FAREWEL, DEAR DR KHALIL by Edward Abyei Lino
Edward Abyei Lino
The news that discontinued the flow of the joyous atmosphere of our first Christmas to celebrate after our independence was the unpleasant news about the assassination of Dr Khalil Ibrahim! It was so detestable like putting salt in our tea. Indeed, it was so shocking for it is too early for the man to depart in that most crewel way, at the time in which everything was prepared and moving smoothly to bell that most inhuman cat called al-Bashier. He must have shouted very high and loud, enchanting “Allahu Akbar! Alhamdu lil-Lah” for receiving the news about the savage murder of one of his closest in-laws, Dr Khalil!
The two people the Islamic fundamentalists feared most were Dr John Garang and Dr Khalil Ibrahim, because the Islamists do not fear God in all their dealings. They much dreaded Dr John when he advanced towards Kassala heading to Khartoum. And they feared Dr Khalil when he reached Omdurman and did what he wanted for more than three hours without any confrontation, sending a big guy like Dr Naafe Ali Naafe panicking rushing to airport and Salah Gosh in his civil clothes at the verge of abandoning Khartoum for good, as they shall soon panic the very day Abdel-Aziz Adam al-Hilu and Malik Agaar Ire shall move from different directions to that Islamists infested city, Khartoum. Nothing shall salvage them from their ultimate doom, whether they claim to have assassinated Dr Khalil Ibrahim or choose to celebrate the murder of Daud Bolad and the air crush of Dr John Garang openly or in privacy.
That soothsayer called al-Sawarmi Khalid, a Colonel in that Sudan army, tried his best to concoct a story that Dr Khalil was hit during the battle with their forces at Wadbanda and quoted other skirmishes somewhere around Nuhud on his way to the east, which he forged to be on his way to South Sudan to get organized! The truth is Dr Khalil was bombed with his two bodyguards far away from where Col al-Sawarmi indicated to have been gunned down in the battle. He added South Sudan simply, because they still panic from the days of war when al-Sawarmi was a junior officer with a pip on his shivering shoulders, the way cocks fear kites right from the time they were chicks. From where they reported the war to have taken place in western part of North Kordufan to South Sudan and from there to Khartoum where their enemy abides, are almost the same.
But habitually, they would always add South Sudan to be the cause of their woes beside America, Israel, Western World and Churches like dictated by their inherent Islamic fundamentalist culture of fear!
However, the Sudanese army as we know them have no capability what-so-ever to under-take such a complicated electronic war-fare. What they know is how to spray poisonous gases left-over from the days of Saddam Hussein on our poor civilians; raping, pillaging and burning villages like dictated by ‘jihad’! What the Sudan military spokesman attempted to do was to claim what happened to be of their making, while Israel operates freely these days killing elements of Hamas along Red Sea State. The truth is: Dr Khalil was assassinated somewhere far in the Sahara Desert along Wadi-Hawar, where his Thuraya phone was picked by an advanced high altitude surveillance plane which targeted him with two body-guards near the Libyan-Chadian boarders, without suggesting the involvement of any of the two countries and without negating the probability of having crossed through any one of them.
Of course, of late the Dar-Furi Problem has reached sensitive proportions with the involvement of Libya under an outgoing Moamer al-Ghaddafi and Qatar, involved in the fight against Gaddafi. Given the manner in which Dr Khalil Ibrahim turned his back at Doha Peace Talks, which he refused to sign, leading to the loss of President Debbi’s open support to him and his subsequent stay under close surveillance in Libya under the eyes of Col. Moamer al-Gaddafi, many cooks arose to prepare what could kill him. It was during the civil war in Libya in which the Sudan Military Intelligence and National Security Service did their level best to trap and kill him during the turmoil, but they utterly failed to reach him.
To hunt or trap a seasoned guerrilla leader like Dr Khalil like a fish in the ocean, was not that simple game to be under-taken by a wanted criminal like Omer al-Bashier, a confused simpleton like Col. al-Sawarmi Khalid, a Mongolian nut alike Abdel-Rahim Hussein or a non-intellectual killer like Mohammed Atta. That endeavour entails more intellectual readiness to under-take it. They even claimed to have poisoned Dr Khalil Ibrahim with six of his aides when he was in Tripoli during the war, which came to be the cheapest propaganda ever made by a desperado. Eventually that saga was crowned by Dr Khalil’s most triumphant return to his motherland with a mountain of lethal means like a determined fighting Leader, which shall quieten Khartoum in a few months to come.
