Trumpets Sounding

I was riding a handy, sure-footed grey Arab polo pony. We wheeled and began to gallop . . . Bright flags appeared as if by magic, and I saw arriving from nowhere Emirs on horseback . . . The Dervishes appeared to be ten or twelve deep at the thickest, a great grey mass gleaming with steel. They seemed to be wild with excitement, dancing about on their feet, shaking their spears up and down . . . I found myself surrounded. I fired . . . Three or four men from my troop were missing . . . Trumpets were sounded . . . Two squadrons were dismounted and in a few minutes their fire . . . compelled the Dervishes to retreat . . .

Thus Winston Churchill, a dashing young subaltern in the 21st Lancers, describes the Battle of Omdurman, one of those minor actions which made the British Empire great in the days of Queen Victoria. For 80 years, Egyptian armies had spread fire and confusion among the ancient kingdoms of Kordofan, Darfur and Nubia, immediately south of Egypt, part of a vast area south of the Sahara desert called by the Arabs Bilad-as-Sudan, meaning Country of the Blacks. When the British army occupied Egypt (1882), an attempt was made to bring order also to these vassal states, but for a score of years a local religious leader, the Mahdi, with thousands of fanatical followers called Dervishes, resisted the British. At Omdurman (1898) the 60,000 Mahdist spearmen were whipped. A year later the British made a treaty with Egypt, cutting Egypt in for a half share in the management of the Sudan. For all its name, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (an area one-third the size of the U.S.) was a solid segment of the British Empire.

Self v. Good. It was a turning point in the saga of the empire, which, after a few disputed additions, was to grow only smaller. Already in London young Churchill, on the threshold of a brilliant parliamentary career, was immersed in discussions about colonialism and "the issue of whether peoples have a right to self-government or only to good government." The Sudan got "good" government. For centuries Arab slave traders from the north had raided the Negro villages of the south, sold their captives on eastern markets. The British put down the slave trade. The dancing Dervishes became respectable Sudanese, and the British educated them.

The time came, after World War II, when the educated Sudanese decided to make the shift from "good" to "self" government. Anticipating a bitter struggle, the Sudanese independents sought the support of the Egyptians. They overestimated British resistance to their aims.

A little more than two years ago, without a struggle of any kind, the British agreed to withdraw from the Sudan as soon as an independent provisional government could "Sudanize" the administration and write its own constitution. Last November, 57 years after Sandhurst-trained Winston Churchill charged into the Battle of Omdurman, the regimental band of the Roy al Leicestershires played God Save the Queen and the last British soldier left the Sudan.

Counterrerror. But was the Sudan quite ready for independence? When Moslem Sudanese took over the British-trained Negro defense corps last August, the old hatred between Negro and Arab burst into flame. In Equatoria, southernmost province of the Sudan, the Negro soldiers rebelled, killed their officers and all Arabs they could find. Said a Negro Sudanese: "They talk of independence, but for us independence simply means slavery under the Arabs."

British Governor General Sir Knox Helm (since resigned) ordered the Negro soldiers to surrender to the authorities. Trusting the British, some 700 mutineers gave themselves up, but a campaign of counterterror launched by the northern Sudanese put the rest to flight. Some Negro rebels cast off their uniforms and returned to tribal life; others went on pillaging villages. Thousands of tribesmen fled with their families to the Belgian Congo and Uganda. District commissioners tried captured rebels in drumhead courts, ordered 168 executed by firing squads.

All this made a mockery of the agreement reached in 1953 by the Sudan's stepmothers, Britain and Egypt, providing for a general election soon to decide what form Sudanese independence should take. At that time the question seemed to be whether the Sudanese wanted to be a part of Egypt or fully independent. But now that the British were pulling out, Egyptian propaganda and money, once welcomed by the Sudanese independents, were only an embarrassment. Last week, without asking the permission of either stepmother, the Sudan's Premier Azhari proclaimed the Sudan an independent country. Neither stepmother felt in a position to object, although the Sudan, torn by revolt, is obviously not ready to run itself.

Behind the great flourish of trumpets announcing free determination in the Sudan lay a policy of desperate expedience --proving that independence, even when it is freely extended, is not the easiest of gifts to receive.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.