Sudan: reaching the limits

By Richard North - April 28, 2023

One of the joys (if you can call it that) of blogging is that, in order to produce the volume of copy that I do, one ends up learning things that otherwise one would have no call to discover.

Thus, with Sudan in the news, I am starting to acquaint myself with aspects of this country which were completely unknown to me and which previously I had little interest in learning. And one of those things is the sheer size of the country.

It has taken a while fully to appreciate the size of Ukraine, which is the second-largest country in Europe after Russia, at 603,628 square kilometres. But, at 1,886,028 square kilometres, Sudan is three times the area of Ukraine, making it the third-largest country in Africa.

Until the secession of South Sudan in 2011, it used to be the largest country in Africa. But then it lost a chunk of territory larger than modern Ukraine, at 644,329 square kilometres, and about 10 million of its population, leaving the current Sudanese Republic with about 48 million people.

Not for the first time in the troubled history of this nation, which achieved independence in its present form only in 1956, war stalks the land. In fact, the first Sudanese government only lasted from 1956 to 1969, before it was replaced in a coup d’état, followed by another one in 1971 which was overturned a few days later.

During the period, there had been a bitter civil war between the Islamic north and the largely Christian south which, after a ten-year hiatus in 1972 resumed with renewed fury in a conflict that lasted 20 years.

The 30 June 1989 saw yet another coup – bloodless this time – when Colonel Omar al-Bashir created a military government which suspended political parties and imposed an Islamic legal code on the entire nation.

Stoning became an approved judicial punishment, with several women sentenced to death by stoning. Flogging was also legal, with several men dying in custody after being flogged. Not content with this, crucifixion was added to the litany of punishments, used as an alternative to hanging.

In October 1993, al-Bashir appointed himself “President”, assuming what amounted to dictatorial powers, putting himself up for election in 1996 when he was the only candidate in the ballot. After drawing close to Islamic fundamentalist groups and inviting Osama bin Laden to the country, the United States listed Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism, representing the lowest point in the country’s recent history.

After what might be loosely called a period of instability, punctuated by the war in Darfur in 2003 which degenerated into a typical African genocide, the situation was eventually supplemented by a series of ongoing conflicts between rival nomadic tribes in Sudan and South Sudan.

A conflict in South Kordofan and Blue Nile in the early 2010s between the Army of Sudan and the Sudan Revolutionary Front led to South Sudanese independence in 2011, with fighting damped down in 2013 after al-Bashir promised he would not seek re-election in 2015.

The man then broke his promise and went on to win a rigged election in 2015, boycotted by the opposition, on a turnout of 46 percent.

Street protests in 2018, after massive price-hikes on basic commodities, failed to displace al-Bashir but, after a government clamp-down on the opposition and multiple deaths, he was eventually overthrown in April 2019, arrested by the Army chiefs of staff, who declared a three-month state of emergency.

A Political Agreement beginning in July 2019 and a Draft Constitutional Declaration in August, with the creation of a joint military-civilian Sovereignty Council, and the appointment of a prime minister, offered the promise of a period of stability, but it was not to be.

A failed attempt at a coup d’état in September 2021 was followed by another successful coup in the October, led by general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan who subsequently declared a state of emergency. A month later, the prime minister was reinstated, although Burhan retained control, leading to continued and widespread protests, with multiple deaths.

In January, the prime minister resigned leaving Burhan presiding over a fractured country, his rule bolstered by his deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, head of the heavily-armed paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and Rapid Strike Force (RSF), formed from the so-called Janjaweed militia which had been prominent in the Darfur genocide.

While international intervention sought to broker a transition to civilian rule, tensions between Burhan and Daglo could not be contained, leading to the eruption of violence currently being recorded, where at least 400 have been reported killed and 3,500 injured.

Despite a brief ceasefire, extended for a further 72 hours, there is no end in sight to the fighting and, with Darfur once again at the epicentre of violence, reigniting fears of another bloody civil war.

Understandably, many of those caught up in this latest round of violence are taking every opportunity to get out of the country, not least the 4,000 or so dual-citizens who are fortunate enough to have secured UK passports.

But, already, there are calls from diverse sources for the UK to widen the scope of those allowed to enter this country. Under pressure from a Sky journalist to explain why people were being “left behind” in Sudan, hapless foreign secretary James Cleverly was forced to respond in an uncompromising fashion.

Said Cleverly: “There is war and conflict all over the world. There are literally millions upon millions of people who are in countries plagued by war. We recognise that we cannot host everybody who is in a country plagued by war”.

He went on to say that: “Sudan is not the only country suffering from conflict and so picking out Sudan because it happens to be in the news, I think, diminishes the suffering of other people around the world firstly, and, secondly, we have to remember there are millions upon millions of people who are fleeing conflict or who are fleeing economic privations”.

Cleverly, of course, is right. There has been little interest in the fate of the tens of thousands slaughtered in the Darfur genocide, or the protracted conflicts between north and south Sudan. Only when the media bring pictures of refugees fleeing the violence direct to the homes of people in the UK does the emotion quotient increase and the bleeding-heart liberals start demanding action.

But, of the 48 million currently “trapped” in Sudan, how many, given the chance, would take up the offer a free flight to the UK and a new life, safe from the perpetual cycle of violence? Would it be five thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand or perhaps a million? And if more than a million wanted to come, where would we draw the line?

And then the are the other conflict areas. Given free access to the UK, how many Ethiopians and Eritrean subjects would come? How many people from Chad would prefer to live in the UK, rather than suffer the instability of their own country?

But, if we are to have an open house, we cannot stop at Africa. Iran, Afghanistan, Burma, Pakistan and India, to name but a few countries, have an unknown number of people who would prefer a fresh start in the UK.

Every one of the millions of potential migrants could offer a tale of hardship, oppression or danger, enough to melt the hearts of the “refugees are welcome” liberals. But once we open the doors and let the millions of migrants in, to add to the millions already here, at what point does the UK cease to become a cultural entity?

How many millions do we have to take before we diversify ourselves into extinction, whence the nations of the UK cease to exist in any recognisable form and simply become vast, free-range refugee camps?

That is the reality of the position articulated by Cleverly. There are millions, if not hundreds of millions of people who could present good arguments for being better off in the UK than they are in their own countries – sufficient to qualify as asylum seekers once they had gamed the system, as so many have done already.

That there are so many in need is desperately sad, but we cannot take them all or even a tiny fraction of those who would seek a new life. This is what the hue and cry over Sudan points up.

Another dysfunctional nation that cannot manage to govern itself is falling apart. We can sympathise, and do what we can to help, as the International Rescue Committee (IRC) would prefer us to do, calling on countries to shift their focus from evacuees to those who remain in Sudan.

What we cannot do is provide new homes for all the world’s dispossessed, just because they rock up to our shores with a tale of woe and demand entry. There are limits, and these must be imposed, or we ourselves cease to be part of a recognisable nation.