From the monthly archives:

April 2011

Five Years

by Drima on April 14, 2011

That’s how old The Sudanese Thinker became today. There’s a lot I could say and that I want to say, but a mere blog post will never be enough. It will never fully convey, not even close, how drastically different my life would be right now if I never started this blog.

Oh you have no idea. Only a book can tell the story, the same book I began working on two years ago, and which is still a work in progress that I cannot wait to reveal and share with everyone.

But before that happens, something else will in the coming month.

Hint: It’s related to the book and my Masters research.

Stay tuned.

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Sudan’s Two Failed Uprisings: My Interview with the Sudanese-Born and DC-based American Political Analyst, Musa A. Murawih

by Drima on April 1, 2011

Many people are not aware that Sudan had two popular uprisings. Yes, that’s right, two damn uprisings but unfortunately both ultimately failed to bring democracy to Sudan.

However, even though they failed to democratize the nation, today their specter hangs over the regime in Khartoum.

Of all the ageing dictators in north Africa and the Middle East, Mr Bashir certainly knows the most about the potent threats of people power and popular uprisings—he has lived through two of them in Sudan. The first took place in 1964: the so-called “October revolution” ousted newly independent Sudan’s first military dictator, General Aboub. The second occurred in 1985 and toppled another military dictator, Jafar Numeiri, who had come to power in a coup in 1969. It is this uprising that will be preying on Mr Bashir’s mind today.

Indeed, and there’s been a lot of talk about this amongst us Sudanese.

Can we have a third uprising? Especially right now in this regional political climate? Given what we’ve seen in Tunisia and Egypt, I’d never rule out the possibility, but given the psychological state of the Sudanese people, I’m also cautious in my expectations.

But that’s not the important part. The key issue is, if indeed we can have a third popular uprising, what can we do differently this time so that we don’t end up repeating the mistakes of the past? And on a related note, what can Egyptian and Tunisian revolutionaries learn from the mistakes Sudan’s revolutionaries made?

To help answer these questions, I interviewed the Sudanese-born American political analyst, Musa A. Murawih, who is based in Washington DC. In his own words, he is “a formerly active, democracy activist,” and is pretty knowledgeable about Sudanese politics.

More importantly, unlike me, he lived through the 1985 popular revolution so I thought it might be nice if he shared a thing or two, and gave us his brief analysis of the recent changes in the Arab world and the possibility of democratic change occurring in Sudan.

Here’s part 1 of the interview.

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I’ll post up the remaining portions of the interview soon.

Meanwhile, leave your response in the comments section. What do you think? Do you agree with Musa’s assessment or not, and why?

Beace my beebull.

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