Guía de entrevista a profundidad: perfiles de expertos

The ethnic history of Sudan has many phases. The ancient Egyptians called Sudan the land of the Nahassi and they identified various ethnic groups such as the Kush, Mazzoi and Nobat (El

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Mahdi 1965). The Greeks and Romans later occupied Egypt and also brought Christianity into the territory now known as the Sudan. The Sudanese people are a mix of Hamites, Negroes and Arabs and have experienced the rise and fall of Egyptian rule over Sudan, the Kingdom of Napata, Funj, the Meroitic Era, the Christian Kingdoms of Nubia, The Turko-Egyptian Period, The Mahdist revolution and lastly the British Condominium (El Mahdi 1965). All of these invaders and rulers have influenced the institutional and cultural development of Sudan and further diversified the Sudanese society (Collins 2008). In this process some ethnic groups have changed, merged with one another or disappeared.

The Arabs visited Sudan already before its Islamisation but the impact of Islam as a religion grew stronger during the 12th Century. In the fourteenth century the conflict in Egypt encouraged the Arab migration further south in Sudan. The indigenous populations were assimilated by marriage and peaceful proselytization. This merged local cultures into an Arab ethnicity (Ryle 2012). Thus most Arab Sudanese of today are not purely of Arab origin, but rather represent different Negroid, Arab, Beja and Nubian elements (El Mahdi 1965). Many indigenous languages continued to be spoken and traditional lifestyles did not change drastically.

Therefore many of these now Arabic-speaking Sudanese are not Arab in ethnic or geographical origin, but have African heritage. However, they have adapted into the Arabic language and lifestyle and converted to Islamic faith in a way, that they now perceive themselves culturally more Arab than African. Therefore, Arab culture and Islam in Sudan means more than just a religion, it binds people to a shared identity and origin. This helped the Sudanese ruling elite to create a coherent Sudanese nationhood based on the Islamization programmes that eventually would result in the transformation of Sudan into an Islamic State (Adar 2001). Today most of northern Sudanese have adopted Arab culture, the Islamic faith and the Arabic language as their own. In some parts new hybrid forms of indigenous culture and Arabic culture have mixed forming new identities (Abdalla 2008).

As many of the nomadic ethnic groups were converted to Islam, the British and Egyptians further encouraged Islamisation as it was seen as a unifying element in the creation of the national Sudanese identity (Adar 2001). Therefore, the uniforming of the Sudanese nation was supported by the colonial rule and they further institutionalized the ethnic and racial entitlements, rights and privileged of the chosen group of people. Eventually this led to unequal forms of Sudanese citizenship (Idris 2005).

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Since the British lost their control over the Sudan and independence was gained in 1956 the Sudanese government has pursued “ethno-religious-centred policies” of Islamisation and Arabisation throughout the country (Adar 2001; Collins 2008). In essence Arabisation means integrating other ethnic or religious groups into the “cultural values and beliefs of Muslims and Arabs in particular” (Adar 2001). This Islamisation has resulted in the polarisation of the country into cultural core-peripheries and also further enhanced the crisis of Darfur and the secession of South Sudan in 2011. The ruling elite in Sudan has for long seen the ethnic diversity as an obstacle and a disintegrating factor in the unification of Sudan. Adopting the Arab-Islamic paradigm was therefore used to ensure the national unity (Biong Deng 2005). This however has divided the nation, created a power imbalance between different ethnic groups and deepened the gap between the core and the peripheries. Many of the crisis in Sudan’s history have been caused by the exclusionary and discriminatory policies adopted by the ruling elite against the majority of the indigenous people that have denied their access to political and social decision-making, and therefore, often to power and resources (Biong Deng 2005; Idris 2005). The imposition of the Sharia (Islamic laws) in 1983 together with the policy of Arabization caused marginalized groups of people and the people of (then) Southern Sudan to be regarded as inferior citizens, even to the extent of being brutalized by the military (Idris 2005). This led to insurgencies in the peripheral regions, such as Darfur, and caused the migration of people avoiding conflict that is continuing to reshape the country.

Those who identified themselves as more African in their identity, such as the majority of the now independent South Sudanese people, felt excluded and discriminated against. Most non- Muslims opted for a secular nationalism that gave space for other religious and cultural values (Adar 2001). However, as we have seen with the secession of South Sudan and the possibility for the secession of Darfur and other peripheral regions of Sudan, the country is witnessing vast disparities and extensive differentiation regarding accessibility, wealth and societal status when it comes to the different ethnic groups of Sudan. The politics of Arabisation and the cultural mainstreaming create automatic hierarchies, inclusion and exclusion, that with a country as big as Sudan, there are bound to be conflict and power struggle between different groups of people. As with many African countries, Sudan has also been an artificial construct combining many geographically, religiously and ethnically different regions (Cockett 2010). The promotion of the Arabic language as the language of instruction in schools further divided the people, especially between the north and the (then southern) Sudan. The Arabization policy monopolized political power and eventually led to the growth of Arab

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racial supremacy (Ryle 2005; Abdalla 2008). This has caused the minority groups, such as the Fur and the Zaghawa of the Darfur region, the Nubians of the north and the people of the Nuba mountains in the Kordofan state to stand up for themselves that has eventually led to violent conflicts. The president of the opposition group Justice and Equality Movement of Sudan, Khalil Ibrahim from the Zaghawa ethnic group, was one of many Sudanese that saw the injustice and discrimination done by the ruling elite of Sudan. The revolutionary, yet illegal, document by the movement, the Black Book; Imbalance of Power and Wealth in the Sudan was widely distributed and discussed in Sudan. The book gives concrete examples of the institutionalised injustice and political hegemony of the Sudanese ruling elite that has discriminated against other ethnic groups and peripheral regions within the country (El-Tom 2011). The favouring of central and northern part of Sudan within politics is widely known yet criticism of the existing political apparatus is strictly forbidden and dreaded.

One of the negative consequences of this cultural mainstreaming is the slow decay of the multitude of cultures, traditions and historical symbols within the country. For instance the lack of interest towards the rich archaeological findings of the old Nubia of which many are now under the Lake Aswan. This imposed single vision of history and the Sudanese identity has neglected or destroyed the presence of a rich cultural and historical capital within Sudan. As Amir Idris states; “In the Sudanese context, history has never been about the past, but about the present contested realities.” (Idris 2005).