The Blacks

The blacks
 
The tidal wave
 
When the French invaded Egypt in the late nineteenth century, they left no doubt about how won. The Egyptian army, made almost entirely of a foreign caste of mercenaries called Mamluks, was eviscerated in every encounter. Casualty figures are laughable, and the shock of the asymmetry did not only hit Egypt, but the entire Ottoman Empire.

 

The French often romanticized their foray into Egypt. Above, a French artistic depiction of the battle of Abukir. The reality was a lot more Mamluks slaughtered by guns and cannons and a lot less melee.

The French burnt themselves out and had to leave Egypt within a few years. In the chaos of the vacuum left behind, Egypt picked the head of a band of Albanian irregulars as the ruler of Egypt. Mohammed Ali Pasha proceeded to modernize Egypt. In fact, he modernized the Egyptian army, and in the process accidentally modernized the country. For the first time since the Ptolemies, the army was made of native Egyptians, and it adopted European training and armor.
 
When you have an army, you use it. And Mohammed Ali used his new army to expand Egypt. He began by invading the lands to the south, and then he headed east to Hijaz as part of the Wahhabi wars. But then he got greedy and headed north, invading Syria. He stood at the gates of Turkish lands and demanded the Ottoman Caliph give him Egypt and all its new territories as a de facto independent hereditary empire, with only lip service to the Ottoman Empire.
 
Europe was happy to see the Ottomans squirm. When the Ottoman caliph refused, Mohammed Ali invaded Anatolia. Europe saw the Egyptian army about to invade Istanbul and panicked. The Egyptian navy was destroyed by a coalition of European forces. Europe forced Egypt and the Ottomans to come to an understanding. Mohammed Ali would not get his expansive empire, but he would get de facto independence for the Egyptian Khedivate. As well as the lands to the south of Egypt.
 
In the firman (Ottoman decree) allotting these southern lands to Mohammed Ali and his descendants, the Ottoman caliph proclaims that Egypt would now get control of the lands of Nubia, Kordofan, Sinnar, and Darfur.
 
Stunning diversity
 
These four lands are what form modern northern Sudan, or the republic of Sudan. The Ottomans never saw it as one land. Nobody ever did. These lands have always been incredibly diverse. Sudan, like Egypt, is at a crossroads. It is Africa’s gateway to the Mediterranean, and the gateway of the Mediterranean to Africa. As such, the people of Sudan are not and have never been one. And therein lies the strength of this land, and its innate weakness.
 
In a way, the Ottoman caliph knew what he was talking about. The above map shows the ethnolinguistic diversity of Sudan. The country is shaped by the intersection of the Middle East and Africa. This intersection dates to the stone age, but there is an additional layer of delusion that shapes identity in Sudan. Specifically, there are various degrees of identifying with Arabia. This has to do with the history of how parts of Sudan were Islamized, through late medieval migrations from Arabia across the Red Sea. This causes an overwhelming dichotomy between the “Arab” and the “Black” in the country.

Nubain wedding in Aswan, Egypt. Sudanese Nubians do not look very different from Egyptian Nubians.
 
In the northernmost part of Sudan and along the Red Sea coast, the main groups are Nubians and Bejas. Neither speak Arabic, both are Muslim, and both are also present in smaller numbers in southern Egypt, forming the link between the two countries. The Bejas are nomadic, while Nubians are agriculturalists. Both are among the least “African-looking” Sudanese, which is ironic because both are foci for Afrocentrism.

Bejas are a Cushitic people who live near the Red Sea in Sudan and Egypt.
 
South of this belt along the Nile down to Khartoum and Al-Jezira, the bulk of Sudan’s population lives. This is an ethnic group known as “Sudanese Arabs”, but they should be identified as “Riverine Arabs”. The Riverine Arabs traditionally identify with particular tribes in Arabia that migrated to Sudan. They are entirely Muslim, and their Islam is a peculiar form of militaristic Sufism. The Riverine Arabs are the most numerous ethnic group in Sudan and they form the elite of the country, holding onto most aspects of the modern state, including the regular army.

The bulk of the Sudanese population and Sudanese elite are Arabized Nubians, traditionally called "Sudanese Arabs". More properly, they should be known as Riverine Arabs.
 
