The Miners' Massacre! There Is No Sovereignty for a State Ruled by Traitors

By Buthaina Terwis: Once again, the (Hope) government in Port Sudan, General Al-Burhan, and the army leadership have failed to condemn the massacre committed by the Egyptian Air Force on Saturday, October 10, against Sudanese miners inside Sudanese territory. Instead of an explicit condemnation identifying the party responsible for the deaths of up to 73 citizens and the injury of about 120 others, a flimsy statement was issued that failed to directly identify the perpetrator and did not reflect the scale of the crime or its danger to the country's sovereignty and the right of its citizens to protection. The statement echoes a previous speech by Al-Burhan to mining victims: "We as a state and a government ask our brothers and our people to abide by the borders, not to go and bring trouble upon their own necks and the state." It is as if these citizens go to mining areas out of adventure or amusement, not in search of a livelihood in a country whose government, by insisting on continuing the war, has failed to provide the basic necessities of life for its citizens. Mining with primitive means—and the accompanying collapse of mines on the heads of workers, dying of thirst in mountains and deserts, and then being subjected to gunfire by Egyptian border guards—is a reflection of an economic and living crisis that has driven people to seek means of survival. More dangerously, the latest attack occurred inside Sudanese territory; even the Egyptian government's confirmation that the Al-Aqidat mine is close to the Egyptian border confirms that this involves a violation of Sudan's sovereignty and an attack on its citizens within their own country, which requires a clear official stance that is not "muddled"! However, the failure of Al-Burhan and the army leadership to take this stance confirms that the calculations of power take precedence over the dignity of the nation. It is evident that the nature of the interests and privileges granted to Egyptian companies regarding Sudanese resources, including gold during the war, is no secret to any perceptive person. Supporters of Al-Burhan and the army have continued to raise the slogan of national sovereignty and justify their support by citing the fear of Sudan's disintegration and foreign interventions. But the miners' massacre puts this rhetoric to the test: what is the value of the sovereignty they speak of if the leadership cannot condemn an attack on its citizens within the country's borders? The concerns about strife between the two "brotherly" peoples and endangering relations also arise, but if the state had actual sovereignty, maintaining relations would not justify silence over crimes. Furthermore, the presence of Sudanese in Egypt should not be turned into a tool to silence the demand to hold those responsible for killing citizens in their homeland accountable! As for the fear of Sudan being torn apart and the loss of its statehood amidst conflicts, it is a legitimate fear, but the question is: what state are we talking about, and whom do its institutions serve? The concept of the state has eroded since its institutions, under the Salvation regime, turned into tools for protecting the organization and its interests through empowerment and the subjugation of state institutions, including the army, which did not hesitate to weaken its own institution by giving birth to militias that grow in number and strength according to the authority's inability to manage the state's affairs. Since then, protecting the nation's sovereignty has no longer been their priority, but rather protecting power and the organization's interests. Therefore, the burden of the state's dismantling and the loss of its prestige rests on the shoulders of the Islamists' government, including the attempted assassination of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1995, which is the most prominent of the crimes for which Sudan still bears the political consequences. Today's crisis cannot be separated from the army's history in managing internal wars against components of the people who demanded equal citizenship, the lifting of marginalization, and the achievement of justice. Nor can one overlook the shame of the General Command massacre in June 2019, when peaceful protesters were subjected to killings, dragging, and rapes, and some were thrown into the Nile while still alive, in grave violations linked to the responsibility of military and security institutions, including the army and the Rapid Support Forces. That massacre revealed that the threat to citizens also comes from the institutions supposed to protect them. Therefore, they cannot be considered immune! Rather, they must be confronted and their falsehood exposed in that they betrayed their oath of loyalty to the people to guard their wealth and blood. The miners' massacre is not an isolated border incident, but reveals a deeper crisis in the concept of state and sovereignty. The state was gradually lost when the army became a party to power struggles, when its institutions turned into tools for protecting the political interests of the Islamists, and when the citizen was required to submit to a narrative of a "Dignity War" for the sake of state sovereignty—a slogan raised for mobilization in war. If the military leadership remains incapable of naming those responsible for the killing of Sudanese, while demanding they sacrifice in the name of dignity and sovereignty, the question will remain: what kind of sovereignty is this that does not protect its own people, and what kind of state are its citizens asked to defend while it fails to defend them?