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 Re: ثوار السودان المسلمين يشاركون المسيحيين احباطهم (Re: Rakoba)
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Here is the english version of the article:
FEATURE- Sudan Muslim rebels share Christians' frustration
By Cynthia Johnston
CAIRO, March 4 (Reuters) - As a Muslim, Mohamed Adam Yahiya may seem an unusual member of a largely Christian opposition group fighting a civil war against Sudan's Islamist government.
But Yahiya, a Sudanese refugee in Egypt, says he is one of a growing number of Muslims supporting the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), whose military wing has waged a 19-year war against successive governments in Khartoum seeking to impose Islamic rule across Africa's biggest country.
"I joined the SPLM because it is struggling against the tyrannical government in Sudan, because it's calling for peace, because it doesn't differentiate between those who are Muslims and non-Muslims," Yahiya told Reuters in Cairo, where he ######### the SPLM's youth group.
Muslims make up only a small fraction of the rebel group's members, but Yahiya is not simply a curiosity. His membership defies the conventional perception that the civil war, which has claimed some two million lives since 1983, is a clear-cut fight between Christians and Muslims.
He is a symbol of the complexity of the war, which pits the mostly Muslim north against the mainly Christian south but is complicated by ethnic and tribal rivalries, power struggles and economic motives such as oil.
The government and the rebels implemented a fragile truce in the Nuba Mountains region in January that diplomats hope can serve as a model for peace in the country as a whole. But a U.S. peace envoy said recently it was not clear if the parties had sufficient will for peace.
SPLM officials say Yahiya is not alone with his views.
"(A Muslim) joins because he wants to fight for his basic rights...(He thinks) I'm black, I'm Sudanese and I'm a Muslim, but I'm being discriminated against," the group's spokesman Samson Kwaje said in Nairobi.
Kwaje could not say how many Muslims have joined the rebels, but analysts say they make up less than 10 percent of the group.
RACIAL IDENTITY
Some Muslims like Yahiya, who is from western Sudan, say they often face discrimination because of their African, non-Arab roots, whatever their religion.
"They (northerners) want to wipe all of these people out because all of them are African...They say they are a fifth column," Yahiya said, as other SPLM members in the group's Cairo office nodded their ######### in agreement.
He said members of his Masseleit clan could not get jobs, had been forcibly recruited to fight in the war against the south and had been driven from their homes by the war.
The government denies accusations of racism and forced recruitment. It says the war is about neither race nor religion, but is a fight against secessionist militants, who the government in turn accuses of human rights abuses.
Rights groups and aid organisations accuse both the government and the rebels of attacking civilian targets, forced recruitment, and hindering relief efforts.
Analysts say both sides have used race and religion as a tool to divide the population.
"Ethnicity and religion...are easier to use to mobilise people," said Ibrahim Elnur, head of the American University in Cairo's African Studies department.
Elnur said intermarriage among tribes and even religions has not been uncommon. But inequality, exacerbated by war, has heightened the sense of division between communities.
OIL FACTOR
Despite widespread complaints about discrimination, SPLM members say the war is also about an unwillingness among those holding power and wealth to share it across Sudan's many tribes, cultures and religions.
"It is a question of power and maintaining power," one Muslim SPLM member said.
Successive Khartoum governments, while including some Christian members, have been mostly made up of Muslims from the north. The current government, which came to power in a military coup in 1989, has an Islamist platform.
One of the most contentious factors in the war is the question of oil, which is largely found and produced in areas of the rebellious south under government control.
While the government says it invests oil revenues to improve the quality of life in drilling areas, opponents say it is using the money to fuel the war and extend its power. The SPLM says the south has been left undeveloped while the government has paved new roads in the north and developed its infrastructure.
Khartoum says war prevents it from providing key services in the south. It says the rebels have not been patient enough as the government tries to solve the country's problems.
Although the SPLM officially preaches equality among its followers, Muslim members say they sometimes feel unwelcome and misunderstood. In some cases, they say their loyalty has been questioned.
"Sometimes you find one or two who criticise the Muslims. But it is small things from people who are not intellectual. They say, 'We suffered so much because of you.' But we do not blame them," Yahiya said.
But Muslim SPLM members say the greatest challenge comes from other Muslims outside the group.
"People are surprised when I mention I am an SPLM member. They say, 'What is your problem? You are a Muslim Arab'. But I am not joining just for my own problems," said Salah Abu Sibah, a Muslim Arab SPLM member.
"I want a secular state," he said.
(With additional reporting by Fiona O'Brien in Nairobi).
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Rakoba
Kostawi
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست