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THE FORGOTTEN FIFTY-YEAR SLAUGHTER IN THE SUDAN

by Elliott A Green

  

 Are you not like the children of the Kushites unto Me? -- Amos 9:7

In the 1990s, the world press and the international community campaigned to have certain Bosnian Serb leaders handed over to a special court at the Hague for trial as war criminals. And the hunt for alleged war criminals in former Yugoslavia still goes on. This concern for war crimes would be reassuring if it did not seem rather selective. The worst war crime is mass murder. Yet mass murder or mass slaughter in other places, Iraqi Kurdistan, for instance, was long overlooked. The Algerian horrors of the 1990s got little attention, while in Lebanon most massacres were likewise disregarded outside the country, and may be officially forgotten in the future as part of a reconciliation policy. Sabra and Shatila was an exception only because that massacre was conveniently attributed to Israel.[1] But what is most depressing is that the long-lasting mass murder in the southern Sudan has continued to be disregarded, and ongoing negotiations will not lead to prosecution and punishment of the guilty. Meanwhile, the massacres and rape in western Sudan, Darfur, previously left in relative peace, get sporadic world political and press attention with UN Security Council discussions but meager concrete action.

To be sure, mass slaughter has taken place in various countries since the end of World War II. But the southern Sudan is the outstanding illustration. There, civil war, mass slaughter, and cultural and religious destruction, have been going on more or less regularly for some 50 years, that is, since the civil war began in 1955. Yet the same politicians, journalists, and would-be consciences of the world who had so much to say about Bosnia and Kossovo, are and have been silent about the Sudan. After so many years of massacres and brutality there the well-informed person cannot say that he did not know about them. Yet they get hardly any attention at all in the international press and media. The number of tribal Blacks killed in the civil war in Sudan was estimated at 1.5 million as of 1972 (New Columbia Encyclopedia, 1975), more than thirty years ago. The number now must be much greater. But little has been heard about the massacres, the forced starvation, the enslavement, the raids by Arab tribesmen from northern Sudan on the Blacks.

Moreover, those factors of the international community that called for an independent Bosnia before the civil war there began, have not called likewise for self-determination for the southern Sudanese Blacks.

As we have suggested, no major government, international humanitarian or human rights agency, or prominent humanitarian personality - to my knowledge - has called for the Sudanese Muslim political leadership to be tried for war crimes (unlike the charges against Bosnian Serbian leaders), or for political separation of the Black southern Sudan from their tormentors of the mainly Arab-Muslim north.

All this demonstrates a pro-Muslim, pro-Arab bias on the part of the press and the humanitarian agencies. And it fits in nicely with the pro-Muslim, pro-Arab bias which British policy makers in London have long practiced in various parts of the world. That's how the Sudanese tragedy of the twentieth century began in the first place. But first a brief survey of the Sudan's history is in order.

The tribal Blacks of the southern Sudan had suffered for centuries from Arab slave raids. Yet, they were "first conquered by Arab slave-raiders and occupied by the Turco-Egyptian government after 1860" (according to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, in 1950).[2] Obviously they did not identify with their longstanding oppressors.

The British took over Sudan as allies of the Egyptian rulers, administering the country as an "Anglo-Egyptian Condominium" from 1899. They were well aware of the geographic-ethnic differences there. The Royal Institute wrote of "two distinct areas (the north and the south)" stemming "from differences in historical origins, geographical factors, and the character of the population... The south... is inhabited by a variety of negroid [sic!] pagan tribes who speak Sudanic languages and whose material culture and social organization are African."[3] In 1950, these Black southerners made up about one-third of the total population.[4]

The northern population, however, although it was in large part of mixed race (Arabs, Berbers, and Blacks), was strikingly different in ethnic character. "Their language, the predominant features of their culture, their racial [i.e., national] consciousness, and their historical traditions, are all of Arab ancestry."[5] Their religion was Islam.

Six hundred years ago, the northern Sudan too was Black African in character. This region was called Kush in the Bible, and Ethiopia in Greek and Latin writings. From here armies had gone forth against Egypt, even installing a renowned dynasty of Pharaohs. There is reason to believe that the Queen of Sheba belonged to an Ethiopian (i.e., Sudanese) dynasty of Egypt (rather than to some minor kingdom in Yemen). Josephus identifies Saba (= Sheba) as the Ethiopian capital which, he writes, is "now called Meroë" (Antiquities of the Jews, 2:10:2).[6] He later describes the queen who visited Solomon as "the woman who ruled Egypt and Ethiopia" (Antiq. 8:6:5). Ancient Meroë is a known location down the Nile from Khartoum.

Northern Sudan, also called Nubia, was converted to Coptic Christianity and later held out against the Arab invaders until the late Middle Ages. The very name Sudan, replacing Nubia, was contributed by the Arabs. It comes from the Arabic term bilad as-Sudahn, meaning Land of the Blacks, which actually referred to all of Africa south of the Sahara desert.

Toward the end of the Middle Ages, a mass migration of Arab tribes into the northern Sudan took place, changing the demographic and religious character of the region. The last Christian Nubian state was overthrown about 1500.

Yet the South maintained its distinct character into the nineteenth century. In that period, the forces of Muhammad `Ali, Pasha of Egypt, had conquered the northern Sudan (1820-23). Slaves and gold and ivory, in that order, had preoccupied the Egyptian ruler. He wrote to his forces: "You are aware that the end of all our effort and this expense is to procure Blacks." (as slaves)[7] From the north expeditions were sent to the South. Arab-Muslim slave raiders had won a fragile hegemony in the South by mid-century amidst constant warfare with African tribesmen. The Cairo government did not succeed in establishing Egyptian rule there until the 1860s when the Khedive, Isma`il Pasha, enlisted British cooperation.

British-inspired efforts to curtail the slave trade led to the revolt of the Mahdi, a religious leader, who led the Muslim, northern tribes. Among other things, the revolt stood for the divine right of Muslims to raid for slaves among non-Muslims.[8]

...the Egyptian government, under the pressure of its British guardian, had proclaimed the abolition of slavery and so disturbed the entire economic life.[9] ... Like the Prophet, he [the Mahdi] was filled with a strong passion for women and, like him, accustomed to selecting from the spoils the most beautiful girls for himself.[10]

Britain's Lord Kitchener commanded Egyptian troops in the conquest of the country in 1898, and a year later took over rule of the whole country in the name of a largely nominal "Anglo-Egyptian Condominium." By agreement, British and Egyptian flags were to fly together over the whole Sudan as a symbol of the Condominium which lasted, juridically speaking, until 1955. All this while, the distinctiveness of the Black African south persisted. For a long time, the British protected the southerners by administering the two regions separately and encouraging indigenous institutions.

Nevertheless, in 1955, when the British announced that they were going to give independence to the Sudan at the start of 1956, they did not allow separation, independence, and self-determination for the Blacks of the south. Further, they ordained a unitary state rather than a federal system. British policy consciously disregarded the South's distinctiveness. Postwar Britain was committed to a pro-Muslim policy worldwide, and in the Middle East this meant pro-Arab. An Arab government was to be granted rule over the whole Sudan. In contrast, in India the British had encouraged the Muslim Indians to separate from the Hindu majority and set up a separate Muslim state called Pakistan, although Muslims were scattered throughout India, and the proposed new state would not have territorial contiguity. Since independence, Pakistan has not been able to live at peace even with itself.

Another instructive example of pro-Arab British policy is Zanzibar. This state of two islands, Zanzibar and Pemba, off the East African coast, had long served as a base for Arab slave raids into Africa. A sultan belonging to the dynasty ruling Oman ruled the islands until the British ended the slave trade based there in 1873. The sultan remained in place in a mainly nominal capacity. When the British gave Zanzibar independence in 1963, they left a sultan of that same dynasty of slave raiders in charge, though he represented the Arab minority.[11] The above facts may or may not explain why the British, who saved southern Sudan from Arab/Muslim slave raids and oppression in the 19th century, decided to put the region's people at the mercy of their traditional enemies in 1956 in the 20th century.

Be that as it may, the British announcement of independence for an undivided Arab-dominated Sudan provoked a mutiny of Black troops in 1955.[12] The fighting has gone on ever since at fluctuating intensity, albeit with the standard lulls for negotiations or truce, followed by promises broken by the government side. One truce lasted (with violations of course) from 1972 until 1983, when Islamists took over central power with the aim of imposing Islamic law (Shari`ah) on the whole country. The revolutionary force of the Blacks in the 1960s was called Anya Nya. The Black force in the 1980s was the Sudanese People's Liberation Army led by John Garang, who had once taken part as a minister in the Sudanese government during the long truce.

Alongside the fighting, more or less systematic massacres have gone on for years. Every once in a while the international press carries a report about the massacres, which are usually glossed over by the term "civil war."

One well-meaning writer on Sudan, a former South African of "leftish" bien-pensant Third Worldist views, Leo Kuper, opined as follows in his book Genocide (1981): "I think myself that the charge of genocide against the North is exaggerated..."[13] Maybe like the girl who was only half-pregnant. Yet, he adds, "this was a highly destructive conflict and ... it included many episodes of genocidal massacre."[14] The word "conflict" signifies the misleading civil war motif. But does this word fit fighting in which barely clothed, barely armed guerrillas fought a state army unrestrained by morality, by international criticism, or by world press attention? In line with his simplistic Third-Worldist prejudices (believing the Afro-Asian countries to be a naturally harmonious whole with a common purpose), so characteristic of the 1950s and 1960s, Kuper sketchily glossed over the pre-British history of Sudan, without understanding the Islamic factor. He accused "British policies during the period of Anglo-Egyptian 'Condominium'" of contributing "to this cleavage between North and South."[15] But fostering "unification,"[16] which he deplores British failure to do, would have promoted a false unity, literally of master and slave, of tormentor and tormented.

In fact, the 19th century British put an end to the slave trade, curbing the Muslim North's assault on the "infidel" South. The North-South cleavage had long existed since the Muslim North believed that Kaffirs (= unbelievers) were fair game for enslavement (Europeans learnt the word Kaffir from Arabs, using it for black Africans generally). This principle is a general Islamic one, part of jihad and the notion of a world divided into Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam. Muslims are commanded to make war on Dar al-Harb (literally, House of War) inhabited and controlled by non-Muslims.[17] The Muslim Tartars on the northern shore of the Black Sea made regular slave raids into the Ukraine, southern Poland and Belarus, etc., before their defeat by the Tsar in 1783. Not long afterwards, Russia put Georgia in the Caucasus out of bounds to slave raids. As if obeying a Newtonian principle, after the supply of white-skinned slaves from the latter areas was cut off, the Muslim Middle East made up the shortfall in fresh slaves by increasing the flow from Black Africa.[18] In short, Kuper shows no insight into the Islamic motives for enslaving Kaffirs. Now, in the 21st century, when slavery is often and widely reported in Sudan, we wonder what Kuper's Third-Worldish analysis might have been. Despite his blind spots, Kuper directed the African Studies Center at UCLA.

Le Monde carried a major article about Sudan in 1988 (8 XII 88). It is significant that such a strong report was carried precisely in Le Monde, a newspaper with a longstanding pro-Arab policy corresponding to the pro-Arab policy of the French government. Le Monde informed us not only of massacres and enslavement, but that the Sudanese Catholic Church had politely applied the labels "ethnocide" and "genocidal tendency" to what was going on. The plain word "genocide" would have most likely been too strong to be in good taste or to be politically correct. Yet the latter term was freely used about Bosnia. However, the Sudanese situation is much worse.

