The importance of being Sudanese

A new round of Sudanese peace talks in Kenya started this week demonstrating that Sudan's path to democracy and stability is slow, but inexorable, writes Gamal Nkrumah

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This week, the fourth round of face-to-face peace talks between Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha and the leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) John Garang commenced in Naivasha, 80 kilometres northwest of the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

Taha flew briefly to Khartoum last week for consultations with Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Beshir. The United States is intensifying pressure on the Sudanese government to conclude a peace treaty with the SPLA, the country's largest armed opposition group.

The SPLA says that the southern Sudanese, swindled out of power first by the British colonial powers and subsequent northern Arabised Muslim regimes, expect nothing less than the full panoply of democratic freedoms.

The challenge facing peace negotiators in Naivasha today is how best to anchor Sudan on the rock of democracy. The US and the EU have rightly tied aid and political and economic links to Khartoum's commitment to peace and democratisation.

US President George W Bush is scheduled to present a report on progress in the Sudanese peace talks by the middle of next month. He will assess the commitment of the Sudanese government and the SPLA to peace. The Sudanese peace talks are taking place under the auspices of the Inter- Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD), a regional organisation which groups seven East African countries, including Sudan. But the US is the main impelling force for peace in Sudan.

The Sudanese government wants the peace agreement to be officially signed in Nairobi, and not Washington as preferred by the Bush administration.

Washington is stepping up pressure on Khartoum to conclude a peace agreement with the SPLA. The Sudanese authorities want peace, but not at any cost.

With US presidential elections in November in mind, Bush staked out a firm defence of securing peace in oil-rich Sudan. A Sudanese peace agreement would improve his chances of making a successful bid for a second term at the White House. The signing of a Sudanese peace agreement in Washington will underline his role in bringing peace about in Sudan.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the umbrella opposition organisation grouping the SPLA and other mainly northern Sudanese opposition parties, is not taking part in the Sudanese peace talks, but Mohamed Othman Al-Mirghani, the head of the NDA and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), was invited to Uganda this week by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni who is also the current chair of IGAD.

Al-Mirghani also flew to Kenya for consultations with Kenyan officials. "Al-Mirghani was invited to Uganda and Kenya in his capacity as head of the NDA," Farouk Abu Eissa, former the head of the Cairo-based Arab Lawyers Union and official spokesman for the NDA told Al-Ahram Weekly. "IGAD leaders realise that the time has come to involve the NDA more closely in the Sudanese peace process."

"Peace will not come to Sudan without democracy," Abu Eissa stressed. The Sudanese government now officially concurs with Abu Eissa, but many Sudanese opposition figures doubt the government's sincerity.

"We must work for equal distribution of resources in a multi-party democracy," said Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Othman Ismail in Khartoum on Wednesday at the first Afro-Arab youth festival held in the Sudanese capital.

The talks have reached a critical stage with this week's round focussing on the status of three remote regions that the SPLA says are politically marginalised and economically disadvantaged and underdeveloped -- the Nuba Mountains in southern Kordofan, the Abeyei region in western Kordofan, and the Ingassena region of southern Blue Nile. While both the SPLA and the Sudanese government appear to have reached a compromise over southern Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains, there is still much disagreement over the fate of Abyei, an oil-rich region which straddles the disputed border between northern and southern Sudan and is inhabited both by ethnic Dinka and Arabised tribesmen. The latter are accused by international human rights groups of enslaving Dinka villagers and leaving behind a trail of death, destruction and hunger in the wake of their raids.

Meanwhile, reports of indirect contacts between Sudan and Israel are flying about after the Israeli Army radio announced that a high-ranking US official of Jewish descent met with the Sudanese president in Khartoum recently. The report also noted secret meetings between Sudanese and Israeli diplomats and other officials in Washington, New York and London.

In July 2002, the Sudanese government and the SPLA signed the Machakos protocol, a blueprint for peace in Sudan. Under the Machakos protocol, the Sudanese government agreed in principle that the southern Sudanese people hold a referendum on secession after six years of power sharing in a transitional government of national unity.

While the Machakos protocol laudably attempts to enshrine guarantees for the democratic rights of southerners, it does not guarantee the rights of northerners -- those belonging to the secular or opposition parties in the north and those members of the traditionally marginalised ethnic groups in western and eastern Sudan.

The intensification of fighting in western Sudan's Darfur province points to intractable political problems in other parts of the country not covered by the Machakos protocols. The appalling carnage in Darfur threatens to spill over into other Sudanese regions and across the border into neighbouring African countries. The civil war in southern Sudan cost the lives of an estimated two million people. The number of people killed because of the fighting in southern Sudan is fast rising.

The insurrectionists in Darfur have abducted foreigners working for Sudanese government projects in the outlying region. Two Chinese nationals were kidnapped this week in Buram, an area of Darfur 950 kilometres southwest of Khartoum. The vast majority of Darfur's population is like northern Sudan, Muslim. But like southern Sudan it is predominantly not Arabised. Most of the people of Darfur hold on to their non-Arab ethnicity.