SUDAN-POLITICS: Opposition Leader Draws Hope from Regional Changes

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, May 29 1997 (IPS) - Sudan’s former prime minister, who now leads the opposition National Democratic Alliance, says that changes of government in several nearby states have boosted support for the cause of democracy in Sudan itself.

“International developments have been very positive where our cause is concerned,” Sadiq al-Mahdi, who was ousted as prime minister by the present regime of Gen. Omar al-Bashir in 1989, said at the United Nations. “The democratic alternative is very much sought after in our region.”

Al-Mahdi has drawn particular optimism from the collapse of the Mobutu dictatorship in the former Zaire, now renamed Congo. Mobutu, he argues, provided Sudan’s government with military and technical assistance in its war against the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in the country’s southern provinces.

Not only is that military assistance likely gone following Mobutu’s ouster this month, al-Mahdi said, but the recent elections in Iran — which he also accuses of providing military support to Khartoum — may also provide an opening for democratic opposition. In last week’s elections, moderate Islamic cleric Seyyed Mohammed Khatami won in a landslide over conservative opponents.

For the coalition of forces opposed to al-Bashir’s fundamentalist government, that victory could help to steer Teheran away from its backing of Khartoum’s hardline ‘Islamicisation’ campaign.

Al-Mahdi said he had already written to outgoing Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, urging Teheran to end its support for al-Bashir’s regime, and he plans to contact Khatami as well. But the former prime minister, who won the country’s first democratic elections in 1986, ruled out any similar appeals to another suspected ally of Khartoum, Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi government, which he labelled a “hopeless case”.

The regime in Khartoum, however, is not the only party accused of seeking outside help in Sudan’s civil war. The National Democratic Alliance, which includes as partners the SPLA and its sometimes rival SPLA-United faction, has been linked to several of Sudan’s neighbours which are openly critical of the al-Bashir regime — notably Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda.

Al-Mahdi denied that those three nations have been directly involved in the southern Sudan fighting, but he acknowledged that “there is a very great deal of fluidity between Sudan and its neighbours,” and that the borders dividing the countries have been porous. Some Sudanese fighters, he admitted, have received training in bases in other countries.

In any case, he argued, as long as Sudan’s government antagonises and destabilises its neighbours, “it is a reality” that Uganda, Eritrea, and Ethiopia will support the Sudanese opposition forces.

That stance has drawn the ire of the Khartoum government, which accuses al-Mahdi of trying to use outside intervention against al- Bashir. One Sudanese diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that al-Mahdi’s acknowledgement of a “common cause” with the neighbouring states is worrying. That position, the envoy said, is at odds with al-Mahdi’s claim of supporting peaceful and democratic change in Sudan.

“I think it is quite unbecoming for (al-Mahdi), as a former prime minister, to invite foreign troops into the country,” he said.

That is not an idle worry. Mobutu’s regime, which had hampered the activities of the SPLA at the Zairean-Sudanese border, was overthrown with at least some military and technical assistance by neighbouring Rwanda, Uganda, and Angola, U.N. officials contend.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who in recent months had pointed to Mobutu’s support for anti-Kampala resistance groups, has also accused Khartoum of providing assistance to the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army. Ethiopia and Eritrea have also brought claims here against Sudan for its alleged support for rebel groups in those nations.

The most serious charges were brought by Egypt, which accused Sudan of harbouring attackers who attempted to assassinate President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa two years ago. In response to those charges, the U.N. Security Council asked all nations to reduce the size of Sudanese diplomatic missions worldwide, and has debated over whether to ban commercial flights to and from Sudan.

The flight ban has been withheld pending agreement over how badly it would affect the Sudanese people. One U.N. study indicated that the sanctions would not hurt the society so badly if combined with some humanitarian exemptions.

But an internal report written last December by U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) senior representative Christophe Jaeger cautioned, “The deterioration of air services in the country will affect directly the programming and delivery of humanitarian assistance and implementation of development assistance from the United Nations agencies.”

Several key veto-holding Security Council members, including Russia, China and France, have continued to resist sanctions, which the United States strongly supports.

“So far, U.N. sanctions are very symbolic, very hesitant,” al- Mahdi argued. “They have no impact.”

The opposition leader contended tlat the United Nations should follow the same hard line against Khartoum as it has taken in the recent crisis in Sierra Leone, where Ahmed Tejan Kabbah’s elected government was ousted in a coup last weekend. The Sierra Leone coup, al-Mahdi said, was similar to his own elected administration’s 1989 overthrow — and the United Nations should not accept either one, he added.