Sudan

It is an interesting fact that some of the very criticisms leveled against the Condominium educational policy have become the criticisms of the modern Sudanese educational policy. Namely, education has been subordinated to the interests of the Khartoum regime whether to conscript youths for service in the southern jihad or to Islamize refugee children in the so-called "peace" camps. Rather than addressing the real needs of the entire populace, Khartoum has engaged in a protracted civil war against its citizens in the South while maintaining a posture of compromise. And this pseudowillingness to hold out the olive branch has meant that educational endeavor in the South has come to a standstill.

In other regions of the country, education has suffered from the diversion of funds to the war effort and the exodus of qualified teachers. The meager enrollment of school-age children testifies to the failures of the Sudanese government in meeting the educational needs of large sectors of the Sudanese populace. Such troubling issues prompt many questions. How will the alienation of southerners be dealt with in future educational policy planning? Will the accommodative ideals expressed in the constitution be upheld to allow a limited degree of autonomy and freedom from coercion?

What is clear though is that the Khartoum regime has the upper hand in the civil war. It is very likely to win the war, especially with the money earned from the oil pipeline and refinery exports. How to rebuild after the war and assimilate the displaced persons and populations of the South in forging a national unity will be a responsibility involving future educators. A difficult task indeed will be the rebuilding of an intact system of governance and social service after so many years of fratricidal war and bloodshed. The "lost brother" may be brought back from the "evil" influence of the West to the fold of Islam. But how many of the displaced Sudanese will survive this process? Will those who do survive merely bide their time, regrouping for a number of years, until they are ready again to assert their southern identity in resisting Khartoum?

The poisoned relations with the South, a poisoned image in the worldwide community, and a poisoned record of human rights violations have no antidote but the diluting passage of time. From Sudan's experience with political Islam, religion poisoned by political ambitions, or vice versa, will continue to be seen by many—and not just in the West—as yet another failure of a system that combines and intertwines religion with politics to the detriment of social services and provision of basic educational foundations to citizens. The Bashir regime has given ample proof that it is a "repressive system that survives by force." The 1990s for Sudan were years that gave "credence to the thesis that any government based on religious fundamentalism and intent on propagating its religious beliefs will by its nature be tyrannical, intolerant of dissent, and prepared to use any means, including violence against its own people, to maintain itself in power" (Peterson 1999).

If only educational objectives had been formulated to comprise solutions other than violent homogenization and cultural extermination. If only tolerance had prevailed. If only there had been a genuine willingness to compromise on all sides in light of the multicultural, multireligious, multi-lingual heritage of the Sudan. The poisoning of the education process is perhaps one of the saddest results of the Sudan's ongoing civil war. When there is little or no education for the children, educators have little hope of reversing the historical cycles of factionalization, violence, and bloodshed in the name of politicized Islamist religiosity.