Freedom for Dirar Ahmed Dirar, Independence for Sudan's Beja / Blemmyes

The leader of the Beja Congress, the national political organization that fights for the Rights of the Great and Noble People of Beja, the Illustrious Blemmyes of the Greco-Roman Historians, has been unjustly arrested and unlawfully imprisoned in Sudan.

This is a Call for Immediate Liberation of the last of many Noble and Heroic Leaders of one of Africa’s most Ancient Nations.

Modern Bejas oppressed in Sudan

Today’s Bejas, acknowledged as the descendents of the Ancient Blemmyes, live in Eastern Sudan between the coast and the inland cities Atbara (on the Eastern bank of the Nile, precisely at the Atbara river’s estuary) and Kessala. The entire Red Sea state of Sudan, comprising the coastal cities, Suakin (the historical Ptolemais Theron – Ancient Egyptian Ptolemaic harbour in the Red Sea) and Port Sudan, is homeland to Bejas, who also live, in smaller numbers in Eritrea, Egypt and Abyssinia. They total approximately 3 million people, including Diaspora in Khartoum, Aswan, Cairo, other Middle Eastern countries and the rest of the world.

One can easily understand how critical the geopolitical location of the Beja – Blemmyan Land is; if the Bejas achieve independence, the rest of the Sudan will become a landlocked country, in the same way Abyssinia (fallaciously named ‘Ethiopia’) has been landlocked following the independence of Eritrea.

Numerous injustices have occurred to the Modern Bejas since the times of British colonial rule; after Sudan's independence the Bejas were kept marginalized and not a single concern has ever been expressed for them by the Khartoum tyrannical governments.

More recently the Bejas established the Beja Congress (http://bejacongress.com) as a major national instance and key tool in their effort to achieve what seems so normal for all the independent nations: national self-determination and independence, development and democracy. And above all, Beja Culture and Language preservation and promotion!

The murderous acts of the Sudanese government and the Port Sudan bloodshed last year demonstrated that the Khartoum Pan-Arabist murderers should not be further allowed to dominate this geopolitically critical area, as they do not respect the basic Human Rights of the indigenous people. It sounds unbelievable, but similarly to the South (excruciated during 50 years of Civil War) and to Darfur (that is still bleeding) Beja Land risks presenting another more appalling record of inhuman acts shamelessly and appallingly perpetrated by the Khartoum thugs of Al Bashir.

The Unholy Alliance Al Bashir – Issaias Afeworki

At a moment Sudan is being decomposed, it seems that the Pan-Arabist gangsters of Khartoum offered an appalling role to the increasingly undemocratic leader of the impoverished and ailing state of Eritrea; president Afeworki’s interference in Eastern Sudan is not geared for the profit of the oppressed Bejas but for the longevity of the Khartoum tyranny.

According to reports published in several newspapers and websites (among others: http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article23575, http://somalinet.com/news/world/East%20Africa/12747, and http://www.jeberti.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1188928056&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&), the leader of Beja Congress, Dirar Ahmed Dirar, was arrested precisely because of his opposition to the growing Eritrean role in the implementation of a peace deal signed in October last year with Khartoum. 

Writing on  September 04, Bonny Apunyu (‘Sudan: Authorities arrest politician for opposing Eritrea role in Sudan peace’ as above) specifies that the National Leader of the Bejas "was detained just one day before the arrival of the Eastern Front leadership from Asmara on August 26".

The appalling reasons of the capture of Dirar Ahmed Dirar are presented as "fear" that the Beja Leader might have orchestrated a protest at the airport denouncing the agreement, the Eastern Front, and "the Eritrean interference in our internal affairs". 

Dirar Ahmed Dirar - the Great Leader of the Beja Nation

In fact, the October 2006 Agreement was a Sudanese – Eritrean governmental alliance against the Bejas, against whom the Asmara sole boss seems to have developed an agenda, as he is constantly portrayed as highly uncomfortable with his country’s minorities. According to the aforementioned sources, Dirar Ahmed Dirar "held several meetings in several towns in eastern Sudan, speaking about the agreement, the Eritrean interference and calling to boycott the meager posts left to the Beja in power sharing".
 
