SUDAN-POLITICS: Conflicting Signals from Khartoum

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru and Nhial Bol

NAIROBI/KHARTOUM, Feb 5 1997 (IPS) - Sudan’s government appears to be caught in a dilemma as it faces the broadest coalition of armed opposition groups ever to operate in the northeast African nation.

Within less than a week, it has come near to declaring war on one country, threatened to destabilise two others, rejected an offer by a fourth to mediate in its conflict and asked yet another nation to act as mediator.

This last request was made Tuesday by Sudanese leader Lt-Gen. Omar Hassan al Bashir during a four-hour visit to Kenya where he met President Daniel Arap Moi. Moi chairs a seven-member body, the Inter Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), that has been trying in vain to end the civil war in Sudan.

Al Bashir left Nairobi without holding an expected press conference but Kenyan Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka briefed journalists after the meeting.

“He asked President Moi to continue to be involved in finding a solution in the matter (civil war) and to act as a go-between in the conflict regionally,” said Musyoka. “President Moi hosted al Bashir in his capacity as Chairman of the IGAD Peace Initiative on the conflict in Southern Sudan which has since taken another dimension.”

What’s new about the conflict in Sudan is that what for 13 years had been a rebellion by non-Muslim Southerners against domination by the mainly Arab/Muslim north has become, since January, a much broader struggle.

The change was brought about by the formation, in December, of the National Democratic Alliance, which links the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and six northern opposition groups that have decided to take up arms against Khartoum.

While the SPLA’s rebellion, which started in 1983, was confined to the south, the NDA has brought the struggle closer to Khartoum, capturing towns and garrisons within 600 kms of the capital, along the eastern border with Ethiopia and Eritrea, whom Sudan has accused of invading its territory.

According to Khartoum, the offensive in the east has been accompanied by SPLA raids in the south. The government alleges that Uganda has been involved in these attacks and, on Monday, Information Minister Al Tayeb Mohamed Karar warned that Sudan’s government would retailiate if Kampala kept backing the rebels.

Al Tayeb, who is the government’s official spokesman, said that if Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni did not “take his hands off” the civil war in southern Sudan, Khartoum would declare northern Uganda “a colonised area” for whose self-determination support must be given.

Kampala in turn accuses Sudan of supporting two rebel groups that operate in northern Uganda and, on Friday last, Museveni complained that he had tried everything to mend relations with Khartoum but failed. “Now I think they will get a solution on the battlefield,” he told journalists in Kampala. “That’s what they have been waiting for.”

Al Tayeb also described Museveni as anti-Arab. Museveni, he said, “is the African leader that hate Arabs most. He was the first leader on earth to demand compensation from the former slave traders to be paid back to the African tribes whose relatives were taken as slaves to Europe, America, the Arab world …”

Al Bashir’s trip to Kenya came one day after the speaker of Sudan’s parliament, Hassan al Turabi, threatened that if Sudan failed to retake the territory lost to the NDA, it would turn the conflict along its eastern border into a regional one.

Al Turabi, who heads the powerful National Islamic Front (NIF) and is widely regarded as the de factor leader of the Sudan, said Khartoum would “allow” the estimated one million Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees it hosts to attack Ethiopia and Eritrea.

While Sudan has called on Kenya to mediate, it Saturday rejected an offer by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to broker a negotiated settlement to the war.

Al Tayeb said Saturday there was no question of negotiating with the NDA unless it withdrew from the areas it had seized, publicly acknowledged that it was helped by Eritrea and Ethiopia and paid for the damage done to Sudan during the 13-year war.

The government spokesman described the UAE mediation offer as a plot cooked up by the rebels to hold talks with the government and thus gain time while consolidating their hold on the east.

Kenya is one of the few neighbouring countries with which Sudan has normal ties. Its enemies include Egypt, which accuses it of supporting Egyptian Muslim fundamentalists and harbouring three men suspected of trying to kill President Hosni Mubaraq in Addis Ababa in June 1995.

Sudan’s failure to hand over the suspects to Ethiopian investigators looking into the 1995 assassination attempt has led the United Nations to consider sanctions against Khartoum. The UN Security Council is to meet this month to decide on a proposed ban on all aircraft registered in Sudan.

According to Musyoka, this issue also came up during Al Bashir’s meeting with Moi. “Sudan is at the moment faced by sanctions all round and so would like to have Kenya’s understanding of the situation,” he said.