Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 16 - 22 November 2000 Issue No.508
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

	Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters

Battling for control of Kassala

By Gamal Nkrumah

Last Wednesday, forces of the Sudanese opposition umbrella group the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) stormed the large eastern Sudanese city of Kassala, near the border with Eritrea, and held it for 24 hours. By Thursday, it had vacated the city of 500,000 some 400 kilometres east of the Sudanese capital Khartoum.

"Our troops pulled out of Kassala but are now stationed 15 kilometres from the city," NDA spokesman Yasser Arman confirmed to Al-Ahram Weekly .

Sudanese government forces disputed the NDA claims, saying that its troops and allied militias drove the NDA forces out of the city. They claimed that over 130 civilians, government forces and NDA troops were killed in the heavy fighting.

Kassala commands the main artery between Khartoum and the country's only Red Sea deep-water harbour, Port Sudan. Khartoum charges that the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) was chiefly responsible for the attack and has called upon the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) -- a grouping of East African governments seeking to broker peace in Sudan -- to condemn what Khartoum describes as provocations by the SPLA.

Sudanese first vice president, Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, flew to the embattled city shortly after the Sudanese armed forces restored control. After a tour, he praised the "courage of the Sudanese armed forces and the Mujahidin" -- the pro-government Islamist militia. "Khartoum is keen to present the attack as further proof that the SPLA is fomenting trouble in the east of the country. Kassala is a religious centre and the notion that so-called 'southern infidels' are invading the garrison town could easily have sparked off religious riots. However, the people of Kassala were not fooled," Arman told the Weekly.

Al-Tijani Al-Tayeb, a prominent NDA member and leader of the Sudanese Communist Party concurred. "We made our point that we are a force to be reckoned with," he said. "The government cannot continue to bombard the civilian population and not expect the people to side with us. The government is on the defensive now."

The NDA insists, nevertheless, that their troops were welcomed as liberators. "The local population gave our troops food and water," Al-Tayeb claimed. "Our forces have demolished all government military garrisons and command posts in the vicinity of Kassala, shot down two helicopter gunships and captured 13 tanks and over 2,000 kalashnikov guns," he added.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir described the incident as an assault on Sudan's stability that showed the SPLA was the aggressor and that the Sudanese government was defending itself.

"The Sudanese government has long belittled our military capabilities. The NDA capture of Kassala was a wake-up call for the government. We have demonstrated that we have full control of the countryside and that the government forces are isolated in urban pockets," said Farouk Abu Eissa, a member of the NDA Leadership Council, NDA presidential adviser on legal, constitutional and human rights affairs and the head of the Cairo-based Arab Lawyers Union. He told the Weekly, "The NDA only opted for a military solution to the Sudanese political crisis after all other peaceful political options were rejected by the government in Khartoum. We only resorted to the armed struggle in 1996." However, Abu Eissa conceded that, "at the present moment we do not have the capacity to hold on to the cities and garrison towns we capture."

The outbreak of the latest hostilities has embarrassed Eritrean President Isaias Afeworki, who has been personally mediating between the Sudanese government and opposition forces recently. The Sudanese government blamed the Eritrean government for the outbreak of the latest hostilities. Khartoum claimed that the NDA forces had logistical and military support from Eritrea. The Eritrean ambassador to Sudan, Eissa Ahmed Eissa, was summoned by the Sudanese Foreign Office. Eritrea, which emerged badly bruised after a border dispute with Ethiopia, vehemently denied the charge, insisting that it does not harbour ill-intentions towards Sudan.

The two countries have recently re-established diplomatic relations and the Sudanese embassy building in the Eritrean capital Asmara was handed back to the Sudanese government after being the headquarters of the Sudanese opposition NDA for over five years. Even though many Sudanese opposition groups, including the SPLA and Sudanese refugees -- both northern and southern -- have taken up residence in Eritrea, the Eritrean officials deny that they supply arms and ammunition to the SPLA.

Eritrea was also strongly condemned by Sudan's chief Islamist ideologue, Hassan Al-Turabi, who withdrew from government last year to form the Popular Islamic Congress, an independent and rival party to the ruling National Congress Party headed by President Al-Bashir. The SPLA currently controls a vast sweep of territory stretching from the Ugandan-Sudanese border in the southernmost part of Sudan and other southern areas all the way to southern Chad. In recent months the SPLA and its allies in the NDA have made a concerted effort to make a mark in the eastern parts of the country, and especially in the areas around the Eritrean and Ethiopian borders with Sudan.

"The capture of Kassala has shown that Al-Turabi and Al-Bashir are still close allies when it comes to the crunch," Abu-Eissa explained.

© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

	weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg