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University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, Dec. 8, 1964
Sudan Faces Disunity
When President Ibrahim Abboud assumed full power over the Sudanese government in October, he was attempting to plug up the latest holes in the leaky dike holding back the waves of cultural and political divisiveness that constantly threaten to engulf the Sudan.
Even the general's pudgy and powerful fingers were not able to hold back the flood.
REPORTS FROM KHIARTOUM now indicate a transitional government, with plans to revert to the 1956 parliamentary constitution, has been agreed upon by military and civilian factions.
Abboud has resigned. Until the elections, promised in March, a three-man civilian council will act as chief-of-state under Sir El Khatim El Khalifa, a middle-aged, middle-of-the-road politician. The new cabinet of ministers include eight representatives of religious and professional organizations, two Southern Sudanese and four Communists, taking an open part in the Sudanese government for the first time.
OUTBREAKS OF VIOLENCE and a general strike by government workers, following the earlier anti-government riots, prompted the conciliation.
To end the demonstrations in the capital city of Khartoum, President Abboud has dissolved the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces and his council of ministers, pledging an end to military rule and promising his people progress toward a government "acceptable to all citizens."
The Khartoum riots, in which 30 persons were killed and hundreds arrested, broke out after military authorities suppressed a student meeting held to discuss an anti-Moslem and anti-Arab revolt in Southern Sudan.
The civilian opposition—students, professional people and the Moslem brotherhoods—formed a "National Democratic Front" in protest against the six-year-old Abboud military regime.
FIGURING IN THE CURRENT power struggle are factions whose dissidence has lapsed at the dike of Sudanese unity throughout the modern history of the nation.
The northwestern African country, as large as all the NATO countries of Europe combined, is peculiarly divided — geographically, culturally and politically. While the arid North shares an Arab heritage, the Moslem faith and the Arabic language, the inhabitants of the tropical South are members of diverse Negroid, pagan tribes. One writer commented that the Sudan "came to independence with no tradition of religious, cultural, linguistic or political unity."
Modernity began creeping into the Sudan with the Turco-Egyptian conquest by Muhammad Ali in 1821. The 60-year Turkiya administration was so ineffectively controlled from Cairo, however, that serious abuses in taxation and the slave trade caused discontent culminating in a native revolt in 1881. The Mahdiya administration, independent of foreign control and fanatically Moslem, reigned temporarily.
IN THE 1890's, though, the French Italians and Belgians began making inroads in North Africa. To protect their interests, the British and Egyptians planned the reconquest of the Sudan by an army under the leadership of Sir Herbert Kitchener. His victory at the Battle of Omdurman initiated the 57-year Condominium in what was known as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.
Though a mixed blessing, British-Egyptian colonialism rebuilt the Sudan from a country torn by war, famine and plague to a peaceful and
prosperous one. British officials from Oxford, Cambridge or the Egyptian army established the Sudan Political Service, which has been called the "finest colonial administration in the world." Introducing Western education, technology and bureaucracy, the British ruled indirectly through tribal and hereditary Sudanese chiefs and through Egyptian officials in subordinate posts. The British also insured a sound economy through an irrigation system of dams and canals, an extensive railroad network, a cotton-based agriculture and a textile-based industry. The Egyptians, with geographical and historical ties, continued their unique cultural influence on the country.
THE VERY COLONIAL PRACTICES that were strengthening the Sudan were breeding political awareness and the inevitable embryonic nationalism. The Graduates' General Congress of Gordon College developed political feeling among the educated elite, who, with the British-ignored middle class of Westernized Sudanese, in the 1940s organized the first genuine political party in the Sudan. In Egypt, Farouk was claiming to be king of Sudan. After Nassar's takeover in 1952, negotiations began for independence.
Elections in the fall of 1953 indicated the Sudanese wish for freedom from both the British and the Egyptians. The nationalists were led by Al-Azhari, who on New Year's Day in 1956 declared the independence of the Republic of the Sudan. Within six months, Al-Azhari fell from power by his defiance of his party's sponsor, the Moslem Khatmiya brotherhood. The Khatmiyas formed a coalition with the moderate Umma party, whose leader, Khalil, was made premier.
