Khartoum hit by security fears

By William Wallis

KHARTOUM, May 22, 2004 (Financial Times) — Sudanese security forces stopped cars and buses in search of alleged coup plotters in Khartoum overnight on Thursday, in a sign that the repercussions of the conflict in the far-off province of Darfur are reaching the capital.

Witnesses said police conducting searches on bridges over the Nile leading into central Khartoum were bearing photographs of six men wanted in connection with an alleged foiled coup in April.

In state-sponsored newspaper advertisements, the authorities have claimed the men were linked to a plot to overthrow President Omar Hassan el Bashir, involving, among others, military officers from Darfur.

The 15-month-old conflict in Darfur has emerged as the main obstacle to efforts by Mr Bashir’s regime to rehabilitate itself internationally, after years of being ostracised in the west for its links to terrorism and its conduct in the separate civil war in the south.

Since members of sedentary black African tribes from Darfur rose up early last year, demanding a greater role in the future of Sudan, more than 1m people have been driven from their homes.

The conflict took on an ethnic dimension when the Arab-led government in Khartoum enlisted militias from nomadic Arab groups to help put down the rebels.

Now, 15 months later, political analysts in Khartoum say the government is struggling to control the consequences. It is accused by human rights groups of complicity in war crimes and relations with the United States have turned again for the worse.

At home, reports of burnt villages, massacres and gang rapes of fellow Muslims in Darfur are proving a powerful recruitment tool for the rebels, as well as creating friction within parts of the military and political establishment.

Fresh jumpiness in Khartoum may be connected to a warning earlier in the week by Abdel Wahed Ahmad Nour, leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement, the main rebel group in Darfur, that he was prepared to bring the battle to the capital if negotiations were to fail.

In an apparent charm offensive in the middle of the week, Mr Bashir flew out to Nyala, the second largest city in Darfur, in the company of UN officials and diplomats, to cut the red ribbon on half a dozen new clinics, schools and government buildings.

Speaking at a rally attended by thousands, many of them perched on top of camels, he appealed to displaced inhabitants of the province to return to their villages to begin planting before the rains break next month. Darfur’s next crisis was looming famine, said aid workers who were present.