SUDAN-POLITICS: Rebel Faction Rallies to the Government Side

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Sep 25 1997 (IPS) - The return to Sudan of a top rebel commander this week is a major diplomatic victory for the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Khartoum, sources here say.

Lam Akol, who is the commander of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army – United (SPLA-United), returned to Khartoum on Tuesday after spending 11 years in the bush.

“I think Dr Lam Akol’s return will be seen as a major victory in Khartoum,” said an aid worker here on Thursday. “With Lam Akol now well out of the way, Khartoum will now concentrate its energy to wooing Col John Garang.”

Garang is the leader of the mainstream SPLA, which has refused to join a peace deal signed in April between the Sudanese government and rebel factions led mainly by people who had broken away from the rebel movement.

The SPLA-United signed the peace agreement last week with the government in Fashoda in Upper Nile region — 750 kms south of the Sudanese capital — where the rebel group is based. Akol is the seventh rebel leader to sign the April accord, dubbed a “sellout” by Garang.

In Khartoum, state-run Radio Omdurman, monitored here Wednesday, quoted Akol as saying that the Upper Nile region, which had been the scene of fighting between his forces and the Sudanese army, has become a safe area following last week’s agreement.

Akol, a former lecturer at the University of Khartoum, urged Garang to grab the opportunity and make peace with the Sudan government before it is too late.

His return home came one day after the SPLA-Mainstream and Khartoum agreed here to resume talks that were stalled three years ago. A joint communique they signed on Monday stated that the next round of talks would resume in the Kenyan capital on Oct. 28 and that each side would “fully co-operate” to find a solution to Sudan’s 14-year conflict.

More than one million people have died in southern Sudan since the SPLA launched its bush war in 1983, demanding greater autonomy for the predominantly non-Muslim South — home to 35 percent of the 30 million Sudanese — from the Arabised Muslim North.

Ethnic rivalry within the SPLA led to the defection in August 1991 of Akol and two other commanders — Riak Machar and Gordon Kong. The split weakened the rebel movement, enabling Khartoum to seize territory previously held by the insurgents.

Lam Akol later parted company with Riak, forming a rebel group made up primarily of people from his ethnic group, the Shilluk, while the bulk of Riak forces are from his Nuer people. Both ethnic groups come from Upper Nile.

Machar now chairs the Southern Sudan Co-ordinating Council, whose brief under the April agreement is to oversee the administration of the 10 states in the south of the country, and organise a referendum within four years to decide whether the southerners want to secede or remain part of a united Sudan.

Akol had originally dismissed the April agreement, saying it did not offer enough guarantees for the people of southern Sudan. However, a sign that he was inching towards a negotiated settlement emerged recently when the soft-spoken commander declared a unilateral cease-fire in his war with the government.

Then, early last week the SPLA-United issued a statement that the talks would be brokered by the King of the Shilluk, who wields absolute power over his subjects.

“The King’s word is final. Not even Lam Akol can question it,” said a Shilluk refugee here.