“Margins from the Notebook of Independence”

 

Ahmed Al-Tijani Al-Shayeb

 

“I shall sing for you, my homeland,

as Al-Khalil once sang,

as Mahira sang,

rousing the horsemen,

generation after generation.”

 

There is something like mirr (a thick, yellowish, bitter liquid traditionally used to induce vomiting in malaria or dengue fever) lodged in the throat and stomach of every Sudanese citizen — every true son/daughter of this land. And the reason is that, seventy years after raising the flag of our independence, after the departure of the occupying soldiers, after the resounding chants of the masses at the time — “You have liberated the people, O Ismail; those who were slaves, O Ismail!” — here we stand today, the people of Sudan, confronted with the beginning of yet another attempt to bring back occupation and servitude, albeit through modern tools, methods, and disguises.

We find ourselves reliving that historic moment, with all its psychological tension — the moment when the brilliant commander of the East, Osman Digna, advised the then-head of state, the Khalifa Abdallah Wad Torshin, may God have mercy on them both, to launch a surprise night attack on the invaders rather than await daylight, when the enemy could see clearly and rain down deadly fire upon us. Had the Khalifa accepted that plan from one of his finest military leaders, perhaps our history — and our present reality — would have been very different.

The Necessity of Re-reading History

Revisiting history is not a luxury; it is a national duty and a vital necessity. It is through such re-reading that nations gain awareness, extract lessons, and craft their future trajectories.

One of the key reasons why we fail to properly celebrate our Independence Day — why this mirr continues to churn within us — is our inability to study history as it should be studied. Our school curricula still label foreign invasions as “conquests,” referring to the Turco-Egyptian invasion as the “dual rule,” and now, God forbid, some may even call it a “quadrilateral rule” (after the so-called “Quartet Mechanism”). But the 1821 invasion by the so-called “Turco-Egyptian” forces was neither Turkish nor Egyptian in reality; it merely hid behind those banners.

Egypt at the time had no real sovereignty after the defeat of the Mamluk state and the dismantling of its national army and institutions by global Freemasonry and its representative, Muhammad Ali Pasha — an Albanian by origin — and his descendants. Turkey, for its part, accepted only nominal sovereignty after losing to Muhammad Ali in the Levant.

Muhammad Ali and his sons administered Sudan through European officials such as Gordon, Gessi, and Slatin, granting them the title of Pasha, and opened the doors wide to spies disguised as travellers and traders. From Khartoum sailed the three expeditions of Selim Qubudan (1839–1841) that pushed into Gondokoro and paved the way for European adventurers such as Prandolini and members of the Catholic Mission in Central Africa.

Colonel Camille, the British Consul in Egypt, even praised Muhammad Ali for “planting the seeds of civilisation” in Sudan — a revealing view of the colonial mindset.

Muhammad Ali and his sons succeeded in achieving the core objectives of global Freemasonry in occupying Sudan: extracting gold from the mountains of Beni Shangoul and elsewhere; recruiting the strong men of Sudan into their army for future Masonic wars; securing the Nile sources — an early premonition of future water wars; and pursuing the remnants of the Mamluks, whose values and traditions posed a threat to imperial ambitions.

A Repeating Pattern of Invasion

These same objectives underpinned the reoccupation of Sudan in the early twentieth century (1899–1916), and yet again emerge in the quarter-century we now inhabit with the war of 15 April 2023.

The methods differ — as the evolution from first-generation conventional wars to modern fourth- and fifth-generation “smart wars” demonstrates — but the goals remain unchanged.

Lord Kitchener, commander of the invading army in 1898, made this revealing statement:

“Unless the Church unites its efforts in Africa, the Mohammedan Arabs will advance from bases which will enable them to repel all civilised [i.e., European] influence towards the coast, and the country will fall into wrongful rule.”

This, clearly, was a blueprint for engineering Sudan’s future — to prevent, as he put it, “Mohammedans” from blocking Western influence and establishing independent national rule, deemed “wrongful” by the coloniser. The same logic underpins today’s appetite for domination: competition for food, energy, rare minerals, strategic geography, and, importantly, ideological supremacy, including the long-standing Zionist vision of a “Greater Israel” extending from the Euphrates to the Nile — a project which global Zionism sees as closer than ever to realisation.

Understanding Today’s “Quadrilateral Invasion”

From this historical perspective, the objectives of today’s “quadrilateral” intervention (referencing the so-called Quartet states) become clearer. The ongoing war against the Sudanese state since 15 April 2023 is a war of occupation in new clothing.

It differs from previous invasions only in technique — a shift from traditional warfare to the hybrid “Smart Power” approach described by Joseph Nye, blending hard and soft power. This approach was further detailed by former CIA Director George Tenet in his book At the Centre of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (576 pages, published 30 April 2007), where he outlines the tools, methods, and operational frameworks of modern geopolitical conflict.

Conclusion

The mirr that fills our mouths and stomachs today is not merely the bitterness of loss, but the sting of historical repetition. Independence is not a flag raised once; it is a project that must be defended continuously against invasions — old and new, direct and indirect, visible and disguised.

If we are to truly celebrate our independence, we must first recognise the nature of the threats we face, the continuity of the ambitions directed at our land, and the necessity of reading our history with clarity, courage, and purpose.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=9654