Drawing for a long tradition of indomitable and redoubtable fighters, Dirar Ahmed Dirar has acted more as a Beja hero and less as a political tactician, announcing beforehand the withdrawal of the Beja Congress from the Eastern front, which is a masqueraded effort aiming at the continuation of the Sudanese – Eritrean division of the Beja Land.

Briefly portraying Dirar Ahmed Dirar, the Sudan Tribune noted the following:

"He lives in Port Sudan. He had been detained several times by the security services. After the killing of 22 people in Port Sudan in January 2005 following a protest organized by his party, he was detained for 6 months together with several leaders of the Beja Congress.

The rebel leader is favourable to the Eastern Sudan Peace agreement with Khartoum signed in Asmara last October. However, he was frustrated by the growing Eritrean intervention during the talks and after. Dirar denounced Asmara pressures on the former rebel front to share the obtained positions with tribal leaders allied to the Sudanese ruling party".

Nefarious alliance and appalling practices 

As it comes out, a meticulous analysis of Issaias Afeworki’s deeds drives us to the conclusion that he backed tribal leaders pressurizing them in order not to participate in the struggle for Eastern Sudanese peoples’ rights. For a former leader of a national independence struggle, this is just outrageous. This intrusion of tribalism in Eastern Sudan’s political activities, as he seems to have schemed with Sudanese Dictator Al Bashir to carry out, will lead to divisions, confrontation and even a possible Darfurism among the people of the region.

According to Beja sources, most of the 60 posts allocated to the East Front within the deal had been granted to people who have nothing with the Bejas. "Some have been known for their membership in the ruling National Congress Party, other are security agents." The source added "this situation was the result of a deal between the NCP and Eritrean authorities."

The appalling situation has provoked an absolute rebuttal from the part of the Beja leadership who declared that "the Beja Congress inside Sudan are against this deal, against the continuous Eritrean interference in our affairs. Those in Asmara just obey orders from above."  

Seminal Geopolitical Importance of the Bejas for US African Policy
  
At a moment the paranoid and suicidal US administration spends so uselessly incredible amounts of money in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, it is essential to highlight that a minimal portion of that money would be enough to bring peace in the strategically crucial area of Eastern Sudan where the Blemmyes / Beja have engaged their struggle for Self-Determination and Independence.

US Righteous Support to historically indigenous Beja would bring the Khartoum tyrants at the brink of collapse, and ensure freedom for the Sudanese South, Darfur, Kordofan, Nubia and the Bejas, reshaping the entire area of the Red Sea where historical nations demand international recognition.

This would offer the unreasonably isolated US many unexpected friends, key naval bases in the Red Sea, and several new, free, and viable markets, while closing the door of Africa on China’s ugly and undemocratic face.

Millennia long Voices speak to us of the Blemmyan – Beja Pride

…… Hrmdoye ne qor ene ariteñ lne mdes ne mni-t kene
mk lebne ye re qe-ne q yi-t hl-ne y es bo he-ne q r lebne tro.
S-ne ariteñ net er ek li s-ne d-b li lh ne q r kene qor ene mnpte.

This was heard already before 1670 years at a moment the Blemmyan King Kharamadoye drove his compatriots to a point of national statehood at the northern area of the then ailing Meroitic kingdom in what is today's Sudanese North and Egyptian South. Using Meroitic scripture, the scribes of Kharamadoye immortalized down to our times an inscription on walls of the Mandulis temple at Talmis (modern Kalabsha). The beginning of the inscription reads in a plausible English translation as follows:

