Mansour Khalid - War and Peace in Sudan

WAR AND PEACE IN SUDAN

A Tale of Two Countries

MANSOUR KHALID

First published in 2003 by
Kegan Paul International

This edition first published in 2010 by
Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX 14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Mansour Khalid, 2003

Transferred to Digital Printing 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 10: 0-7103-0663-6 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-7103-0663-0 (hbk)

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. The publisher has made every effort to contact original copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

Abbreviations

Preface

Nearly half a century ago the first flares of Sudans civil war were enkindled. Today, as the world enters a new century and a new millennium, Sudans civil war has degenerated into an inferno of carnage and destruction. Despite the trumped-up romanticization of the era of independence, no Sudanese can look back to the last century with pride. If only for the underachievement of their leaders to bring peace and stability to their country, the Sudanese have more to grieve than to sing paeans for. This underachievement is the more deplorable as the last half-century held out numerous routes to peace. That Sudanese leaders have taken an alternative route that woefully induced more carnage and self-destruction, should be a matter for serious reflection. The dawn of a new century, therefore, offers us an opportunity to pause, reflect and introspect.

Sudans war, however, is no different from wars elsewhere; it is an entangled political, cultural and social weave with equally intricate international ramifications. Long before Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace in 1869, the subject of war was a cause of bewilderment to scholars. Over time, they have developed it into a discipline of great scope. To military theorists like Carl von Clausewitz, war was rationalized as an instrument of diplomacy. On the other side of the globe, Sun Tzu also rationalized war as a tool of policy. He laid down that the art of war and martial prowess was a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or ruin. But nothing in what has been said on the subject of war subtracts from the truth of what Tolstoy wrote about it when he addressed himself to the numerous conflicts of his time in Europe. Tolstoy observed: If the aim of the European wars at the beginning of the nineteenth century had been the aggrandizement of Russia, that aim might have been accomplished without all the preceding wars, and without invasion. If the aim was the aggrandizement of France, that might have been attained without either the Revolution or the Empire. If the aim was the dissemination of ideas, the printing press could have accomplished it far better than soldiers. If the aim was the progress of civilization, it was extremely easy to see that there were more expedient ways of propagating civilization than destroying men and their wealth. Why did it happen this way instead of some other way? Because that was how it happened, chance created the situation; genius utilized it.