The Arab Summit in turn!
By Mahgoub El-Tigani*
April 3, 2006 — “We call on all concerned international and regional parties to restore
security and stability in the Sudan… We call on the participant Sudanese
parties in the Darfur peace talks to increase their efforts to finalize a
comprehensive agreement to resolve the crisis of Darfur,” urged the Khartoum
Declaration of the Arab Summit, as issued in the Sudanese capital, on March
the 29th, 2006.
The Summit demonstrated a great deal of rhetoric “in solidarity with the
Arab unity” in the face of “external invasions.” That rhetoric, however, was
a matter of “much cry, little wool,” for the Summit failed, with only five
heads of states, to commit the participant governments with clear decisions
to reconcile conflicts with civil society and opposition groups; democratize
their systems of rule; and realize the regional and international
obligations towards women, ethnic and religious minorities, and the other
suppressed populations.
The meeting of the Arab Summit in the Sudanese capital had been strongly
rejected by many human rights and democracy groups protesting, as earlier
exhibited before the African Union meetings in Khartoum, the leadership of
the Summit by the NIF repressive rule whose president ignored the country’s
urgent agenda on national reconciliation, and the compliance conferred upon
the Sudan’s government by international resolutions to implement the peace
agreements; end the Darfur and East Sudan conflicts; stop acts of security
terrorism against civil society; reconcile with opposition groups; and
surrender suspects of crimes against humanity to international trial, etc).
Stressing an all-Lebanese settlement, Lebanon dealt a severe blow to the
NIF-motivated Initiative that aimed to tie in a Syrian-Sudanese approach to
resolve the Lebanese conflict. Although the Initiative was never fully
exposed to the public by the Syrian or the Sudanese authorities, it appeared
as a poor diplomatic effort to release both initiators from international
pressures. Moreover on the question of Iraq, the Summit failed to commit the
Arab leaders to provide the Iraqis with effective developmental support or
to help release their outstanding debts. Still, both Western and Arab
entities emphasized national unity in Iraq and Lebanon!
The Summit appreciated a proposal by Egypt to hold a consultative session
for Arab leaders in between their regular summits (Al-Ahram, Cairo:
03/30/06). The proposed sessions would probably allow follow-ups and high
policy coordination; however, they might as well pre-empt the Arab dialogues
or visions with ready-made decisions!
Looking forward to “effective implementation of the [Naivasha] agreement and
a peaceful, unified Sudan working in harmony with all other States for the
development of Sudan, the Security Council Resolution 1556 (2004) asks the
Government of Sudan to “facilitate international relief; advance independent
investigation in cooperation with the United nations of violations of human
rights; facilitate the work of the monitors in accordance with the N’Djamena
ceasefire agreement; cooperate with the High Commissioner for Human Rights;
conclude a political agreement without delay; fulfill its commitments to
disarm the Janjaweed militias and apprehend and bring to justice Janjaweed
leaders and their associates.”
Instead of pressing upon the NIF regime to show responsible commitment and
implementation of these international obligations, the Arab Summit decided
to offer a self-awarding prize to “the conscientious management of the Arab
Summit… through the wisdom, experience, efficiency, and creativity… of
president Omer Bashir by which the Arab collective work will witness more
achievements and development programs in the Arab Nation.” (!)
Vaguely avoiding a specific need to call directly on the Sudanese opposition
to participate with the two negotiating parties in the ongoing peace talks
(the Darfur rebels and the NIF ruling group), while offering unspecified
“Arab support to the African Union forces,” the Arab Declaration un-vaguely
missed an essential component to ensure deserved solutions for the political
crisis of the Sudanese State, in general, and the region of Darfur, in
particular. These strategies, however, fell short of a full-fledged
governmental, opposition’s and external support solution of the escalated
crisis.
