agreement authorizing each state to use the currency of the other for six months. The striking of a new currency in the north though an exclusive sovereign act is being attacked by the south as a malicious act. The Abyei identity and border demarcation is a thorny issue. The Dinka elites would consider it their indigenous locality while the Baggara Arabs would not subscribe to this. The Arabs came from North and West Africa over 500 hundred years ago. The Dinka migrated from West Africa in the 16th century.
Outbreak of military reprisals
The government has recently taken military acts of reprisal targeting the standing military units of the SPLM in the north; in southern Kordofan and southern Blue Nile. These actions of hostility have been described by the state–owned media as acts of keeping law and order; have caused enormous loss of life and displacement of people , the situation could best be described as a new war gathering pace or actually being fought in a less scale.
The impact of secession on Darfur
The grand Nilotic confederacy would be formed extending from the Grand Lakes and East Africa up to Darfur. The Darfur armed groups have recently found the secession option tempting; bearing in mind the Darfur was an independent kingdom until its forcible annexation by the British condominium government in 1916.
Pax Sudanica and the regional order
The South-North relationship should be freed from engulfing political obscurity and should be re-oriented by a blueprint of an agenda pertaining to what I portray as 'Pax Sudanica.' it should aim at achieving greater openness, vast interconnectedness; to engender a new paradigm to enhancing the positive dynamics of identification drawn by genuine respect for the dignity of human beings, codified by law as citizenship rights and duties. This still holds true irrespective of the fact that there are two differing existing states.
The future of the two states must be salvaged from dichotomous trends and parochial modes of thinking. The Sudan should seek more inter-ethnic cross-cultural platforms, equitable division of wealth, political representation and a thriving democracy. The Sudanese democracy will reinforce the global upsurge of democracy which could no longer be decried as a luxury that Africa or Sudan can ill afford.
A blueprint for constructive change
The Sudan is badly in need of a cosmopolitan framework to get to grips with the risks of religious extremism, to end, by evolution or willy nilly revolution, the heinous era of lingering kleptocracy, cultural relativism, the debt boomerang and the adverse impact of colliding ideologies in the last two decades and the impoverishment and marginalisation of the down-trodden. .
We need to address social and economic grievances, to learn how to pacify and accord priority to peaceful coexistence, communitarian and traditional arbitration of conflicts can help curb the tide of belligerency. Community harmonisation projects and a special agenda for peace ought to be applied hand in hand. There should be a solid move in the field of human rights from empty rhetoric to the legal plane, to make the rights a legal and economic entitlement enforceable and protected by courts decisions, thereby making an entire legal reform.
Existing and changing software of the minds
In the age of withering away of long-lasting ideologies, expanding democracies whose centre has now shifted to the Arab world, the global media impact, internet, satellite TV and Facebook all these factors will provide more space for multiculturalism. I assume that the realm of bigotry, false supremacies and racial chosenness will diminish. The information age will reshape our way of thinking by replacing old constructs and relegating old and fictional visions to oblivion.
Henceforth the new birth and emergence of a new paradigm geared towards inter and intra-ethnic cooperation which shall encompass an effective getting-togetherness. This recipe will pave the way for a one-to-one robust nationhood and the Sudan for all statehood.
More adhesion to human rights and economic entitlement, empowering of women and creation of jobs and inclusion of the youth; will displace the agenda of cultural relativism be it in the name of bigotry, religion, secularism, race or primordial conditioning.
Modern transport networks will lead to an unparallelled dynamics of convergence and integration of identities by creating wide scale connectivity and physical mobility thus leading to the emergence of homogeneous communities that recognise universals but still would espouse cultural particularities, and culture in this sense is the software of the mind according to Hofestead.
The global impact will further future ethnic engagement where ethnicities not particularities shall vanish and economic disparity shall become narrower than ever before, given the right political set up. Tribes will wither to usher in a peaceful post-conflict times, where a modern economically motivated individual-entrepreneur and communal partnership of peace will take the lead.
Universal norms and values will intermingle with religious pristine norms where brutish and primordial peculiarity, the drive for fragmentation and the quest for superiority of racial selfhood shall wither paving the way for an all-embracing and inclusive era of humanity.
In the hope that my approach is not a broken dream, or a loud scream like the one in Edward Munch’s painting or a sheer post-modern apocalyptic vision which shall remain awaiting the second return of Jesus or the advent of the Shi’ite Mahdi. The Sunnite Mahdi had already emerged in my native-country the Sudan in the 19th century.
May Allah the Almighty bestow upon you all His special Mercy.
Al-Harith Idriss is a former diplomat who read law and trained as lawyer in Sudan, The Hague and London. He joined the Sudanese opposition in exile in the early 1990s and since then is domiciled in London. He has written extensively about Sudanese and African affairs, diplomatic and international issues in the London-based lead Arab newspapers, commented on the same on the BBC Radio & TV, SKY TV and MBC. He works at present for the Kuwait Investment Authority in the City of London. Recently the Universal Peace Federation, New York, awarded him the title Ambassador for Peace.
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lana mahdi
جعفر محي الدين
ياسر احمد محمود
Mannan
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست