Convenient Crashes

They are going to bury King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in an unmarked grave in the Kingdom today. It will be a humble rite in keeping with his fierce faith. Ronald Reagan traveled about in grand style after his passing, but the other People of the Book seem to place more emphasis on getting the dearly departed into the ground and getting them to their Maker.

They say the late King was a gambler and a drinker in his time, losing six million dollars in one sitting at Monte Carlo . But that was before the stroke, and the end of the Kingdom’s oil-fueled good times. I am sure the last decade of his life gave him a chance to return to a more righteous living.

On the Christian side of the fence, even the deathbed confession can save one from the fires of hell. Or so they say. I’ll keep the option in my quiver, just in case. Hope I have a chance to exercise the option. There could be a lot riding on that.

I don’t know what ceremony will attend John Garang’s body. He was a Christian, and that is why he fought the Islamists in Khartoum for nearly twenty years. His death could plunge the Sudan back into open warfare, just when there seemed as though there might be some hope in extending the fragile peace between the north and south to the west. Maybe address the misery in Darfur.

John had been sworn in as the first Vice President just three weeks ago, ending the long struggle between his armed group and the men who wished to bring Islamic Sharia Law to the Sudan . In the south, the people are animists and Christians. The government in the north has taken the Islamic path, and had become increasingly militant in expanding the faith to the south and the west.

There were tales of child kidnapping, and rape and murder long predating the same sort of activity in the western province of Darfur . It was an orchestrated campaign of intimidation and conversion, and it was inconvenient to talk about it. Southerners rioted in the capital, and accused the Government of complicity in his death. Arabs were attacked on the streets of the capital.

The Islamic majority in the north has always had a strain of nationalism coupled with a religious zeal. When Britain was establishing the Cape-to-Cairo colonial system in Eastern Africa, the Mad Mahdi rose against the Turks, still the titular rulers of Cairo with the British Resident in the background .

The Mahdi was born Mohammed Ahmed, like another prominent religious figure the son of a carpenter. He was intoxicated with the mystery of his faith. He was a dervish and a Sufi mystic. He began wandering the Sudan as a holy man, serving as doctor and scribe to the poor in exchange for food.

In 1881, he began sending out letters proclaiming his beliefs and urging others to follow his path. The Egyptian government, sensing trouble, sent officials to meet with the Mahdi to dissuade him of his beliefs. The mission was a failure. By August the government sent a military expedition to Sudan which was ambushed by Mahdist forces armed with clubs, rocks and spears.

The victory confirmed the status of the Mahdi as a popular hero. A second Egyptian expedition, dispatched in December 1881, was nearly annihilated. Yet a third expedition met the same fate and the Mahdi was feeling his oats.

He declared Jihad against the Turk, and went on the offensive. The South was in flames and Egypt proper was reeling with the prospect of holy war against the apostate Ottomans and the infidel Europeans.

Fifteen of the latter were murdered in Al Iskandria and the British intervened July 1882. By September, the British had defeated the head of the rebellious army forces, squashing the revolt in the process. The British were now in effective control of Egypt , maintaining the Khedive as a fig-leaf to placate Constantinople ‘s delicate sensibilities.

There was much more to come, and renowned British mystic General Chinese Gordon would die at the Mahdi’s hands before that period of Sudanese history passed into the Empire, and then the Commonwealth, and then the new religious state.

It is interesting to note that the angry young men are calling for the re-establishment of the Umma, the universal caliphate of Islam. It existed here before, in the form of the Turkish empire , and it was overthrown by the Mahdi for being too decadent.

Perhaps that is the way of universal empires or caliphates. But they can be implacable indeed in the days of their establishment. It is why they succeed, at least at the beginning.

The British are long gone now, and the Sudanese of the North have returned to an expansionist version of the True Faith that the Mahdi would have appreciated. The war with the south was a symptom of that, and so is the current genocide in Darfur .

John Garang was a Doctor in Agricultural Economics, trained in America , before going into the guerilla business. He was a military officer when Khartoum decreed Sharia, and he pulled his battalion out of garrison and went into the armed opposition business.

He was leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army for twenty-one years. He was reported to have a compassionate soul for his people, a quick tongue and a fierce temper.

He wanted to see the people of the south have a better life, free of incursions from the north.

There was great hope that as the rebels merged into one government there might be an end to a generation of war, and perhaps an end to the Arab Janhaweed militia depredations against the Christians and animists in the west.

John’s presence in the capital was supposed to fix that. But it was a gamble of faith. I guess you can’t really tell what the future will bring when you take a new career option.

A Ugandan military helicopter was used to transport the new Vice President and his security detail from a meeting with President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda . They were headed for a former rebel strong point south of a place called New Site, in Kapoeta County . There are two Internally Displaced Persons’ camps there, Narus and Natinga, which have a combined estimated population of 16,000. Those people were the base of John Garang’s support.

The helicopter went down in hilly terrain. The Government seemed a little confused about it, first saying the flight had arrived successfully, then saying it was lost in bad weather. Everyone on board was killed, fourteen people in all. Foul play was ruled out by the Ugandans and the Sudanese.

They say that John Garang will be interred in Juba , the city that is the de facto capital of the South. There are no words about his service, or who will attend. But unlike King Fahd, I bet he gets a monument.

I don’t know if the helicopter got lost in inclement weather, or if there was something else involved. I know helicopters pretty well, and am not convinced the laws of physics really permit them to stay airborne. Like a bumblebee, they shouldn’t really be able to fly.

That fact that they crash periodically shouldn’t be unexpected. But I always wonder about convenient crashes, don’t you?

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

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