INTERVIEW-No peace in Sudan until army quits power, ex-VP
By Tom Perry
CAIRO, Aug 16 (Reuters) – Sudan will not see peace while the military is in power and until the vast nation’s regions, especially the war-torn south and west, are properly represented in government, a former Sudanese vice-president said.
Joseph Lagu, who was also once a southern rebel leader, said military domination of politics had crushed democracy in Sudan and forced groups with grievances to take up arms, as they had in the western Darfur region and the south.
“There will be no sustainable peace in the Sudan if the military is not disengaged from politics and the Sudan must be returned to the way it started — parliamentary democracy,” said Lagu, who signed a pact with Khartoum ending north-south fighting which raged between 1956 and 1972. Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir seized power from an elected government in a 1989 military coup, following a pattern of military power grabs since independence in 1956.
Lagu said the army needed to be convinced to leave power, but would not go further. Sudanese military rulers have twice been overthrown since independence.
The grievances of Darfur rebels, who took up arms early last year, were legitimate, Lagu said.
“Darfur, like the south, has been marginalised. People have not participated in the very centre of government in the Sudan. Just as we in the south have been. I was in the government, I was the second vice-president without any responsibility at all,” Lagu told Reuters on Monday from London.
Lagu defected from the Sudanese army in 1963. He led Anya-Nya guerrillas in Sudan’s first north-south civil war and was vice-president when another civil war broke out in 1983.
The Sudanese government and rebels from the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which has fought Khartoum since 1983, have made strides towards ending the conflict in the last two years.
International pressure has been key in pushing forward the peace process between the Islamist government in the north and the SPLA from the mainly Christian or animist south.
Darfur is overwhelmingly Muslim. Darfur rebels and human rights groups say the government has used Arab militia to launch a campaign of ethnic cleansing against African villages. Khartoum denies the claim.
INHERITED POWER
“The northern Sudanese, who claim descent from Arabs, pose as rulers in both Darfur and the south,” Lagu said.
“They present themselves as if they have inherited power from the departed colonial rulers,” Lagu said, adding that northern Sudanese Arabs dominate the military command.
The SPLA has won significant concessions in talks with the government, although the sides have yet to sign a final peace agreement. Khartoum has agreed to a southern referendum on secession six years after the signing of a final deal.
Lagu said the African Union, United Nations and Arab League should put more pressure on Khartoum to resolve Darfur’s fighting and humanitarian crisis, which the United Nations says is currently the world’s worst.
“Whatever type of pressure is necessary should be exerted,” he said. Khartoum has less than two weeks to show the U.N. Security Council it is serious about reining in the Arab militia or face unspecified sanctions under a U.N. resolution.
Lagu said pressure was needed because Khartoum seemed to think it could crush the Darfur rebellion militarily. The U.N. estimates violence has killed 50,000 in Darfur, where rebels took up arms in early 2003. Khartoum disputes the death toll.
Government forces had the upper hand in Darfur because Sudan’s west was less well suited to guerrilla combat than the south, Lagu said.
“In the south, the southern guerrillas roam about in the southern jungle and southern hills and southern swamps which are not present in Darfur,” Lagu said. That meant Darfur rebels had fewer places to hide from government forces.
“It gives (Khartoum) the advantage because they have the air force, they can monitor, they can locate these people and bomb them, as has been reported,” he said.