Identity and Citizenship

Zuhair Osman Hamad: Land transcends the boundaries of geography. In the history of Sudan, land has never been merely a space for living and production, nor have borders been simply lines separating human groups or administrative units. Throughout successive historical stages, land has been linked to sources of political legitimacy, collective memory, religious authority, resource utilization rights, and belonging to the community and the state. However, this relationship did not take a single form throughout Sudanese history. Perceptions of land and authority varied between historical kingdoms and sultanates, the Mahdist State, colonial administration, and the national state after independence. In each phase, the political sphere was redefined according to the balance of power, economic patterns, sources of legitimacy, and relations between the center and the regions. Hence, understanding the crisis of land and identity in Sudan does not begin with the assumption that religion was the sole cause of conflicts, but rather by studying how the sacred intersected with power, and how certain religious and historical perceptions were transformed, under specific circumstances, into tools to justify control or rearrange belonging and rights. The central question, therefore, is not whether land has religious or cultural value, but how this value is transformed into political power, who has the right to define belonging to it, and what happens when a group's narrative about its land conflicts with the rights of others to equal citizenship. First: Historical Sudanese Kingdoms and Multiple Sources of Legitimacy. The Sudanese kingdoms preceding the modern state offer an important entry point for understanding the relationship between religion, power, and the geographical sphere. The regions of Sudan experienced diverse political experiments, from the Christian Nubian kingdoms to the Funj Sultanate in Sennar, the Sultanate of Darfur, and the Mahdist State in the nineteenth century. These entities were not identical in the nature of their governance, their relationship to religion, or the organization of the territory over which they exercised power. Religious legitimacy intersected with lineage, local alliances, trade, and control over movement routes and resources, and forms of administration varied according to historical circumstances. In the Funj Sultanate, for example, political power was linked to local traditions, Islam, and networks of scholars and trade. In the Darfur Sultanate, Islamic legitimacy interacted with sultanic governance patterns, social relations, and local administration. As for the Mahdist State, it was based on a religious call with a political and military project that sought to reshape power in Sudan. These experiences reveal that religion was not merely an individual belief separate from politics; in specific contexts, it contributed to establishing legitimacy, regulating relations between the ruler and the ruled, and mobilizing groups and defining the nature of conflict. However, this does not mean that land was always managed according to a unified religious concept, or that political and social boundaries were a direct extension of a jurisprudential division between the Dar al-Islam (House of Islam) and the Dar al-Harb (House of War). The political sphere in those eras was also shaped through local loyalties, trade routes, tribal alliances, taxes, control over resources, and the ability to protect or subjugate populations. It is important here to avoid projecting the concept of modern territorial sovereignty onto those experiences; the boundaries of kingdoms and sultanates were not always fixed lines in the contemporary sense, but rather overlapping areas of influence, dependency, and land utilization. The first historical lesson is that the intersection of religion and power is a variable phenomenon, and there is no single rule that explains all Sudanese experiences. Second: The Mahdist State, Colonialism, and the Reshaping of the Political Sphere. The Mahdist State represented a significant milestone in Sudanese history; it combined a religious call with a project to establish a new political authority, and reorganized loyalties and centers of power in the context of the revolution against Turco-Egyptian rule. However, understanding the Mahdist experience requires looking at its historical context, including its struggle for governance and resources, military mobilization, and shifts in the center-periphery relationship. It is not sufficient to interpret it solely as a religious project, just as it is incorrect to separate its religious legitimacy from the nature of the state it sought to establish. Then came colonial rule, which redrew the political and administrative landscape according to its own security and economic interests, working to develop systems of local governance and native administration, with varying applications across regions and periods. The borders formed under colonial rule were not just lines on maps; they were linked to tax collection, administration, resources, defining the jurisdiction of local authorities, and controlling movement and populations. Just as the policies of indirect rule and disparities in services and political representation affected the development of the relationship between the center and the regions, in some areas, colonial administration helped entrench local identities or rearrange traditional authorities, while other policies led to deepening regional disparities. However, the effects of these policies were not uniform across all of Sudan, and all subsequent conflicts cannot be attributed solely to them. The national state after independence inherited institutions, borders, and administrative arrangements formed during the colonial era, but it did not inherit them as a complete and neutral system; rather, it faced a difficult question about how to transform this diverse sphere into a state based on equal citizenship. The problem was that political independence did not automatically lead to the redistribution of power and wealth, or to the building of a stable national consensus on the nature of the state, its identity, and its relationship with its various regions. Third: The Post-Independence State and the Crisis of Defining the Homeland. After independence in 1956, Sudan faced a challenge that exceeded the establishment of constitutional institutions: How to build a national state within a society with diverse cultures, religions, languages, and ways of life, and in light of historical disparities between the center and the regions? The crisis was not just a disagreement over Arab or African identity, or the relationship between religion and state, but was also linked to the distribution of political power and public resources, the nature of governance, and the extent to which national institutions could accommodate social and regional diversity. The long war in Southern Sudan, and then wars in other regions, revealed the complexities of this issue. At different stages, demands for autonomy, political representation, development, and local rights overlapped with identity conflicts and religious and nationalist discourses. In this context, religious discourse was not always an independent cause of conflict, but at some stages, it became a means to interpret it, mobilize its parties, and lend it moral legitimacy. When political and military conflict was portrayed as a confrontation between a group that possesses religious truth and another that falls outside it, the space for political settlement shrank, and disagreement became susceptible to being transformed into an accusation of heresy or lack of national loyalty. Here, one of the fundamental dilemmas of the Sudanese state emerged: that national belonging, instead of being based exclusively on citizenship and constitutional rights, remained in some political discourses conditional on perceptions of the "correct" cultural or religious identity, or on the supposed