Bin Zayed’s Adviser Will Not Make the Sun Rise in the West!

Essam Al-Hussein
There are moments when silence is no longer possible, when treating unequal parties equally is no longer justice, and when standing in the middle ceases to be an ethical position. Some decisions may appear, on the surface, to be calls for peace, but which, when measured by their consequences and by those behind them, reveal profound distortions in the balance of justice.
Perhaps the most dangerous challenge facing Sudan today is not merely the war imposed upon it but, among other things, the proposals that the UAE’s secret adviser, Massad Boulos, has carried into the corridors of the Security Council in an effort to broaden—or, rather, revive—Resolution 1591 by imposing a comprehensive ban on arms and aviation in Sudan, including areas controlled by both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the rebel militia.
Boulos’s proposal has placed the international community in an unenviable position: either to preserve its commitment to justice or prepare itself for bargaining and trade—especially if Sudan is to be the price. For Sudan is a country whose living conscience can testify that it is confronting the most terrible acts of betrayal, the latest of which attempted to strike at its very heart by encouraging the Rapid Support Forces militia to seize power and secure the violation of Sudan’s sovereign decision-making, resources and national capabilities, while humiliating its people—something that even the empire on which the sun never sets was unable to achieve.
The shameful aspect of the UAE adviser’s proposal is that it fails to distinguish between the state and those rebelling against it, between the national army and the militia, and between weapons used to defend the state and weapons used to undermine it. Yet, despite the absurdity of his proposal, it found its way into the corridors of the Security Council, where candles were lit for it as though a Mass had been hastily convened and its bells rung in anticipation.
Since silence in the face of such nonsense was no longer possible, the voices of the living conscience stepped forward to block the breach opened by Boulos. From Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others, he received words that I doubt will cause him to repent—but which undoubtedly left him speechless.
It seems the conscience of the world has finally awakened to the danger inherent in the peace the United Arab Emirates seeks through the voice of its adviser, Boulos—a peace built on dismantling the Sudanese state. The call for an arms embargo could become a plan for Sudan’s partition, while “military balance” could become another name for entrenching the rebel militia’s authority.
The world has begun to realise that Sudan needs less peace between an army and a militia than it needs peace that restores the state’s monopoly over arms, rebuilds its institutions, guarantees a political transition determined by the Sudanese themselves, holds criminals accountable, and prevents the recurrence of war.
For a peace that places the state and the militia on equal footing in terms of legitimacy is not sustainable peace. It is merely a truce between the state’s project and the project of non-statehood.
Bin Zayed’s adviser, Boulos, came to the Security Council to weaken the Sudanese state in the name of peace; to equate the aggressor with the defender in the name of neutrality; and to equate the army with the militia in the name of realism. He sought to prevent the state from possessing the means of defence while failing to dry up the known sources of weapons and prevent their flow to the rebel militia.
He came before the international community with the false claim that he wished to end the war, while in reality seeking to redistribute power in a way that would make the war longer, the state weaker and division deeper.
But he was confounded. He could not make the sun rise in the west, even if he claimed the power to give life and death—or, like Pharaoh, declared: “I am your Lord, the Most High.”

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