Khartoum’s residents hope for true Peace
By TANALEE SMITH
Aug 23, 2005 (Khartoum) – Bahreddin Mohammed, like many in Khartoum, says the Sudanese capital has recovered from deadly riots three weeks ago and is again the model of the peace outlined in a deal that ended a two-decade civil war early this year.
But anger and suspicion lie below the veneer of calm.
“It is no longer dangerous or tense, but we are taking care,” he said, showing off a thick, yard-long pole he says he would use to defend his life and property. “I have to protect myself.”
Mohammed lives in Kalakala, a southern suburb of Khartoum where some of the worst riots broke out after First Vice President John Garang de Mabior, who led the southern rebellion, died in a helicopter crash July 30.
Garang reached a peace accord with President Omar al-Bashir in January to end the 21-year civil war and guarantee southerners a role in the national government. He died just three weeks after taking office as first vice president.
The southerners, mainly Christians and animists, had been fighting what they viewed as oppression by the central government, dominated primarily by Arab Muslims.
Rioters — widely claimed to have been southern Sudanese — unleashed their anger over Garang’s death in attacks on northerners and their shops and homes. By the second and third days of rioting, northerners began taking revenge.
Garang’s successor and fellow rebel leader, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has pledged to continue implementing the peace agreement, which promised southerners an equal share in the wealth in Africa’s biggest country, particularly from the southern oil fields.
But the violent flare-up in Khartoum laid down a coat of mistrust that still must be overcome by both northerners and southerners trying to reconcile their lives under a new national unity government.
Spice shop owner Moawya Mahmoud Mohammed said he stood his ground when hundreds of people marched through the market on Aug. 1, looting shops and setting some on fire. His shop was not touched, but the storekeeper next door was beaten.
“Things are fine now,” he insisted but said he was alert when he saw groups of young southern men walk past his baskets of colorful spices. “I’m keeping myself ready. I expect anything from them. And if they burn me, I will burn them.”
In the first official report on the rioting, police Gen. Kamal Al-Din Gaafar said Sunday that 90 people were killed — lowering the toll from the 111 reported by the Sudanese Red Crescent — and 967 were seriously injured. There was no breakdown of casualties according to ethnicity. One policeman was among those killed.
Gaafar, director of the Khartoum state criminal department, said 3,747 people had been arrested in connection with the violence, among them known criminals. He said the roundup did not target a specific race, ethnicity or religion.
The president has appointed a commission to investigate the violence and assess compensation for those who lost property.
Three weeks on, charred shops and gutted cars on the roadside are grim reminders of the three days when the city’s residents turned on each other.
While most witnesses said the rioters were a mix of people from the south, west and north — with a large contingent of criminals — the blame, in the public’s perception, seems to have fallen mainly on southerners.
Luka Black, 20, from Equatoria in the south, said he was being treated differently by northerners in his neighborhood of al-Fitihab.
“People look at me suspiciously, mutter things under their breath,” Black said. “We just can’t live together.”
Watching a child run past rolling a bicycle rim with a metal pipe, he said, “We’re using things like that in our homes to defend ourselves if the northerners attack. Every southerner is … ready to fight.”
But he said one of his closest friends was a northern Muslim and he hoped things would return to normal.
Northerner El-Sayed Mutasim El-Sayed didn’t hide his distrust. “Before John Garang died, everything was fine, northerners and southerners lived together easily. Now, northerners have to take care. I don’t trust some of the southerners.”
He pointed down the road, where a shop was burned to the ground, and declared himself lucky.
“We can live in peace. We need each other. But I still have a bad feeling here,” he said, touching his chest.
AP/ST