A Shade of Reality: Truth and Untruth in the Republic of Sudan

BY ANGUS FE NI

Sudan is one of those places that, when mentioned, tends to elicit responses from people that range anywhere from the fiercely-spirited to the theatrical, but never anything in between. The plight of its millions of victims, of either genocide, civil war or the greed of big oil, presents a perfect cause to be championed by undyingly devoted liberal hearts or debated ceaselessly amongst self-assured Social Sciences/IR specialists. The subject of Sudan can be likened to a horse beaten to death many times over, but which periodically rises from the dead to incite new vigor in idealist, imaginative young minds. I admit that I have played both these roles dutifully, going from passionate advocacy of humanitarian aid—not intervention—during the height of the Darfur conflict, to more recently a dismissive cynicism at the futility of it all.

Such were my thoughts as we filed past government dignitaries, shaking hands and murmuring pleasantries in Arabic, on our way into the imposing conference hall, its cavernous interior bearing an eerie resemblance to Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

The date was November 26th, 2008, and I was in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, taking full advantage of a Sudanese government invitation to attend a conference on Darfur and Sudan’s International Relations. I was excited to see for myself this place, so hotly contested in our moral and intellectual landscapes, and ecstatic at abandoning the dreary winter of Toronto for the sunshine of the upper Nile. This weeklong trip, as confusing as it was revealing, enlightened and injected a sense of purging reality into my sheltered and parochial mind, hitherto convinced by assumptions based on questionable second-hand information about a place that neither I nor anyone around me had ever been to. Here is some of what I experienced.

Sudan being second last on the UN stability and human development indexes, I expected to find an underdeveloped and desperately poor fourth-world backwater, with roads clogged by donkey carts and perhaps some camels. I was surprised, then, to be greeted with a functional, good-sized airport and wide asphalt boulevards. The latter were lined with shops and restaurants and traversed by what seemed to me to be well-fed people. Khartoum obviously had its drawbacks, but it was not the shantytown I had expected. I was told that as a result of its oil wealth, the country had built the most advanced telecommunications network in Africa. Indeed, the cell phone shops near the hotel did brisk business throughout our stay. The Omdurman market, a vast, bustling affair that riotously bought and sold until late into the evening, was well stocked with both cheap goods and high end luxury items – gold shops alone lined a whole street. I saw not a single homeless person on the entire visit, and we traveled all over the Capital.

Security for a country embroiled in several conflicts of varying degrees of intensity, and which only recently concluded a decades-long civil war, should obviously be tight. One would expect the army to be patrolling the streets. Indeed, we had a twenty-man police escort to and from the conference venue, but this was likely just for show and speed. I was allowed to go explore the city alone and visit areas of the capital with only a driver and guide. Further, the hotel’s other guests—including a jolly group of Australian coast guardsmen in town to train the Sudanese—and staff were all unanimous in agreeing that Khartoum was as safe as any place on earth.

The most heavily defended area we saw, with machine gun-equipped guard towers on each corner of multi-layered walls, bristling with barbed wire and surrounded by blockades, was one I initially assumed to be the ministry of defense and which turned out to be the UN compound. When questioned about the monstrosity, my guide wryly replied, “That’s how the UN is.” The government district, on the other hand, where the ministry of defense was located, featured only gates manned by city police and honor guards at the Republican Palace that smiled and banged their rifle butts on the ground in salute when we passed by. To be fair, I must note that this is only Khartoum, the well-protected capital. It is in the south and west, where the tribes and oil are, that the fighting is visible.
This leads me to the issue of oil, and with it, the much discussed Chinese presence. Both are evident in the capital. One of the largest and most distinguished looking structures in the city is the headquarters of Petronas, the Malaysian oil giant—a company with a knack for building elegant and imposing structures, having also brought us the twin towers in Kuala Lumpur. The Chinese presence is quite noticeable, our hotel itself being run by a division of Sinopec. The Chinese also supply just about every manufactured product in the country. Our conference hall turned out to be a gift from China, hence the resemblance to the Great Hall of the People. Yet I was heartened to hear from everyone I talked to that they welcomed the Chinese presence, and that any suggestions of a new “colonialism” are absolutely misplaced. I was repeatedly told that the Chinese build supermarkets, infrastructure and industry, invest huge sums, and only take oil in return. Our hotel, financed and built by the Chinese, is under Chinese management, and will be given to Sudanese owners after a 15-year lease has expired. Over the years, Chinese investment in the country seems to have built a relationship that, from the ground in Khartoum, appears to be mutually beneficial.

