Sudan hopes peace deal ends Darfur crisis

By TANALEE SMITH, Associated Press Writer

CAIRO, Egypt, Jan 8, 2005 (AP) — Sudan officially ends its two-decade southern civil war on Sunday with the signing of a peace deal. Amid the jubilation lies the hope that ending one war may spark a solution to the country’s second – in western Darfur, where an equally brutal conflict has led to a massive humanitarian crisis.

A Sudanese girl carries a load of firewood into the IDP camp of Krinding on the outskirts of the western town of El-Geneina, near the border with Chad, Sept 2004.

Sudan’s president, caught up in the excitement of the long-awaited southern peace deal, has said he now would be willing to consider wealth- and power-sharing agreements with rebels in Darfur.

“The deal in the south puts Sudan on the doorstep of a new era of peace for the whole country,” said Jean Baptiste Natama, a senior political officer with the African Union, which is mediating Darfur peace talks. “It is a means to the solution in Darfur, a necessary bridge.”

But continued outbreaks of fighting in Darfur – despite repeated assurances from both sides to honor a recent cease-fire pledge – indicate just how difficult the problem might be to solve, even with new momentum.

The comprehensive peace deal for the southern war will be signed in Nairobi, Kenya. It comes after government and southern rebel officials on Dec. 31 concluded two years of peace talks by signing a permanent truce, and endorsed a detailed plan to end the conflict. It includes power- and wealth-sharing agreements and a proposed government for an autonomous southern Sudan.

Secretary of State Colin Powell traveled to Kenya on Saturday after touring the tsunami devastation in Asia. He was to attend Sunday’s peace signing.

Even before the southern deal was reached, officials inside and outside Sudan had linked the two conflicts, saying peace in the civil war would be key to making progress on the so-far intractable Darfur front.

Efforts for a Darfur solution have gone in fits and starts – a Nov. 9 cease-fire signed in Abuja, Nigeria, between the government and the two main rebel groups has been repeatedly broken by both sides. And new insurgent groups have recently arisen to add strength to the resistance.

On Tuesday, the rebel Sudan Liberation Army accused government soldiers of attacking a base in North Darfur and threatened that rebels would step up military operations in retaliation.

Nevertheless, in its new focus on peace, the Sudanese government has given assurances that it is serious about solving the Darfur crisis.

Darfur is “definitely” next on the government’s list of priorities, said Deputy Information Minister Abdel Dafe Khattib, saying the conclusion of the southern peace deal has brought a positive feeling.

“There is a different mood, one of trying to mend fences. I think it’s going to help” with Darfur, he said. “The government itself is trying to mend fences with all factions, inside and out, be it American, European or our neighbors.”

The southern deal was a result both of Western pressure and Sudan’s desire to end its pariah status in the international community, said Charles Gurdon, an analyst with a British consultancy firm.

“If Libya and Iraq and others can come off the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, Sudan also has to try,” he said. “It is a calculated position – this way they can have more time to sort out western Sudan.”

He said Darfur was more important to the government than the south, because its population is Muslim, like most of the north, and because the bulk of the army comes from there.

However, the area never had much political nor economic power. It was that feeling of marginalization that led non-Arab rebel groups to take up arms in February 2003 against what they saw as years of state neglect and discrimination against Sudanese of African origin.

The government responded with a counterinsurgency campaign in which the Janjaweed, an Arab militia, has allegedly committed wide-scale abuses against the African population.

About 70,000 people have been killed from disease, hunger and attacks just since last March, and nearly 2 million are believed to have fled their homes. Many more are believed to have died in the fighting.

There are parallels with the southern crisis, in which rebels made up mainly of Christians and animists demanded greater autonomy from Sudan’s Islamic-dominated government and a greater share of the country’s wealth for the south. That war left more than 2.5 million people dead, mostly from hunger and disease, and has driven more than 4 million people from their homes.

The international community has put intense international pressure on Sudan to end the Darfur conflict, which the U.N. last year called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Two U.N. Security Council resolutions have threatened possible sanctions, as has a bill signed by President Bush in December.