Badru Mulumb
21 May 2008
Juba — Raga Gibreal Babo still vividly recalls the incident, although he was only six years old. It was May 1983 and a rebellion had just begun in south Sudan. Planes bombed Omdurman, some 20 kilometres from the presidential palace in Khartoum. The country was at war, but the rebels did not have warplanes. To this day, it is not clear who bombed Omdurman or why. But mass arrests followed the bombing.
Then, as now, relations between Sudan and a neighbouring country had deteriorated. At that time its relations with Libya were poor, having started deteriorating in 1976, when the Ummah Party, the Muslim Brothers, and the Democratic Unity Party first attacked Omdurman but failed to capture the national radio station.
"It was a also bloody event. A lot of people were killed in their houses and on the streets," recalls Mr Babo, now 29 and a graduate student in London. "The attack, however, damaged the national TV and the radio stations and Imam [Sadiq] Al-Mahdi house."
Jaafar Al Nimeiri was then president.
Mr Babo says the army's failure to respond to the attack was strange. "To me, it now seems like the same game," he adds.
This month, 25 years later, Darfur's rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), attacked Omdurman.
Mr Hassan Omar, a translator in Khartoum, was on his way to work when the bus driver told them that he would not cross the bridge into Khartoum because danger lay ahead. Mr Omar says he then saw military cars packed with soldiers zooming to Khartoum. "I saw terror in the bus drivers' eyes as the vehicles whizzed past," he says.
Local journalists in Omdurman reported seeing people believed to be JEM combatants talking to the people, telling them that they were not out to hurt them, but simply wanted to oust President Omar al-Bashir.
Later, the rebel group announced that it had inflicted heavy losses on government forces, and that it had taken control of the air base in Wadi Sayidna and destroyed five planes there.
Like in 1983, the government arrested opposition politicians following the attack. Indeed, as the fighting was going on in Khartoum, presidential information adviser Mahgoub Fadol announced the arrest of Popular Congress Party (PC) leader, Ahmad Hassan Al Turabi, and 10 senior members of his party. Mr Turabi remains President Bashir's worst nightmare in the North. The government said the arrests followed interrogation of captured JEM members, adding that the PCP was linked to the attacks.
But unlike in 1983, when Al-Mahdi's house was bombed, Mr Turabi's house was not. Some people see the recent attack as a replay of the 1983 incident.
They see the arrests as an effort to forestall possible rebellion riding on a wave of discontent in the North. This has given rise to the theory that the attack was government-orchestrated to enable it to get rid of its opponents.
Mr Babo explains it thus: Certain cliques within the government encourage attackers to strike and draw world attention before the government fights back and claims victory, then uses the attack as an excuse to take further steps against a neighbouring country - this time Chad- or to arrest troublesome elements, in this case the Darfur rebels.
"I think there are similarities between the 1983 attack and this year's'; this year's event looked like a revenge attack and appears to have been supported by someone within the government. It's just like some game. There are "bloody" cells within the government and they are benefiting from this."
The attack was announced a day in advance. It is surprising how the rebels were able to reach a bridge into Khartoum, 20 kilometres from the western border of Omdurman? "This clearly means that the attackers met no resistance," all the way, Mr Omar.
"I would have expected Sudan's Armed Forces to use its helicopters to intercept JEM before they reached the capital."
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