The war on terrorism has in many ways been a war on fundamentalist Islam. But that could be about to change. A new type of state may soon emerge in eastern Africa -- an Islamic nation at peace with the United States. Sudan may soon become the world's second Islamic country (after Saudi Arabia) to officially exist outside of George W. Bush's "axis of evil."
Northern and southern Sudan have been locked in a deadly civil war for 20 years. The two sides are in negotiations this summer, and those talks, the U.S. State Department announced this week, may lead to an agreement by Aug. 14.
Prospects for a permanent peace look better than they have in years, though it is still unclear what kind of agreement will emerge. Most likely, said former Sudanese Foreign Minister Mohamed Khalil, speaking at the Middle East Institute in Washington last week, the northern and southern sides will agree to separate. The north, which is predominantly Muslim, will probably consolidate its Islamic regime. The south, which has historically feared northern aggression, will seek to form a secular state.
The Sudanese government in Khartoum -- located in the northern half of the country and headed by Lt. Gen. Ahmad Al-Bashir -- has been the center of power during a bloody civil war and an accompanying ruthless campaign of human-rights abuses. Bashir consolidated power in 1993 and promised to turn Sudan into an Islamic state, "civilize" the south and end the civil war -- by winning it. A decade later, the fighting rages on and the south continues its resistance against the north's so-called civilizing overtures.
More than 2 million people have died in the war, mostly in the south. As a result, Sudan is one of the most destitute nations on earth. It is a land of child soldiers sent to the front lines without training, a land where the military tries defendants in languages they don't speak. It is a land in which whole villages are burnt down at a time, in which civilians have been routinely slaughtered by invading forces (on both sides). It is a land of torture and also of slavery.
The Sudan People's Liberation Army has led the rebellion, ostensibly to protect southern Sudanese from decades of second-class treatment at the hands of the northern government. It has also invoked the need to defend the Christian south from the Muslim north. But the group's violent rise to power and poor human-rights record have embittered many residents of southern Sudan, and Khartoum has slowed the rebel advance by arming opposing factions in the south.
The United States has actually been somewhat helpful to Sudan, offering $100 million in aid to regions not dominated by Bashir's northern army or its client factions (though it has been hard to find good guys in just about any area of the country).
In regions where Bashir has consolidated control, the government has enacted a harsh version of Islamic government: Women are not allowed to walk alone and are compelled to wear a veil, and verses of the Koran that call for stonings and amputations have been written into law, along with the admonition to exchange "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
But lately, in what many observers believe has been a bid by Bashir for international support, many of these prohibitions have gone unenforced. Many fear that once the parties sign an agreement, Bashir's government will take the opportunity to fortify Islamic law in the regions it still controls. "They will not only have a free hand, but will have a freer hand than ever before," Khalil said.
Nevertheless, the Sudanese people desperately need peace and the opportunity to develop their economy and their social systems. Most of all, they need a respite from the daily fear of death. "What will the north get out of the agreement?" Khalil asked rhetorically. "They will no longer need to be afraid that their teenage sons will be picked up off the street, put on the back of a lorry, armed with a gun and then sent to the front lines to die."
Khalil, who was once the country's minister of justice as well as its foreign minister, spoke of a different vision of Islam that he hopes can eventually triumph in a more peaceful north. He spoke of incorporating "the general principles of Islam" written in the Koran rather than the Koran's "positive law" aspects, those exact phrasings regarding crime that so many Islamists around the world have taken to be fundamental. At the very least, Khalil hopes the north will find a way to subject the Sharia (Islamic law) to a new constitution.
All of which is to say that a peace process, however imperfect, seems like the least bad solution for the majority of Sudanese. And Khalil, who has little love for Bashir, believes that if the new Islamic state is welcomed into the international community, it will not harbor or support fundamentalist militants. By allowing the south to secede, the north can end its status as a pariah state in the eyes of American and European diplomats, with all of the economic opportunities that would entail. Egypt has long accused militant Islamists of hiding in the Sudan Nile basin, and Osama bin Laden himself is rumored to have spent time in the Sudan. But Khalil believes a new north would reject these groups in the hope of avoiding a war with Egypt. Certainly Sudan doesn't need any new problems.
Meanwhile, the Sudanese peace process leaves the United States in an awkward position. By far the best way to save lives, enforce human rights, and build peace and order is to help midwife the creation of the world's third truly Islamic state (after Iran and Saudi Arabia). For now, America seems to be correctly betting that a state of order, even if it is a fundamentalist one, is better than a state of lawlessness. Should peace take hold in Sudan, it would represent an all-too-rare victory for humanity over ideology.
Michael Wallach is a TAP Online intern and a graduate student at Columbia University's School for International and Public Affairs.
