 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 May 2000 Issue No. 482 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 May 2000 Issue No. 482
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Features Heritage Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters 'The NIF must take the back seat'
By Gamal NkrumahDuring a visit to Egypt, leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) John Garang said he was optimistic about his movement's chances of taking advantage of the current struggle for power between Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir and his former ally, Hassan Al-Turabi. He also believes that the current political crisis in Khartoum is a golden opportunity for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) -- the umbrella opposition grouping that includes the SPLA and other groups, to inch closer towards the corridors of power.
John Garang
"The ruling clique in Khartoum is at its weakest point. The NDA must seize the opportunity and play a leading role. I believe that the internal crisis of the National Islamic Front [NIF] regime is deepening and the power struggle intensifying. The Turabi-Bashir conflict will drag on giving the opposition more time to score political points," Garang told Al-Ahram Weekly.
Quizzed on what the opposition has achieved so far, Garang said, "There have been demonstrations, falling short of an intifada or popular uprising. Moreover, opposition pressure has forced a debate within the ruling clique with some leaders advocating opening up the political establishment to secular groups and others insisting on more stringent Islamic fundamentalism."
Garang said that political differences between Al-Turabi and Al-Bashir are grossly exaggerated and suggested that the two rivals might have more in common than first meets the eye. "They vie with each other to propagate Islamic fundamentalism and they both adopt a militant Islamist posture. The two rivals try to outdo each other hurling Islamist rhetoric at each other. There are some who are fooled by Al-Bashir's less ideological credentials, but in recent months, and especially since the power struggle intensified, Al-Bashir has been making statements which sound even more militantly fundamentalist than those made by Al-Turabi."
Garang characterises some of Al-Turabi's recent utterances as particularly worrying. "There is a competition between Bashir and Turabi to prove who is more of an Islamist. Their so-called Islamic civilisational project or Al-Mashrou'a Al-Hadari has failed. They themselves concede defeat," Garang said. In spite of this, Garang noted, Al-Turabi recently announced that he intends to turn all private primary schools into Qur'anic schools.
The NIF's failures extend beyond its civilisational project to include its military endeavours, according to Garang. "All their projects have ended in disaster," Garang said as he listed NIF setbacks on the battlefront in southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains and more recently in the eastern garrison town of Humoshukoreib.
Anxious to clarify the SPLA's position on a negotiated settlement with the NIF regime, Garang said, "We do not mean joining with the regime or reaching a power-sharing agreement with the ruling clique. What we want is for the NIF to negotiate itself out of power, just like the apartheid regime of South Africa did. We are not seeking reconciliation with the regime in Khartoum. They have reached a political dead end and we want them to negotiate the terms of their surrender of power," Garang told the Weekly.
"We do not wish to see national reconciliation with the NIF regime still sitting in the driver's seat. The NIF must take the back seat and the NDA take control of the steering wheel," Garang explained. "They have failed on all fronts and must step aside for more competent political forces to realise the aspirations of the long-suffering Sudanese people," Garang said.
However, Garang explained that while the negotiated settlement option is tenable, other options, including the armed struggle must be stepped up and the popular uprising organised. He gave the examples of the popular uprising in 1964 against the military regime of Ibrahim Abboud as well as the mass upheaval in 1985 that led to the ousting of the regime of former Sudanese President Jaafar Al-Numeiri. "This is a viable option that must be taken seriously. The Sudanese people are fed up with the political and economic crisis created by the NIF regime. The situation is ripe for change. The people in Khartoum especially, but also elsewhere, must rise up and vent their frustration with the status quo. The Sudanese people can topple this regime, they have done so before with other equally repressive regimes," Garang said.
Garang is sensitive to accusations that the SPLA is an anti-Arab exclusively southern Sudanese movement. "Our efforts to secure warmer relations with Arab countries have not succeeded. We [the SPLA leadership] have tried hard to get invitations to Arab capitals, but no Arab governments extended official invitations with the exception of Cairo and Tripoli both of which have made us very welcome and we are very grateful to both," Garang said.
Garang calls for the amalgamation of the Inter-governmental Agency for Development (IGAD) initiative and an Egyptian-Libyan initiative announced last year to end war in the south and restore peace in Sudan. "I see no point in this duplication -- why have parallel initiatives? The two initiatives are complementary and each one has very positive elements that could be combined to achieve quicker results." Moreover, Garang sees a danger in having an Arab-based initiative versus an African-centred one. "The Arab-African division only complicates matters and compounds our problems. It reinforces the traditional divisions between northern and southern Sudan and between Black Africa and Arab Africa. We are working hard to have a united, democratic and non-racist Sudan. We don't want the Arab-African divide to widen."
"The responsibility lies with the mediators to bring about an amalgamation of the two initiatives. IGAD has a recognisable and precise blueprint for survival -- a declaration of principles, which the Egyptian-Libyan initiative lacks. But the Egyptian-Libyan initiative is characterised by an environment highly conducive to political action. We must, therefore, combine the two initiatives and have a single mechanism. The two parallel initiatives are unhealthy for Sudan and for Arab-African solidarity and can only serve the interests of the NIF regime," Garang said.
"The regime is fond of shopping for initiatives," said Garang of the NIF's approach to peace. This approach has tapped the African sphere: "They go to South Africa seeking an initiative based on South Africa's own anti-apartheid experience and the negotiated settlement which ended the apartheid regime," Garang explained, adding that Al-Turabi also consulted with the Mozambican and Nigerian governments on their experiences reconciling government and opposition. Likewise it has had an international dimension, "Al-Turabi even went to see Pope John Paul II in the Vatican," Garang explained. "They are not serious about peace. They are only interested in prolonging the crisis and staying on in power."
