Lamenting Sudan’s war and working for peace
By Nora Boustany, The Washington Post
April 9, 2004 — A ldo Ajou Deng, one of 100 children born to Deng Akuei, a Dinka tribal chief in southern Sudan, said that when he was a young man, he could trek miles across Africa’s largest country without worrying about food or safety.
Villagers often invited young travelers into their homes for communal meals of millet porridge, okra stew and dried fish served on spongy layers of flatbread.
“I remember the civility and generosity of the Sudanese, not this violence,” he said, reminiscing about the week-long journey from a southern province to Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. “I used to walk for miles, take the lorry to the nearest train station and then head to Khartoum without taking provisions. Strangers always took me in.”
“If I left my belongings by the side of the road, no one touched them,” said Deng, 63, who first became a member of parliament in 1967 and later served in several governmental posts, including chairman of a parliamentary human rights committee. “We have lost this hospitality. I keep wondering now, can it come back?”
By the early 1990s, Deng had grown disillusioned with the government’s aim of an Islamic state and frustrated with efforts to block his human rights investigations. In 1993, he sent his nine children out of the country, ostensibly to attend school in Egypt. It was only in midair that he confided to his wife, Martha Leon John, that the family was forever leaving behind their home in Khartoum, property in the south, cars and bank accounts.
Deng was in Washington this week to meet with U.S. officials and nongovernmental organizations about his vision for a peaceful Sudan, where fighting has occurred for most of the years since the country gained independence in 1956. The current civil war began in 1983, when a group of southerners formed the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) to fight the northern government and its imposition of Islamic law. Two million Sudanese are estimated to have died during the past 20 years of warfare, many of starvation and disease. The government of Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Bashir, president and prime minister since 1989, has proclaimed an Islamic state.
“I want Sudan to maintain its geographic borders,” Deng said in an interview Wednesday, “but I want to see power distributed equally to all areas in a federal system.”
“I have known Sudan very well, I know the people in the south, in the north, west and east. My only conclusion is that its governments, of which I had been a part once, neglected the country by not ever drawing a real constitution that makes room for its diverse traditions, ethnicities and religions,” Deng said.
During the first 10 years of his life, Deng helped raise cattle owned by his father, who wedded 20 wives before he died in 1995. Deng attended a Catholic missionary school, where Italian priests nicknamed him “Aldo,” which stuck, and taught him hymns that he still likes to sing. He left for secondary school, where he was tutored by British instructors. And at 6-foot-8, he excelled at basketball and mastered the high jump.
He was drawn into politics at age 22, when Col. Jaafar Nimeri sought to appease southerners by involving them in national politics.
Deng currently lives in exile in London and shuttles among Cairo, Nairobi and southern Sudan. He has been actively negotiating with Sudanese government officials and the rebels to help bring a measure of peace to Sudan.
At least three of Deng’s nine children are on basketball scholarships at American universities. He came to the United States to watch his son Luol, 18, a 6-foot-8 freshman forward at Duke University, play in the NCAA tournament semifinals against the University of Connecticut in San Antonio. His daughter Arek, 21, is a 6-foot-4 center at the University of Delaware.
Deng said that even if the problems in southern Sudan are solved, fighting in the western Darfur region of the country remains a hurdle to peace and democracy. Thousands of people have died in the area, and Doctors Without Borders has spoken of the need for militarily secured havens. The Sudanese government signed a cease-fire with rebels in the region Thursday to allow humanitarian agencies access to the area.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan warned Wednesday that a Rwanda-style genocide was in the making in Sudan and said an international military force could be necessary, a suggestion promptly rejected by the government.
Oil concessions granted by the government to Canadian, Swedish and Chinese firms have involved the clearing of villages and an exodus of refugees, Deng said.
“When the government built pipelines through the Nubian mountains, entire villages were wiped out, even mosques were burned down while preachers were giving their sermons,” Deng said.
“So far, no one has benefited from this oil, $3 billion in annual revenues that are not even on the books,” he added. “Now we are going to call for an investigation into the atrocities committed by these governments with the help of foreign companies. They all participated in these crimes against humanity.”