A quick glance to the political composition of Darfur would testify to the
Umma and the DUP politico-religious influences in the region since the
colonial era throughout the present times. These two parties with the other
contending groups, including the Federal Party, several professional and
civil society associations, the newly established Darfur rebel groups, the
NIF opposition faction, al-Mutamar al-Sha’bi, and a few other Bedouin and
farmers’ groups comprise a majority of the Dafur population that not any
solution of the Darfur’s Crisis can do without!
The “concerned international and regional parties,” and the “participant
Sudanese parties,” specifically the Government of Sudan, addressed by the
Arab Summit, however, have been excluding, to the detriment of the nation,
most of these opposition groups from all decision making processes of the
country, including the key peace negotiations between the central government
and the regions of the South, Darfur, and Eastern Sudan.
The external powers’ peace process strategies, notwithstanding, emphasized
the accomplishment of short-term structural governance arrangements on the
basis of cease-fire agreements. These strategies miscalculated the national
responses and their anticipated repercussions in the long-term.
Seriously ignoring the important realities of the Sudanese arena, the
international sponsors of the country’s peace process, including the USA
Government, the European Union, IGAD, and the African Union have
unnecessarily underestimated the vital role to be played by the Sudanese
Opposition in the North-South peace negotiations, which concluded in an
exclusionary flavored “Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA)” in January 2005.
The Arab Summit simply followed suit since it ignored the nature of the
crisis and the need to ensure full-scale Sudanese participation in the
current pursuit for the country’s permanent peace and political stability.
For a large bulk of the masses of Sudan, whose opposition has been
continuously harassed by the NIF heavily-armed militias and security forces
(which most recently roamed the streets with aggressive slogans condemning
both opposition groups and the UN/USA “invasions in Sudan”), the negative
stand of the external sponsors towards the issue of representing all
Sudanese parties in the peace process worsened the short sightedness of the
NIF ruling group (by now, 17 years’ corrupted alliance of army generals and
NIF businesses).
As it boils down to the specifics of power relations and administrative
performance with respect to the political, legislative, executive, and
judicial authorities of the State, the CPA emerged as a bilateral treaty
body approved by two asymmetrical groups of the Sudan’s conflict, namely the
NIF militarily controlled central government (since June 1989) and the Sudan
People’s Liberation Movement and Army rebel group – both of whom assumed the
key offices of the post-Naivasha Government of National Unity (GONU) with
ineffective participation or non-representation of the other Sudanese
groups, regardless of their political weight or national leverage.
This antagonistic, dramatic indifference to the Sudanese well-established
diversity and potential plurality spoke the truth about a show down by the
CPA versus the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) opposition umbrella and
the NDA original resolutions to achieve the permanent and just peace in the
Sudan. The NDA resolutions and consensual agreements resembled principled
nationalist strategies that western think-tanks, the IGAD, the African
Union, and now the Arab League collaborated in some way or another to
replace with the CPA’s circumcised version of bilateral power and wealth
sharing.
Compared to the CPA restrictive deal, the NDA original resolutions were
meant for all Sudanese peoples, which is a tradition rooted in the political
culture of Sudan and is certainly the best way to ensure national unity and
democratic rule. Worst of all, however, is that non-accomplishing follow-up
negotiations the NIF reluctantly offered to the NDA in Cairo. That did
nothing to straighten out the CPA “partisan impositions” towards the
achievement of a “national” transition rule.
Excluding the NDA, the DUP, and the Umma large constituencies from a real
share in political participation and national decision-making, the GONU
could only speak of itself as a NIF-SPLM coalition government. With only
some ritualistic participation of small political factions and one or two
portfolios for former opponents, the GONU is virtually short of any firm
grounds to claim national representation of the Sudan.
Although basically designed, and so finalized by regional entities and
international powers, to protect the South share of national power and
wealth, the exclusion of the core parties of the Sudanese national
opposition from the peace process would only reduce the necessary local
guarantees to execute the agreement in real terms; this situation would
ultimately act against the protection that the peace deal aimed, in the
first place, to achieve since approval of the CPA in January 2005 by the
bilateral partners.
