Issue No. 597
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1 - 7 August 2002 Issue No. 597 Region |
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Fast forward
Peace must be in sight since the Sudanese president shook hands with the head of the country's most powerful armed opposition group, writes Gamal Nkrumah
In an unprecedented development, Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir met John Garang, leader of the country's largest armed opposition group the Sudan's People's Liberation Army (SPLA), in the Ugandan capital Kampala on Saturday. It was the first ever face-to-face meeting between a Sudanese head of state and the SPLA leader since the movement took up arms against government forces in 1983.
The two-hour meeting, brokered by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, centred around the tentative peace agreement reached between the Sudanese government and the SPLA in Kenya last week. The Machakos Protocol, named after the Kenyan town which hosted the talks, was widely regarded as a major concession by the Sudanese government because it stressed the separation of state and religion and the right of the southern Sudanese to self- determination -- issues that had proved to be insurmountable stumbling blocks to peace in Sudan in the past.
A new round of talks is to take place in Kenya next week, following a meeting of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) -- the umbrella opposition organisation grouping the SPLA and other mainly northern Sudanese opposition parties. Leaders of the northern opposition groups in the NDA officially welcomed the Kampala meeting even though privately they expressed scepticism. They stressed that the SPLA's partners in the NDA must play a more prominent role in any future talks.
"The key to the success of the meeting is Sudan's newfound oil wealth," Farouk Abu-Eissa, head of the Cairo-based Arab Lawyers Union and official spokesman for the NDA told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Washington wants to lay its hands on Sudan's vast oil reserves." The key issue, Abu-Eissa said as far as the Sudanese were concerned, is whether the Sudanese government is willing to share the oil revenues with the its adversaries.
Indeed, the Sudanese government launched a major offensive in oil- producing regions of southern Sudan barely two days after the Kampala meeting in which an estimated 1,000, mostly civilians, lost their lives.
The Sudanese government announced that it has clinched a tentative deal with the SPLA and acquiesced to two key SPLA demands -- self-determination for the southern Sudanese people and the separation of religion from the state. In Kampala, the symbolic significance of the Bashir-Garang meeting was designed to give peace a chance. "[Bashir and Garang] underscored the need to reinforce the peace process by rallying popular support behind it and building a national consensus on a comprehensive peace settlement," a joint statement by the Sudanese president and SPLA leader read.
In an astounding about face, Al-Bashir publically acknowledged for the first time that Garang was no separatist.
The two men could be more different. Even though they both have a military background, and served as Sudanese government army officers, Garang deserted while Al-Bashir rose to the top ranks. From humble beginnings, Al-Bashir served with a Sudanese infantry battalion that fought alongside Egyptian troops in the 1973 war with Israel. In December 1999, Al-Bashir dissolved the Sudanese parliament, dispelling in the process his onetime image as a front man for the leader of the now moribund National Islamic Front (NIF) and at the time all-powerful speaker of the Sudanese parliament Hassan Al-Turabi.
In an ironic twist, leaders of the NDA, including SPLA officials, insisted that Al- Turabi -- currently under house arrest -- be immediately released. They explained that he must take part in any future talks about Sudan's political future. Al-Bashir had detained Turabi precisely because he initiated direct talks with the SPLA.
The SPLA leader, on the other hand, is an intellectual with an academic background. He obtained a PhD in agricultural economics from the US and the topic of his doctoral thesis was the controversial Jongolei Canal. Both men, however, are notorious for being ruthless with their enemies.
In Kampala, the Sudanese president offered a sobering admonition. The talks, Al- Bashir said, were "an important step towards peace, but not yet peace". The secession of southern Sudan is a probability few in the north are willing to seriously contemplate, especially now that much of the oil is produced in the south.
Garang was more upbeat. "We hope that we will be able to achieve the final resolution for peace in Sudan," he said after the talks. National unity, both sides agreed, was the preferred option. The SPLA today controls an estimated 95 per cent of the territory of southern Sudan, itself a third of the overall Sudanese land mass. And it is no secret that in spite of Garang's assurances, many southerners want to secede.
It is hoped that Sudan will learn from its past bitter experience former Sudanese President Gaafar Al-Numeiri abrogated the 1972 Koka Dam Agreement that would have established a regional government for southern Sudan. The southern Sudanese are today more determined than ever not to be duped again.
The Sudanese Minister of Transport Lam Akol, a prominent southern Sudanese politician, warned that some members of the Sudanese government are secretly working against the Machakos Protocol, in a determined attempt to undermine the Sudanese national reconciliation process. Akol, who recently resigned from the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and broke ranks with Garang in 1991, urged the release of all political prisoners and the advancement of civil liberties.
Enforced Islamisation and Arabisation is another southern grievance. Numeiri instituted Islamic Shari'a law better known as the so-called September laws in Sudan and introduced Arabic as the language of education in southern Sudan.
The cessation of hostilities is the main task at hand. Economic development can only be achieved with lasting peace, both sides acknowledge. But, in spite of all the good offices of regional mediators, it is difficult to see how Al-Bashir's ruling NCP will share power with its erstwhile foe the SPLA and Khartoum's other political opponents in the NDA.
Power-sharing is no novelty to the Sudanese. The southern Sudanese secessionist Anyanya movement was incorporated into the Numeiri regime in the 1970s. Its leader Joseph Lago became Sudanese vice president, but the sociopolitical dynamics that led to the rise of Anyanya soon led to the formation of the SPLA in 1983. Both sides today want to terminate the 20-year civil war that has claimed over two million lives and internally displaced, or turned into refugees, an estimated five million southern Sudanese.
The finer details and the remaining differences between the SPLA and the Sudanese government are expected to be ironed out with the resumption next week of the Kenya talks. Like the earlier Kenya talks, the new round takes place under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) a regional organisation which groups seven East African countries, including Sudan. Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi, like his Ugandan counterpart, came under tremendous pressure from the United States to exert pressure on the SPLA and the Sudanese government to sign a peace deal.
Washington, it appears, believes that it is more effective and credible to involve Sudan's African neighbours in the Sudanese peace talks. Senator John Danforth, US President George Bush's Special Envoy for Peace in Sudan, and US Assistant Secretary of State Walter Kannister were repeatedly dispatched to Sudan earlier in the year to ease tensions. Danforth was able to negotiate a cease-fire between the Sudanese government and the SPLA in the Nuba Mountains, western Sudan, a peace which has so far held.
Fighting, however, intensified last month in southern Sudan, especially in the vicinity of the oil fields of Bentiu, 1,000 kilometres south of the Sudanese capital Khartoum. Oil exports have become Sudan's main foreign exchange earner, and oil revenues have fuelled the war in the past couple of years. No mention was made of whether the oil revenues are to be shared between the SPLA and the Sudanese government in the Machakos Protocol. At the moment the Sudanese government has exclusive control of the oil industry in conjunction with transnational oil corporations.
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