Sudan’s rebel leader vows to fight to rebuild devastated region
RUMBEK, Sudan, June 12 (AFP) — Sudan’s main rebel leader, John Garang, has swapped his combat gear for bright African shirts now that peace is in sight and vows to rebuild one of the most deprived and war-ravaged regions in the world.
“We are literally starting from scratch. We are just emerging from the bush,” he told AFP in an interview in Rumbek, a southern town likely to be the south’s capital but which today lies in ruins after countless bombing raids.
“We want to provide the basic services to our people,” he added Friday, listing electricity, public transport, education and clean drinking water as some of his priorities.
Sudan, Africa’s biggest country, has been at war for most of the years since it won independence in 1956. Some 1.5 million have been killed since the 1983 start of the conflict between Garang’s southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) against government forces.
But the rebels and Khartoum have struck deals resolving the Christian and animist south’s grievances of domination and marginalisation by the Arab, Islamic government in the north.
Power and wealth are to be shared equitably, and the south will enjoy self-rule for six years before holding a referendum on its political future.
In the coming months, the two sides will hammer out details of how to implement these arrangments and of a comprehensive ceasefire.
“Our priority begins with infrastructures, because really if things can not move, the economy cannot function,” said Garang, who is set to get the job of Sudanese vice-president if the peace deals are concluded.
“We haven’t had tarmac roads since creation,” added the rebel leader, who travels around the 850,000-square-kilometre (333,000-square-mile) oil-rich southern region by plane.
Garang, a former government army officer sent to quell a mutiny of southern troops but who never came back, no longer wears a pistol on his belt and has ditched his combat garb for brightly patterned African shirts.
But the bald, bearded leader, who has a doctorate in agricultural economics from a US university, is still escorted by heavily armed bodyguards.
“We have to open a water way for navigation of the Nile so that we link with the north, and we must rehabilitate the only railway line we have,” he said. “We will look at all the alternative ways of getting electricity, wind, sun, water.”
Most of the people of southern Sudan currently live without electricity or telephone connections. The war also took a heavy toll on education in the south, where a mere 1,000 people out of a total of 10 million are estimated to hold a university degree.
Garang said he would focus on education for girls, which he said “has been totally neglected,” adding that the south had few teachers.
Access to clean water is another priority.
“A woman travels five to 10 kilometres to bring drinking water. We will reduce this so that she gets water from the house. We will liberate that woman by five to 10 kilometres.”
If the peace deal is concluded, the south will get an annual budget of 1.5 billion dollars under the terms agreed on the distribution of the country’s wealth.
But Garang admitted that the reconstruction of the devastated region was an enormous undertaking.
“We’re going to have to fight, but this time without weapons,” he said.
The planned peace settlement has yet to be finalised. Observers say it may have to include other conflicts in Sudan, which is roughly the size of western Europe.
The country’s other main conflict is in the Darfur region on the western border with Chad, where an estimated million people have been displaced by fighting between mainly African rebels and Arab militia.