Enemy at the gates?
Sudanese peace talks resume in Kenya against the disquieting backdrop of a renewed campaign against secularist and democratic forces in Sudan, reports Gamal Nkrumah
The sixth and final round of Sudanese peace talks resumed in the Kenyan Rift Valley city of Nakuru on Sunday 6 July. The talks between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), the country's largest armed opposition group, are widely anticipated to be the decisive rostrum for determining the political future of Sudan. During the Nakuru talks, the Sudanese government and the SPLA will prepare the final peace documents that they are expected to sign by the end of August.
Topping the agenda is the future role of the Sudanese national army, the legal status of the national capital Khartoum and three regions which currently are technically part of northern Sudan, but whose inhabitants overwhelmingly support the SPLA. The SPLA wants the three regions -- Abyei; the Nuba Mountains; and Ingassena, or the southern Blue Nile -- to enjoy autonomous status similar to that envisioned for southern Sudan.
The Sudanese National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the umbrella opposition organisation composed of the SPLA and other mainly northern-based Sudanese opposition parties, is not officially part of the Nakuru talks. However, the NDA has sent observers to the talks. The Nakuru talks are officially held under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD), a regional organisation comprising seven East African countries, including Sudan.
The United States, the prime mover of the Sudanese peace process, is stepping up pressure on both the Sudanese government and the SPLA to sign a peace agreement before the US presidential campaign begins in November. "US President George W Bush would like to present himself as a man of peace especially after the war and occupation of Iraq. Bush wants to be seen as a man who ended Africa's longest running civil war that cost the lives of more than two million Sudanese," Farouk Abu Eissa, the head of the Cairo-based Arab Lawyers Union and official spokesman for the NDA told Al-Ahram Weekly.
The cessation of hostilities between the Sudanese government and the SPLA was signed last October and renewed in February 2003. The Sudanese government and the SPLA are trying, with regional and international backing, to finalise an agreement to end the Sudanese civil war. During the flurry of diplomatic activity leading up to the peace talks, Kenya's Sudan mediator, Lazarus Sumbeiywo, visited southern Sudan last Tuesday to inspect government-controlled areas before the Nakuru talks.
US special envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, is also scheduled to visit Egypt and Sudan in mid- July to follow the progress of the Nakuru talks.
However, the Sudanese peace talks have resumed at a time of heightened political tensions in Sudan. Student unrest is creating political ripples. The Sudanese government has clamped down hard on the University of Khartoum students. The authorities are particularly concerned about the increased influence of the Democratic Front, a student organisation of the Sudanese Communist Party founded in 1953, and which still has a strong following among academics and university students. The imams (preachers) of mosques sympathetic to the Sudanese government have this week issued fatwas (religious decrees) declaring Communists, liberals, secularists, Democratic Front members and other secularist groups as kuffar (faithless or apostate) which under Sudan's Islamic Shari'a law is regarded as a criminal offence punishable by death.
Among the ulama (Islamic scholars) who have issued the fatwas are leading Sudanese religious figures such as Sheikhs Mohamed Al-Fadel Ahmed Al-Amin Ismail; Mohamed Sayed Hag; Al- Hibr Yousef Nur Al-Daim; Salah Al-Tom and Mohamed Abdul-Karim. Adopting a seige mentality, they are spearheading a campaign to keep the capital Shari'a-ruled.
The Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood has also stepped into the fray. The pro-government group has stepped up its campaign against liberals, secularists and "godless" Communists. The leader of the Muslim Brothers Sadig Abdullah Abdul- Maged, nicknamed Sadig Al-Banna, after the celebrated late Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader, Sheikh Hassan Al-Banna, also issued a fatwa denouncing the secularists as apostate. Ironically, Sudan, unlike Egypt, has no central religious authority issuing official fatwas.
It is against this tense backdrop that the Nakuru talks are taking place. The rise of religious bigotry and intolerance, coupled with a renewed determination to keep the national capital Khartoum under strict Islamic Shari'a law. The religious and legal status of Khartoum as the national or federal capital is one of the most contentious issues under discussion in Nakaru.
"Certain elements of the Sudanese government are behaving in a very irresponsible manner. They are playing dangerous political games that will lead Sudan into future setbacks and catastrophes," Umma Party leader Sadig Al-Mahdi told the Weekly. He stressed that the fatwas are political in nature and cannot be taken seriously as religious decrees.
In a separate political development, the Sudanese authorities last week arrested the outspoken anti-government activist and lawyer Ghazi Soleiman and four others for drafting a document known as the Khartoum Declaration which calls for the Sudanese capital Khartoum to be free of Islamic Shari'a law.
The Khartoum Declaration lends support to the Machakos Protocols governing the Sudanese peace process and which both the Sudanese government and the SPLA have in principle accepted as a blueprint for charting Sudan's political future. Signed by 18 opposition parties, 15 non- governmental organisations and more than 40 opposition leaders, the Khartoum Declaration urges the active participation of civil society and all political forces in the country in the drafting of a new "civil and democratic" Constitution for the six-year transitional period stipulated by the Machakos Protocols. During this interim stage, southern Sudan would be granted six years of self-rule before deciding in a referendum whether to secede or remain part of Sudan.
Other key features of the Machakos Protocols defining the peace framework, apart from the southern Sudanese people's right to self- determination, include the creation of a federal system of government and the lifting of Shari'a law in the southern, predominantly Christian and animist, third of Sudan.
Complicating the picture, a number of influential northern-based political parties have serious reservations about the secularisation of the country. The Umma Party, a signatory to the Cairo Declaration, objects to the use of the term "secular" and prefers the shorter term "national capital" instead. The Umma Party and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) are essentially religious parties whose primary constituencies are religious orders -- the Khatimiya Sect for the DUP and the Ansar Al- Mahdi for the Umma Party. While the leaders of both parties signed the Cairo Declaration with the SPLA in May calling for Khartoum to be made a national secular capital, the leaders of the Umma and DUP publicly played down their commitment to a secular Khartoum for fear of alienating some of their followers.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 10 - 16 July 2003 (Issue No. 646)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/646/re11.htm