Dialogue or dead end?
Peace talks resume in Kenya as Washington urges fresh negotiations between Sudanese forces, writes Gamal Nkrumah
The Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), the country's largest armed opposition group, have resumed peace talks in Kenya after a month's break. The Sudanese talks broke off in mid- December, ostensibly because of the Kenyan presidential elections which took place on 27 December. The Kenyan authorities have assured the Sudanese protagonists that in spite of the change of government, they are committed to pursuing the talks, which had previously been hosted by the former president, Daniel Arap Moi, who was chosen by the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD), a regional organisation which groups seven East African countries, including Sudan, to act as chief mediator. The new Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki has now assumed Moi's former role.
Continuity, then, seems to be the order of the day given that President Kibaki has pledged his determination to uphold the policy of his predecessor vis-a-vis Sudan. The Kenyan authorities have asked Moi's special envoy to Sudan and talks mediator, Lieutenant General Lazaro Sumbeiywo, to carry on with his job. Kenya is keen that civil wars in its northern neighbours Sudan and Somalia do not spill over the border into its territory. The SPLA, however, accuses the Sudanese government of snubbing the Kenyan mediators by pussyfooting over the peace talks.
The Sudanese government was most reluctant to go ahead with this week's round of Nairobi talks, because it refuses to discuss the status of a number of regions that it does not consider part of south Sudan. Those areas are the Nuba Mountains in southern Kordofan; western Kordofan, home to the Abyei people; and the area inhabited by the Angassana along the southern Blue Nile. But, the SPLA concedes that even though these three regions are not technically part of the south, nevertheless, they constitute part of the Sudanese war zone and problems pertaining to the war in these areas should be addressed. The peace initiative brokered by IGAD focusses on southern Sudan and not on these three regions, but the SPLA is keen that the peace talks include the three regions as well.
"These economically and politically marginalised regions are not part of southern Sudan, but they are war zones," Mansour Khaled, special political adviser to SPLA leader John Garang told Al-Ahram Weekly. Khaled said that the SPLA liberated and governs vast stretches of territory in these areas, added to which, the organisation claims overwhelming popular support in the three remote and economically backward regions of Sudan. He also said that SPLA forces are stationed there. Khaled, who participated in last month's Sudanese peace workshop in Washington, said that the people in the Nuba Mountains -- the Abyei and Angassana -- share the same feeling of political marginalisation and suffer from underdevelopment as the southern Sudanese. He stressed that the talks were low-key and informal. "The main purpose of the talks is to bridge the wide gap between the Sudanese government and the SPLA on a number of key issues that remain unresolved," Khaled said.
The Sudanese government has in principle agreed that the southern Sudanese should hold a referendum on secession, but statements from the Sudanese government have been far from conciliatory. "Peace will come by the gun if it cannot come by dialogue," warned Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir at independence day celebrations in Malakal, southern Sudan. The SPLA warned that even as Al-Bashir spoke, helicopter gunships were bombarding civilian targets near oil-producing areas of southern Sudan.
Two burning issues still unresolved are the sharing of the country's oil wealth and a more equitable distribution of government posts. The SPLA demands 60 per cent of the oil wealth, but the Sudanese government has offered only 10 per cent. The SPLA also wants 40 per cent of all government posts, but the government is willing to apportion only 20 per cent. These sticking points, together with Khartoum's insistence that the national capital remain under Shari'a law and not secular law, have enraged southern Sudanese.
Some southern Sudanese factions have raised concerns about Arab plans to reconstruct southern Sudan. "Secession is a choice of last resort," Khaled explained. "Those who criticise the southern Sudanese for seeking secession invariably fail to address the issues that exasperate the southerners like the separation of religion from the state. The central government at the federal level must be subject to secular, not religious law," he said. He added that the SPLA is committed to the territorial integrity of Sudan, "providing that the Sudanese government upholds the terms of the Machakos protocols".
The SPLA believes that it is of critical importance to involve the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the umbrella opposition organisation grouping the SPLA and other mainly northern Sudanese opposition parties, in the peace talks. The Sudanese government has adamantly opposed bringing in other Sudanese opposition parties to the talks.
"The Machakos process is all but finished. The Sudanese government is intransigent and does not want to concede any of the most important demands," Farouk Abu-Eissa, the head of the Cairo-based Arab Lawyers Union and official spokesman for the NDA told the Weekly.
The United States this week signalled that it will not remove Sudan from the list of states sponsoring terrorism until Sudan could "prove unequivocally" that it harbours no militant Islamist "terrorists". Washington has emerged as key to the successful continuation of the Sudanese peace talks. The United States is exerting tremendous behind the scenes pressure with its Sudan Peace Act, signed by US President George W Bush. The act provides a framework through which Washington may block oil revenues if it believes that the Sudanese government is not fulfilling its obligations under Machakos.
In a separate development, Sudan is strengthening its regional ties and appears to be succeeding in forming an tripartite axis with Ethiopia and Yemen. Officially, Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen have formed a regional alliance to combat terrorism. But observers believe that the real motive behind the alliance is to contain any possible threat from their mutual enemy Eritrea, where the Sudanese opposition NDA is headquartered. Over the past decade, Eritrea went to war at different times with one or the other of the three countries. The worst clashes were during the two-year border war which ended with the signing in Algiers of a cease-fire agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopia in June 2003. But even with the cessation of hostilities, it is a tense and cold peace that prevails.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mostafa Othman Ismail and his Ethiopian and Yemeni counterparts reiterated their pledge to uphold human rights and democratisation in their respective countries. The three states also stressed their determination to stamp out terrorism. "We need to step up our cooperation to make our region free of any terrorist elements that destabilise world security." How this new alliance will impact the war in Sudan is still not entirely clear.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 23 - 29 January 2003 (Issue No. 622)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/622/re3.htm