To the south is Kordofan, a hilly area with a very different nature from the rest of Sudan. This area, especially the Nuba mountains, is inhabited by extremely diverse people. But there is something “different” about them. They are mostly Muslim, and they speak Sudanic languages rather than Arabic, but something sets them apart from Nubians and Sudanese Arabs. Political correctness notwithstanding, what sets them apart is that they are “more African”. We can pretend we do not know what this means, but we do. They are darker skinned, have “typical African features”, and live in Savana environments in thatched huts. One might protest that all of this is too simplistic, and it is, but everyone knows the difference when they see it.

The Nuba mountains "Look African". It sounds stupid to say so, but it is undeniable.

The Nuba people are not Nubians and are hardly if at all related to them. It is with the Nuba in Kordofan that you start seeing the fault lines of Sudan.

Fur and Masalit refugees, probably displaced by massacres perpetrated by Baggara Arabs.

And like Kordofan, Darfur is also “different”. It is again a highland Savana, and it is also inhabited by non-Arabic speaking people who “look African”. Darfur is also entirely Muslim. In fact, it is probably one of the earliest areas of Sudan to convert to Islam and the Sultanates of Darfur and Dar Masalit are some of the earliest Muslim states south of Egypt.

Baggara "Arabs" are more adamant that they are true "Arabs" than the Riverine Arabs.
 
The Riverine Arabs are the dominant group in Sudan, but they are not the only “Arabs”. There is also a large group of people called “Baggara” Arabs, or cow-herding Arabs. These are nomadic pastoralists who extend in a belt into Chad, and further west all the way to Nigeria. While many Riverine Arabs, especially youth, are starting to reject an “Arab” identity, Baggara Arabs are fixated by the idea. They insist on pure Arab lineage directly from the Arabian Peninsula, and they can track their ancestry dozens of generations to specific clans in Hijaz and Najd. The Baggara herd their cattle in Darfur and Kordofan, where they have interacted for centuries with local Nuba, Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa.

The Baggara belt extends from Sudan into Nigeria.
 
In the late nineteenth century, the first ember of a “Sudanese” national identity sprang in the Mahdist revolution against Egyptian rule. The Mahdist state was a mixed bag, with most of its practical results disastrous. Egypt regained Sudan after it (Egypt) itself was invaded by Britain. When the British “helped” Egypt regain Sudan, they expanded the territory south into Equatoria, and in that new territory, they found another group of cattle herders.
 
If it feels icky to say the Fur or Masalit look “more African”, but nobody feels any compunction saying the same about the Nilotes. Nilotic people are the inhabitants of what would later become South Sudan. Just looking at them, you cannot deny they are unique. They are tall, extremely dark, speak a unique group of languages, and have a lifestyle that has no parallel in Africa or the world.

A Dinka man from South Sudan with his cattle.
 
And the British added them to the pot of disparate territories that Egypt was given by the Ottoman caliph.
 
Stunning delusions
 
Sudan is a fascinating place for a geneticist. It is literally the out of Africa corridor. I find this paper:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5587336/
To be particularly fascinating because it puts Sudan in its regional context. The figure below is an admixture analysis of the various populations in the study:

Autosomal admixture analysis of Northeast Africans, including the Sudanese.

Without getting too technical, Admixture allows a machine learning tool to break down populations’ genomes into building blocks. The K in the figure is how many building blocks you allow the tool to use. The higher the K, the more genetic components you allow the tool to find and the finer the breakdown.
 
So, if K=2, the tool will most likely choose one block for African and another for non-African, then express all populations as proportions of both. At K=3, the “African” gene is broken down into two variants. At K=4, the African gene is broken down further. Only at K=5 and above does non-African genome start to differentiate into different clusters. Why does African genome differentiate first? Because Africa has more genetic diversity than the rest of the world combined.
 
So, at K=4 only the green color represents “non-African” genome. The Europeans are represented by all green because they have 0% African genome. But “African” genome breaks down into multiple colors. For example, orange represents west African populations, and you see it being very high in Yoruba people from Nigeria.
 
A few things are very interesting, even funny if you look at the K=4 row. The Southern Sudanese Barria, Shilluk, Nuer, and particularly Dinka people look like they are almost entirely made of one cluster. In fact, as K rises, you find this cluster covers 100% of many Dinkas. And this cluster is very different from everyone else. It sets them apart not only from non-Africans, but also from other Africans. The uniqueness of the South Sudanese is not a myth.
 
