“What Do We Want from the UAE?”

Mahjoub Fadl Badri
I chose the title of this article to be the reverse of that naïve question—“What does the UAE want from us?”—so that we do not keep repeating the fallacy that goes: “There’s something with four legs and a long tail, it says ‘baa’, and they slaughter it at Eid; the first letter of its name is ‘kharoof’ (sheep)… what is it?” Because that is the height of naïveté and stupidity—if we give people the benefit of the doubt and assume good faith. A question like that has an obvious answer; the “how” is obvious; and the evidence is too abundant to count.
The logical question, in the view of many of our people, is: what do we want from the UAE? After we have given it what no other country has given. From the moment of its birth, Sudan was the first state to recognise the fledgling country. Then we threw the apples of our eyes at it to build it up more than its own people did; and we opened the doors of the Sudanese Military College to its officers from the days when their commander, “Abu Kadouk,” was learning to walk and talk and wear a shirt!!
But the basic, well-established rule in politics is that it is a dirty game—there is no room for emotions or good intentions. It has no permanent friendships and no permanent enmities—only permanent interests. It is from this angle that the title was framed as the question above.
Away from squabbling and reminding the UAE that its three occupied islands deserve more attention than looking at our lands in Al-Fashaga; or that Jebel Ali Port’s operational capacity exceeds all Sudan’s ports combined—we say: what we want from the UAE, first of all, is:
First:
That it abide by international laws governing relations among the world’s countries; that it uphold proclaimed human rights; and that it respect the shared ties between our two countries—language and religion. There are no shared borders between our country and the UAE for us to demand “good-neighbour policy” and non-interference in our internal affairs; so there is no place here, then, for exchanging harm or “mutual harm”!!
Second:
In the field of economic cooperation or investment between the two countries, if the UAE’s rulers desire, aspire, or dream of expansion and diversifying sources of income, this is a legitimate and possible ambition—but not in the manner whose traces have appeared in other Arab countries, such as Yemen and Libya, for example.
We welcome any investor who guarantees our country’s rights and does not violate the dignity of its people—unlike what happened in the Emirati “Amtaar” project in Northern Sudan, where what was forbidden to all Sudanese was permissible for people of every other kind!! It later became clear that the project was nothing more than a شبه-military intelligence base, and that agriculture was merely a cover to conceal suspicious activities!!
As for the lands of Al-Fashaga—towards which the eyes of the greedy among neighbouring states, and behind them the UAE and above it the states of modern colonialism, are fixed—we want clear and fair agreements with the UAE that preserve the rights of the Sudanese citizen and all other parties.
As for ports on the Red Sea coast—this is the UAE’s favourite game—we have a long coastline along the Red Sea with many sites suitable for port development. Our country has no objection to exploiting and managing them well, with due regard to the rights of all littoral states, ensuring safe passage for international trade, and, as a consequence, safeguarding international peace and security.
Third:
That the UAE reciprocate respect for the rules of diplomatic work, so that its ambassadors to our country—who are, in essence, intelligence officers—do not meddle in matters that ambassadors have no right to meddle in. We know where the fine line lies between diplomacy and intelligence activity. It has never been known of Sudan’s ambassadors to the UAE, or to any other state, to behave in the suspicious manner that the UAE’s ambassador in Sudan used to practise. The principle of reciprocity, one of the pillars of relations between states, is not absent from our minds!!
As for the malicious role the UAE is playing in the militia’s war against our country, the entire world has spared us the burden of proving it. Even if the UAE denies it, we want it to cease harming us; to refrain from spending money to bring in weapons and recruit mercenaries from the far ends of the earth to kill our people and loot our resources—resources that have made Dubai the capital of gold looted from Sudan’s land!! And we want it to compensate the victims and rebuild what their war against the Sudanese people has destroyed.
What we want from the UAE is, quite simply: you are welcome—“ten welcomes without a frown”—but without war, without conspiracy, without arrogance or cunning “smartness”. You know the proud, generous Sudanese people—but you have not known the Sudanese person when anger possesses him: fear the forbearing man when he is enraged. And do not hand the reins of our country to “diaspora advisers”!!—those who sold their land and homeland to occupying wolves and now seek to swagger over our country!!
We say this in light of leaks about Sudanese-Emirati negotiations—whether they are true or mere rumours. There is no problem in states negotiating with one another. But no state or army negotiates with a rebellion that rose against it, and no militia rules a state. All recognised laws and settled norms require our people and army to fight the rebel militia until it is annihilated to the last man, or until it lays down its arms, surrenders, and is subjected to military law—or as stipulated in the Jeddah Agreement.
Without these clear, simple, and fair conditions, there will be no negotiations—just as Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Chairman of the Transitional Sovereignty Council and Commander-in-Chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces, has said and continues to say. This is the united position of the masses of the Sudanese people in their entirety, with its declared slogan: “One people, one army.” We are defending the sanctity of our land and the dignity of our people. We challenge no one, and we covet nothing that is not rightfully ours. Truth is more deserving of being followed.
O Allah, show us the truth as truth and grant us to follow it; and show us falsehood as falsehood and grant us to avoid it.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=9790