Cockburn, Alexander. "The decay of 'human rights." The Nation 264.15 (21 April 1997). 9-10.

Abstract: Alex de Waal of the African Rights organization traces the progress of human rights, from the 'mass popular' movements of the 1960s to the beginning of professional organizations in the 1970s. De Waal believes that a reinvented professionalism is now needed in human rights.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1997 The Nation Company L.P.

I've complained about him often enough, but since David Remnick wrote a fine piece about Isaac Babel in The New York Review of Books for April 10 I had better give him credit for it, not least for a couple of piercing remarks from Babel: "a simile must be as precise as a slide rule and as natural as the smell of dill"; and to his wife, Antonina Pirozhkova (whose memoir, At His Side: The Last Years of Isaac Babel, Remnick was reviewing), in gratitude when she got rid of a bunch of journalists trying to interview him, "Go wash your feet, I'll drink the bathwater." This goes one better than the exalted tribute my friend Pierre Sprey once heard in a jazz club in Washington, D.C., as a patron gazed admiringly at a spectacularly beautiful woman. "Man, it would be a privilege to drink her bathwater."

de Waal, Alex. "Clashes in Darfur." TLS (10 Aug 2005).

[Review of Darfur: The ambiguous genocide by Gerard Prunier]

Amat Acyl Aghbash is known toabout by few, and then mostly for his grisly end: he stepped backwards into the spinning propellers of his Cessan aeroplane in 1982. The plane was a gift from Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi; for ten years, Ahmat Acyl was both a commander in Libya’s multinational pan-Sahelian “Islamic Legion” and the leader of a Chadian Arab militia known as the Volcano Brigade. Today, Acyl’s fighters from the Salamat of south- central Chad, and the Sudanese intermediaries who smuggled their weapons, can stake a good claim to be the original Janjawiid – the Sudan Government-backed militia now infamous for genocidal atrocity in Darfur.

Acyl’s name crops up in most histories of the long-running wars between Libya, Chad and Sudan. His supplier’s name doesn’t. It was Sheikh Hilal Mohamed Abdalla, whose Um Jalul clan’s yearly migration routes took them from the pastures on the edge of the Libyan desert in Northern Darfur to the upper reaches of the Salamat River where it crosses from Sudan into Chad. Renowned for their traditionalism, their camels and the vast reach of their semi-nomadism, the Um Jalul were a logical intermediary for Libya’s gun-running. Their encounter with the Salamat militia, first social, then commercial and finally military, forged the Janjawiid, which is now headed by the Sheikh’s younger son, Musa Hilal.

TABAN LO LIYONG (ca.1939-), Ugandan poet, critic, novelist, and short-story writer, was born of Ugandan parents in southern Sudan. He received his early education at Gulu High School and the Sir Samuel Baker School, and subsequently studied at a teachers' college in Uganda, at Howard University, USA (BA), and at the University of Iowa, USA, where he was the first African to receive the MFA degree in creative writing and where he cultivated his unconventional writing style. He has taught at several universities, including the University of Papua New Guinea, the University of Nairobi in Kenya, where he co-founded the department of literature with Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Juba University in Khartoum, Sudan. A former cultural affairs director in southern Sudan, he teaches at the University of Venda in South Africa.

No single distinctive style or voice dominates Taban's aesthetic. His work assimilates oral traditions, conscious and unconscious integration of heterogeneous sources, fragmented utterances, and a prosaic diction with little or no regard for a coherent logical sequence. Fixions and Other Stories (1969), filled with Luo mythology and folktales, is an example of his experimentation with the short story as genre, while Meditations in Limbo (1970), which creates a persona who acts antithetically with his father, is more or less a novel. Both, despite their structural flaws, demonstrate his strong sense of commitment to the indigenous culture and oral tradition as a viable source of literary imagery. The poems in Frantz Fanon's Uneven Ribs (1971), Another Nigger Dead (1972), Thirteen Offensives against Our Enemies (1973), and Ballads of Underdevelopment) (1976) employ contrast, paradox, irony, innuendo, repetition, humour, cradle song, gossip, and surprise. 'With Purity Hath Nothing Been Won' (in Another Nigger Dead), for example, argues that success is never achieved through honesty, contrasting 'purity' and 'impurity' to draw the moral that evil ultimately triumphs over good and surprising with the premise that evil predominates over good, which runs counter to traditional belief. Echoes of other writers reverberate in his work, especially in some of the title poems. For example, 'The Marriage of Black and White' recalls Blake's 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell', while 'Telephone Conversation Number Two' echoes Wole Soyinka's 'Telephone Conversation', demonstrating his affinity with other writers and his ability as an experimental poet to borrow and adapt and move with the times.

Jamal Mahjoub was born in London in 1960 where his father was stationed at the Sudanese cultural centre, Sudan House. He spent his formative years in Khartoum before being awarded a scholarship to Atlantic College in Wales. He went on to study Geology at Sheffield University. He returned briefly to the Sudan in search of employment after which he decided to dedicate himself to writing. Since then Mahjoub has lived in a number of places, including London, Denmark and currently Spain, as well as extensive periods in France.

He has worked in a variety of sectors to support his writing, including telemarketing, catering and futon making and has also worked as a librarian, freelance journalist and translator from Arabic, Danish and Catalan. His first three novels were published in the Heinemann African Writers Series. His most recent novel is Travelling With Djinns (Chatto & Windus 2003), which won the Prix de l’Astrolabe award in France in 2004. His short story The Cartographer’s Angel won the Heinemann/Guardian African Short Story Prize in 1993.

Abdelmoula, Adam M.. "The "fundamentalist" agenda for human rights: The Sudan and Algeria." Arab Studies Quarterly 18.1 (Winter 1996).

Abstract (Document Summary)

Abdelmoula examines the Islamic "fundamentalist" agenda for human rights in Algeria and the Sudan. The National Islamic Front in the Sudan and the Islamic Front for Salvation in Algeria are prominent exclusivity movements.
Full Text (12102 words)
Copyright Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc. Winter 1996

THIS ESSAY CONTENDS THAT EXPRESSIONS such as "Islamic fundamentalist" 'Islamic revivalism," 'Islamic absolutism" "political Islam," and 'Islamic reawakening," taken independently, do not provide a sufficient description of the phenomenon. The author proposes the use of an alternative expression 'lslamic exclusivity" because: (i) these groups seek to monopolize Islam and exclude other groups from its arena. They do not consider differing groups and parties that also invoke the Islamic rhetoric within their respective countries to be Islamists (or sufficiently Islamist). (ii) They call for the application of ancient codes of Islam from a monist perspective that excludes all that amends or contradicts them. (iii) The term gives some sense of the type of political organization these groups adopt an exclusive organization the membership of which is not open to any ordinary or average Muslim. (iv) Although they rarely speak about their plans, these groups adopt all embracing programs which are exclusive in their nature and attempt to provide solutions to all the problems of humanity. These programs are not necessarily written, in many instances they can only be inferred from the discourse of each movement.

Gallab, Abdullahi A. "The Insecure Rendezvous Between Islam And Totalitarianism: The Failure Of The Islamist State In The Sudan." Arab Studies Quarterly 23.2 (Spring 2001). 87-108.

Abstract (Document Summary)

The engagement between totalitarianism and the state the Sudanese Islamists have established is explored. The ideology and strategies of this one-dimensional conception of state power has been most closely affiliated with Hassan al-Turabi and his brand of Islamism.
Full Text (11300 words)

Copyright Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc. Spring 2001

THE EFFORT TO UNDERSTAND the rise, disintegration and eventually fall of the current regime in the Sudan, which might be obvious to some observers for a variety of reasons, is among the most complicated. This puzzle is reflected in a number of situations and forms for the last eleven years. This article begins by exploring the engagement between totalitarianism and the state the Sudanese Islamists have established. They have been in power from June 1989, when the military coup instated them in power, till the late 1990s, when Hassan al-Turabi, the leader of and ideologue behind the movement and the regime, was expelled from power by President Umar Ahmed al-Bashir on 12 December 1999. From June 1989 to December 1999 real power in the Sudan rested with Dr. Sheikh Hassan al-Turabi` who became the political and religious reference for the regime, the Speaker of the National Assembly in 1996, and the Secretary General of the National Congress the ruling party in 1998. On 12 December 1999 al-Bashir declared a three-month state of emergency, dismissed al-Turabi, and disbanded the National Assembly. On 6 May 2000 al-Bashir expelled al-Turabi from the ruling National Conference party. Since 20 February 2001 al-Turabi has been arrested and kept in detention for "conspiring with the rebels [the SPLA] to topple the government," according to his former disciple and the current government spokesman Ghazi Salah el-Din. (AP 2001)

Medani, Khalid Mustafa. "Black Monday: The Political and Economic Dimensions of Sudan's Urban Riots." Middle East Report Online (09 Aug 2005).

(Khalid Mustafa Medani is an associate professor of political science and Islamic studies at McGill University and an editor of Middle East Report. He contributed this article from Khartoum.)
For background on the north-south conflict in Sudan, see Dan Connell, "Peace in Sudan: Prospect or Pipe Dream?" Middle East Report 228 (Fall 2003). The article is available online.

