Sudan: The Shepherds War Before the War
Yousef Hamad
"I have returned, my lords." Not like the omniscient narrators return in the "Season of Migration to the North." I returned after decades of absence within the country, to the neglect within a forgotten rural area. We forgot it, we intellectuals and official authorities, and it, in turn, intensified our forgetfulness. "I have returned, my lords," from the capital to the village with contrasting emotions, more intense than the feelings of the proud protagonist of the "Season," proud of his absence and joyful for his return to Wad Hamed.
I returned with emotions resembling artificial hypnosis, as if one swallows, all at once, the content of a whole box of sleeping pills. It is sleep, seemingly, but not warm or pleasant, haunted by nightmares of every color. My return to the first preserve was painful and rough. I returned to the neglected, transformed place, crowded with strangeness and blurred memories.
On that day, for no objectively justifiable reasons, war broke out, and fires erupted from the rifles of the army and the Rapid Support Forces. The air of Khartoum filled with the sounds of bullets, and the smoke covered the sky of the giant city. People were startled, and we emerged from that rubble miraculously, having narrowly escaped death. We gained the continuation of life while thousands lost it, much to our regret.
"I have returned, my lords," to our village in the midst of the vast agricultural Jazeera project. I did not find life in it as I used to know it. The flock of sheep my father raised disappeared, a significant loss he endured with hardship. Our cows vanished, and our white donkey died. In place of the old stable, a room made of cracked mud stood, unoccupied for years.
Last May, the "Danat" (Libya Market), the most famous markets for selling livestock in Khartoum, was hit, and the carcasses of camels scattered. To this day, no one inquires about the hundreds of shepherds or their herds that used to occupy the streets of Khartoum. Perhaps many of them perished. In any case, neither the Shepherds Union nor any similar organization issued a statement about the Libya Market incident, considering it a trivial part of the meaningless and senseless war losses.
This silence regarding the shepherds was the norm for their issues. My father lost his herd in a fierce war preceding the current one by years, losing thousands of uncounted sheep and goats. They lost a way of life that started with the udder, wool, and skins of those livestock. Yet, no one heard about them.
Centuries ago, our villages were built in this place, relying on herding and rain-fed agriculture. In the 1930s and the following decades, those villages became part of the Jazeera Agricultural Project, which extends to provide both the plant-based and animal-based engineering lifestyles. Currently, the Jazeera project is one of the largest irrigated agricultural projects in Africa, covering an area of about 2.2 million acres of arable land.
In addition to crops, our village cattle, like other villages, played a vital role in the agricultural cycle of this project. They were allocated areas for pasture and movement within the cultivated area, representing an integral unit with agriculture and peoples lives, each reminding the others.
"I have returned, my lords," but this economic tradition is no longer what my eyes see. It has disappeared or suffered confusion, as official interest in animal wealth has significantly diminished, at least in the aftermath of the Authorized Project Law two decades ago. The project shifted to depend on continuous cash crops throughout the year, such as wheat, cotton, and peanuts. There was no longer a place for the traditional grazing that we knew in our childhood.
For many years, the agricultural cycle left spaces within the fields where grass would grow, nourished by livestock. Crop rotations also included cycles for animal feed. In reality, the project began in 1925 with a three-year crop rotation, focusing on corn, cotton, and beans. The latter was dedicated to animal feed. This continued until 1982, when it shifted to a four-year rotation and later to a five-year rotation in 1992, until the Project Law was amended in 2005. This amendment introduced changes to the projects administrative system, leading to a decline in management and the disappearance of controls.
Gradually, things changed, and people entered a silent social war. Agriculture prevailed for a while, then quickly collapsed. In the face of this, life diminished in the villages, and the villages themselves became warehouses for day laborers and wandering sellers seeking simple livelihoods in nearby and distant cities—sometimes beyond the borders of the country.