Quite expectedly, the Naivasha-based NIF-controlled GONU has taken the
opportunity to monopolize national decision making, in close collaboration
with the African Union and the Arab League, concerning sensitive nationalist
agenda that legitimately require the broadest national consensus (for
example, the Darfur crisis, the Eastern Sudan crisis, the foreign policy
crisis with the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court,
and the crisis of Sudan’s transitional governance, all in all).
Reported by many observers in and outside the country, the NIF performance,
nonetheless, continues to weaken the roles of the South Sudan Government,
added to the adamant exclusion of the Northern Opposition, in regard of
Darfur and the other affairs of the country.
Apart from the African Union/Arab Summit “formal” support to the NIF rulers,
the unabated challenges of the Sudanese peoples’ democratic forces and
movement vis-à-vis the NIF militias and security bodies, the GONU
unacceptable economic planning, including questionable oil deals and
condemned financial corruption, in addition to escalated confrontations with
the International Community and power entities, isolated the ruling regime
in the national and international arenas and are doing a great harm to the
situation of peace and the future of Sudan’s unity.
Several northerner and southerner political and civil critics criticized the
miscalculations of the North-South CPA since the beginning of the peace
process, which came about in the early 2000s under active guidance by the
American Envoy Senator Danforth. The Senator held meetings with all parties
to the Sudan’s Crisis, He worked, however, in close collaboration “only”
with the NIF regime and the SPLM via western states and think tanks to
resolve, reshape, and reestablish a partisan CPA to “end” the Sudan’s
National Crisis.
Of the Sudanese major critics, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)
continues to support the peace process despite many reservations about the
political, legislative, judicial, and executive provisions of the CPA. The
NDA, however, alarmed repeatedly that “the absence of the NDA groups from
the Naivasha negotiations is a serious shortcoming that will seriously
affect the final results of the negotiations, as well as implementation of
the agreement in the near future.” The NDA predicted the CPA GONU would
ensue in unfair elections in the post-transitional period” (several NDA
statements, 2000-6).
Equally importantly, the Umma Party, a significant mentor of the Darfur
region in the Mahdiya and the colonial era, long before the national
independence of Sudan throughout the post-independence decades (1956 to the
present), and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) – the Umma foe in national
contests as well as a major political partner in all democratically elected
governments of Sudan – have loudly protested the negligible 14% share that
had been contemptuously reserved by the CPA to the sizable constituencies
and historically leading parties of Sudan in the CPA’s present-time GONU.
It is true the SPLM/A has been carefully struggling to maintain close
relations with the Northern Opposition groups, especially the Merghani-led
NDA and the DUP. The rejection of a dual role of both opposition leader and
government partner by Mr. Salva Kiir, the successor of the late John Garang,
the long-time venerated partner of the NDA and the DUP, added to the odds of
adopting NDA objections while performing State responsibilities and
leadership obligations by the CPA. This situation alienated the SPLM/A in
actual terms from the larger body of the opposition.
The SPLM/A ceased to exist as an NDA opposition group vis-à-vis the NIF
regime: the SPLM/A is a government body that is fully answerable by all
democratic criteria to the Sudanese opposition, as well as the masses of the
Sudanese people regarding its GONU performance together with the largely
condemned NIF rulers. The South parliamentarian rejection of the ethnically
dominated post-Naivasha Government of South Sudan, as expressed in the Memo
of the Nuer Members of Parliament to President Kiir, is a case in point.
Additionally, since the departure of the New Sudan’s most influential
unifying leader, Dr. John Garang de Mabior, the high interest in national
unity among the northern-southern ruling elites has somewhat dried out,
while a countermovement on both parts of the Nation raised a developing
banner of political separation between the two sides of the Homeland.
