New southern group mounts pressure on Garang

By KEN RAMANI, The Standard

NAIROBI, Dec 27, 2004 — New alliance was last week formed in Khartoum to ‘exert pressure’ on Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement to sign a peace agreement with the government.

General Joseph Lago during a press conference at the Sudanese media centre in Khartoum, last November.

The outfit brought together Lieutenant-General Joseph Lagu, a former vice-president of ex-Sudanese president Jaafer Numeiri, and the commander of South Sudan Defense Forces Major-General Paolino Matip.

The announcement comes at a time when SPLA/M and Khartoum are preparing to sign the last and most critical peace accord with international guarantees.

It was not immediately clear how the new alliance will bring to bear their pressure on Garang nor who will finance its activities. It’s emerging that radicals in and outside the movement are bent on putting up new demands that could pose a litmus test to Dr John Garang’s grip in the south during the six-year interim period. A section of southern intelligentsia are saying absence of armed conflict in the south won’t herald the beginning of peace as long as freedom fighters-both in and outside the country are not fullyinvolved in the system.

Matip is a southerner whose SSDF broke way from SPLA in early 1990s and controls a sizeable fiefdom.

The announcement of the alliance was also made in the wake of a crisis conference convened by Garang in his Rumbek stronghold two weeks ago. Together with his comrades-at-arms, Garang discussed an internal row that had threatened the movement. After the conference, Garang told The Standard at his New Site residence that SPLM/A had met to discuss what he termed as “normal fears in any armed struggle in the face of imminent peace” in which actors become anxious-not knowing what the future holds for them.

Sources said most of the movement’s top brass were not sure whether they would be accommodated in the government during and after the interim period.

It’s against this backdrop that the Lagu/Mapit axis is seen as adding to the headache for Garang.

According to Matip, the ongoing Nairobi peace process between SPLM/A and the government is deficient and not final unless all the internal and external southern political forces are involved.He also considers the South-South Dialogue as apriority that would lead to reconciliation amongsoutherners.Writing a lengthy article last week in the Khartoum Monitor newspaper, an influential southern Sudanese scholar, Dr Wani Tombe Lako said: “It can be plausibly argued that the signing of the final peace agreement is not the ultimate panacea for our political and military quagmire as the readings of southern Sudan political literature indicate.”

He went on to argue that people ought not build peacein the south upon quick political sand that is sure toswallow every meaningful peaceful effort being madeand renders everything politically vacuous. “If the southern Sudanese are not careful, the next strife in this country may emanate from southern Sudan,and between the southerners themselves,” warned Lako.

The same scholar is also on record rubbishing the idea of setting up the New Sudan, an autonomous country that will break away from Khartoum once the six-year interim period is over. According to the Naivasha accord, a referendum will be held in the south for the people to decide whether to be part of the greater Sudan or form their own country, The New Sudan.

“The talk on self determination is a political effigy, camouflaged in slippery legal fatigues,” Lako was quoted as saying. In November, Lagu threatened to mobilise opponents of SPLA/M against its leader, Dr John Garang.

He joined the ranks of Bona Malwal (a southerner) and Sadiq al Mahdi- a former military Head of State who have openly expressed their disapproval of the Naivasha peace process.

After Lagu accepted a post of roving ambassador from President Omar el Bashir, he has attracted criticisms and has been called names by critics who view his move as a betrayal to the causeof the south.

Lagu lost his credibility by associating with al Mahdi under whose rule the south suffered despicable atrocities still fresh in the minds of those who around in the mid sixties and early seventies. Al Mahdi is on record as saying the Naivasha Peace Agreement won’t be binding for the whole of Sudan unless a constitutional conference attended by all the political forces approves it.