[NYTr] British parliamentarians wise to tread very softly in Sudan

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Simon McGuinness

["A strong alliance of imperialists and Evangelical Protestants forced
the reluctant Liberal prime minister, William Gladstone, to send Gen
Gordon to Sudan [in 1882] to sort out its problems, defeat the
"Mohammedan fanatics" and "save the negroes" from the Arabs. Similar
emotional but simplistic imagery is used by the powerful Christian Right
and Neocon coalition to argue for western intervention under the guise
of the UN." -- and the 1882 British Imperialists didn't know what the
2007 US Imperialists now know about the vast oilfields under Darfur.
-SMcG]


The Irish Times - Sep 6, 2007
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2007/0906/1188603615161.html

Letter from Darfur

Visiting British parliamentarians wise to tread very softly in Sudan

by Pieter Tesch 

David Drew, chairman of the Westminster All-Party Group on Sudan, while
leaving the presidential palace on the banks of the Blue Nile in
Khartoum recently, said to his two colleagues: "Lucky enough, we were
spared being taken to the stairs where Gordon was speared by the
Mahdists."

On a previous visit, Vice-President Ali Osman Taha had taken the Labour
MP to the spot where Charles Gordon, the ill-fated British general, was
killed in the then governor-general's palace in 1885 as the Mahdist
forces overran Khartoum, a scene immortalised by Charlton Heston in the
film Khartoum. It took the British another 13 years to defeat the
Mahdist army in the bloody battle of Omdurman, across the Nile from
Khartoum, with an Anglo-Egyptian force commanded by Gen Horatio
Kitchener. The recaptured city is now seat of the national assembly in
the independent state of Sudan.

The international community now involved in Sudan - in the south, where
the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005 brought an end to the
civil war, and in trying to find a solution to the civil war in Darfur
in the west - now rightly or wrongly looks to the former colonial power
for wisdom.

Strictly speaking, Sudan was never a British colony in the chain along
east Africa from the Cape to Cairo, but was a condominium jointly ruled
with Egypt. Nonetheless, the British tried to keep the Egyptians out of
Sudanese affairs until the nationalist President Nasser forced them to
grant Sudanese independence in 1956.

It may be that when visiting diplomats look closer they will learn that
many of the modern grievances of southern Sudan or Darfur in the west,
such as marginalisation, are rooted in the colonial policy of promoting
development centrally, around Khartoum. This policy has left the south
and west at the mercy of young colonial administrators who hunt big game
and study exotic tribes.

On a recent visit the British parliamentary delegation found that the
Sudanese by and large value their British historical links, but expect
different things from the UK government, depending on their perspective.

In Juba, the capital of the new autonomous south Sudan, photographs can
still be seen of the young crown princess Elizabeth landing on the White
Nile on her way back from Kenya after the death of her father, George V.

The old Juba Hotel, where the future queen stayed, is in ruins after
Africa's longest civil war, while the Dutch knocked down the old
governor's residence to make way for the brand new building which houses
the Joint Donor's Office, which channels European aid to the government
of south Sudan.

In a meeting in el Geneina, the state capital of west Darfur on the
border with Chad, Prince Asaad Abdul Rachman Bay el Dein, younger
brother of the Sultan of the Massalit, the local major African ethnic
group, told the British parliamentarians of his pride at the photo of
his father attending the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1952. Darfur was
only incorporated into the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan after the Fur Sultan Ali
Dinar heeded the call for jihad against the British by the Ottoman
Sultan in Constantinople in 1916. The reaction was a swift but bloody
campaign which saw warplanes being used for the first time in Darfur and
the death of the sultan.

But Prince Asaad has now asked the British to send troops for the new
hybrid African Union UN force, or Unamid, which is unlikely to happen.
In Juba, the speaker of the southern Sudan legislative assembly, Lt-Gen
James Wani Igga, reminded the British parliamentarians that the southern
mutineers of the old colonial army asked the British in vain for help
and mediation in 1955.

Opposition leader Sadig al-Mahdi, the great-grandson of the Mahdi who
led the successful jihad against the Egyptian rulers of Sudan and their
British backers in the 1880s, reminded the parliamentarians of the
pitfalls of western intervention where humanitarianism was disguised as
imperialism [sic].

A strong alliance of imperialists and Evangelical Protestants forced the
reluctant Liberal prime minister, William Gladstone, to send Gen Gordon
to Sudan to sort out its problems, defeat the "Mohammedan fanatics" and
"save the negroes" from the Arabs. Similar emotional but simplistic
imagery is used by the powerful Christian Right and Neocon coalition to
argue for western intervention under the guise of the UN. Study
carefully the history of Sudan first, cautions David Drew.

(c) 2007 The Irish Times