Yes, indeed, many of us might have rightly or wrongly differed with the ideological direction which Dr Khalil cherished for long. But for sure, we all stand to admire the man who kept his position very clear specially, when he returned from Doha and Libya. Foremost, Dr Khalil refused to be directed by Arab chauvinism and refused to embrace Islamist pretence as an African man whose marriage was concluded in the court to one of the daughters of a close relative to al-Bashier himself, who stood against the marriage because he considered it to be haram since he, Omer al-Bashier, considers Dr Khalil to be a “slave” like any black African person, in spite of the fact that Dr Khalil was a very devoted Muslim and they were both members of the same Islamic party which took Dr Khalil Ibrahim to fight a ‘jihadist war’ in Southern Sudan.
Dr Khalil stood firm against being taken like an obedient slave, and so are almost all the Dar-Furians.
Before his great march to Khartoum, Dr Khalil declared for the first time that he would firmly abide by what the people want. He promised to stand firm for the liberation of the marginalized people of Sudan. He promised to stand for democracy like desired by every Sudanese person. So he stood until his death for justice and equality of the Sudanese people. After his return from Libya Dr Khalil had no master in Khartoum to whom power should be delivered. He was a free man struggling for peace and freedom. That stand sent a shocking wave to Khartoum, as they saw their doom coming, firmly mounted on many a Landcruiser!
History shall record that the Arab Islamists in the Sudan premeditatedly murdered Sultan Ali Dinar in 1916, Commander Daud Yahya Bolad in 1991 and Dr Khalil Ibrahim in 2011 almost with the same degree of brutality, in order to subdue Dar-Fur! Sultan Ali Dinar was murdered by the British, but the fellow who shot the bullets which killed him was a Sudanese national serving in the colonial army as a sergeant and who happened to be the grandfather of Ali Osman Mohammed Taha. Comrade Bolad was betrayed and offered by a traitor, Ja’far Abdel-Hakam his maternal uncle to Atheyib Mohamed Kheir ‘Siekha’ who murdered him and burnt him as an apostate, as he believes, in order not to let him to be buried in his motherland. And here today comes the news of the assassination of Dr Khalil Ibrahim in the same sad sequence. I strongly believe this should remain a lesson to every son and daughter of Dar-Fur in the leadership of his or her people. It is either one becomes like Kibir to live lavishly beyond your means in the slave market selling your people or live with your people like Dr Khalil or Bolad in the battlefield.
Big shame on every daughter and son of Dar-Fur, if they happened to turn their backs against the words of Comrade Daud Bolad to Dr John Garang in Nzara in 1990; when he was asked by Dr Garang as to why he wanted to join the SPLM-SPLA being a well known Islamic fundamentalist leader. Comrade Yahya Bolad replied him that in the end of the day he discovered that “blood was thicker than religion”! And immediately all what he said was accepted and he was welcomed into the Movement. I appeal to those who are fond of splitting unity of our people in Dar-Fur to stop that nasty game. Time has come for any one of you to keep united to fulfil the will of your martyrs and peace-loving people of Dar-Fur. However, sometimes the fall of such a calamity would bacon us to return to our roots to resolve all the problems.
May the Almighty God bless Dr Khalil and rest his justice and equality seeking soul right in Heaven. I sincerely send my condolences to all his colleagues in the field and hail them to continue the march. My heart-felt sympathies to every member of his small and large families and to those who were dispersed by the police with live bullets wherever his funeral. Dr Khalil Ibrahim led a life of a formidable and determined freedom fighter and so shall his memory live in the annals of history, for the great do not die the way we simply die, unless with the withering of their revolutionary ideas and deeds. Dr Khalil Oyeee!! Dar-Fur Oyeee!! New Sudan Oyeeee!!!
http://www.sudaneseonline.com/english/articles-and-analysis/4761-farewel-dear-dr-khalil-by-edward-abyei-lino.html
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