During the next two years, the political and economic situation under the parliamentary government steadily worsened. Foreign exchange reserves were low, and the cotton surplus was mounting. When Khalil obtained a $30 million loan from the United States, though, violent anti-Western opposition arose. Khalil was also resented for his close identification with the rival religious sect, the Ansars. Foreign powers, especially Egypt's Nasser, seemed ready to take advantage of the impasse caused by factional strife. Khartoum was ripe for a coup'detat.
THE NOVEMBER REVOLUTION OF 1958 was actually a bloodless transition from a civilian to a military regime. General Abboud, chosen because he was supposed to be above politics, won support from the rival religious brotherhoods and from most Sudanese, who were relieved to see the end of factional bickering. Abboud soon sold all the surplus cotton and started ironing out the decades-long dispute over the Nile waters with Egypt. He insisted on absolute neutrality between the power blocs and on close cooperation with Egypt.
Abboud's collapse this fall was precipitated by public debates and rioting over the most serious of the problems facing the Sudan today: the cultural deadlock between the North and the South. Back in the 19th century, slave traders from the North decimated the Southern tribal population. The British practically ignored the South, although they did exclude undesirable Northerners to prevent exploitation of the Southern tribes. In 1947 the British and Northerners agreed to accept Southern representatives in the legislative assembly of the Sudan. But independence brought an all-Northern administration hated and resented in the South.
NATO, Trade Probed
By Phil Newsom
French President Charles de Gaulle fears United States' domination of Europe, economically as well as militarily.
Within the next week, the forces which unite the U.S. and its European allies and those which divide them will begin moving toward a decision in meetings in Geneva and Paris.
Margaret Hughes
IN GENEVA, representatives of the United States, the European Common Market countries, Britain and Japan begin the first hard bargaining in the most far-reaching attempt ever made to liberalize world trade.
This is the sixth in a series of post-war tariff cutting negotiations and is known as the "Kennedy Round" which seeks a general tariff cut of 50 per cent across the
On Dec. 15, foreign ministers of the NATO nations meet in Paris. The greatest divisive factor, the U.S.-proposed Multi-Lateral Nuclear Naval Force (MLF), is not on the agenda but will be thrashed out in numerous private sessions.
BESIDES TAR1F7-CUTTING and the problems of NATO, inextricably involved also is the future of the European Common Market and the 1963 Franco-German Treaty of Cooperation by which the two nations sought to bury age-old enmities.
board. This week the big industrial nations argue those industrial goods which they seek to exempt from the general list.
in a broader sense, it may be said that encompassed in these two meetings is every major problem besetting post-war Europe.
Dailij Hansan
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Roy Miller ... Managing Editor
Don Black, Leta Cathcart, Bob Jones, Greg Swartz, Assistant Managing Editors; Linda Ellis, Feature-Society Editor; Russ Corbitt, Sports Editor.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Jim Langford and Rick
Mabbut ... Co-Editorial Editor
The People Say...
To the Editor:
As regular readers of the Kansan we have come to expect a degree of restraint, a coolness of temper, a sense of balance and fairness, and above all, logical consistency and intellectual honesty in your editorial comments. We would not settle for anything less, for we believe that an editor, because of the very nature of his job, carries awesome responsibilities. He has an obligation to himself, to his readers, and to society at large. He must be guided at all times by the requirements of truth, justice, and fair play. He must purveyors of terminological inexactitudes, whose stock in trade is hate-peddling and mudsling, distortions, and concoctions, have any place in a respectable profession such as journalism.
WE DEEM IT NECESSARY to make these observations because of Mr. Krishnan's leading article in the December 1, 1964, Kansan, which tragically fell short of the standards seemingly set forth by the Kansan for its ideal. We found the article somewhat disconcerting. In general, it was a conglomeration of inconsistencies and inaccuracies clothed in a garb of verbal splendor. In particular, it was a malicious attack on Pakistan, deliberate, premeditated, but cleverly hidden behind the ramshackle structure of a discussion of "non-alignment."
It seems obvious that Mr. Krishnan is innocent of the vast differences that exist between democratic socialism and revolutionary communism. Further, he confuses non-alignment with neutrality, a serious error which the high priests, magicians and pundits of this new superstition—non-alignment—will certainly regard as heretical. He considers either neutrality or non-alignment as the intrinsic good, postulated a priori, but in the same breath he has the temerity to decry Britain and France for moving in the same direction, and seemingly appeals to the U.S. to prevent this. It is curious that he should despair at the alleged Anglo-France flirtations with China, but would not even mention India's seduction by China some years prior to the border conflict.