Kharamadoye the monarch and chief of the living Ariteñ, the great son and patron of Amani, you (who) revitalizes (man). The lord's voyage of discovery indeed gives the creation of Good. Act (now Amani) he travels to support good. Make a good welfare swell (for) the offering of the Chief, (he) desires indeed the restoration of eminence. The patron of good Ariteñ bows in reverence (before Amani) to evoke exalted nourishment (for) the patrons to leave a grand and exalted legacy to behold good. Oh Amani make indeed (a) revitalization (of) the monarch (and) commander of Great Napata…..(http://www.arkamani.org/arkamani-library/meroitic/Kalabsha.htm)

The temple of Kalabsha was transported 50 km in the north of it its original location, when the UNESCO and an astounding crowd of Egyptologists, archeologists, engineers, multidisciplinary specialists, and technician joined forces in the late 50s, the 60s and the early 70s to save Blemmyan, Nubian, Meroitic and Egyptian temples, fortresses, churches and monuments from the rising waters of the Nubian Lake that was formed behind the then erected Aswan High Dam.

In a way, the transportation of the Blemmyan temple symbolizes the historical movement of the Blemmyes (already known as Blehu in Egyptian Hieroglyphic), who were first noticed at the times of the New Egyptian Empire in the area of the Western desert, but gradually proceeded to the Eastern Desert, and since the middle of the 1st Christian millennium prevailed throughout the plains, the wadis and the mountains of the Eastern desert and along the Red Sea coast.

To Blemmyes has been dedicated a great part of Egyptian Demotic, Coptic, Ancient Greek, Latin and Medieval Greek literature, to that extent the brave people was a concern for various local and international rulers!

Epiphanius of Salamis, writing around 394 when Egypt as Roman province was Christianized to large extent but several Egyptian temples were still functioning, let us know that Talmis (the great Blennyan temple of Maluli) was under Blemmyan control; no much later Claudius Claudianus reported that between Syene (Aswan) and Meroe (today Bagrawiyah, 300 km in the north of Khartoum) the Blemmyes were prevailing. This covers an area of no less 1600 km alongside the Nile, and it was due to the earlier (370) collapse of Meroe following the Axumite / Abyssinian king Ezana's expedition. The Greek text of Ezana's inscription speaks of Bougaeitai, another appellation of the Beja – Blemmyes.

Blemmyes were the good friends of Firmus of Seleucia, as reported in the Historia Augusta, and Olympiodorus makes of the emerald trade the reason of the Blemmyan wealth and international significance. Would you like to go further in depth and study Blemmyomachia, a late Antiquity poetry that incorporated the national name of the Blemmyes into a new Greek word, 'the fight of the Blemmyes'?

The Coptic Life of Moses compares the spears of the evil with those of the Blemmyes, and the Aramaean monk Cosmas Indikopleustes, who traveled as far as Sri Lanka, found space to report about the Blemmyes and the key role they played in the Red Sea trade.

Equally significant are the Blemmyes for the Islamic historiography, and we find many references to them; one century after the arrival of Islamic armies in Alexandria, the Egyptian Muslim (in the north of today's Egypt only) and the Blemmyes (consisting in the most apt and bellicose element of the peoples of Nobatia (in the area of today's southern Egypt) sign a pact. If we only consider how many pacts were signed by Blemmyes / Beja and other peoples and were disrespected by the others….

Our memory travels back to meet the Blemmyan king Phonoin the Righteous and Noble, who expressed complain about his brother Yeni's murder by Noubades, saying:

- I want us to have concord between one another and that we have my cattle with your cattle, pasturing one with another and the sheep.

As we hear this sentence, we feel we listen to the modern Beja leaders demanding their rights in a mild and wise way.

All this makes the Beja feel that the Time of Liberation from the Sudanese Hell is close, and the new Beja democratic leaders will voluntarily echo King Phonoin's noble and peaceful voice; a voice that is badly needed in the Red Sea coasts and in the entire Middle East.

Note:
The temple of Kalabsha, saved and transported nearby the Aswan High dam in Upper Egypt, is full of inscriptions relating to the Ancient History of the Bejas / Blemmyes.