relationship with the historical center of the state. Nevertheless, reducing this dilemma to religion alone ignores the impact of authoritarianism, economic disparity, weak institutions, competition for resources, and accumulated regional grievances. Fourth: The Salvation Regime and the Utilization of Religion in Redefining the State. With the Salvation regime coming to power in 1989, the relationship between religion and state entered a new phase, characterized by an effort to reshape institutions, laws, and the public sphere according to an Islamic political project. This project intersected with the war in Southern Sudan, and with conflicts in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains, and other regions, within contexts where the immediate causes and the demands of the parties differed. In some cases, religious discourse was used to justify war, mobilize fighters, or categorize opponents, which weakened the ability to deal with conflicts as political and human rights issues subject to negotiation. However, the impact of this discourse cannot be understood separately from the nature of authoritarian rule, the centralization of decision-making, the use of force, the disparity in development, and networks of economic and political interests. Furthermore, redefining national identity according to narrow ideological perceptions contributed to deepening the fears of groups that saw the state as not representing them equally, or that their cultures and local rights were treated as less authentic or less deserving of recognition. Here, the distinction becomes necessary between religion as a social and cultural belief, and the use of political power to define who fully belongs to the homeland, and who is treated as a subject of suspicion or exception. The problem is not in the existence of religiosity within Sudanese society, nor in the right of citizens to express their beliefs, but in transforming a specific religious or ideological identity into a standard higher than citizenship, or into a basis for justifying exclusion and violence. Fifth: Land in Darfur and Marginalized Areas Between Rights, Memory, and Conflict. The land crisis appears in a highly complex form in Darfur and other regions of Sudan. Land there is not just a symbol of identity; it is a space for living, production, grazing, and agriculture, a system for local rights, possession, and utilization, and a vessel for memory and social relations. Land tenure and management systems were formed through a historical interaction between local customs, traditional authorities, official laws, colonial interventions, and national state policies. This overlap produced disparities and contradictions in some areas regarding land ownership and the right to use it, the limits of local administrative powers, and the rights of residents to resources. With increasing pressures on land, water, and pastures, and their overlap with displacement, demographic changes, and political and military competition, some local disputes became more susceptible to turning into wider conflicts. It is not correct to interpret these disputes as purely religious conflicts, nor is it correct to separate them from the discourses that grant one group exclusive right to land or strip another group of its right to belong to it. In the face of exclusion, demands emerged for the recognition of historical and local rights, for protecting land from confiscation, for guaranteeing the return of the displaced, and for settling disputes according to fair rules. However, recognizing these demands does not mean assuming that all local groups agree on a single definition of ownership, history, or priority. Historical rights may overlap with acquired residency and usage rights, and conflicting demands may arise between herders and farmers, or between local residents, the displaced, and returnees. Thus, justice is not achieved merely by replacing one collective narrative with another, but by building clear and fair rules to settle conflicting rights and protect civilians. Land is not spoils for whoever holds power, nor an eternal privilege for a group due to its identity, but a sphere of rights and duties that should be regulated by a fair law that ensures no exclusion. Sixth: The Current War and the Disintegration of the Relationship Between Land and Power. The current war in Sudan reveals the danger of the continued conflation of military control and political legitimacy, and between owning land and owning the right to rule its inhabitants. When cities, villages, roads, and production resources turn into sites for military and economic control, the population becomes vulnerable to displacement, loss of property, and the severance of livelihoods. Local rights to land may be subjected to further disruption, especially when control over areas changes without civil institutions capable of protecting the population and settling disputes. The danger is not limited to what happens during the fighting, but extends to what comes after—who returns to their home? Who recovers their land? How are properties and customary and legal rights protected? And who has the authority to adjudicate disputes resulting from displacement and changing control? These questions make the issue of land a part of the project of peace, transitional justice, and reconstruction, not just an administrative file postponed until after the war ends. Furthermore, discourses that employ religion, race, or history to justify the seizure of land or the stripping of the rights of opponents may make settlements more difficult, because they turn negotiable interests into existential demands that do not accept review. Hence, stopping the war is not enough on its own to guarantee a sustainable peace unless accompanied by mechanisms to protect properties, settle disputes, ensure the safe and voluntary return of the displaced, hold those responsible for violations accountable, and rebuild civil institutions. From owning land to ensuring rights: Sudanese history does not offer a single model for the relationship between religion, land, and power; rather, it reveals multiple experiences in which religious legitimacy intersected with governance, social alliances, and resources, and then the colonial and national state reshaped the political and administrative landscape in ways that left lasting impacts to this day. Therefore, overcoming the crisis of identity and borders is not achieved by abolishing the religious and cultural meanings of land, nor by denying the historical memory of Sudanese groups, but by preventing the transformation of these meanings into political or legal privileges at the expense of others. A civil state is not a state hostile to religion, but a state that does not make religious, ethnic, or cultural belonging a condition for the completeness of citizenship. It does not deny historical and local rights, but works to regulate them with fair rules that balance the protection of those rights and prevent their use to exclude other groups. Rebuilding the Sudanese social contract requires separating the sanctity of belief and the monopoly of power, the historical connection to the land and the exclusive right to it, and military control and legal legitimacy. The question that Sudanese elites must face today is not only: who has the right to define Sudan? But also: who has the right to define the land, who decides the rights of its inhabitants, and by what rules can these rights be protected when historical narratives, economic interests, and local identities conflict? The answer does not lie in imposing one identity on the country, but in building a state that recognizes its diversity, guarantees equality before the law, and makes land a basis for coexistence, not a justification for exclusion and conflict. Sudan will not stabilize by merely agreeing on the map of its borders, but when every Sudanese, regardless of their identity or region, becomes an equal partner in the homeland, its rights, its resources, and its future.