Rescuing Equatoria
When the world news media turns its attention to the Republic of the Sudan these days, it almost always casts its gaze on the troubles in the Darfur region. Given that those troubles have bordered on (and been labeled as) Genocide, it is in many ways a good thing that the media looks first there. The Darfur conflict is both a tragic example of the treatment a centralized authoritarian state gives to a (relatively) recently-incorporated territory and a flash-point for border battles between the Sudanese state and its enemies in the Republic of Chad. The central authority bases itself upon the Arab Supremacy doctrine as well as the concept of concentration of power in the hands of the leadership in Khartoum. But there is more to be seen about the Sudan; for one, there are defensible historical reasons why the very idea of “Sudan” is not, and should not be, what is drawn on the map.
Speaking of maps, here is a
modern political map of the Sudan. Here is a map showing
the political regions of the Sudan (as of 2006). Please refer to these as needed as we proceed.
The Upper Nile and its surrounding territories were little known to outsiders other than in glimpses and tales of the interior lands until the Arabianization of the northeastern tribes and kingdoms had gone on long enough that a small Sultanate had come to be in the region of the Third Cataract of the Nile and Arab colonization along the Red Sea coast had penetrated a small distance inland… a process that took nearly a thousand years. Islam did spread, but the idea of Islamic States as per se did not go much beyond the replacement of indigenous Nubian sub-states in the north with Arabianized Nubian sub-states. The Blue Sultanate of the Sinnar (Sennar) region along the fertile part of the Blue Nile was the first to gain even tributary control over the many tribes of the Upper Nile, and had knowledge of tribes in the far south. This loose empire-in-miniature rose in the 16th Century and existed until 1820… when the Ottoman-dominated Egyptians came south.
Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Ottoman-installed
Wali (Governor) of Egypt, had grown a bit “too big for his britches” taking the self-styled title of
Khedive (overlord; viceroy) and setting out to increase his domain by exploration and conquest. Conveniently, this was also the beginning of the era of the great European interest in the exploration of the “Heart of Africa” and as a part of that, the search for “The Source of the Nile”. Through the 1840’s and on to 1879, this both encouraged Egyptian cooperation with European nations *outside the official relationship with the Ottoman Empire” and made a steady supply of European Adventurers available for employ by the Khedive. These men (and one very famous husband-wife team) worked mostly alone at the head of expeditions that established a chain of very modest garrisons along the Upper Nile. Unfortunately, the interest and availability of these Adventurers came at a price: The sudden, and instantly critical, awareness by European nations of the extent of the Slave Trade. It was everywhere. It was the major trade activity of the Arab interests in East Africa and along the Upper Nile. By any reasonable measure of economic “resource production”, it was the *only* major trade activity in those regions. Ivory-trade was a poor second in comparison, and there was basically no other trade of value except on the coast. The Khedive now told (one of his many) well-told lies to the Europeans: that by encouraging and supporting Egyptian control of the Upper Nile, his administration would see an end to Slave-taking and –trading.
Some believed him; others thought they could use this as an opportunity; most of the Egyptian administrators put in place by the expeditions simply ignored it. Worse, while the Slave Trade had been tied before to Red Sea ports and the East African Arab kingdom of Zanzibar and severely limited by the dangers that befell outsiders who ventured very far inland into East Africa, the explorers (both European Adventurers and Arab Slavers) were gaining the ability to penetrate farther into the countryside. By the 1870’s, heretofore unvisited tribes and territories were being brought into contact. This contact might bring negotiation and the tribe told of its place under administration, or it might just as easily bring death, disease, and enslavement; it simply depended on who got there first.
One of the earliest such places was Darfur, and it at least had the veneer of Islamization to protect *some* of its people from the Slave Trade. The confluence of the Niles was another early place of Egyptian administration, and Khartoum grew to become a moderately large center of trade linked overland along the Blue Nile and the desert to the Red Sea ports. Later, expeditions from the north established a tenuous presence far up the White Nile called “Equatoria” (part of which is the modern South Sudanese province of the same name) and explorers working from Zanzibar had mostly mapped the region of the northern Great Lakes of Africa, unveiling the strong tribal kingdom of
Buganda in the process. By reaching Equatoria, the extent of the holding was well past the Arabianized tribes. This was tribal Sub-Saharan Africa. Where ever the European presence asserted control the Slave Trade was in peril, but where the Slave Trade came first, their depredations either ruined the countryside or turned the native tribals implacably hostile to outsiders.
The European influence eventually began to turn the tide against Slavery as an industry, but it also instantly destroyed the source of wealth of many powerful people in the newly-Egyptian Sudan (and in Egypt). The repression of Slavery was along with epic mismanagement by the Khedive the cause, but not the *declared* cause, of the end of Ottoman-Egyptian rule. First the Arab population of Egypt rose “against Foreign influence” and their own overlords in the Urabi Revolt (1879~1882) which was put down by British intervention in the end, resulting in the not-entirely-wanted by anyone British control of Egypt for the next ~70 years. Then came the unexpected: the Arabianized tribes of the Sudan rose in revolt… under a unifying leader.
The
Mahdi (“guided one”; by implication the 12th Imam revealed) led the first “modern” jihad, raised a massive army of followers, and set to very efficiently destroying Egyptian control of the Upper Nile. Militarily, he was an astounding success. Darfur was captured, extending his rule west from the Sudd; Egyptian garrisons were cut off and destroyed above and below the confluences of the Nile, and fortified Khartoum was besieged and taken (only days before a relief column approached, by the way). The British and Egyptian forces that could do so simply withdrew; the rest mostly died. We’ll never know if the
Mahdi would have been a great leader of a partly-unified Sudan, though. He died but six months after the fall of Khartoum. His replacement at the head of the Mahdiyah (Mahdist government) was a more conventional Arabianized tribal leader and his campaigns to extend the control of his rule was thwarted against Ethiopia, bested by Anglo-Egyptian troops when he attempted to invade Egypt proper, and eventually turned back from eastern ambitions by Italian colonial troops from Eritrea. With all that going on, he never made much of a significant effort to take Equatoria and the piecemeal efforts that did happen were countered by the garrison of men cut off there under the enigmatic Emin Pasha (another European Adventurer supposedly in Egyptian employ). But contact with Equatoria was cut, and as of 1889 it was believed that the garrison’s withdrawal *up* the White Nile meant the loss of the territory. But “lost” how? It had, after all, barely been “found”.
The claim was restored by a series of great adventures, including an appallingly difficult passage of a relief expedition traveling from the Congo through unexplored terrain (modern Ituri of the D. R. Congo) and then down to Zanzibar, taking from 1886~90. The British military expedition (counter-invasion) from 1896~98 came from the north and decisively defeated the Mahdiyah and brought “modern” logistical transport to the Upper Nile. A railroad reached as far as Khartoum; steam vessels vastly superior in number and quality to the small steamers used by the Egyptian garrisons now reached the far navigable extreme of the White Nile. Communication was now no longer an issue. Meanwhile, in East Africa, Zanzibar had become a British Protectorate (by force) and the Anglo-German agreement (1890) on a division of territorial influence on the mainland had brought a British East Africa Company into being. This holding expanded through what is now Kenya and in 1892 included a British Protectorate over the Kingdom of
Buganda. The White Nile, from Khartoum to the Great Lakes, was under British colonial control. But a line drawn on a map placed most all of Equatoria within Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and the rest assigned to the new Uganda Protectorate in 1894.
Clearly that line was drawn in the wrong place.
The current administration of the Republic of the Sudan inherited that line, and others drawn to make borders with what are now Ethiopia, Eritrea, Chad, the Central African Republic and the D. R. Congo. But from the very moment of post-colonial Independence in 1956, those lines proved to be a catalyst for an explosion. In the case of Equatoria, the South of Sudan (South Sudan) went to war against the Khartoum regime from day one. Only the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972 put a hold on the conflict, and that proved to be a weak protection. In 1983 the South Sudanese went back to war. After horrible hardship, South Sudan won a kind of autonomy in the Naivasha Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005. Meanwhile, the Khartoum regime had gone through 50 years of military juntas and strongmen, first Arab Nationalists, then Marxist-inspired Nationalists, and most recently waves of Islamic Fundamentalist Nationalists… the last being the regime of Omar al-Bashir (since 1989), the ICC-indicted criminal leader of the Genocide against Darfur.
Under the al-Bashir government, Khartoum has almost totally reneged upon the terms of peaceful co-existence. Development in the South has been near-nil except for the precious oil fields along the Abyei part of the line-of-division which feed foreign hard currency to the regime (and oil to the People’s Republic of China, by the way). The South Sudan autonomous administration has withdrawn from cooperation with Khartoum since 2005 over these slights… and more. Since the 1980’s, Slave-taking has returned in the Sudan, with reliable reports of over ten (perhaps tens of) thousand people taken from the southern region into Slavery.
There is only one real benefit of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, though…
…the South Sudanese don’t have to *stay* Sudanese.
The terms of the agreement specifically call for a referendum for independence for South Sudan after six years. That would be in 2011.
There is a conference on the 2005 Naivasha Comprehensive Peace Agreement being held in Washington D.C. on Tuesday of this week, hosted by American Special Envoy to the Sudan J. Scott Gration. The so-called “North” (the Khartoum regime) will be there. The South Sudanese will as well. So will interested parties from P. R. China, the United Nations, the Arab League, Britain, Italy and Egypt.
The host, by the way, gave a statement to the Washington Post last week that the Genocide in Darfur “is over”. Right then; that pretty much puts to rest any claims of perceived impartiality.
Let’s put this plainly: the al-Bashir regime is a threat to its neighbors and a threat to the people under its sovereignty. It arms proxy forces and actively destabilizes any rivals. It is a listed Terror-Supporting Regime. It is one of the last places on earth where the abomination of Slavery can still thrive.
The only thing the South Sudanese have to say to the regime is “Good-bye”.
The only things,
the *only* things that should be being discussed in Washington tomorrow are those matters that will allow for a referendum in the South, a parallel referendum in Abyei, and what needs to be prepared for the possible permanent secession of the South.
Oh, if there is time on the agenda, I’d tolerate Ambassador Gration taking the time to ask the regime representative when al-Bashir will surrender to his International Arrest Warrant and face the charges against him.
Other than that all, there is nothing to talk about.
***
End Notes:
Maps for reference are linked in the text, above.
Recent Sudan news articles related to the matter of Sudan include:
Sudan requires Aid NGO’s to restructure before being allowed back into Darfur.
Human Rights Watch calls upon the U.N. to keep its Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Sudan.
Sudan barge convoy attacked, regime forces implicated.
U.N. Human Rights Special Rapporteur reports on Sudan.
South Sudan leader places forces on war footing.
U.N. keeps Human Rights Investigator for Sudan.
Referenced matter in the text regarding J. Scott Gration; also the Washington conference:
J. Scott Gration claims Sudan Genocide “over”.
Q & A from Reuters about the Washington D.C. conference on the implementation of the Naivasha Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
General Information on Places and People referenced in the text are all available online at Wikipedia. As with any politically sensitive topic, please carefully check all sources cited there.
