Sudan’s NCP, SPLM to talk tough to maintain peace
May 27, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan’s former north-south foes held their first joint political forum on Saturday hoping to overcome their differences and ensure a 2005 peace deal does not degenerate into a return to war.
The Government of National Unity was formed last year after the peace deal between the north’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) ended more than two decades of civil war.
But critics say it has yet to live up to its name.
“The NCP has the capacity to implement but lacks the political will, whereas the SPLM has the commitment but is weak and disorganised,” the International Crisis Group think tank said in a recent report.
The NCP has an army of seasoned politicians who have governed Sudan for the past 16 years. Their SPLM counterparts are often commanders who have spent two decades in the bush, cut off from the world.
The SPLM, which controls 80 percent of the southern government, also struggles to function in the south — one of the poorest areas on earth with vast mined areas, few tarmac roads and little infra-structure.
Last month the SPLM finally formed political institutions dissolved by its late leader John Garang months before his sudden death in July last year. But the transformation from guerrilla group to political party is proving difficult with a lack of skilled people.
During a news conference before Saturday’s forum, the NCP’s Mustafa Osman Ismail gave a 30-minute introduction with his desk full of documents which he was still reading as he spoke.
By contrast, SPLM official Aliyu Ayeeni Aliyu sat before an empty desk and spoke for only two minutes using oft-repeated phrases about the historic moment facing Sudan.
The ICG said these challenges and the faltering pace of the peace process gave rise to a real risk of renewed conflict.
The most flagrant violation was in Abyei in March with 12 SPLM soldiers killed in an ambush.
The area, on the north-south border, has a special autonomous status with the right to vote in a referendum on joining the north or a possible separate south in 2011.
But President Omar Hassan al-Bashir refuses to accept the findings of an Abyei boundary commission appointed under the deal, creating a deadlock.
Abyei contains one of Sudan’s two largest oil fields. Sudan is pumping around 500,000 barrels per day of crude.
Abyei’s fate epitomises the strain on the peace deal signed in January 2005 to end Africa’s longest civil war which claimed 2 million lives and forced more than 4 million people to flee their homes.
While the SPLM tries to disarm or negotiate with militias in the south, they accuse the NCP of continuing to arm their proxies there to undermine the ceasefire.
The Crisis Group says the NCP is in “blatant violation of the peace deal” on Abyei, adding it was a “direct threat to peace”.
As the meeting between the NCP and SPLM began, about 50 students from Abyei demonstrated angrily demanding to know why their region has been left in a state of disarray with no change since peace.
“We are happy with peace, but we want to know why some parts are not being implemented, like the Abyei protocol,” said Malwal Aalwau, a student from the oil-rich region. “The SPLM … need to do more.”
Aalwau said the SPLM were trying to implement the deal but were regularly being blocked by the NCP, which still controls a majority of governmental ministries, security organs and parliament and are delaying the process.
(Reuters)