For Nubians, Bejas, and Riverine Arabs in Sudan (Shaigia, Bataheen, Gaalien), almost half of their genome is similar to Dinka people, while half of it is non-African. These most northerly of Sudanese people “look different” for a reason. They might think of themselves as a pure race, but like most people in the world they are mixed. At higher K’s, we find something interesting. The non-African part of these most northerly Sudanese is not Arabian-like, it is Egyptian-like. It is an ancient migration that shaped who the Sudanese are from their inception to this day. This breaks a few myths simultaneously. First, most Sudanese, like most people in the world, are not “pure”. Second, most Sudanese are not Arabs from Arabia. Third, while a lot of Sudanese believe that Sudan is the origin of ancient Egypt, it looks like it is the other way around. 
 
As people had always suspected, the Fur, Masalit, and Nuba people of Darfur and Kordofan are mostly African. They have negligible non-African genes. But what is truly funny is that the Baggara, represented here by the Meseiria, are indistinguishable from their “more African” neighbors in Darfur. The “most Arab” of the Sudanese Arabs, responsible for generations of ethnic cleansing, are as African as the Fur and the Masalit.
 
Maneki Neko
 
The Maneki Neko is a Japanese waving cat motif that you have seen but don’t know the name of. My dad bought a Maneki Neko alarm clock in Tokyo as a gift for my daughter. And she loved it. The cat waves its hand and gyrates at seemingly random times, but they are not really random. The cat sits at critical equilibrium. It is stable, but barely so. Any slight breeze will cause the equilibrium to break and the cat moves along a groove. It is fascinating how little it takes to set the cat off, and how much she moves in response to basically nothing.
 
Sudan is also at best in critical equilibrium. Its whole history is moments of glory after which it disappears and breaks apart. Sudan will break apart if someone pushes it, and it will break apart if left alone.

I know this sounds harsh, but it is important in understanding what is happening now and how to solve it. Kerma and Kush were shining lights in the ancient world, but they were brief compared to the length of bronze and iron age societies in the old world. After which, Nubia went away and disappeared, only to reappear as the “Nubian Christian Kingdoms” in late antiquity. These, in turn, disappear and appear periodically, until they break completely apart at the slightest push back from Mamluk Egypt. The Mahdist state of the late nineteenth century had ten years of Egypt getting invaded by the British to completely solidify itself. They spent it trying to enslave Nilotes and destroying irrigation infrastructure.
 
It is not that Sudan is destined to break apart into statelets, but perhaps its amazing dizzying diversity required tools that were not available in the pre-modern world. But what about now that we know about federalism, basic rights, and managing diversity? Can Sudan remain stable? Yes, but first everyone must get real.
 
Untenable
 
Nasserist Egypt in the early fifties wanted a unified Egypt and Sudan. Nasser was a lot of things, but he was not racist. He viewed a single country from the Mediterranean to the Sudd marshes of Equatoria as possible. He wanted freedom of movement for the southernmost Dinka to travel and work as far as Alexandria and to have the same citizenship as everyone in between.
 
The Riverine Arab elites in Khartoum rejected this. They had already woven a view of Sudanese national identity in intellectual debates in the early twentieth century, and Egypt was the villain in their novel. They wanted an independent and unified Sudan, and Britain wanted a fragmented region, so they got what they wanted. But at that moment, they ensured that greater Sudan was no longer possible.
 
The relations between northern and southern Sudan had always been more fraught than even the tensest communal strife in Darfur. The practice of enslaving Nilotes was so prevalent in Northern Sudan that the British had to ban northern Sudanese travel into South Sudan. The British also used this as an opportunity to spread Christianity and “Western culture” to South Sudan. The Christianity part worked, but the South Sudanese remained who they are.
 
South Sudan had to break away from Sudan, and in a way, I think the Sudanese internalized this fact. South Sudan was supported in its struggle by too many foreign powers for Sudan alone to withstand. But there was also a lot for the South Sudanese to want to break away from. There was neglect, cultural imperialism, and violence.
 
But I think what really drove the south to abandon attempts at autonomy in favor of independence is the fact that the north never held on to itself long enough to talk to the south. Since its independence, Northern Sudan oscillated between incompetent civilian rule, last minute military coups to keep the whole thing from falling apart, and rinse and repeat. With nobody to talk to in any effective way, the south was dragged into fighting for independence.
 
 
Backstabs
 
We need to assign evildoers in all conflicts. In the many many ethnic conflicts of Sudan, we want to call the “Arabs” villains. But things are not always that simple. 

The Fur and Zaghawa minorities of Darfur united in the early 2000's to fight the government. Their grievances were very legitimate, but their demands were hazy at best. This Fur resistance grew slowly at first, but perhaps unfortunately for them, the government was too busy fighting in the south and in Kordofan to pay them enough attention.

