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Al-Ahram Weekly 23 - 29 March 2000 Issue No. 474 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 23 - 29 March 2000 Issue No. 474
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Dissension in the ranks
By Gamal NkrumahAfter stormy sessions in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, a leading Sudanese Umma Party figure, Mubarak Al-Fadil Al-Mahdi, tendered his resignation as secretary-general of the umbrella opposition grouping, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The Umma delegation angrily walked out of the conference. The NDA subsequently froze Umma's membership but left the door open for its return.
For many observers, Al-Fadil Al-Mahdi's resignation was an expected move given the recent rapprochement between the Sudanese government and Umma Party leader and former Sudanese Prime Minister Sadiq Al-Mahdi.
"We regret that Umma Party leaders stormed out of the NDA meeting in such a brazen manner, pointing accusing fingers at us," Othman Al-Mirghani leader of the Democratic Unionist Party and president of the NDA, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "I accepted the resignation of Mubarak Al-Mahdi, which the Umma Party used as a pretext to withdraw from the NDA. Yet, we hope that they will reconsider and return to the opposition fold, but only on condition that they give up their political intrigues and machinations. We bent over backwards to accommodate them. But we can neither accept nor condone the tacit connivance by the Umma Party's leadership with the government in Khartoum," Mirghani added.
Has so much promise come to this? When Umma Party leader Al-Mahdi fled Khartoum in December 1996, ostensibly to be closer to the nerve centre of opposition forces in Asmara, hopes were high that he would strengthen the opposition's resolve to topple the government in Khartoum. For a couple of years the incorporation of the Umma Party, easily the largest and among the best organised political groupings in Sudan, provided a great boost to the morale of opposition forces. Al-Mahdi even joined the military wing of the NDA under the unified leadership of Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) leader John Garang. Al-Mahdi's men trained and fought alongside other opposition forces in a concerted effort to put pressure on Khartoum and win a decisive military victory over the Sudanese government forces.
However, in an interview with the Weekly, Garang said he believed that Al-Mahdi was a "double agent" who leaked sensitive military information concerning the NDA's military strategy in eastern Sudan, which led to NDA setbacks at the hands of government forces. "We have ample evidence that Sadiq Al-Mahdi and his Umma Party coordinated militarily with the government after they decided to pull out of the NDA's military wing," Garang told the Weekly. "The strategy of the Umma Party working in tandem with Khartoum was to put pressure on the NDA to soften its position and adopt the more conciliatory Umma Party line towards Khartoum. The scheme failed and backfired as the government forces recently suffered a defeat at the hands of the combined NDA forces, the New Sudan Brigade, which captured the strategic military outpost of Humoshukoreib, which doubles as capital of Kassala Province in eastern Sudan," he explained.
"The withdrawal of the Umma Party would actually strengthen the NDA. Mubarak Al-Fadil Al-Mahdi's own lack of enthusiasm for carrying out his duties as NDA secretary-general immobilised the NDA. The constant bickering and infighting consumed so much of our precious time which we could ill afford, and which could have been better spent fighting the regime in Khartoum. The freezing of Umma Party membership in the NDA could, however, in the short run make the regime more intransigent and less eager to negotiate with the NDA," Garang said.
Meanwhile, Umma leader Al-Mahdi dismissed the NDA as an organisation controlled by "scheming communists" and "southern secessionists." Al-Mahdi told the Weekly, "The SPLA has been negotiating with the [Sudanese] government in Nairobi and Kampala [the capital of Uganda]. Why is it that when we, in the Umma Party, indicate our willingness to negotiate with the regime in Khartoum, everyone calls us traitors? We tabled a proposal to open channels of negotiations between NDA member parties and Khartoum last year, and our proposal was endorsed. We see the NDA's antagonistic attitude towards us as a lack of determination to move forward, to take the initiative and rectify the lethargy and lack of action that paralyses the NDA."
Al-Mahdi met with Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir in Djibouti late last year amid efforts by the Umma Party to hold what it describes as a "comprehensive meeting" between the government and opposition. Shortly after this meeting, Al-Bashir declared a state of emergency and dissolved the parliament in a clear attempt to sideline his former ally and powerful Sudanese parliament speaker, Hassan Al-Turabi. The Umma Party leader believes that Al-Bashir is serious in his desire to allow the restoration of democracy in Sudan and reports are rife about the possible return of Al-Mahdi to Khartoum. The Umma Party also decided to resume its public activity in Sudan.
So is this the end of the NDA? Garang believes that the NDA now has a new lease on life. "The Umma Party was not serious about creating a radical new Sudanese political environment -- they want to maintain the old Sudan. We are fighting for a united Sudan, a new Sudan where religion and the state are separated. We want a truly democratic and united Sudan where all Sudanese citizens have equal rights. We are against secession and have never deviated, not since we began the armed struggle in 1983, from our goal of creating a new, united and democratic Sudan," Garang said.
Garang accused the regime of "negotiating-forum shopping" to confuse the issues and divide the opposition. "In the past few years, Khartoum has solicited the mediation of numerous regional and international figures while ignoring the main cause of the crisis. We want one forum," Garang said.
"We in the SPLA are supportive of the Egyptian-Libyan initiative. We want to combine Egyptian-Libyan and the Inter-governmental Agency for Development (IGAD) initiatives [the latter is a regional African initiative led by Kenya]. To this effect we, in the NDA, are dispatching a delegation to Cairo and Tripoli to resolve the issue before the coming Africa-Europe Summit early next month in Cairo."
