During this holy month of Ramadan, I attended an iftar (daily breaking of the fast) and fundraiser held March 15 at the West Philadelphia-based Sudanese American Community Center.
The funds raised at the iftar will go to Sudan-based “ground organizations who are providing food, shelter, medical supplies and medical help,” for the displaced, mostly women and children, said Tibian el-Sharief, a member of Philly For Sudan, one of two organizations sponsoring the event. The money was collected from ticket sales, donations and an auction.
Ms. Sharief is the daughter of Sudanese-born parents. She is a social worker and a nursing student. Her organization consists of youth activists and was founded to promote the liberation of Sudan, raise awareness about the proxy war happening in Sudan, and also
“create or build active Sudanese communities in the United States.” She explained Philly For Sudan is also involved in creative ways of “supporting the efforts of Sudanese youth and organizations on the ground in Sudan.”
Tahya Eldreny is chief operating officer and co-founder of the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-based, all-volunteer LLAH Organization, and a co-sponsor of the iftar. “We came here to hold our very first event in Philadelphia, to help fundraise for Sudan. We have organized this event in collaboration with Philly For Sudan.”
Ms. Eldreny, was born in Egypt and came to America when she was 11. Members of her organization are very diverse, she explained. “We have members from Sudan, Egypt, Palestine and Lebanon. We also have members from Tunisia, Morocco and Nigeria. So, it’s a very diverse organization.”
Concerning Sudan, Ms. Eldreny said, “It’s a country that has been abused by a lot of foreign powers and also by neighboring countries, which is very unfortunate.”
She added, “The problem when it comes to Sudan, along with other African countries, people just think we were made for this. People don’t pay attention to African causes. They think that we have always been poor, we have always been struggling, which is very untrue.”
“How come we (appear to have always) been violent when we were only introduced to a gun when we were colonized? So, when it comes to African issues, it’s very unfortunate that when we are advocating about our causes, we have to humanize our own experience as Africans and tell them that what we’re going through is not normal, and it’s not okay, just because we’re African,” said Ms. Eldreny.
“Our African history was never about violence, was never about corruption, was never about hatred. We were quite the opposite. We are a people that lived very peacefully and who existed in such a beautiful way with simple rules of humanity,” she continued.
Ms. Eldreny notes the downward spiraling of Africa as a civilization came “when others (mainly Europeans and Americans) learned that we had (natural and mineral) resources that we did not abuse. So, they came to abuse it. And this is what brings us back to Sudan,” she said.
Sudan is a country that was colonized for so many years and was the victim of corruption in government, Ms. Eldreny explained. That corruption “still serves the colonizers who left just a few years ago,” she added.
As Sudan’s civil war approaches two years on April 15, the spiraling out-of-control war-torn country appears to be hurling toward a complex and divisive abyss. “The next phase of developments in Sudan.
Africa’s third largest country by area bordering seven countries and the strategic Red Sea, may have far-reaching consequences for the politically fragile Horn of Africa,” penned Mahesh Sachdev, the president of Eco-Diplomacy & Strategies, a consult and advisory firm in Delhi, India.
In the former ambassador’s opinion piece, on ndtv.com titled, “Sudan Is Staring At A Second Partition, Thanks To Two Warlords,” he suggests a second partisan may be inevitable. The first was the creation of the U.S.-encouraged, “failed” state of South Sudan, Africa’s latest nation-state.
According to Sachdev “… some observers see an east-west partition of Sudan as a natural progression in the unwinnable civil war. They expect that such a division would bring an end to the spread-out civil war that has devastated the entire country.”
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