Southern Sudan dreams of city in the sands

By William Wallis, The Financial Times

Feb 17, 2004 — The pawprints of aleopard and trail of a snake were among the only signs of recent visitors to Ramciel – a stretch of sandy, Sudanese scrub that may one day host the capital of a new nation If remaining obstacles to a peace agreement are overcome when negotiations resume between southern rebels and the Khartoum government today, Sudan’s social and political environment will be dramatically reshaped.

Days away from Ramciel, in central southern Sudan, dozens of ethnic Dinkas are hacking their way towards the site chosen by leaders of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) as the future administrative centre of the south.

The construction of a modern city in a part of the world that has – aside from AK47s – been deprived of most of the trappings of the twentieth century embodies an SPLM dream of leapfrogging into the twenty-first. But those grandiose aspirations also reflect the tensions at the heart of US-backed negotiations in neighbouring Kenya that have brought a lull to Africa’s longest-running civil war.

The framework agreement underpinning the talks plays both to the secessionist longings of many in the south and to the centrist ambitions of Khartoum in the north.

For the Muslim and Arab-dominated government, the planned formation of a six-year transitional government buys time to rebuild national institutions and safeguard Sudan’s unity. For the black African and non- Muslim south – victim since independence in 1956 of systematic underdevelopment and conflict – they have already won a semi-autonomous state, and the right to have their own army.

At the end of the six-year power-sharing period a referendum on independence will be held. That many in the south would vote for independence is beyond doubt. “If the Arabs don’t want to accept that, it will be another very tough war,” says 76-year-old Abdelatif Chol, the most successful businessman in Rumbek, the SPLM’s headquarters, about 200km from Ramciel.
On the other side of a rickety bar, Commander Marial Canuong Yol interjects with the SPLM’s official line: “We are not fighting the northerners. We are fighting the system. If we have the same attitude, we can stay one.”

But he fails to convince many of the petty traders drinking Ugandan beer. They soon move on to discuss how they would prevent merchants from Khartoum gaining a toe hold in the south if the peace lasts. “We would spread the word that their products carry Aids,” says Mr Chol, revealing the depth of hatred war has engendered.

Such debates are emerging because of the success of the negotiations to date, which western diplomats describe as Sudan’s best chance of resolving its chronic divisions.

But they also underline the need for a concerted state-building and peacekeeping effort supported by the outside world, if current agreements are not to collapse into another war.

“We cannot do it alone. We need help from the international community,” says the warden of the bombed out, British-built prison at Rumbek. Four convicted murderers have escaped recently.

On the face of it, the costly construction of a new city nowhere near a sealed road hardly seems a priority. There is no electricity in Sudan’s south. The roads are tracks, bridges have been bombed and diseases eradicated or unheard of elsewhere are at epidemic levels.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, there are fewer than 100 doctors for a population estimated at between 8m and 9m in SPLM-controlled areas. Only about 700 girls go to secondary school, and most of the young men in the region are caught up in the war.

If the southern Sudanese vote for independence, they would take with them much of the country’s known reserves of oil. Unless an agreement is reached in advance, allowing Khartoum to continue sharing in the revenues, this could prove explosive.

Equally sensitive are issues surrounding the use of the Nile. SPLM officials near Ramciel see it as the source of electricity for their new capital and of water for a surrounding breadbasket. The Egyptians perceive otherwise, and are protected by a decades-old treaty that requires Cairo’s approval for any diversion of the Nile.

Nor are the southerners themselves united. More of the 2m deaths resulting from the war were due to internecine fighting encouraged by Khartoum, than because of direct confrontation with the government army. Many now fear the emergence of a Dinka-led SPLM-controlled state.

Foreign donors have already pledged more than $1bn towards Sudan’s reconstruction. In reality that infrastructure has yet to be built. The heavy hand of decades of war – and the challenges of building a new state – will be far harder to surmount than the effort of erasing the faint pawprints of a passing leopard on a piece of scrubland.