An observer working in the southern city of Juba wrote: "A true genocide has been perpetrated." The observer, Marcello Lado Jada, complained about the international lack of concern. "Professors of anthropology of international reputation who have studied and written about the Dinkas [and other Black Sudanese peoples]... now seem forgetful of the fact that these very same peoples with whom they once shared evenings around the fire are now in the process of being exterminated."[19] Some may quibble that it is not genocide. Not all the Africans were massacred. Some were enslaved and others converted. But in the earlier Armenian case (1914-22), exceptions were made too, yet few today hesitate to speak of Armenian genocide. It is clear that Sudanese policy aimed to destroy whole peoples and physical murder was combined with other means.

Another academic, thoroughly welded to the international "leftist" movement that outlasted the fall of the Soviet empire, displayed not indifference -like Jada's anthropologists - but barely hidden contempt and hostility toward the Southern Sudanese. This was one Ilan Pappé, a so-called "new historian" of the Arab-Israeli conflict.[20]

In 1994, he wrote of "the Sudanese civil war... a war which still tears the country apart." He thereby suggested that the Sudan was a historical nation or "country," while also implying a symmetry of suffering and of responsibility. In fact, the suffering was overwhelmingly on the side of the Black Africans all along, while the Arab-Muslim side always enjoyed military superiority in funds and weaponry, such as planes, tanks, etc. The fighting was almost always confined to the South, so that even when the Southern rebels won control of large areas in the south, Arab-Muslim rule over most of the country was not challenged. To be sure, Pappé issued a pious wish for "peace." But is it desirable that peace be made on the basis of a status quo of ethnic subjugation and literal enslavement?

Pappé justified his position on the grounds of cultural relativism, referring to how Arab-Muslims see or wish to see the Sudan and related events. He expounded on the need for a cultural relativist position on the Sudan favoring Arab and Muslim prejudices. He agonized over the failure of "European historians" to see the Sudan's history as "the Sudanese and Egyptian historians understood their own history and past," as Albert Hourani, the Anglo-Arab historian had suggested. Hence Pappé implies that the viewpoint of the tribal Black Africans of the South did not deserve to be taken into account. That is, they did not have the right to have their history and their current experiences viewed from their cultural perspective. Yet he did briefly acknowledge at the very end of the article "the cultural and ethnic cleavages between the Moslems in the north and the Christians and pagans in the south." Thereby, Pappé denied national rights to the Sudanese Blacks, although he was aware of their distinct ethnic, cultural, racial, religious and historical identity. He chose to see the country as part of the "Orient," (hence essentially Arab in his view) rather than African, except geographically. His cultural relativism took no interest in the views of the persecuted section of the Sudanese population. Whereas the Prophet Amos spoke for the equality of Kushites, Pappé endorsed inequality. The African heritage was worth less in its African homeland than the Arab heritage.

Nevertheless, how did the Arab historians (evoked by Hourani and Pappé) understand the Arab role in Sudan? One Egyptian, Dr Ibrahim al-Adwi, claimed: "None contributed more than the Arab nation to the economic and political progress of East Africa... Today, East Africa follows the example of the Arab renaissance..."[21] The Egyptian review Nahdatu Ifriqiya went further: "Centuries ago, the Arabs already represented civilization, progress, and knowledge to the Africans."[22] French and British imperialist writers might have described their own nations' roles as much the same. Yet, one of Nasser's PR men claimed moral superiority to the Europeans in the name of Islam. "Islam is endowed with the mission of liberating Africa from imperialism."[23] Another Egyptian wrote that, through Muhammud Ali's 1820 expedition, "the Sudan was introduced to modern civilization."[24] Only the Arabs could get away with claiming to be both victims of colonialism and civilizing imperialists.

Ironically, in view of Pappé's claim that "European historians" have misrepresented the Sudan (which is often true), the truth is that the Western great powers and other foreign states have allowed the government to do pretty much as it wants. The mass murder, the enslavement, and all the other atrocities have proceeded with relative ease. The British, as seen above, placed the Black Africans under Arab-Muslim rule.

