The Specter haunting the Sudan.

Edmond Kaguta

British rule in Sudan was bad enough, but nothing became as ill as their departure.

The Present as History
British colonialism had long justified itself with the pretense that it was conducted for the benefit of the governed. British conduct everywhere; particularly the Horn of African sub-region gave the lie to this myth. In Sudan, as in many other parts of the world, the legacy of the British imperial presence has been untold misery and human suffering. Often, the British forced their colonial subjects to fight colonial wars. The injustice was too much even some British colonial officers described British attitude towards its colonial subjects as negligent, hostile and contemptuous. Plunder and devastation was almost like a ritual. Recent reports show that, the British ordered the diversion of food from starving colonial subjects to already well-supplied British soldiers and stockpiles in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, including Greece and Yugoslavia. Thus, it is not surprising that British rule led to widespread injustice and deprivation of the local population. The exclusive focus was the benefit of the British Empire without a minimal consideration of the dignity and future peace of the colonized.

This historical and cultural cruelty was followed, in most cases, by another political and diplomatic betrayal in the middle of the last century, when in the case of Sudan, Britain ignored the wish of southern Sudanese and signed a political and security agreement with Egypt and the northern Sudanese political elite. A problem that continues to haunt –in terms of security and political challenges-the country until today. What probably makes British legacy in Sudan unique is the fact that before their arrival in the region no political or armed group around the region had effective control over south Sudan. Although the Turko - Egyptian rule lasted for a period of sixty years, it did not control all the Sudan. Similarly, the Mahdist administration of 1883 - 1898 did not succeed to impose its full authority on the whole of South Sudan. All of south Sudan came under the control of the political center in Khartoum by the British. 

The Making of a Disaster
Fatal were the approaches of the British administrative, the so-called Indirect Rule and Native Administration, the policy’s aims and actual results of which the Sudanese had to cope and which still interfere greatly in the daily reality of Sudan. Owing to the geographical, political, historical and cultural differences between North and South Sudan, the British devised a system of a separate administration for the two countries. They developed administrative policies, trade and immigration laws treating the two areas as separate countries. The cumulative effect of all these coupled with the language policy was to maintain South Sudan as a separate country from North Sudan. In fact, historical records show that colonial governors from South Sudan used to attend regular administrative conferences in East Africa instead of Khartoum. This system of governance continued until the erratic and sudden way in which the British handled their departure from Sudan.

The problem was not so much with the way the British ruled, but how it ended. The biggest political crime was finally concluded in the infamous Juba conference of 1947. Precisely the conference was convened to inform the chiefs of South Sudan of the irreversible decision to hand over South Sudan to the new political masters from North Sudan. Thus far, North and South Sudan were regarded as two separate countries colonized by the British and Egyptians. In 1953, as the era of the Anglo-Egyptian administration in Sudan came to an end, the colonial masters from Britain and North Sudan masquerading as representatives of national political parties with tacit support of the Egyptian government conspired to grant self-determination to the Sudan without the participation of South Sudan. As in many other cases, the independence agreement sold the Sudanese down the river. The people of South Sudan were deliberately excluded on the pretext that they had no political parties or organizations. Looking at the current crisis in Sudan and the unresolved issues of the CPA-north-south border and Abiyei one can’t help but see the British ghost everywhere. It is a paradox and extreme irony that the British Government, which had supposedly helped create the problem, is being nominated to be in charge of one of the critical dossier in north-south relations.

The agreement that the Foreign Office made, under Egyptian pressure, in the 1950s is the historical cause of the terrible suffering in Sudan and the multiple fragility in the Horn of African region. If the British had felt that South Sudan was not yet ready to become an independent state by itself then, they should have either handed over its administration to an international body like the UN instead of North Sudan or should have left North Sudan get independence separately as they did with North Rhodesia. It is now up to the British to correct this serious error of judgement that has cost millions of lives, by supporting state building in south Sudan.

Conclusion
The deliberate hand over of South Sudan to North Sudan by the British was one of the greatest blunders ever made in the diplomacy of the British colonial history. The human cost of British colonial occupation and subjugation is immense. More dreadful is the political crisis they left for posterity. The end of British rule in Sudan has remained somewhat wrapped in mystery. The common version is that they left Sudan undivided. In reality, however they made separation inevitable. And they did so with the ruthlessness, carelessness and irresponsibility that cannot be excused on grounds of policy and analysis. This makes current British peacemaking efforts in Sudan a suspect.