The extent of this movement is not yet clear. Still, the unabated
international pressures on the GONU to improve implementation of the CPA on
one hand, and the African and Arab “diplomatic” concerns for the
humanitarian relief and the other inter-continental and international
security agenda on Darfur, on the other hand, failed to lend sufficient
support to the nation’s key agenda to accomplish national unity and
political stability via a pluralist system of rule.
As earlier stated, the Arab Summit endorsed several romantic visions and
ideological plans to boost “the Arab unity and solidarity.” These plans
included in the Khartoum Declaration an interesting emphasis on women’s
rights and scientific research which offsets any real mention of the top
humanitarian needs of the populations of the Arab region to enjoy the right
to life and public freedoms versus the extra-judicial killings, arbitrary
arrests, and tortures by the well-financed Arab security forces and
praetorian guards.
Apart from the courteous tone of the Arab States’ “praising, with gratitude,
the conscientious management of the Arab Summit… through the wisdom,
experience, efficiency, and creativity… of president Omer Bashir by which
the Arab collective work will witness more achievements and development
programs in the Arab Nation” (!), it is true the Summit Communiqué has
cautiously pledged to support “the national initiatives that aim to broaden
the basis of participation in governance in such a way as to guarantee
national reconciliation and peace.”
Similar to the politico-administrative plague that characterizes the Arab
governments with a state of continuous oscillation between peace and war,
democracy and dictatorship, national reconciliation and security
suppression, etc., the Arab Summit failed to address the Sudan’s outstanding
issues with any committed obligation. Several alterations were made on the
Declaration, including a vague promise of supporting the African Union
forces “with the necessary material logistics to complete their mission,”
instead of US150 million dollars earlier pledged in the draft for that
purpose (Al-Ray, Kuwait: 03/30/06).
Al-Qabas (Kuwait: 03/30/06) mentioned “the frustration of Sudanese people by
the Summit’s failure to provide effective humanitarian relief or some strong
support to avert the international intervention in the country’s internal
affairs.” The truth of the matter, however, is that western donors, not the
Arab governments, have constantly ensured the largest portion of relief to
the Sudanese victims of drought, famine, or civil war.
For sure, it would have been better had the Summit advised the Sudanese
president to resolve the country’s crisis in full collaboration with the
Sudanese opposition. To avoid international sanctions, the NIF rulers must
abandon their partisan policies and practices to come in good terms with all
civil society and democracy groups to be able to adjust the CPA provisions
by a constitutional national conference to the country’s situation. This
political procedure should translate the realities of Sudan to favor a
viable transition to democratic rule and the lasting peace.
Clearly, the only way to ensure political stability and national unity in
the country hinges on the insurance of full political participation by the
Sudanese opposition groups in the peace process of Darfur, Eastern Sudan,
and the other warring zones of Sudan, indiscriminately. This unfulfilled
participation must be immediately redressed to meet the urgent needs of
South Sudan to enhance its social, economic, and political development by a
principled indiscriminate commitment to the human rights and freedoms of
people, as enshrined in the CPA, with due respect to the cultural diversity
and the pluralist structure of the region.
The N’Djamena ceasefire [and security arrangement] agreement did not put
forward a comprehensive political solution to end the Darfur’s Crisis, as
Omer al-Bashir claimed (April 3rd, 2006). Related to this-self-defending
approach, neither the Arab Summit’s promised finances, nor the Summit’s
proclaimed “wisdom” of the Sudan’s repressive dictator Omer al-Bashir, his
adventurous junta or repressive regime, would end the Darfur Crisis, let
alone the Sudan’s Crisis.
The road to national sovereignty and international cooperation is not yet
observed by the Sudanese ruling elite, if not seriously handicapped. There
is already enough evidence in the case of the South-NIF peace deal: only
full-fledged all-Sudanese transition governance with equal representation of
the Sudanese opposition parties, civil society associations, and human
rights groups would do that complex task.
* Member of Sudanese Writers’ Union (in exile) and the president of Sudan Human Rights Organization Cairo-Branch.