There is No Solution to the Sudan Issue Except Ruling by Islam
Since its (independence) on January 1, 1956, Sudan has witnessed a series of military coups, the first of which was the failed attempt led by Ismail Kabida, who tried to overthrow the first national government headed by Ismail al-Azhari, followed by the first successful coup led by Lieutenant General Ibrahim Abboud in November 1958 against the elected al-Azhari government.
In May 1969, the most famous coup in the history of Sudan took place, led by Brigadier General Jaafar al-Nimeiri and a group of communist and nationalist officers, and his rule lasted for 16 years. He was subjected to several coup attempts, the first of which took place in 1971, and in 1975 Nimeiri succeeded in eliminating a coup attempt against him, in which the coup plotters were executed. Attempts to overthrow Jaafar al-Nimeiri continued, as in July 1976 a violent coup attempt took place, and battles took place in the streets of the capital, Khartoum, between government forces and the coup plotters, which ended in the failure of the attempt and the execution of its leader. But after all these challenges, in April 1985, Nimeiri's rule did not withstand a popular uprising, as he was removed from power and Field Marshal Abdul Rahman Swar al-Dahab - who was then Minister of Defense - assumed the presidency of a transitional military council, and he was the only one in the history of the country and the region who fulfilled his promise and handed over power after a year to an elected government headed by Sadiq al-Mahdi. However, it - too - in 1989 was subjected to a military coup led by Omar al-Bashir, who assumed the position of Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation, and also held the position of Prime Minister and President of the Sudanese Republic together.
A series of coups experienced by the people of Sudan made them taste the woes of wars and instability. These conditions continued during the era of Omar al-Bashir, who ruled Sudan with an iron fist for thirty years, during which he made people taste the bitterness of injustice and tyranny, in addition to bringing the country into a severe economic crisis. In 1999, he ordered the dissolution of the National Assembly (Parliament) and declared a state of emergency in the country following a power struggle between him and the Speaker of Parliament, Hassan al-Turabi. The rebellion movements against al-Bashir and his government continued, and the response to them was repression and persecution; for example, in 2004, army forces moved to Darfur in western Sudan to eliminate the rebellion movement that accused the central authority in Khartoum of marginalizing the region, and hundreds of thousands of Darfur residents fled to neighboring Chad: deteriorating political conditions described by the then US Secretary of State Colin Powell as "genocide."
In 2005, the government signed a peace agreement with the southern rebels, but it was violated and war crimes were committed during it, and a new constitution was issued giving a large degree of self-rule to the south, and as a result, the south actually seceded in 2011 after a popular referendum.
After the secession of the south, the government lost the oil it was producing from its fields, and the south monopolized three-quarters of the total output, and Sudan was unable to meet its fuel needs, thus losing a major source of foreign exchange. Most economic statistics have confirmed that 90% of Sudanese live below the poverty line and that the unemployment rate exceeds 60%. Inflation in June 2012 reached about 37%, with a sharp rise in all prices of goods and services, coupled with a significant deterioration in individuals' income. In return, the government claims that it will begin to apply Islamic Sharia "hudud" more strictly after the secession of South Sudan. The First Vice President affirmed in his speech during the fourth session of the Islamic Jurisprudence Academy that Omar al-Bashir is keen for the Academy to proceed on the path of scientific approach and investigate objectivity and "arrange priorities and derive Sharia rulings without favoritism." So what priorities is he talking about? The government, which is rushing to apply hudud to people who have not been provided with the simplest means of living and have made them live in poverty and need, finds no problem in permitting its dealings with usurious loans (due to the inadequacy of the state's financial resources and its need for external financing), as it claims.
The government has pursued a failed financial policy, withholding liquidity from people and failing to provide them with bread flour, which has caused the people of Sudan to be unable to obtain basic needs and provide the simplest means of life... in addition to the health situation, which is disastrous; in one of the statistics published by the "Sudan Now" website in 2018, one in every 20 children in Sudan suffers from malnutrition, and diseases such as malaria and bilharzia are widespread, reaching two million cases!
They raise the slogan of applying Sharia and select from its rulings after molding them to serve their interests and the interests of the West, and they throw the other rulings to the ground; there is no rule by Islam in the politics of the country and no sovereignty, they are followers of the disbelieving West as they rely on it and borrow money from it and issue fatwas about that and legalize it, and they allow it to interfere in the affairs of their country and determine the fate of their people... and there is no care for the people and no guarantee, the people of Sudan are starving and living in abject poverty... so what Sharia are they applying? Islam is a whole that cannot be divided with its rulings and hudud, it is applied as a system of life that God has approved for His servants, and no servant has the right to select some of it and leave the other. Whoever chooses to apply Sharia must implement all of its rulings, without missing anything.
Then, the lifting of subsidies on bread and fuel, the high prices of basic commodities, the scarcity of many goods, the continuation of financial policies dictated by the International Monetary Fund, and other factors, and the deterioration of the health situation had a profound impact on the feeling of all the people of Sudan of dissatisfaction with this livelihood, and a state of discontent spread in the country that escalated and worsened day after day. The corruption of the Omar al-Bashir regime and its involvement in manipulating state funds became clear, as a report issued by the International Financial Integrity Organization revealed that this regime had concealed about $31 billion of Sudanese exports between 2012 and 2018. The government announced that the country's exports amounted to $65 billion during the aforementioned period, while 70 countries of Sudan's trading partners estimated their imports at about $96 billion, so there were protests and demonstrations and the fires of revolution broke out against this government in all cities of Sudan, and it was overthrown in 2019 after the Ministry of Defense announced that al-Bashir had stepped down from his position and that the army would manage the affairs of the country.
Despite the overthrow of al-Bashir's rule, the suffering of the people of Sudan is still continuing in light of conflicts based on Western countries and supervised by their organizations, and this suffering will not stop and will not have a limit unless all the rulings of Sharia are applied and the country is ruled by those who do not fear God for the blame of a critic and do not rely on an enemy, but make raising the banner of Islam their goal and implementing its rulings their aim.
#SudanCrisis #SudanCrisis
Written for the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir
Zeina al-Samet