Pappé deplored the "war which still tears the country apart." Perhaps the answer lies here. Perhaps the present Republic of the Sudan should be "torn apart," that is, divided politically. It is curious that people who recommend "tearing apart" the small Land of Israel (and the smaller yet Land of Israel west of the Jordan) for the sake of peace with the Arabs or self-determination for those Arabs called "Palestinians", do not recommend partition of the Sudan for the sake of "peace" between the tribal Black Africans of the South and the Arabs and Arabized Muslims of the North. Perhaps the war and the oppression can only be resolved by a "land for peace" formula, by granting self-determination to the Blacks of the South. However, apologists for the Arab cause over the Arab-Israeli conflict, like Pappé maintain their pro-Arab stance toward the Sudan too, although there the established government is Arab and the rebels (fighting for self-determination) are not Arabs.

This is the same Pappé who in 2005 urged European academics to boycott Israeli universities, including his own University of Haifa, for the sake of poor "Palestinian" Arabs suffering under "occupation." During the 1990s, Pappé appeared in election commercials on Israeli TV for the Communist Party (Hadash). So we may say that he comes upon his objectively genocidal attitudes honestly, since one of Communism's founders, Friedrich Engels, wrote that, "The next world war will make not only reactionary classes and dynasties but whole reactionary peoples disappear from the face of the earth. And this too is progress" (Engels had in mind not Jews, by the way, but all Slavs save the Poles).[25] Furthermore, Pappé and many other Communists today appear to be Arab nationalists of the most chauvinistic sort. Their cherished Arab nation can do no wrong, whether in Sudan or Israel. Pappé almost seems a cheerleader for genocide. Intriguing in this vein is the present-day convergence - that might have seemed bizarre fifty years ago - of Communists of various sects with Arab nationalists and even Islamists. Carlos, the red diaper terrorist now sitting in a French jail, was raised as a Communist, studied in Moscow, joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, found refuge in Sudan, and praised "the Islamic revolutionist" for being the "spearhead... of Revolution"[26]

Turning aside from Pappé, we note that starting in the late 1980s, mainstream American publications have given more attention to the horrors of the Sudan than previously. Time and Newsweek, not known for any anti-Arab animus, saw the situation more objectively than our "new historian." In one article in the 1990s, Time reported the research of two Baltimore Sun reporters who found that they could actually buy slaves in the Sudan in 1996.[27]

More surprisingly, a UN agency condemned Sudanese human rights violations as far back as 1992. The Geneva-based UN Commission on Human Rights did this and, furthermore, received reports on the "Situation of Human Rights in the Sudan" starting in 1993. These reports confirmed the existence of slavery in the Sudan - and the government usage of enslavement as a tactic in the civil war.[28] Le Monde had reported the slavery and enslavement as far as back as 1988. Other sources had done so earlier.

Signifying a deep-seated change in attitude, in February 2003, the National Geographic which had long favored sweetly sentimental or romantic, cleaned-and-scrubbed, rosy-hued tableaux of the Arab world, actually reported genocidal massacres.[29] in southern Sudan Later that same year, the massacres in Darfur started to come to world attention. The atrocities were featured on CNN and BBC. However, the coverage of the Darfur horrors has been intense for short periods, for fits and starts, but nothing like the sustained, every day coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict. And maybe the Darfur coverage has been spasmodic precisely because, if sustained, it might take away from the Western urge to exculpate the Arabs and cast guilt on Israel. To be sure, Kofi Annan, Colin Powell, Dr Condoleeza Rice, and other politicians have uttered denunciations of Sudanese government policy in Darfur, unlike the habitual reluctance to criticize Sudan over the mass murder in Southern Sudan. Darfur in Western Sudan was left relatively in peace until 2003, when the horrors began. The Fur and other tribes in Darfur (in Arabic, House of Fur) were Muslim, although not arabized. Whereas the massacres in southern Sudan over the decades struck at those of Christian and African tribal religions, now Muslims were under attack.

Apparently, pressures to change views on Sudan events were slowly building up. By 2004, the US Congress condemned the Sudan government for "genocide" (though mentioning only Darfur). Secretary of State Powell later repeated the charge (September 2004), citing the UN Genocide Convention. Better late than never. This signifies a welcome, if very belated and slow, awakening of interest in Sudanese reality.

