SUDAN-POLITICS: A Not-so-Safe Haven for Sudanese Rebel Leaders

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru and Nhial Bol

NAIROBI, Jul 8 1996 (IPS) - Major Arok Thon Arok, a founder of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), is a lucky man.

Under the cover of darkness, four men burst into his house, dragged him out and took him to their leader who was waiting in a car. “I was frog-marched to the vehicle,” said Arok. However, he was saved by the timely arrival of a group of policemen, who arrested the men and seized four guns, ammunition and a suspected get-away car.

The police have refused to divulge any other details of the incident, which took place Friday in the low income Nairobi suburb of Komorock. However, the Southern Sudan Independence Movement (SSIM), a rival rebel group, Monday accused SPLA leader Col. John Garang de Mabior of what they saw as an attempt on Arok’s life.

“The SSIM leadership denounces the deplorable incident in the strongest terms possible and holds John Garang responsible for unnecessary behaviour in a foreign country which gives sanctuary to thousands of refugees fleeing the war in South Sudan,” said David de Chand, SSIM representative here.

In a statement released Monday, the SSIM identified the four suspects — Cap. Atem Aruai de Mabior, Cap. Juma Mohamed, Lt. Kuol Majak and private Atem Areng Mabior — as Garang’s bodyguards.

“The assasins used a Mercedes Car which belongs to Nyadeng Garang de Mabior, the wife of John Garang, who lives in Gigiri,” a rich suburb where diplomats and U.N. officials reside, the SSIM said.

Should the SSIM’s claims prove true, this will have been the first attempt by a Sudanese insurgent group to kill a rival rebel leader in a foreign country.

Sudan’s government Monday issued a statement urging Kenya to protect former rebel leaders who had broken away from the mainstream SPLA, led by Garang. In its statement, Khartoum also urged Kenya to protect commander Mohamed Haroun Kafi, a member of the Nuba ethnic group –the largest black minority in northern Sudan — who broke away from Garang about a week ago, accusing him of turning his back on the Nubas’ struggle against genocide.

A similar appeal to protect Kafi, a noted Sudanese poet and novelist who now lives in Nairobi, came from the Rev. Philip Abass Gaboush, a promiment Nuba politician in Khartoum.

“I appeal to the Kenyan authorities to protect Kafi and his colleagues in Nairobi,” said Gaboush.

The state-run Sudan News Agency (SUNA) reported last week that Kafi had accepted to back an Apr. 10 agreement, called the Political Charter, between Khartoum and the SSIM, led by Riek Machar, and the SPLA-United, headed by Kerubino Kwanyin Bol.

Arok, a member the SPLA-United, had been booed by Garang’s supporters when he, Machar and Bol addressed a rally in Khartoum to explain the terms of the Charter, which Garang’s SPLA has denounced. The SPLA claims that the rival leaders are merely willing pawns in an attempt by Khartoum to further divide Southern Sudanese.

Arok, a former Sudanese military intelligence officer, was number three in the SPLA hierachy before he split with Garang over policy differences. Detained, he was set free by Machar’s forces which stormed Garang’s detention centre in 1992.

It is unlikely that Kenya will take the incident lightly. In June it warned the 176,000 refugees here to observe law and order or face the consequences.

Cabinet minister Francis Lotodo said Kenya wished to avoid a situation such as the one in which a group of Muslim fundamentalists last year tried to assassinate Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Lotodo was referring to a recent case in which six people died when supporters of Garang and Machar clashed in Kakuma refugee camp, on the border with Sudan.

The minister appealed to refugees to settle their differences amicably.

“We will not tolerate the settlement of differences by refugees in the manner that was recently witnessed in Kakuma. While we are supposed to be sensitive to the plight of refugees, I would like to remind them that they also have a role to play in this scenario,” said Lotodo.

Attorney General Amos Wako has also warned that Nairobi would not allow rival rebel factions to export their political differences and settle them in Kenya.