Eastern Sudan former rebels and damage of
August 24, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — East Sudan leaders are lost in transition from guerrilla fighter to bureaucrat, sunk in a power struggle that threatens to blow apart their coalition and destabilise a peace accord, analysts say.
In one of a series of conflicts to have enflamed Sudan for years, the Eastern Front signed a peace agreement with the government in October 2006 after rebels fought for a decade over lack of power and wealth.
The rebels in the east rose over similar grievances as their better-known western counterparts in Darfur and southerners who signed a comprehensive peace treaty in 2005 that ended a 21-year civil war with Khartoum.
But a year after being sworn into a share of central government, chairman Mussa Mohammed Ahmed and deputy Amna Dirar are at loggerheads over how and who should best represent the undeveloped east in the corridors of power.
“The peace agreement has led us to a new competition between the different groups in the Eastern Front for sharing in power,” conceded Ahmed, sitting in a huge reception room at his grace-and-favour Khartoum guest house.
“This competition has had a negative effect on the Eastern Front. This is a crisis of transition. It’s only been two years and it’s normal,” he added.
The Eastern Front began as an umbrella alliance linking the Beja Congress, named in the 1950s after the largest eastern ethnic group, and the Free Lions of the Rashidiya Arabs.
Last August, chairman and Beja man Ahmed became an assistant to President Omar al-Beshir. His deputy Dirar became a presidential adviser and secretary general Mubarak Mabruk became a state minister for transport.
“It is power struggle on tribal-ethnic lines,” said one foreign diplomat.
“In the end, we could see the disintegration of the Eastern Front… It will also have a negative repercussion on the already slow-moving implementation of the Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement.”
Apart from apportioning the spoils of power on paper, little else in the peace agreement has been implemented in a region that is home to Sudan’s main port and a crucial oil pipeline.
Easterners have yet to be fully incorporated into the civil service, there is little evidence of sustained economic, cultural and social development, poverty remains and few jobs have been created.
The government allocated 100 million dollars in 2007 to the Eastern Sudan Reconstruction and Development Fund, which is supposed to receive at least 125 million dollars each year until 2011, but only 25 million has been spent.
The easterners’ weakness has allowed the president’s savvy National Congress Party (NCP) to divide and rule.
“The NCP is not serious enough and the Front is weak,” said lecturer and journalist Murtada el-Ghali.
“He (Ahmed) is just sitting there as an assistant to Beshir but with no mandate. He can do nothing with the budget, the money, disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation, development in the east.”
Easterners are overshadowed by a political climate obsessed with the Darfur conflict and a possible international arrest warrant against Beshir.
Although delays cloud implementation of the 2005 agreement that ended war between north and south, and there has been little dividend from the limited 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement, both accords had international guarantors.
“The role of the Eritreans was prominent, but there was no international guarantor and this is where the NCP is trying to implement selectively, disregarding the concerns of the people of the east,” said the diplomat.
Dirar says the Front is an independent political party open to everyone and dismisses the Beja Congress as a tribal throwback. Ahmed says it is an umbrella group that has failed to evolve into a party.
Dirar, who says people liken her to 20th century political icons Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi, accuses conservative easterners of sexism.
“Most of the fighting against me came because I am a female. ‘Why is she in this position? Why she can do that? Why she did that?’,” she said.
Dirar announced this month that Ahmed had been suspended as Front chairman. The Beja Congress then suspended her and threatened to take action that could see Dirar and others dismissed from government jobs.
Both Ahmed and Dirar dismiss their suspensions as meaningless.
Although analysts do not agree, easterners warn fighting could erupt anew unless the peace agreement is better implemented, particularly with regard to demobilised forces who have not been given new jobs or been paid.
“You cannot continue without getting money, without knowing what your future is. The war in Sudan has not finished. It is still existing. So it’s easy for them to go back again,” said Dirar.
(AFP)