WE DO NOT PRETEND TO know, nor do we care, what motivated Krishnan's angry outbursts against Great Britain. However, we see no justification in vilifying a great and a brave people who first graciously granted independence to India, and then along with the Americans, rushed to protect her when she stood naked, defenseless, and excuseless—her honor and dignity in shambles, her "mighty" but apparently non-violent armies on the run before the marching hordes of the "hungry dragon." Instead of being grateful to the British for this act of mercy, Krishnan calls them dirty names. Might this not be a case of shameless ingratitude?
] ]
We venture to think that Krishnan is one of those Hindu jingoists who have not yet become mentally reconciled to the existence of Pakistan. This obviously blinds his vision of reality and hence his hysterical diatribes against Pakistan. His assertion that Pakistan has entered into a military pact with China would be seriously absurd were it not laughable. And when Krishnan crowds that Pakistan has, in fact, handed over some territory to China, we should like a bit of evidence other than that which might have originated in the dark cellars of Indian propaganda mills!
WE ASK KRISHNAN what can be gained by spreading fabrications and untruths about Pakistan. We urge him not to consign himself to the depths of hate and fanaticism. He knows and we know that Kashmir—that powder keg of Asia—is the most serious problem between Pakistan and India. We are hopeful that the shackles which have bound the people of Kashmir so long will eventually break. The time is over for violating the spirit of the age, the spirit of freedom and self-determination.
we enaitenge Krishnan to discuss the problem of Kashmir with us in a public debate.
Sincerely.
A. A. Cheema
Rab N. Malik
Ahmad Kamal
Pakistan graduate students
BOOK REVIEWS
ANDORRA, by Max Frisch (Spotlight Dramabook, $1.50); THREE PLAYS, by Jean Giraudoux (Mermaid Dramabook, $1.95); OH DAD, MAMMA'S HUNG YOU IN THE CLOSET AND I'M FEELIN' SO SAD, by Arthur L. Kopit (Spotlight Dramabook, $1.35).
"Oh Dad" is one of those plays of the sixties. Such plays are complex in their simplicity. You sit there (watching, or reading) and it all seems so graspable that you wonder if you must be stupid or something. You talk to other people and find that they didn't quite figure it out, either, but it's all so clever, somehow, and you can't help laughing. Maybe you wrote plays like this yourself, once, but you thought it was a gag. You didn't know that in refined form such plays might be capable of exciting critical comment.
"Andorra" is a mythical country; the play is about a youth named Andri, who is taken wrongly for a Jew, and about how he comes to become almost a Jew in acceptance of how he is different. This version was used in the London premiere of the play.
The Giraudoux plays are "Siegfried," "Amphitryon 38" and "Electra." These go back to the twenties and thirties, "Siegfried" being Giraudoux's first play. It deals with a French writer who suffers amnesia, is picked up by the Germans, is rehabilitated, and becomes a German writer. "Amphitryon 38" is a reworking, and a highly funny one, of the legend of how Amphitryon was cuckolded by Jupiter. And "Electra" is an adaptation from the Greeks, this being the Euripides version of the famous play.
As for "Oh Dad, etc." again—comic, wild, maddening. The play has had a tremendous vogue and did very well last season at KU. But it is not for the taste of all playgoers.
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TRAIL TOWN, by Ernest Haycox (Dell, 40 cents)—There hasn't been a better practitioner of the western tale in recent years than Ernest Haycox, and this is a 1941 Haycox novel available in paperback. We won't burden you with the plot, at least not in detail, but it is possible to leak out the fact that the hero is a town marshal named Dan Mitchell who has a whole lawless town to fight. Gary Cooper, John Wayne. You know.
MILTON, selected and with introduction by William G. Madsen (Laurel Poetry Series, 35 cents)—The latest in a group of volumes that has included Byron, Chaucer, Keats, Shelley, Poe, Whitman, Wordsworth, Dickinson and so on. The editor includes notes and a bibliography; the selections include parts of "Paradise Lost," several sonnets, "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," "Lycidas," and the scene before the prison in Gaza from "Samson Agonistes."