To sum up events in the south, the New Columbia Encyclopedia reported 1.5 million civilian dead in "civil war" up to the 1972 truce. In 2003, the National Geographic reported "more than 2 million" deaths since the truce ended in 1983,[30] a figure accepted by US congressman, Ed Royce, chariman of the House African Affairs subcommittee, in 2004. These two numbers total more than 3.5 million. Yet, another authority, the impressively named Encyclopedia of Genocide, asserts that the Sudanese government's "civil war" against "non-Muslims" in the South "killed more than 2 million people" from 1956 to 1999 (that is, 1.5 million fewer), in addition to 4,500,000 refugees forced by war to leave their homes. This source adds that the Nuba and Dinka tribes have been special targets of "genocide by Khartoum-based government forces." It concludes by stating the obvious: "The international community has paid little attention to, nor attempted to halt, the civil war and genocide in Sudan."[31] These data do not refer to Darfur. Little effective succor will reach Darfur if we can judge by international neglect of the south since 1956. Peace negotiations over the South began in 1994. Several protocols have been signed but the process is ongoing. However, the South will not win independence. Outside powers influencing the negotiations want to maintain a united Sudan. Peace is welcome, but the settlement shaping up is that persecutors and persecuted will be together in one state. The chief murderous war criminals are unlikely to be punished. Further, income from the oil discovered in a part of the South adjacent to the North will have to be shared with the North. The oil is now being exploited for the benefit of the Khartoum government. If peace eventuates, it will be without justice.

The Sudanese situation has of course implications for the Arab-Israeli conflict. It tells us something of the nature of Israel's enemies. Both the PLO and Hamas have firm connections with the Islamist fanatic government of the Sudan. Indeed, Yasser Arafat met his counterpart, the leader of Hamas, in the Sudan during the uproar over Israel's deportation of some 415 Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders in the wake of the murder-kidnapping of Sgt. Nissim Toledano in December 1992. The present Sudanese regime enjoys financial support from Islamist Iran and a number of Islamist terrorist groups have operated out of the Sudan. Terrorists based in the Sudan even attempted to assassinate Egyptian President Husni Mubarak, a Muslim militant in his own way. Yet it would be too much to expect the international community to take a meaningful, sustained stand against the present Sudanese regime. Most Western and other statesmen will no doubt prefer to continue going soft when criticizing genocide in Sudan. It remains to be seen whether concrete action effective in stopping the Darfur atrocities will emerge from current Security Council deliberations. For the south, the UN never intervened in any meaningful way. A final lesson for Israel is the unreliability of international institutions and humanitarian conventions, of world powers, of the world press (with exceptions of course), and of ostensibly "humanitarian" non-governmental bodies.

End Notes

1. Elie Hobeika led the Phalange troops that killed hundreds in Sabra-Shatila (1982). Yet Hobeika was a secret agent then for Hafiz Assad's Syrian dictatorship and took orders from him. Hobeika is also suspected of perpetrating the murder of Bashir Gemayel, newly elected president of Lebanon and his own ostensible leader. It is a telling fact that Hobeika was a minister in Syrian-controlled governments installed in Lebanon in the 1990s. See Robert M Hatem, Dans l'Ombre d'Hobeika, en passant par Sabra et Chatila (Paris: Jean Picollec, 2003), pp 57-61; Barbara Newman, The Covenant: Love and Death in Beirut (London: Bloomsbury, 1989); and my review of Newman's book in Nativ, September 1991 (Hebrew).

2. Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Middle East: A Political and Economic Survey (London: RIIA, 1950), p. 343.

3.  Ibid.

4.  Estimate of the Royal Institute, Ibid.

5.  Ibid., p 346.

6.  Quotes from Josephus translated into English from Abraham Schalit's Hebrew translation. Qadmoniyot haYehudim (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1972).

7.  Robert July, A History of the African People (New York, 1974), p. 259. The translation of Muhammad `Ali's words quoted in this book uses "negroes" rather than "Blacks," which was no doubt the meaning of the original word, most likely the Arabic word `Ibahd, which means both slaves and Blacks.

