Resource-sharing pact could end Sudanese civil war: Government, rebels to divide country’s assets today
By Peter Goodspeed, National Post
Jan 07, 2004 — A civil war that has claimed the lives of two million people in Africa’s largest country may be drawing to a close.
Negotiators for the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army are expected to sign an agreement in the Kenyan lakeside town of Naivasha today on how to share southern Sudan’s resources — a breakthrough that may signal the acceptance of a final peace pact within weeks.
Two years of delicate diplomatic negotiations to end Africa’s longest-running civil war, which pits the Christian and animist population of southern Sudan against northern Sudan’s Islamic fundamentalist government, may finally be reaching a successful conclusion.
Under the agreement, Sudan’s government and the rebels will agree to split revenues from southern Sudan’s oil and non-oil resources, including taxes, equally over a six-year transition period.
The agreement will also set up a new monetary system that calls for the creation of a double-barrelled central bank that would allow the continuation of an Islamic banking system in the north and the creation of a Western banking system in the south.
Currently, all of Sudan’s major banks are run under Islamic law, which forbids most forms of interest.
Under the proposed peace deal, northern Sudan will retain shariah law, but it will no longer be applied in the Christian south.
Two key issues remain to be negotiated in the talks — power sharing at the national level in the government, national assembly and civil service during the six-year transition and the final administrative set-up of three disputed areas in central Sudan.
Overall, today’s agreement will give Sudan’s rebels both the finances and the institutions they need to run their own affairs in a nearly autonomous state. After six years, southern Sudan will hold a referendum on whether to secede.
The struggle for resources — particularly Sudan’s oil reserves, which are located mainly in the south — has been one of the main issues in the war.
The country exports around 300,000 barrels of oil per day.
Under the peace agreement, Sudan will create a special presidential commission to oversee management of its oil fields. The commission, which will include members from both the government and rebel sides, will oversee future oil exploration and ensure revenues from the oil fields are distributed fairly.
Sudan has been plagued by conflict ever since it won its independence from Britain in 1956. For all but a few years it has been engulfed in battles between the Arab, Islamic north and the south’s predominantly black African Christian and animist population.
The current conflict erupted in 1983, five years after oil was discovered in the south and around the time a new Islamic fundamentalist government tried to impose shariah law on the entire country.
Since then, the war has become one of the world’s longest-running humanitarian tragedies, claiming the lives of two million people and forcing another four million into squalid refugee camps.
The conflict has been characterized by constant shifts in alliances and ideologies, gruesome human rights violations and constant civilian suffering, both as a result of fighting and from war-induced famine.
For four years, the Canadian oil and gas exploration company Talisman Energy Inc. was criticized by human rights groups over its involvement in Sudan’s oil fields. The company sold its share of Sudan’s largest oil project for $1.13-billion last year.
For the past two years, both sides in the conflict have been pressured to negotiate an end to the war as the United States waged a campaign of diplomatic arm-twisting.
The current talks in Kenya have been held under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, a seven-member body that includes Sudan and its neighbours, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Uganda and Somalia.
But it has really been the behind-the-scenes efforts of Washington, Britain and Norway that have forced the warring Sudanese to reach a final deal.
Peace in Sudan could hand George W. Bush, the U.S. President, a political and diplomatic victory just in time for this year’s U.S. presidential elections and could help Washington reach out to other Muslim states.
Settling the conflict could also undermine the influence of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist group in the region while solidifying Mr. Bush’s domestic political support among conservative evangelical Christians, who have consistently rallied to the cause of Sudan’s oppressed Christian minority.
More importantly, after two decades of insecurity and constant bloodshed, a peace deal in Sudan could become a beacon of hope for the rest of Africa and might encourage a broader comprehensive settlement of disputes in neighbouring Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea.