Circumstances will pass.. Pay it no mind

Without getting upset..

In 2017, the Army Special Forces asked us to produce a documentary about them. Our company “Otrek” -which means: the moon in the Bedouin dialect- is a small, modest company, located on the third floor of the “Talab” Building in Khartoum Bahri.

The mediator shared that the Special Forces Commander personally requested to meet the script writer, and the written information that was provided to us wasn’t sufficient. He sent a car with civilian plates, so I went to him at the Special Forces Camp and Command, north of Omdurman, in the mountains.

The Commander was an officer with the rank of colonel. His name is Issa Al-Talib. He was friendly, polite and precise. After further enlightenment in regards to what should be said and what shouldn’t. What you should know, and what you should write, the director of the training institute, Colonel Al-Fadani, instructed me to accompany him on a tour of the Training Institute, training programs, and so on.

During the tour of the institute and the field, I noticed that all of the trainees were young men from the Rapid Support Forces. So, I asked him “……?”. He replied that this wasn’t their first batch. They come to us (raw), and very stubborn, we follow the approach of (Good is attributed to the individual; evil is projected on the group) with them. When one of them makes a mistake, we punish the entire group… Therefore, when they serve their term, they’d have mastered the “Military”…

Do you see ?

Within the Enlightenment, i was told that the Special Forces made the difference in the battles to liberate
Heglig (Panthou) from the South Sudanese Army, in 2012. Among those who assumed its leadership: Al-Zubair Mohammed Saleh, Bakri Hassan Saleh, and other well-known names. I rode with the driver to take me back to the “Ibrahim Talab” building in Bahri. He was an assistant in the Army. The road is long and we naturally had a conversation. In his revelations, his own enlightenment, to me, he took a piece of paper from the drawer of the car to prove to me that the work of the Special Forces is very hard, and that only men can bear it.

While he was driving, he was asking me to turn over the papers and read them. Of the weapons and units on the lists, there are only (11) soldiers who have registered their names to join the Special Forces. The nature of the arduous and continuous training doesn’t entice soldier to enroll in the Special Forces. Joining is voluntary, in terms of your Military rank. They don’t recruit soldiers off the street. You must be a Military man first, then join it. I asked him, “Why don’t the soldiers usually want to join ?” He answered, “Because it prevents you from practicing any other work, because of its training program, and the soldiers usually take other jobs to improve their livelihood, as the salary isn’t nearly enough for them.”

Do you see ?

We made a first-class documentary. Othman Okasha is an artist photographer, who is suppressed by directors. When he finished filming, he told me when the editing technician comes, before he starts doing anything, let him talk to me. “I will make it easier for you in the montage.” This is because he photographed complete visual sentences, not just snapshots of the various training programs implemented by the director and students of the training institute.

Let’s review it, then…

You like that the Arabs of the diaspora are illiterate in everything. They are neither military nor civil. They came from the “desert”, and they should return to it, so that you can enjoy your quiet and pleasant life. At best: they should go to guard the border. They’re bandits, plunderers, thieves, they inhabited our homes, stole our women’s gold, our cars, raped (when it comes to rape, they don’t usually say raped our women), and they must be wiped from existence.

Well then…

This isn’t what you said. This is what the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and all the great officers said. Whether the cost of annihilating them and erasing them from existence is the death and displacement of thousands of civilians, or it is at a lesser cost, in which the Rapid Support Forces soldiers are killed one by one. The war of dignity will continue, even if we fight for a hundred years, according to what Lt. Gen. Yasser Al-Atta said.

Sarcasm broke out when it was leaked that Rapid Support Forces used drones, for the first time, in the first Armored battles, “They can’t even use a smart phone. You’re telling me, they used drones ?!’” But the reality is -after almost a year and a half- the Army is still suffering through difficult conditions on the ground. During the war, the latter was losing with no wins, except for the battles of old Omdurman. However, the Rapid Support Forces are on the borders of Ad-Damazin, the borders of El-Gedaref, and the River Nile state is no longer one of the “safe states.”

Do you see ?

There is a semi-official phrase of; (The main power of the Rapid Support Forces has been eliminated…and what remains are isolated islands that lack leadership). It is a numbing phrase. It will warm your heart, for sure. But what you aren’t sure of is whether the special training, for the elite and others, that took place at the hands of Army experts as well as foreign experts, were sent to their graves or not. Are they capable of fighting for the next hundred years or not ? Have they developed their capabilities or are they still at the same level ? But news months ago shared that Al-Fadni -the director of the training institute- was lying wounded in Shendi Hospital.

Why do you have to fight for another hundred years ?

Why do you have to fight for one more day ?

To get your car back ? Your wife’s gold ? Your home furniture? Your “dignity”, because you fled in fear, and carried nothing but what was light enough, and you became a refugee or a displaced person ? All of this will not be restored… after the war, nothing will not bring back to you what you once had… that is if you are fighting, and not if you are like me, sitting and reading what I write.

Do you see ?

What restores your life.. What grants you a chance to resume living, or rebuild your life, is peace..

Nothing else.