Finally, there are the people themselves. Being university students we requested and were granted the chance to visit several universities in Khartoum. Khartoum University, the best in the country, was an interesting experience to say the least. Touring the place with a student guide, I managed to catch a glimpse of university life not unlike our own: amorous boys chatting up coy girls. Between stops in classrooms, I managed to get away from our minder while he was distracted and stole a few quick exchanges with passing students, almost all of whom spoke English. It turns out that most of the student body—a privileged group, of course—supported Al-Bashir, the president accused by International Criminal Court prosecutors of crimes against humanity. The students were hopeful and optimistic for development and a steady bettering of the state of their country and the lives of their fellow countrymen. Student elections being only several weeks away – a serious affair in a country where universities can be national political battlegrounds – loudspeakers were set up in the middle of campus, and student leaders gave passionate and rousing speeches while hundreds gathered to watch and clap. All in all, it seemed an animated affair, with students rushing to class, resting on vast green fields and playing soccer, all within a lively campus that bustled with energy and freedom. There were even a few rabbits, a pair of gazelles, and a kitten rolling around on their equivalent of the King’s College Circle field.

What left the deepest impression, though, was speaking with the head of the governing party’s student union, a man by the name of Muhammad, who earnestly pleaded with me to go back to Canada and tell people what I saw with my own eyes. He wanted desperately for people outside of Sudan to see a side of it that was beyond war and strife. His sullen dejection at hearing that my knowledge of Sudan essentially consisted of the words “Darfur” and “genocide” betrayed a weariness of war, as well as a sincere desire to move beyond it to a better future for his people. Even so, he did not dodge my inquiries about Darfur and tried his best to explain that everyone knows that there is a problem there, but that they are trying their best to solve it. Throughout the week, he repeatedly begged me to try and see the better side of the country, to see that they were trying hard to improve and to move away from the narrow view of Sudan as only a by-word for war, strife, or North African basket case. He represented a side of Sudan that I had naively never expected to exist.

I am not suggesting here that there is no genocide going on in Sudan, or that everyone in Africa’s largest country – be they Darfurians, Nubians, Northern Arabs, or Southern Coptic Christians – are all doing as well as the government functionaries and businessmen I saw in Khartoum. Indeed, I did not leave the capital once during the trip and am clear-headed enough to know that much of our visit was stage-managed; that we did not get a chance to see the poorest parts of Khartoum. A quick flight to Darfur was scheduled for our last day, so that we could “see” that there was no genocide. I had to forgo the trip for a philosophy exam the next day, but I had no doubt that the “village” we were to see would have been a model of fine living and secure prosperity. Indeed, Darfur is a big place; without a GPS, the authorities could have flown us anywhere. Yet, at least in Khartoum, Nubians, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Black Africans, and Chinese, to the extent I could see, got along perfectly.

With this article then, I would like to question the practice of going to other countries to dig up dirt and publicize the worst aspects of a people, as if the citizens themselves did not know it. As if only the exasperation of a Western news audience at some of the inevitable injustices of development and poverty—much of it the fault of the West itself—makes such things real. In Sudan, I found a country that, though poor, was full of a serious desire to develop, to leave war and poverty behind, and to be respected. The government, whatever questionable practices it may be engaged in, showed an almost desperate desire to cooperate and work with whoever was willing to listen and see the struggles of this war-weary but hopeful people. In many ways, Sudan was the exact opposite of what I had been led to believe it would be. One wonders, would cooperation and encouragement of its better tendencies not be a superior way of dealing with this country than sanctions and embargoes? Our trip had its share of unpleasant experiences, the least of which being the conference itself, which turned out to be a giant venting venue for scholars espousing a “victimization of Islam by the West” narrative. Yet I found in the end that between the news, one’s own judgment-at-a-distance, and reality, “truth” and “untruth” are never quite what one thought they would be, that it is always better to see for yourself the state of things before buying what television tells you, and that your ideas, however confidently you may hold them, may just turn out to be prejudiced, self-formed preconceptions that a good dose of reality can surely cure you of.