8.  July, pp 273-277. Also see, Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East (Oxford: OUP, 1990), pp 74, 133 n. 10. Roland Oliver & JD Fage, A Short History of Africa (Baltimore: Penguin, 1966), p 174. For an eyewitness account of slavery under the Mahdi, see Rudolf Slatin's account in Bat Yeor, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 1996), pp 433-437.

9.  Carl Brockelmann, History of the Islamic Peoples (New York: Capricorn, 1960), p 410. Also see Ibid., p 412. British general Gordon, in the service of the Egyptian khedive, wanting to make peace with the Mahdi, offered to recognize him as ruler of the Kordofan region, allow free resumption of the slave trade, etc.

10.  Ibid., p 411.

11.  See, inter alia, John Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967). After independence, a revolt of the black majority soon put an end to the Arab sultan's rule (1964), despite the support of the Arab League that he enjoyed. The islands were joined with Tanganyika in the state of Tanzania.

12.  The mutiny and the civil war are covered in various academic studies. However, these usually gloss over the more repugnant aspects of Sudanese reality. One book of some, if limited, use is J.O. & S.P. Voll, The Sudan: Unity and Diversity in a Multicultural State (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1985). The book's sub-title suggests its biases, assumptions and limitations. For more useful approaches, see Mordechai Nisan, Minorities in the Middle East: A History of Struggle and Self-Expression (London: McFarland, 1991); and various boks and articles cited below. For southern Sudanese points of view, see books by Oliver Albino, William Deng and Joseph Oduho, Cecil Eprile, etc.

13.  Leo Kuper, Genocide (New York: Penguin, 1981), p 73.

14.  Ibid., p 73.

15.  Ibid., p 71.

16.  Ibid., p 70.

17.  Inter alia, see Quran, 9:29 (verse numbers vary in some editions); Lewis, pp 6-7; writings on dhimmitude and jihad by Bat Yeor www.dhimmitude.org plus my summary of her views at: http://www.netanyahu.org/whattheydont.html

18.  Lewis, pp 72-73.

19.  Marcello Lado Jada, War Wounds (London, 1988). Quoted in Le Monde, December 8, 1988; p 2. Here translated back into English. The charge of genocide has also been made more recently by a coalition of non-governmental organizations based in the USA and Europe, and representing various non-Muslim Middle Eastern peoples, as well as Black Sudanese. They placed an advertisement to this effect in the Washington Times, 9 October 1996. Also see, Roger Rosenblatt, "The Last Place on Earth," Vanity Fair, July 1993.

20.  Jerusalem Post Magazine, April 1, 1994; p 26.

21.  Jacques Baulin, The Arab Role in Africa (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), p 25.

22.  Ibid., p 31.

23.  Ibid. This pearl was uttered by Abbas Mahmoud al-Akkad.

24.  Ibid., p 42. This gem came from Dr Nessim Makkar.

25. Neue Rheinische Zeitung, January 1849. English translation available inter alia in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Russian Menace to Europe (Paul Blackstock and Bert Hoselitz, eds.: Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1952), p 67.

26.  Elliott A Green, "One Camp, One Kampf," Midstream, July/August 1998. Available on the Internet at http://www.netanyahu.org/nazcomarnatt.html. Photo of Carlos letter with quotes in L'Express, 25 January 1996.

27.  Time, July 1, 1996; p 28. Also see Jerusalem Post, July 10, 1996.

28.  See David Littman, "The UN Finds Slavery in the Sudan," Middle East Quarterly, September 1996.

29.  National Geographic, February 2003

30.  Ibid., p 38.

31.  Eric Markusen, "Sudan" Encyclopedia of Genocide, v. 2 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999). This article also refers to African Rights, published by African Rights, a body for African human rights.

 
Elliott A Green is a translator, writer, and researcher. His blog http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/ showcases significant passages from ancient sources relating to ancient Jewish history and from Jewish poets writing about the glory of Zion and their hatred of Arab oppression, etc.

An earlier version of this article was published in Hebrew in Nativ, no. 4, July 1997.

 

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