The sudden death of John Garang de Mabior, the long-time leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) recently named first vice president of Sudan, unleashed a torrent of anger and protest in Khartoum. Suspecting that the July 30 helicopter crash that killed Garang and 13 others was not an accident, thousands of young men and women took to the streets of the Sudanese capital, setting fire to scores of businesses and numerous government offices and public facilities. In the ensuing three days of rioting, which spread to the southern city of Juba, as many as 130 people were killed and thousands more were injured. The Khartoum government, SPLM lieutenants and Garang's widow Rebecca insisted that the crash was accidental and appealed, somewhat in vain, for calm before the disturbances finally fizzled out. Garang's August 6 funeral in Juba was quiet, but the rioting has laid bare structural tensions that persist as the Khartoum government and the SPLM seek to consolidate a permanent peace on the north-south front of Africa's longest-running civil war.

Connell, Dan. "Peace in Sudan: Prospect or Pipe Dream?" MERIP 228 (Fall 2003).

(Dan Connell, a contributing editor to Middle East Report and a frequent commentator on the Horn of Africa, teaches journalism and African politics at Simmons College in Boston. His two-volume Collected Articles on the Eritrean Revolution (Red Sea Press) will appear in 2003 and 2004.)

Internally displaced Sudanese returning home, near Tam in the western Upper Nile district. (Sven Torfinn/Panos Pictures)

When negotiations in July 2002 at Machakos, Kenya between the Islamist government of Sudan and rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) produced a "framework agreement" of shared ideas on the future of the country, Assistant Secretary of State Walter Kansteiner touted the possibility of a comprehensive peace deal that would finally end Africa's longest-running civil war. "There is good cause for optimism," Kansteiner declared four months later, when the next round of talks yielded a temporary ceasefire. "We have a swath of territory through the heart of Africa that is on the verge of peace." That was then.

Schmidinger, Thomas. "Nubien unter Wasser?" Risse Im Context XXI 7 (2002).

Suad Ibrahim Ahmed wurde am 30. Mai 1935 in Khartoum in einer nubischen Familie geboren. Bereits früh schloss sie sich der jungen Kommunistischen Partei des Sudan an. 1960 schloss sie ihr Studium an der Khartoum University ab und begann als Lehrerin in der nubischen Grenzstadt Wadi Halfa zu arbeiten. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt waren die Pläne der ägyptischen Militärregierung Gamal Abd An-Nassers zum Bau eines Hochdammes südlich von Aswan schon sehr weit gediehen und das ägyptische Regime verhandelte mit dem sudanesischen Militärregime General Abbuds über die Entschädigungen, die der Sudan für das Gebiet erhalten sollte, das auf sudanesischem Territorium in der Folge überflutet werden sollte. Trotz des erbitterten Widerstands der nubischen Bevölkerung verschwand schließlich der Großteil Nubiens unter den Wassermassen die der Aswan-Damm aufstaute. Und trotz der bekannten negativen Folgen für Mensch und Natur, der Zerstörung einer der ältesten Kulturregionen der Welt, der Verschlammung des Sees und des Mangels an fruchtbarem Nilschlamm am Unterlauf des Nils, will nun die islamistische Militärregierung des Sudan auch den verbliebenen Rest Nubiens unter Wasser setzen.

Schmidinger, Thomas. "Die zweite Botschaft des Islam. Eine Menschenrechts- und Sozialismuskonzeption aus dem Sudan." Risse im Context XXI 7-8 (2000).

Die Ideen des 1985 hingerichteten linksislamischen Reformers Mahmud Muhammad Taha werden nach seinem Tod weit über den Sudan hinaus als fortschrittliche Gegenthese zu reaktionären Formen des islamischen Integralismus gesehen. Interessant sind Tahas Positionen dabei einerseits in Hinblick auf seine Sozialismus-Vorstellungen, andererseits aber auch in einer islamischen Annäherung an naturrechtliche Menschenrechtskonzeptionen - von Thomas Schmidinger

Die sudanesische Reformbewegung der Republikanischen Brüder war bis zur Hinrichtung ihres religiös-politischen Führers sehr von der Persönlichkeit Mahmud Muhammad Taha geprägt.

Geboren wurde "Ustad Mahmud" nach eigener Angabe 1909 oder 1911 in einer muslimischen Familie in Rufa´a, einer Stadt am Ostufer des Blauen Nil. "Die familiäre Religiösitiät hat zweifellos den Werdegang Tahas nachhaltig beeinflußt."1 Taha kommt religiös wohl aus dem im Sudan weit verbreiteten Umfeld an Sufi-Bruderschaften, eine Zugehörigkeit seiner Familie zu einer bestimmten tariqa ist jedoch nicht bekannt. Er selbst gehörte jedenfalls keiner der traditionellen Bruderschaften an.