Issue No. 599
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15 - 21 August 2002 Issue No. 599 Region |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Sudan's future in the balance
Anticipation heightened as representatives of the Sudanese government and chief armed opposition forces met in Kenya for the second round of peace talks aimed at ending the country's 20-year civil war, writes Gamal Nkrumah
Discussions about the future of Sudan are inherently laden with ideology and emotion. Recently, impassioned headlines heralded the birth of a new Sudan as a second round of peace talks between the Sudanese government and the country's largest armed opposition group, the Sudan's People's Liberation Army (SPLA) began in Machakos, Kenya on Monday.
The Machakos talks are taking place under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) a regional organisation which groups together seven East African countries, including Sudan. In an unprecedented development other Sudanese political parties attended at consultative level, lending credibility and giving new momentum to the long-stalled Sudanese peace process.
Meanwhile, in the Eritrean capital of Asmara, members of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) -- the umbrella opposition organisation uniting the SPLA and other mainly northern Sudanese opposition parties -- are meeting to discuss developments. Among the coterie of political figures attending the Asmara meeting are Othman Al-Mirghani leader of the northern- based Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and SPLA leader John Garang. There is a consensus that Sudan stands at a critically important juncture in its history.
Islamic Shari'a law is strictly enforced in the northern predominantly Muslim and Arabic- speaking two thirds of the country. However, several influential northern political groups within the NDA are anxious to arrive at a national political formula in which not only the southern non-Muslim third of the country is exempt from Shari'a law, but the entire Sudanese national political structure is declared unequivocally secular and democratic.
The SPLA shares these sentiments with its NDA partners. The Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) is the political wing of the SPLA. The intention of the SPLM is to transform itself into a "broad based mass party modeled on the African National Congress of South Africa", Yasir Arman official spokesman of the SPLM told Al-Ahram Weekly.
Membership of the SPLA is already open to all Sudanese, regardless of ethnic and religious background. Arman, himself is an Arabic- speaking Muslim from the Blue Nile Province, who is married to a southern Sudanese ethnic Dinka woman. Other prominent northern Sudanese members of the SPLA include Mansour Khalid, Garang's chief political advisor and former Sudanese foreign minister. Western Sudanese from the Nuba Mountains have also become prominent SPLA military commanders, perhaps the most important being the late Yusuf Kuwa. "SPLM members come from Namule in the south to Wad Halfa in the far north and from Jeneina in the West to Kassala in the east," Arman assured.
Sudan is currently mapping its political future, and neighbouring countries are closely monitoring the fast-moving developments. But sceptics, mostly in the Arab world, have looked on with reservations and some have even cried foul play. The Arabs' main concern is that the new deal between the Sudanese government and the SPLA will inevitably lead to the splitting of the vast and potentially wealthy country in two: an Arab north and a non-Arab south. Leaders and official spokesmen for the SPLA were at pains to stress the territorial integrity and unity of Sudan. Garang told reporters in Asmara that he was not a secessionist, but a fighter for a "united, democratic and secular Sudan".
There is much consternation among the Sudanese opposition forces regarding the precise nature of the role played by the United States. US Senator John Danforth, President George Bush's Special Envoy for Peace in Sudan, and US Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs Walter Kansteiner have been accused of manipulating the agenda from behind the scenes. These accusations have tainted the signing of the memorandum of understanding that was signed by the SPLA and the Sudanese government on 20 July in Machakos, Kenya.
Under the terms of the Machakos protocol, signed under IGAD sponsorship, southern Sudan will be granted a six-year period of administrative autonomy and will not be subject to the Islamic Shari'a law unlike northern Sudan. However, several northern-based parties privately want to see the Shari'a law upturned in the north as well. The problem is that they cannot openly advocate such an agenda. To do so would invite public scrutiny. Many argue, the only way to overturn Shari'a law in the north is to use the southern Sudanese opposition to the imposition of Shari'a law as the pretext for secularising the country as a whole.
Danforth is to visit Egypt on Thursday to iron out differences over Sudan and assuage Egyptian and Arab fears concerning certain aspects of the Machakos protocols. Egypt, which is not attending the Machakos talks, supports "Sudan's unity because this is in the interest of the Sudanese people and the African continent", Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher told reporters in Cairo following talks with British peace envoy to Sudan, Alan Golty.
Among the most controversial of the unprecedented developments that took place last week is the surprise lifting of a political ban on opposition parties. Last Saturday, Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir issued a presidential decree that conditionally lifted the ban on political parties which he imposed after assuming office in a military coup d'etat in 1989.
Al-Bashir's decree was met with a mixed response. Only parties represented before are to be officially recognised. The influential DUP, which has close connections with Egypt and the widespread Khatimiya Islamic Sufi order, and the Sudanese Communist Party are two NDA member-parties who are expected to be some of the key beneficiaries from the lifting of the ban. However, leading members of both the DUP and the Communists played down the importance of the move.
A DUP spokesman described the move as "gross interference in NDA affairs, and specifically designed to lend credence to the Mubarak Al-Mahdi group which split from the mainstream Umma Party (which is headed by his cousin and former Sudanese Prime Minister Sadig Al-Mahdi). Moreover, to be officially recognised parties must be registered from within Sudan. Therefore the parties must abide by and will be subject to Sudanese law. This systematically excludes the SPLA and its political wing the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). Not surprisingly, the SPLA dismissed the presidential decree as a "manoeuvering tactic".
Other parties were more welcoming. The Umma Party's deputy leader, Omar Nour Al- Daim hailed the presidential decree as a "public acknowledgment" by the Sudanese government of the "legitimate political forces" voted for by the Sudanese electorate in previous parliamentary polls.
The umbrella-group, the NDA, in Asmara assigned the SPLA to negotiate with the Sudanese government on its behalf. But, many NDA delegates held strong reservations regarding the Machakos protocol. "Khartoum is playing the game of peace while conducting a vicious war of annihilation," Farouk Abu-Eissa, head of the Cairo-based Arab Lawyers Union and official spokesman for the NDA told the Weekly. At the Asmara gathering, Abu-Eissa was highly critical of the Machakos Protocol, but SPLA officials said that they welcomed "constructive criticism" from their partners in the NDA.
History is littered with examples of good intentions gone bad in the struggle for peace in Sudan. In a sudden change of position, former Sudanese President Jaafar Al-Numeiri abrogated the 1972 pact with Joseph Lagu, leader of the southern Sudanese secessionist movement Anya- Nya and promptly instituted Islamic Shari'a law in the so-called September laws.
At the time Lagu's Anya-Nya army had some 18,000 fighting men while the SPLA today has around 80,000 well-armed troops. "What are they going to do with the demobilised SPLA troops," asked the aged Lagu recently from his exile in London.
Indeed, Lagu's concerns were echoed by senior SPLA officials in Kenya on the eve of the Machakos talks. "We cannot cease fire, we cannot stop fighting until the root causes of the war are addressed," warned SPLA spokesman Samson Kwaje in Nairobi.
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