The Missing Black Populations of North Africa
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There are many similarities between the history of North Africa and that of North America where European settlers waged a systematic war of extermination against the native population, resulting in the reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900. Described as a “vast genocide . . . ,
the most sustained on record.” David E. Stannard, a historian at the University of Hawaii, writes that native Americans had undergone the “worst human holocaust the world had ever witnessed, roaring across two continents non-stop for four centuries and consuming the lives of countless tens of millions of people.” In the judgment of Lenore A. Stiffarm and Phil Lane, Jr., “there can be no more monumental example of sustained genocide—certainly none involving a ‘race’ of people as broad and complex as this—anywhere in the annals of human history.” Stiffman and Lane Jr. were wrong.
The destruction of the native Northern African population began around 642 AD when Arab invaders poured into Africa occupying areas known today as Tunisia, Libya, Algeria and Morocco, where they physically eliminated most of the native Berber population. The Berbers that escaped death ran westwards and southwards towards the Sahara. In the 11th century, fresh Arab migrants of nomadic origin migrated into North Africa to displace and drive the remaining pastoral Berbers deeper into the Sahara desert.
Ancient Egypt is well acknowledged as the origin of human civilization, but the role of Africans in ancient Egypt has been marginalized by the writers of modern history. It is therefore much less well known that the ancient Egyptians were actually African in race. Acknowledging that ancient Egypt was very different from modern Egypt which now has a predominantly white population establishes the fact that Africans, not Europeans were the architects of early human civilization.
In the Old Testament, Egypt is called The land of Ham, whose son Cush, meaning “black” is described as the father of Ethiopia. Pan-Africanist Scholar and Historian Runoko Rashidi cite Lady Lugard (AKA Flora Shaw,1852-1929) British journalist, writer and wife of Sir Frederick Lugard, Governor of Hong Kong and Governor-General of Nigeria: “The fame of the ancient Ethiopians was widespread in ancient history. History describes them as the tallest, most beautiful and long-lived of the human races, and before Herodotus, Homer, in even more flattering language, described them as the most just of men, the favourites of the gods. The annals of all the great early nations of Asia Minor are full of them. The Mosaic records allude to them frequently; but while they are described as the most powerful, the most just, and the most beautiful of the human race, they are constantly spoken of as Black, and there seems to be no other conclusion to be drawn than that at that remote period of history, the leading race of the Western World was a Black race.“
Senegalese historian and anthropologist Cheikh Anta Diop believed that the Nile Valley and its indigenous African population was the southern cradle of civilization of which ancient Greece was its northern counterpart. Diop opposed official historical classification of Egypt as Mediterranean or Middle Eastern, locating Egypt in Africa and rooting black history firmly in ancient Egypt. Diop supports his hypothesis with his discovery of numerous similarities between the cultures of ancient Egypt and the rest of Africa. In particular, he noted the collectivist matriarchy – a community system based on female descent of the family line and the African farming economy, which is in stark contrast to the European individualistic patriarchal system and a nomadic hunting economy. Furthermore, the ancient Egyptian language shares many features with the Chadic languages of west and central Africa and the Cushitic languages of northeast Africa, providing further evidence of African cultural unity.
However, Egypt is so intimidated by its glorious Black African past that its Arab government would not allow thorough research into Egypt’s past. President Gamal Abdel Nasser falsified Egyptian history when he declared Egypt an Arab Republic. Egyptian authorities refused to allow American filmmakers to make a film on the life of Anwar Sadat in Egypt on the ground that the actor chosen for Sadat’s role was black. When Morocco left the OAU in 1984, it aspired to become a member of the European Union!
Arabs first invaded Africa in the 7th century CE. Recently, with Libya supporting the people of Eritrea, they destroyed the basic structure of Ethiopia, to cut her from the sea and weaken this section of Africa, and eventually all of Africa, for further Arabization. They did this mercilessly using religion as their weapon just as the British did with Christianity in colonizing Africa.
In Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, Mauritania and the rest of the Arab world, Africans are treated as the scum of the earth. They are second-class citizens at the very best in their own countries. Blacks in these countries cannot aspire to positions of respect or authority. There are hardly Africans in high government positions in Arab governed African countries. Like Brazil, which is just as racially cruel against their black natives, there is no legislation favouring slavery (except in Mauritania). It is simply a way of life that’s all. Blacks do not really exist or at best are not humans.
Mauritania left the Economic Community of West African States to join the union formed by the Arab North African States. A few years ago, Mauritania sacked all black natives from their civil service positions. Black Mauritanians protest their plight to the African Union (AU) without receiving attention, because AU black leaders fear offending their Arab colleagues in the AU. In Mauritania, they have had to declare an end to slavery six times in this century alone, and still, nothing has changed for the captive majority African natives. African slavery is still in their statute books. African slavery in Mauritania is what the ongoing quarrel between Mauritania and Senegal is about. The quarrel forced black African refugees to pour across the border from Mauritania into Senegal.
In Algeria, Arabs throw stones at black people, including diplomats, in markets and other public places and across the Red Sea, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, blacks are treated worse than animals, after using their life’s savings to go there on pilgrimage. Hundreds of blacks who have lived all their lives in Saudi Arabia are being repatriated daily right now, after losing an arm or leg for some minor or trumped-up offense and without regard for their comfort, welfare or rights. Racism towards black Moslems in Saudi Arabia is so strong it makes one wonder if making a pilgrimage to Mecca should be one of the five pillars of the Muslim faith, and why blacks bother to be Muslims.
With Arab consolidation and backing in Northern Africa, new waves of Arab invaders and migrants continue to push deeper into the Nile banks, once inhabited by the Nilotic Shilluk, and continued all the way down to where Dueim stands today, belonging then to the Dinka and Furnawi autochthons. The entire territory was known at the time as Bilad as-Sudan (the Arabic for land of the Blacks), and currently includes the Republic of Sudan. Continuing with their Arabization of African land policy through elimination, displacement, separation, marginalization and suppression, the Arab invaders of Bilad as-Sudan, over the passage of time, decimated the population of (the Nilotic Shilluk, Dinka and Furnawi autochthons), owners of the land, and pushed to restrict the rest waiting for elimination to Darfur area and the South of the country, which the Arab invaders are now intent on taking from the native Black Africans.
This is the origin of the war in Sudan, which has been described as a racial war. The Arabs want the Republic of Sudan, which by land mass is the largest country in Africa, to be an entirely Arab state, by exterminating the Black native population gradually to the last person. The war in Sudan is Africa’s modern-day Haiti war in terms of black liberation, and Africa’s more recent fight against apartheid. Arabs are carrying out ethnic cleansing in Southern Sudan, with the financial support of the Arab world, particularly Libya and Saudi Arabia. The Janjaweed, with Sudanese and Arab governments’ backing, are trying to wipe out the black population so as to expropriate their lands, but Africans do not seem to know where their interests reside.
While the son of the Arab migrant continues to cling to power in Egypt against the wish of the people, a new wave of revolution sweeps across North Africa. Will the wind of change be strong enough to blow open the long-hidden secrets of North Africa and return its original inhabitants to their rightful place? Until that happens, there can be no real or lasting peace for the devourers of Africa.
Sources: Naiwu Osahon (AllAfrica) and LaTasha Favors (E-How)
Read the Eye-Witness account of an African American in Egypt
Article Created: Monday, 07 February 2011 13:06
