Sudan’s Garang missing in Uganda
By Daniel Wallis
KAMPALA, July 31 (Reuters) – Sudan’s ex-rebel leader and now First Vice president John Garang was missing on Sunday after taking a helicopter to southern Sudan from Uganda in a potentially dangerous turn of events for the peace process.
Uganda’s military said they were searching for the helicopter, which left on Saturday night to take Garang — who waged a two-decade war against Khartoum from southern Sudan until January — back after talks with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
“What we know is they left here, they went and we don’t know where they are,” Uganda military spokesman Lt. Col Shaban Bantariza said. “There has been no communication back.”
A spokesman for Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), reached by phone in Nairobi, said: “I’m in a crisis meeting and I can’t talk right now.”
A senior Sudanese government official who declined to be identified said: “The Sudanese and the Ugandans and Kenyans were searching the area but this has stopped because it got dark. It will resume tomorrow morning.”
The official said Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir Bashir and Second Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha were holding an emergency meeting in Khartoum.
“The aircraft was going from Uganda to New Site in southern Sudan when it lost contact last night. We don’t know what happened because there is no communication,” he added.
“Since he left Uganda, he did not call or contact anyone. The presidency is following matters very closely. They have contacted the Ugandans and the Kenyans and our friends with sophisticated equipment to search for the aircraft.”
HELICOPTERS SEARCHING
Four helicopters could be seen flying search patterns over Kitgum District in northern Uganda, near southern Sudan, a United Nations security source in the region said.
The 21-year civil war ended with an historic peace deal in January, the terms of which gave Garang the vice presidency on July 9. Multitudes greeted his arrival in Khartoum.
News of Garang’s disappearance spread consternation around the region.
“This is the biggest crisis we have faced in Sudan in 20 years,” said Dan Eiffe, a respected humanitarian advocate who has worked in Sudan for the last 18 years.
“At best he is seriously injured and at worst he is dead. He is the hope of everything. People’s hopes are pinned on him.”
The war started in 1983 when the Islamist Khartoum government tried to impose Islamic Sharia law on the mainly Christian and animist south.
Garang arrived in Uganda on a charter flight on Friday on a personal visit, and was then flown on Museveni’s helicopter to meet the Ugandan president at his ranch at Rwakitura, about 300 km (190 miles) southwest of Kampala.
They were said to have discussed the civil war in northern Uganda and the political future of southern Sudan.
(additional reporting by Khaled Abdel-Aziz in Khartoum, and Wangui Kanina in Nairobi)