This is unfortunate for the Fur because they ended up miscalculating and badly overshooting. They attacked the regional capitals of Darfur, and seeing little resistance, they even attacked the heart of the country: Khartoum.

 
The problem with stories with villains is that you fail to see the other side. The Riverine Arabs rightfully panicked. The very existence of the country was under threat. What made things worse is that it felt like a backstab, and one that was disproportionate and unprovoked from their point of view.
 
The army regrouped and held onto the capital. They understood that they cannot fight wars on so many fronts, so they adopted the same weapon as their opponents. If everyone was using ethnic militias, then the government would also hire an ethnic militia. And in Darfur, there was an agent ready and willing. The Baggara Arabs were already in conflict over land use with the agriculturalist Fur and Masalit.
 
The government had a paved road. The Baggara were “Arabs” and good Muslims, fighting “less Muslim” tribal people who had stabbed the state in the back. The west found a beautiful story in the Muslim Arab militias attacking black African villagers. Which in turn allowed the government to claim the Fur were foreign agents.
 
It was a perfect downhill trip. The Baggara militias, the Janjaweed, carried out a horrific genocide, burning villages and displacing people. The west was happy with the story, Sudan was happy with the breaking of Fur resistance. The irony is that everyone in this conflict was Muslim. In fact, the Fur are probably among the earliest Muslims in Sudan. Genetically, everyone is Black and African, the Baggara trace as much lineage from Arabia as the Masalit, zilch.
 
 
Arabi Juba
 
What I find amazing about the Sudanese people is their ability to find good in everything. They can extract cultural richness and spiritual depth from things you do not even think about. And from the midst of adversity, there are signs that Sudan was, and hopefully will continue to, extracting something unique: a national identity.

The wars in Darfur and Nuba mountains caused large numbers of refugees to move to Khartoum. And in that burgeoning metropolis, people of all stripes were forced to live together and to deal with each other as equal. It is there that the many components of Sudan were being fused into a new identity. It was a fascinating process where people kept regional and ethnic identities while at the same time forming a new shared sense of belonging.
 
Even in the embittered south, I still find that “Al-Sudan” had left its mark. South Sudan is linguistically diverse and tribal conflict between the south Sudanese since independence has been more violent at times than the civil war with the North. The government of South Sudan picked English as a neutral common language that does not allow a single tribe to dominate, while leaving behind the Arabic luggage of the north.
 
The people of South Sudan did not agree. The most common lingua franca in South Sudan is still Arabi-Juba or Juba Arabic. This is a fascinating pidgin that first developed among the soldiers conscripted into the army in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. But now, Juba Arabic is a central feature of south Sudanese identity, and it still binds the country together and ties it to its northern sister.
 
The battle royale of the “most Arab”
 
The crucible melting a new Sudanese identity has been destroyed. Khartoum needs at least a decade to recover. This new round of fighting is like nothing before. First, it is everywhere. Second, it is hitting the heart of the country, Khartoum. The haven to which everyone escaped before is now the focus of fighting and people do not know where to run to.
 
But also, this round seems different because it is between two “military strongmen” rather than an ethnic conflict. Or so news reports would have us believe. This is a horrible misreading of the situation. This latest round of fighting is part of the pattern of Sudanese history that keeps repeating.
 
This is still an ethnic war, and just because the two sides call themselves “Arab” does not mean it is not. The Sudanese army has a core consisting of Riverine Arabs, but given the other option, I bet a lot of other ethnic groups in Sudan are flocking to join the army.
 
The RSF, on the other hand, is personified in its leader, Hemedti. He is known for being the leader of the Janjaweed, but there is more to this. Hemedti is not a very good speaker. His Arabic is provincial and stunted and he radiates a sense of ignorance. He is a Baggara Arab and his militia represents the frustrations and centuries of marginalization of these nomadic cattle herders. His militia is no different from the Kordofanian and Darfurian militias who fought the country before.
 
Except in some respects, it is different. For one, the RSF are battle hardened. They are also heavily subsidized by regional powers, making them more deadly. But another difference is that the Nilotic, Nuba, and Sudanic Darfurian resistance movements have elite leaderships that are intellectual and western educated. The RSF leadership is ignorant and nihilistic. In the RSF, we see the results of total unadulterated marginalization, and it does not matter that they are “Arabs”.
 
 
The revolution is succeeding, actually
 
In a way Sudan is currently what would happen if the Arab Spring works. This is the payoff for years of demonstrations and disruption of the status quo. You might think this is the revolution being backstabbed, but the revolution is doing what it says on the box. 
 
