REPORTS

HOW THE NIF RULE UNDERDEVELOPED THE ARMED FORCES

The Sudanese Human Rights Quarterly, Issue No. 3, April 1996

In November 1992, the Legitimate Command of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAFs) participated with a detailed study in a workshop held at Cairo on the situation of human rights in Sudan under auspices of the Sudan Human Rights Organization, the Arab Lawyers Union, and the Fund for Peace.

Brigadier-General Abdelrahman Saeed, who is now Leader of the Legitimate Command, presented "Policy of the NIF Regime towards the Army and Other Disciplinary Forces." The LC paper explained the impact of fundamentalism on the military and the use of Jihad in waging war against the Southerner rebels.

The Sudanese military has been persecuted by the current NIF-backed regime that basically suspected their loyalty and systematically replaced them with NIF supporters. The regime used the military to destabilize the country by deepening the civil war with ethnic and regional conflicts under the banner of Jihad. Hence, the military suffered the repercussions of being de facto ruling apparatus of the State on the one hand while a victim of the State Jihad war in the other.

Because the NIF did not have the necessary number of qualified military personnel to man SAFs as a large national institution, a replacement program was gradually implemented to allow NIF-loyalists to control SAFs command. For that purpose, the dismissals of the non-loyalists soldiers and officers or their transference from regular units never stopped since the first day of the June coup (1989).

Thousands of SAFs rank-and-file have been expelled from their positions in the service, and a significant number of the commanding officers, including General Saeed, were arbitrarily arrested and savagely tortured. A small number of the high ranking officers who have been associated with past democratic movements to improve the conditions of the armed forces were subsequently executed by the June leaders as in the Ramadan Rectification Movement (April 1990).

The NIF selectively appointed its own cadres in the most strategic military positions in addition to the police, prisons, and state security agencies. Earlier, the NIF managed to train some of its elements in Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iran, for example Dr. Nafi' Ali who, a former professor of agriculture at the University of Khartoum, was appointed director of the June State Security immediately after the coup.

The regime revised the prevailing laws and regulations of SAFs, the police and the prisons' acts and amended them to favor the fundamentalist policies and practices of the NIF rule. These amendments entailed a wide range of gross human rights violations, especially the fundamental rights of life, work, liberty and security of person. They also included violations against the right to education, free participation in the cultural life of the community and freedom of peaceful assembly and association. The regime's human rights violations were extended to the non-recognition of equality before the law without any discrimination, including the right to effective remedy by competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights.

The gross human rights violations of the NIF regime included the non- protection from slavery or servitude, arbitrary arrest, and unlawful detention or exile. The regime enacted and enforced laws that violated the entitlement of citizens, civilian or military, for a fair and public hearing before an independent and impartial tribunal. The violations ignored the just principles of presumption of innocence until proven guilty for accused or suspects and the protection of citizens against interference with privacy, family, home or correspondence or attacks upon honor and reputation, in addition to the protection of the moral and material interests of citizens. The military personnel of the Sudanese Armed Forces equally suffered these violations as civilians did.

The NIF replacement program of SAFs regulars with NIF supporters included the establishment of a Popular Defense Force (PDF) to act as a paramilitary organization parallel to the armed forces. The real function of the PDFs was to protect the NIF rule from the opposition, regardless of the regime's assurance that PDF would only be used to help executing SAFs' national duties.

The enforcement of all these policies and practices led to a ruination of the military institution of the Sudan and the defamation of SAFS good reputation as a professional regular force of the country. These policies created a general frustration of the national role of the army to preserve peace and security of the country. In addition to a huge loss of a great many qualified staff of the Sudanese military by dismissal and other irresponsible acts by the June military leadership, the SAFs hierarchical relations were systematically abandoned. This chaos, in turn, brought about many acts of prosecution upon the technical structure of SAFs by the NIF inexperienced personnel. The consequences reflected negatively on the relations between the SAFs, the other disciplinary forces, and the civilian public at large.

SAFs' paper documented many crimes committed by the military leaders of the NIF regime against the officers and the other regulars of the national army.

In March 1990, Lieutenant-General Mohamed Hamid, 24 officers, and 42 NCOs were summarily tried before a military tribunal. Although the sentences of death inflicted by the tribunals on them were commuted to lie imprisonment, a large number of army officers were expelled from their positions as they were suspected of collaboration with Genral Hamid.

The most brutal massacre was made by NIF high military command on Brigadier-General Khalkid Elzain with 27 other army officers and an unknown number of NCOs in the holy month of Ramadan (APOril 26, 1990).

In November 1990, Lieutenant-General Albino Acol was brutally tortured and more than 15 NCOs were extra-judicially killed,

In August 1991, 12 officers were killed and Lieutenant-General Hulaifi accompanied with 52 other army officers were brutally tortured and arbitrarily imprisoned.

Colonel Nasrt Hassan Bashir Nasr and his brother were arrested and tortured. All these arrests and trials did not comply with SAFs military law.

The NIF regime continued to dismiss army and police officers throughout 1995-1996. For example, in February 1995, 57 brigadiers, 26 colonels, 15 majors, 35 captains, and 20lieeutenants were unlawfully dismissed from SAFs. In February 1996, tens of the high-ranking police officers were expelled for political reasons. The Western Regiment rebelled due to low living conditions, delay of salaries for more than 6 months, frustration of the troops of the long-standing civil war, and the savage killings of many indigenous citizens who were opposed to the NIF terrorist rule. The case of Brigadier Mohamed Ahmed Elrayah illustrates the grievous tortures to which members of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAFs) have been subjected.