Sudan, southern rebels end 21-year war
By Katie Nguyen and Wangui Kanina
NAIROBI, Jan 9 (Reuters) – Amid thanksgiving hymns and the dancing of bare-chested warriors, Sudan’s government and southern rebels forged a comprehensive peace on Sunday ending Africa’s longest-running civil war.
Sudan’s First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha and John Garang of the southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement signed the accord in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, ending a 21-year-old old conflict in the south that has killed an estimated two million people mainly through famine and disease.
The agreement did not cover a separate conflict in the western Darfur area of Africa’s largest country, where almost two years of fighting have created what the United Nations calls one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The agreement is expected to trigger the return of more than half a million Sudanese who fled to nearby countries and the gradual resettlement of four million displaced internally.
Exiles at the ceremony said they would now return home.
“I feel great. If I had wings I would be flying,” said Grace Datiro, 35, a southerner who has lived in Kenya for 14 years since war drove her from her home in Sudan’s Equatoria region.
“Of course it (returning to Sudan) will be difficult for the children. But we have explained to them that home is best.”
She was seated among thousands of banner-waving, chanting exiles and refugees entertained by the dancing of bare-chested Dinka warriors wearing leopardskin loincloths and white paint on their faces.
In front of 12 African heads of state or government and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, SPLM chairman Garang and Taha put their names to a series of protocols that had been signed by junior colleagues in two years of talks. The protocols together constitute an overall accord including a permanent ceasefire.
Under the agreement the ruling National Congress party and the SPLM will form an interim coalition government, decentralise power, share oil revenues and integrate the military. At the end of a six-year interim period, the south can vote for secession.
MANY FRONTS
Sudan faces conflict on many fronts – mainly in the south where rebels have been fighting the government since 1983, when Khartoum tried to impose Islamic law on the entire country. Oil, ethnicity and ideology have complicated the conflict.
Violence also has erupted in Darfur, where a rebellion began in February 2003 after years of tribal conflict over scarce resources. Those rebels accuse the government of neglect and of using Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to loot and burn non-Arab villages.
Khartoum acknowledges arming some militias to fight rebels but denies any links to the Janjaweed, calling them outlaws. Tens of thousands have already been killed in the Darfur war and nearly two million forced to flee their homes.
The southern civil war began in 1983 and broadly pits the Islamist government based in Khartoum against the mainly Christian and animist south. The fighting has killed some two million people and forced millions more to flee their homes.
“We are so happy today. We don’t want any more bloodshed in southern Sudan. I want to go home. I have 12 years to catch up on,” said musician Malek Malual, 25, from Sudan’s Abyei region.
Awadia al-Khatieeb, a government official in Khartoum who was visiting Nairobi for the ceremony, said: “Today is a very big day for us. We (in the north) have also suffered … If this one (war) has been solved then Darfur will also end.”
The U.N. Security Council – meeting in Nairobi, away from its New York home for the first time in 14 years – unanimously adopted a resolution in November promising political and substantial economic support once Sudan ended both wars.
On Sunday, U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan praised the new deal, telling reporters: “The agreement will hopefully have a positive impact on the situation in Darfur. There are lessons there which could apply to the situation in Darfur.”