Home to roost
Sudan's marginalised peoples are jostling for a say in the decision-making process after years of neglect by the central government, writes Gamal Nkrumah
Fighting between armed opposition groups and government-backed militias in Sudan's western-most Darfur province has intensified over the past three weeks. Some of these groups are affiliated to the Sudanese umbrella opposition group, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which includes the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and other northern opposition groups such as the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the Sudanese Communist Party and smaller regional parties such as the Beja Congress representing the non-Arab, but Muslim, Beja ethnic group of eastern Sudan.
The Sudanese government has also warned that armed opposition groups in Darfur include renegade members of the Umma Party headed by former Sudanese Prime Minister Sadig Al-Mahdi. The Umma Party has denied any links with the instigators of war in Western Sudan, including Darfur, even though the region has long been considered a stronghold of the Umma Party and affiliated Sufi religious orders.
The fighting ensued even as peace talks between the Sudanese government and the country's largest armed opposition group, the SPLA ended inconclusively last Wednesday in the Kenyan capital Nairobi under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority of Development (IGAD), a grouping of seven East African countries, one of whom is Sudan.
Lazrus Sumbeiywo, the Kenyan chief mediator for the talks, characterised them as an "earnest and frank exchange". Discussions centred on the political fate of three remote regions that the SPLA says are politically marginalised, economically disadvantaged and underdeveloped -- the Nuba Mountains in southern Kordofan, the Abeyei region in western Kordofan, and the Angassana region of southern Blue Nile. While some progress was made in the cases of the Angassana and the Nuba Mountains regions, not much headway was made in the case of the Abeyei region for which the two parties were unable to agree on precise geographical boundaries.
The Sudanese government says that foreign forces are backing the armed opposition groups in Darfur. There are reports of Chadian armed opposition groups supporting dissident groups in Darfur. The porous border region between Darfur, Chad and the Central African Republic is inhospitable and remote. With the discovery of oil in quantities suitable for commercial exploitation in Chad and Sudan, and talk of possible oil finds in the Central African Republic as well, tensions have reached a boiling point. The tense political situation in the Central African Republic, where armed opposition forces have toppled a democratically- elected regime, threatens to spill over into western Sudan.
While not discounting the impact of the highly strained regional situation, most observers say that heightened tensions in Darfur in particular, and western Sudan generally, are the result of years of government mismanagement and neglect.
"The Sudanese authorities have adopted a policy of ethnic cleansing in western Sudan for the past two decades or more," Farouk Abu-Eissa, the head of the Cairo-based Arab Lawyers Union and official spokesman for the NDA told Al-Ahram Weekly.
The Sudanese authorities have adopted a policy of forced Arabisation and Islamisation policies. It therefore comes as no surprise that one of the main armed rebel groups in Darfur, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) -- not to be confused with the SPLA -- has called on the people of Darfur "of Arab background" to join other non-Arabised indigenous forces in the struggle against the central government in Khartoum. The SLA was formerly known as the Darfur Liberation Front, a secessionist organisation calling for the secession of the area from Sudan. Today the SLA, led by Mini Arkoi Minawi, wants to "create a united, democratic Sudan".
Different political groups representing various ethnic communities and ideological strands in the Darfur region have taken up arms against the Sudanese government who have in the past supported local Arab and militant Islamist paramilitary militias.
Among the better organised ethnic Fur political groups are the Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance (SFDA), headed by former Sudanese Minister Ahmed Diraig. SFDA is a member of the NDA. The main ethnic groups in Darfur are the Fur, Massaleet and Zaghawa. The Massaleet, a Muslim people who -- like the Fur -- have retained strong pre-Islamic African traditional beliefs and customs. Unlike the Fur, they are poorly organised politically, and have an egalitarian structure with no chiefs. There is no single Massaleet political group that represents them nationally or that seeks to advance their interests.
Darfur, Sudan's largest province, is a highly fertile region with rich agricultural farmland and pastures for cattle. It is inhabited by a sedentary and thoroughly Islamised people who constituted an independent sultanate until forcibly incorporated into Sudan by the British colonial authorities in 1916. The Fur people, who live around the Jebel Marrah region and speak their own Fur language, have a strong sense of regional identity. Even though they have been Muslim for over six centuries, they see themselves as distinct from the Arab pastoral tribesmen who inhabit the plains.
It appears that the ethnic groups of the vast and culturally assertive Darfur now want to have a decisive say in a new Sudan. Western human rights organisations have come to the assistance of Darfur's downtrodden and disgruntled groups. Last month, Amnesty International called for setting up an international commission of inquiry to examine human rights violations in Darfur. The SLA wants Khartoum to grant a general amnesty to its fighters and urges the Sudanese government and the international community to speed up the implementation of development programmes in Darfur.
Western donor nations and Japan are scheduled to meet at The Hague next week to discuss Sudan. Darfur might not top the agenda, but it will undoubtedly be discussed as will Angassana, Abeyei and the Nuba Mountains.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 27 March - 2 April 2003 (Issue No. 631)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/631/re2.htm