Hemedti’s Arabic might be stunted, but the content of his speech is very well-crafted. He includes all the buzzwords: minorities, civilian rule, democracy, transition, and revolution. The speech is very carefully worded, too carefully worded for a simple herder from Darfur. It smells a lot like a bunch of consultants in an air-conditioned skyscraper.
 
On the ground, anywhere Hemedti’s militias take control, a clear pattern emerges. Ethnic minorities are immediately cleansed. It does not matter if this is the most “Black African” Muslim groups in Darfur, or the least “Black African” groups like the Sudanese Copts in Khartoum. Everything must go. Your villages will be burnt, your churches will be dismantled, and you will exit the country to Chad or Egypt. Meanwhile, every woman will be raped, the agricultural infrastructure will be taken apart, educational institutes will be razed, and every aspect of diversity and culture will be erased.
 
This is not a bug; it is a feature. Nothing will be left of Sudan except those parts that serve the source. The “source” is always the west through some local broker. The broker might change, but in the end the gameplan is the same. And thus, only gold mines will remain to pay the broker, and only Sudan’s normalization with Israel will remain because that’s what the west wants. Nothing else is needed. The country can be emptied of its people and its history can be erased; and what’s cool is that this will make the remaining husk of Sudan more efficient at fulfilling its post-revolutionary purpose.
 
 
Getting real
 
If anyone wants to be honest about solving the problem of Sudan, what should they do? Well, first they must get real and admit a few things, then things can move on:

• Egypt is not the villain. The Sudanese love to hate Egypt. They have a bunch of villains in their national myth, which is fair enough, but Egypt is always a common denominator. If Sudan is to move on, they must stop taking Egypt’s villainy as a given. As of late, the pattern has been that Sudan has consistently shot itself in the groin just because Egypt said please stop shooting yourself in the groin. Sudan does not have to always agree with Egypt, but Sudanese society is now so addicted to hating Egypt, that they feel they MUST always disagree with Egypt. It is also a fact that if Sudan tries to find an external mediator in the conflict, it can keep fooling around with East Africa, the gulf, and the west. But when it’s time to actually solve the problem, the only interlocutor that can work is Egypt.
• It is NOT about “military bad”. Blaming all of Sudan’s trouble on “military rule” is a lazy, easy, and false copout. The pattern in Sudan is clearer than in any other Arab country. Civilian democratic rule always fails miserably. They are impotent and have no power on the ground. They talk a lot of talk and do nothing. Meanwhile, without fail, ethnic militias rise and start taking over the vacuum of the countryside. Eventually the country is at the edge of collapse and the military steps in to keep together what seems to never want to stay together. The military in Sudan is not the cause of its strife, it is a symptom of the impotence of Sudan’s elite and its perpetual identity crisis.
• Stop both siding. This is not a fight between two equally evil military strongmen in which the people are not involved. The pattern is clear as daylight. Anywhere the SDF goes, villages burn, girls are raped, and young boys are shot in the back as they run away. Anywhere the Sudanese army goes, people go back home and markets open. The Sudanese army is certainly not the most professional in the world, and conditions are not the best, but these two things are not equal. Pretending that they are is not helping anyone, least of all the Sudanese people.
• Accept mistakes have been made on all sides. Everyone in Sudan has made mistakes, horrible mistakes. And by everyone, I mean EVERYONE. The Riverine Arab elites have certainly made mistakes, but so have the Sudanic people of Darfur and the people of Nuba mountains. The military has made mistakes, but so have the civilian forces and the “revolutionaries”. Yes, mistakes weigh differently and some are worse than others, but realizing everyone was at some point some degree of villain allows people to forgive.
• If you want to put pressure, put it where it should be. You cannot seriously think that you should equally pressure the foreign sponsors of the SDF and those of the Sudanese army. If you think that you should, then you have to watch some of the great coverage by brave journalists who still venture into Sudan. Again, there is no comparing what happens to places the army gets to and what happens to places the SDF controls.
• Admit why most of us don’t care. To be able to care about what happens in Sudan, we must be honest about why we haven’t cared so far. The Israelis are masters of whataboutism. Whenever you point out the fact that they are carrying out a genocide, they ask "what about that other genocide." But two things can be right, they can be carrying out a genocide, and we should also care about that other genocide. So why does the world not care about Sudan?This is going to be cringe, but again, cringe can be true. The reason we care less about Sudan than anywhere else is in the name “Al-Sudan”. Look it up if you don’t know what it means.