Government and rebels clear way to end Sudan’s civil war
By William Wallis
KHARTOUM, May 27, 2004 (Financial Times) — The Sudan government and its rebel adversaries from the south were yesterday on the point of clearing the way towards a final agreement to end Africa’s longest running civil war.
John Garang, leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and Ali Osman Taha, vice-president in the Arab-led government in Khartoum, were set to sign off on all the remaining issues holding up a final agreement between the two sides.
A planned ceremony at Lake Navasha in Kenya was, however, held up by last-minute hitches over details of power-sharing arrangements.
A spokesman for the southern rebels said the negotiations in Kenya, which have been taking place for more than two years, had now dealt with “all the burning issues that led us into war”. But Kenyan mediators said both sides still needed to work out security arrangements, including provisions for international peacekeepers, before a final and comprehensive peace accord could be signed.
A basic deal required agreement yesterday on how power will be shared, the legal status of non-Muslims in Khartoum, the capital, which is currently governed by Islamic Sharia law, and the future of three disputed regions in the centre of the country.
A year ago, a peace agreement between the government of Sudan and its rebel adversary Mr Garang might have prompted a groundswell of optimism in the region and provided a timely diplomatic success story for Washington.
Mediators and diplomats are doing their best to salvage hope that one of Africa’s most intractable conflicts, which has claimed over 2m lives in two decades, is indeed drawing to a close. But the mood surrounding the talks in Kenya has been more cautious than euphoric.
If all goes according to plan, the outlined deal will lead to a comprehensive peace deal in the next weeks or months. This will open the way to a six-year transitional power-sharing period. During this, Christians and animists in the south of Sudan and Muslims in the north will either learn to cohabit in a federal structure or decide through a referendum in the south to part ways.
The problem, according to numerous leading political figures and opinion-makers in Khartoum, is that the plan is flawed and the context in which it will come into play is far more fragile than it would have been last year.
Regional analysts have long argued that Sudan’s chronic instability could only be resolved sustainably with an inclusive approach to Khartoum’s stranglehold on power. But in the view of many, the Kenyan talks were between just two warring factions.
President Omar el-Bashir’s government initially used the peace process to revamp its credibility at home – where a decade of cliquish military rule and repression in the name of Islam fuelled widespread opposition – and abroad, where its tolerance of international terrorist groups and conduct in the civil war had earned it pariah status.
Until recently that attempt proved relatively successful. Washington was offering the prospect of lifting its wide-ranging sanctions and pouring in aid, hoping in return to score a rare diplomatic success within the Arab world. There was also considerable optimism among the Sudanese that a system that has favoured a small ruling clique in a country the size of western Europe could be changed through the negotiations.
Those hopes have dimmed amid allegations by human rights groups that government security forces have enlisted, armed and fought alongside Arab militia to crush a new rebellion by African rebels in the Darfur region in the west. In the process more than 1m people have been driven from their homes in what the United Nations has called a “reign of terror”.
The challenge of implementing an agreement between the SPLA and Khartoum and selling it to the Sudanese is now far harder. “The only way to change the system is to overthrow the government,” says a sympathiser of the Darfur rebels, in Khartoum. While militarily contained by the government, according to most reports, the rebels are now enjoying a swell of sympathy among African ethnic groups affected by the violence.
In this context, many northern politicians fear that Mr Taha, the government’s chief negotiator, has made too many concessions to the southern SPLA.
“The agreement as it stands gives priority to secession,” says Sadiq al- Mahdi, the former prime minister who leads the opposition Umma party. “It may be that in the short term this will stop the fighting. But in it is also the potential for many other fights to start down the road.”
The concern in Khartoum is not so much that the south will sooner or later claim its independence, and take with it much of Sudan’s oil reserves of 1bn barrels or more, it is more the precedent of a region winning terms which allow it to secede. With this comes the threat that other marginalised and disaffected groups will be encouraged to follow suit. Those in Darfur may have already done so.
“If the SPLA decides now on separation it would be easy for them to do,” says an influential member of the ruling party, reflecting splits within the establishment. “This has given clear indications to other regions like Darfur and eastern Sudan. Now even some northern Sudanese are talking in terms of secession.”
The only hope, he suggested, was that both the government and the SPLA would open up the debate and agree to some amendments in the deal accommodating other groups.
Charles Snyder, acting US assistant secretary of state for Africa, said recently that he believed a positive outcome at the Kenyan peace talks would have a ripple effect, reaching even devastated Darfur. But he said the US would now lift sanctions and normalise relations with Khartoum only once it had reversed the consequences of ethnic cleansing.