Africa’s biggest country has long been one of its most ungovernable. For a start, it is a grossly artificial, colonial creation. The Muslim Arabs in the north, who have run Sudan since it broke free from Britain in 1956, have little in common with their blacker-skinned Christian and animist compatriots in the south, whom they have periodically enslaved over the centuries. During more than four decades of strife since the British left, at least 2m southerners have been killed. More recently the government in Khartoum, under President Omar al-Bashir, has bludgeoned the disaffected inhabitants of the western region of Darfur since the start of a rebellion in 2003, killing some 300,000 of them and displacing another 3m. Just in the west and the south together, more than 9m people depend on food handouts from abroad. Mr Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court at The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity.
It is hardly surprising, then, that the election for parliament and president and a slew of other bodies due to take place on April 11th is likely to be horribly flawed….In the past year or so, Mr Bashir’s ruling party has been stacking the odds in its own favour. The main southern party has withdrawn its candidate for the presidency and is refusing to compete for most of parliament’s northern seats. The main opposition in the north says it will pull out altogether. The brutal Mr Bashir, who came to power in a coup in 1989, is almost sure to retain the presidency. The conundrum of whether Western governments must continue to treat with an ICC indictee in the hope of sustaining a wider peace will be awkwardly unresolved. Foreign governments that have given money to finance the polls no longer hope for “free and fair” elections but ask that they be minimally “credible”.
The election may still be postponed. Yet, despite all these flaws, it is to be hoped that it will go ahead. If it does, the outside world should hold its nose and accept the result.
I’m always glad to see Sudan get media attention. This unsigned article in the Economist is surely right in arguing that even a flawed election is better than no election at all, but that’s IF and only if, it does in fact help pave the way for the crucial referendum due to take place next year when the southern part of the country, that likes to call itself New Sudan, is supposed to vote on whether to go ahead with independence or not. I remain very, very skeptical that Omar al Bashir, whom I consider the world’s absolute worst dictator, will allow the elections to take place as scheduled in 2011.
Yes, I think Bashir is worse than the dreadful crook Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Worse than North Korea’s insane Kim Jong il. The absolute worst tyrant on the planet, period.
There are many, many woes that New Sudan faces, but this article highlights one symptom that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The fact that the southern region (twice the size of Italy) has only 30 miles of paved road is one of many signs that the utterly corrupt and brutal Khartoum regime has refused to invest any money in building up an infrastructure in the south. Through a “Lost Boy” I know in Richmond, I learned that in his part of the prospective new nation, around Renk, there is only one secondary school to serve over a million Sudanese teens. Basically, a whole generation has gone without any real education in that desperately impoverished and oppressed country.
BTW, the opening line in the article says that Sudan is the “largest” country in Africa. That’s true in terms of land area, but not in terms of population. Nigeria is the most populous African nation.
I’m afraid the article is also somewhat misleading when it speaks of the US being one of the few countries with the chance to exert some influence over the loathsome Bashir regime. China may have some financial leverage due to its oil production investments, but I see little evidence that all our American attempts at pressuring Sudan have done anything at all in the past. Bashir is an isolationist, who openly mocks the West and scorns our half-hearted attempts at influencing the National Islamic Front that remains totally committed, explicitly and unashamedly, to the goal of forcibly Islamizing all of East Africa.
And for us Anglicans, the Episcopal Church of Sudan is now the fourth largest province in the whole Anglican Communion, following Nigeria, Uganda, and Kenya. And when one part of the body suffers, we all suffer, whether we know it or not.
Lord, have mercy.
David Handy+
I agree with David Handy. The Economist is naive if they believe Bashir will allow the referendum to take place as scheduled. Even before the voting began, a confident Bashir had already announced his next move. He will start campaigning for the unity of the country immediately after the elections.
“There will be no separation. Our people in the south will vote for unity voluntarily, through their own will,†Bashir said during a campaign in Sinjah, a town in eastern Sudan, on Apr. 1.
Prayers for Sudan can be found [url=http://anglicanprayer.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/sudan-watch-17/]here[/url].