The war in Sudan is over the very soul of the country. Powerful factions in the north, spearheaded by the NIF [National Islamic Front], believe that Sudan is an Arab, Muslim country and that anyone who wants to be part of it must either adopt this identity or consent to being grossly marginalized. Southern Sudanese, most of whom adhere to traditional religious beliefs, and the modern elite of which is primarily Christian, believe that Sudan is African, syncretic, and pluralistic.

These are mutually exclusive realities, mutually unacceptable models—the basis for a genocidal war, even if there is no widespread intent to physically eliminate the other group. Whether they can be reconciled within the framework of unity, or the country split into two independent states, is the critical question confronting the Sudanese.

We must consider not only the vast numbers of individuals that have been killed in this war, but think as well of the communities whose existence as identifiable cultural entities has been destroyed. The Nuer and Dinka are among the best-studied peoples in the world. Anthropologists have established a clear picture of their identity concepts, social structures, value systems, initiation rituals and other rites of passage. These cultures have in common a holistic system which centers on the notion of linkage with the past through the lineage.

There is a continuity of identity through procreation, family and the community, which confers dignity on the individual, and great reverence for the dead, whose presence is maintained among and through the living. This total social context that constitutes a people has been shattered. If you eliminate a community by saying "You are not good enough unless you change and become something else," that, to me, is genocide. Millions of people will be destroyed as well as their source of livelihood, their communities, sense of identity and continuity, their very future. I can’t think of anything worse.

In order to analyze genocide in this sort of conflict situation, we need to approach it differently. It is not simply a question of preventing genocide, and, if genocide has taken place, of punishing those individuals who are responsible. When I visited Rwanda for the UN, after the genocide there, I found that there was a risk of justice being confused with revenge. There is no way the numbers of individuals who would be tried for genocide would be commensurate to the numbers of people killed. And when trials are seen to be insufficient, then people may be prompted to take justice into their own hands. We need remedies that go beyond trials, that are comprehensive, holistic.

As Sudanese, we need to stand in front of the mirror and ask the tough questions: Who are we, as a people? Are we as divided as we think? Do we deceive ourselves with mythologies of identity? It is extremely important to dismantle structures of "otherness," in a context ripe for genocidal actions, especially given the obvious fact that this "otherness" is largely a mythical perception.

There is a tendency to think of Sudan simply as a North-South dichotomy. That is an over-simplification. If you think in terms of economics, parts of the North are just as poor, or poorer, than the South. Races and ethnicity are also mixed. Those who call themselves Arabs today are, in essence, a mixture of indigenous Africans and the Arab Muslims who came later as traders. Sudanese who converted to Islam, spoke Arabic and became culturally Arabized were accepted and elevated as Arabs. If they could claim Arab descent, that was even better. In contrast blacks, who were seen as heathens, were considered inferior and the legitimate objects of enslavement. Many northern Sudanese today look much more African than Arab. The overwhelming majority of Sudanese are not Arabs; they may be Muslims, but their version of Islam is very Africanized, indigenous, and liberal. The southern tribes have been fighting for equality and are gradually becoming respected by the Arabized Africans in the North, some of whom are now coming out of the closet and "confessing" to Dinka grandmothers. So who are we, really?

I am from the border area between Bahr-El-Ghazal and Kordofan, and my views on the situation have been colored by that background. Our people, the Ngok Dinka, have been for many generations under the paramount chieftainship of our family. My great-grandfather, grandfather, and father did the most to bring the North and South together. As southerners, they chose to be part of the northern administration of the border province of Kordofan in order to ensure better protection for their people. They established good working and diplomatic ties with their Arab counterparts, and through those ties, linked themselves to the central government. But they enjoyed local autonomy and great power over their own affairs. Even the neighboring Dinka tribes to the South were under the leadership of our family before the British annexed them to the South.

I see this area as having been particularly important in bridging cultural dynamics, which makes me hesitant to conclude we must split the country. Ideally, I would like to see a Sudan that reflects its internal composition. So my preference is to create a country where everyone can feel a sense of belonging and roots. My father, although a minority, was so influential and respected among the Arabs that their leaders elected him to be the President of the inter-tribal rural council in which the Arabs were the overwhelming majority. He was neither Muslim nor Arab, yet there was that degree of mutual recognition and respect.

Accountability and leadership, justice and peace are principles that must be carefully balanced in dealing with genocide. Obviously, we should prosecute offenders according to the Genocide Convention. But in the long run, in the Sudanese context, it will be more important to heal the present crisis of national identity. I understand why people go to war; the problem now is to motivate the Sudanese to make peace. In this context, not every crime will, or should be punished. I go back to my grandfather, who after the upheavals of the 19th century—when tribes fought, slavers arrived and middlemen betrayed their fellow Sudanese into bondage—called all the people of the tribe under his authority together. Under his direction, they literally gathered their rubbish, dug a large pit, threw in the rubbish, covered it over and performed a series of rituals to cleanse their hearts and communities. He asked them to forget all the ills of the past and reunite in peace and harmony.

In 1969, our country had been embroiled since 1955 in a terrible civil war marked by rampant atrocities. In August my father died in Cairo and my brother Zachariah Bol and I took his body back home. (At the time, Bol was practicing medicine in England and I was working in the UN Secretariat in New York.) Upon our arrival, we were informed that the local commander had killed our uncle on suspicion that he was allied with the rebel forces. When we confronted him, he admitted it, and said further that he had sent troops to surround our home in order to shoot on sight the local rebel leaders who were our cousins and who, according to rumors, had been expected to come at night to pay their last respects to their deceased uncle.

Despite the bitterness of what he had done, we told him that our main task at hand as successors to the leadership of the tribe was to work for the security and welfare of the living. Toward that objective we were prepared to cooperate with him. And indeed, we endeavored hard for a month to restore a semblance of security in the area. But the situation remained very precarious as we left for Khartoum and back to our assignments abroad.

We eventually wrote a report for the authorities in Khartoum, which led to that commander being transferred out of the area. At the same time, it was never my intention that we should take revenge as I recognized that he thought he was doing his duty under extremely trying conditions. Later, when I married in New York, this commander wrote to congratulate us, and then when I was appointed ambassador to Scandinavia, he came to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to pay me a deferential visit. That brutal war, which had raged for 17 years, was brought to an end in 1972.

Sudan became a model of peace and reconciliation, a factor for moderating influences in the African region and in the Middle East. It became the one Arab country that supported the Camp David accords—and we did so by applying the logic of our internal reconciliation. I was then Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. We had just negotiated the end of our own war through the highly acclaimed 1972 Addis Ababa Accord, how could we not endorse Camp David?

As it happened, President Jaafar Nimeiri and I were in the United States at the time, and it was clear to me that we could not join the Arab rejectionist camp and go against President Carter on what was likely to be the signature issue of his presidency. All our national institutions, in their position papers, wanted to stand with the Arab rejectionist group. The position paper I had prepared for the President on his request was the one he eventually adopted as the basis for our policy on Camp David. And it was in large part based on the way we had ended our own war.

The1972 peace agreement was ultimately violated by President Nimeiri himself, plunging the country into the war that has afflicted us since1983. The June1989 coup backed by the NIF was an effort to save Islamic-Arab identity of the country from the rebel forces in the south [SPLA, or Sudan People’s Liberation Army] that were calling for a secular, pluralistic nation. They wanted in essence to "de-Arabize" the country, which of course threatened the very core of the northern national project, which is why they called their coup the Revolution of National Salvation.

It was at this point that Sudan began to host radical Islamic elements who started coming to the country. Here again we come up against the crisis of national identity. I think the West got stuck on the issue of Sudan’s link to international terrorism without fully appreciating the domestic roots of this link. It is indeed the conflict of identities in the Sudan that prompted the regime to reach out to the terrorists and de-stabilize the neighborhood. Sudan’s deeply entrenched identity crisis is the essential point: it has triggered every internal conflict and fueled the consolidation of an Islamic agenda that pits itself against the West, against Christendom, and, of course, against Israel and Zionism, which they mistakenly or exaggeratedly assume to back the South against Islam and Arabism.

The present focus on terrorism is fully understandable and laudable, and if Sudan is an active partner, then it should of course be made accountable. But in the post-September 11 campaign to root out terrorism, Sudan’s more complicated problems and the domestic roots of any alliance the regime might have had with international terrorism must be understood in their proper context. Those roots lie in the civil war, which must be ended as a matter of priority if Sudan is to experience peace, security and stability, and de-link from externally generated terrorism.

Sidebar
Ethics and Rules of War Lost
by Dr. Francis Mading Deng

Photos Copyright © George Rodger / Magnum Photos
The Nuba tribe from the Korong Jebels (hills) in the Kordofan area of Southern Sudan are herdsmen with cattle that graze in the lower valleys. In 1949, Sudan was ruled by a Condominium government of British and Egyptians. Though the Nuba follow their own culture and rituals, the region is ruled primarily by nomadic Arabs.
Sudan. Kordofan. The Nubas. 1949.

Sudan. Kordofan. Nuba woman of Mesakin Qusar waters the tobacco plants.

Additional Suggested Reading by Dr. Francis Mading Deng:

His latest Brookings publications include: Strategic Vision for Africa (forthcoming ),co- authored with I. William Zartman

Masses in Flight: The Global Crisis of Internal Displacement (1998) co-authored with Roberta Cohen

The Forsaken People: Case Studies of the Internally Displaced (1998) co-edited with Roberta Cohen

African Reckoning: A Quest for Good Governance (1998) co-edited with Terrence Lyons

Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa (1996) co-authored with several scholars

War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan (1995)

Protecting theDispossessed: A Challenge for the International Community (1993)

The Challenges of Famine Relief: Emergency Operations in the Sudan (1992)

Conflict Resolution in Africa (1991)

Human Rights in Africa: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (1990).

Among his earlier books is a biography of his father, The Man Called Majok: A Biography of Power, Polygamy and Change, published by Yale University Press in 1986.

His first book, Tradition and Modernization: A Challenge for Law Among the Dinka of the Sudan (1971) also published by Yale University Press, won the 1972 Herskovits Award offered annually by the African Studies Association for the best book published the year before.

Human Rights in Africa: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, co-authored with Abdullahi An-Na’im,was the 1990 winner of the Excellence in Publishing award sponsored by the Association of American Publishers.

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