After Garang
Editorial, The Arab News
6 August 2005 — Will the hard-won peace in the 21-year conflict between the north and south of Sudan be buried today in Juba along with the body of Dr. John Garang, leader of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) and one of the architects of that peace? It must be hoped that it will not. Peace at the end of any conflict as long and bitter as Sudan’s civil war carries inevitable fears and suspicions.
Garang’s death within three weeks of becoming vice president under an East African-brokered peace deal may well have been an accident, though yesterday Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, in whose crashed helicopter the SPLM leader perished, said he himself was still unsure. Angry supporters who rioted in Khartoum and Juba believed the worst and unfortunately their intemperate response caused over 100 deaths.
The SPLM leader had reportedly granted oil exploration rights in southern Sudan to British interests, in defiance of concessions previously granted to French concerns. Maybe outside hands were indeed at work. It seems impossible, however, that Sudan’s President Omar Bashir could be linked to any conspiracy theory. He and his government have worked intensely to bring about a peace that had eluded all of his predecessors. It was clearly not in his interests to see such hard-won success thrown away with the death of Garang. The president, clearly shocked, has called for calm and insisted that the peace deal must stay in place.
Under its provisions, in six years’ time, the south of the country will vote on secession or for remaining an autonomous part of Sudan. Garang’s successor as Sudanese vice president and leader of the autonomous government of southern Sudanese is his deputy, Salva Kiir Mayardit who is known to favor independence.
Mayardit, though popular among his people, does however have a problem filling the shoes of his former boss, an authoritarian figure who brooked no opposition, dealing ruthlessly with those who challenged him. Some fear that without Garang, tensions within the SPLM that he repressed will now come to the surface, with Mayardit’s leadership disputed.
It must be hoped that senior SPLM members will recognize that now is not the moment for political infighting. They must instead focus entirely on making the peace deal work, calming their angry and suspicious followers and delivering on their side of the bargain, part of which is the inclusion of the SPLM’s fighting units in a new multiethnic Sudanese Army. The appeal by Muslim religious leaders in their Friday sermons for maintaining peace will prove to be of immense help to President Bashir who needs to continue his moderate and sympathetic approach toward the currently disoriented SPLM, while also watching out for extremists among the Arab community, who may be tempted to take advantage of Garang’s death to try and rekindle the civil war. It would be tragic indeed if the peace, so freshly won at such bitter cost to both communities, was destroyed by radicals from either side, who never wanted it in the first place.