Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 30 Nov. - 6 Dec. 2000 Issue No.510

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Sudan in eye of the storm

By Gamal Nkrumah

The triumphant return of opposition Umma Party leader Sadig Al-Mahdi to Sudan last Thursday after four years in exile obscures a more worrying trend in the Sudanese political crisis. In spite of the persistent efforts of neighbouring states to resolve this crisis, nothing has been definitively resolved and the various parties and warring protagonists still disagree on the fundamental issues concerning the political future of Sudan. Positive pronouncements aside, the underlying tensions continue to overshadow the prospects for peace.

"There is a reciprocal readiness for dialogue to activate a comprehensive political solution for Sudan. Opposition from abroad has come to an end. We are heading toward a new chapter," the Umma Party leader told his supporters upon his arrival in the Sudanese capital Khartoum. Most other Sudanese opposition figures disagree. Former Speaker of the Sudanese Parliament and chief Islamist ideologue of the Sudanese government, Hassan Al-Turabi, is not in a conciliatory mood. Last week, supporters of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) clashed with those of Al-Turabi's Popular National Congress (PNC).

"We have come back for consultations with all forces," Al-Mahdi said following his meeting with Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir a few days after his return. Al-Mahdi and Al-Bashir pledged to work for peace and democracy in Sudan in the presence of the visiting President of Djibouti Ismail Omar Guelleh. The Djibouti leader was in Sudan to attend the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD) summit in Khartoum which ended last Thursday. Guelleh was one of five East African leaders who attended the IGAD summit. IGAD groups Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.

"The OAU supports the IGAD effort to seek a peaceful settlement to the civil war in Sudan and welcomes the joint effort of Egypt and Libya to reconcile the Sudanese," Organisation of African Unity Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim said upon his arrival in Khartoum to attend the 23 to 24 November IGAD summit. Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa and his South African counterpart attended as observers. Also present was the Secretary of the Libyan Popular Committee for African Unity Ali Al-Treiki.

The IGAD summit was marked by very lively and sometimes passionate exchanges. East African leaders urged the Sudanese to "transcend their ethnic and cultural differences and restore peace to the country." But the two-day summit ended in deadlock on two central issues: finding a solution to the Sudanese political crisis and merging the IGAD initiative seeking to broker peace in Sudan with the joint Egyptian-Libyan initiative which also hopes to resolve the Sudanese crisis. Both Sudan and the international community are exasperated by the duplication of efforts to achieve peace in Sudan.

Attempts to put a positive gloss on the summit backfired. A telling anomaly was the fiery reaction of Eritrean President Isaias Afeworki who dismissed both the IGAD and Egyptian-Libyan initiatives. "The two initiatives compete with each other but we [the Eritreans] are concerned with a solution," Afeworki said. He warned that both initiatives were "lacking in practical proposals," and offered "nothing new."

The speech by IGAD Partners Forum (IPF) representative at the summit summed up the organisation's predicament concerning the tortuously slow Sudanese national reconciliation process. "While we note that progress is occurring, we express our concern on the slowness of that process," said Ambassador Marcello Recoverri of Italy and chairman of the IPF.

The presidents of Kenya and Uganda, two of the staunchest supporters of the armed opposition Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), which has been waging war with Khartoum for 17 years, were conspicuous by their absence. The SPLA joined forces with northern Sudanese-based opposition parties like the Democratic Unionist Party and the Communists to form the umbrella opposition grouping the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), based in the Eritrean capital Asmara.

Al-Bashir attempted to make political capital out of the IGAD summit which was seen as the last big public relations event prior to the Sudanese presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for next month. But political investments only make sense if they pay dividends, and there was precious little sign of any. "The elections are boycotted by the vast majority of Sudanese political parties," Farouk Abu Eissa, member of the NDA Leadership Council and NDA presidential adviser on legal, constitutional and human rights affairs, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "These are meaningless elections since the main political parties are not participating," said Abu Eissa who is also the head of the Cairo-based Arab Lawyers Union.

Sudan's General Election Commissioner Abdel-Mouein Al-Nahhas, however, insisted that the elections would be free and fair, noting that foreign observers are welcome to monitor proceedings. The NDA is boycotting the elections and so is the Umma Party which withdrew from the NDA and declared a cease-fire four months ago.

To add fuel to the fire, Susan Rice, the United States assistant secretary of state for African affairs, paid a surprise visit to SPLA-controlled towns in southern Sudan. Rice pledged US$400,000 to improve roads between Sudan and Uganda and a further US$150,000 to provide southern Sudan with information technology. The visit and Rice's remarks infuriated the Sudanese authorities. "We strongly condemn and reject US intervention in our domestic affairs," Al-Bashir thundered. In 1997 Washington imposed sanctions on Sudan and in 1998 it bombed a pharmaceutical factory on the outskirts of Khartoum.

The Sudanese government was outraged that Rice's visit occurred without her obtaining an official entry permit from Khartoum. According to the Sudanese newspaper Al-Sahafi Al-Dawli, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail said Khartoum cancelled multiple entry visas for US Charges d'Affaires Raymond Brown, who is currently in Nairobi.

Rice's controversial visit and her provocative statements have opened a hornet's nest. Rice strongly condemned the Sudanese government for its human rights record, institutionalised slavery and discrimination against the southern Sudanese. "[The Sudanese conflict] resonates in a way with the US public on a scale not seen since the apartheid movement," explained Rice during her two-day visit to southern Sudan last week. The southern Sudanese people were very happy about Susan Rice's visit to southern Sudan. The Sudanese government has embarked on senseless and brutal vengeance massacres of civilians in government-held towns like the slaughters in Juba and Malakal in 1992 and in Wau in 1998. The southern Sudanese people are particularly happy about the clear stand of the US on the issues of justice and peace in Sudan. "We see it as a recognition of injustices inflicted on the downtrodden southern Sudanese," the Cairo-based Abdun Agau of the Union of Sudan African Parties, which is a member of the NDA, told the Weekly.

Rice's visit came days before the aerial bombardment by government planes of Yei, capital of Western Equatoria province, southern Sudan, and a town of 80,000 -- the largest SPLA-held town in the country. The Sudanese government denied that it was targeting the civilian population and claims to have blown up a SPLA ammunition warehouse.

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