POLITICS-SUDAN: Rebels Bolstered by U.S. Reception

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Mar 27 2002 (IPS) - After assuring top Bush administration officials that his group would not attack civilian targets, Sudanese People Liberation Movement/Army (SPLA) leader John Garang ended a two-week visit Tuesday substantially more reassured about U.S. support.

In an interview with IPS before he left, Garang hinted that the SPLA intends to intensify its military efforts on oil fields in the Upper West Nile region, which Washington does not consider a civilian target, even as it participates in a peace process that the United States has promised to become more involved in.

Noting that two European oil companies, Lundin of Sweden and OMV of Austria, recently suspended operations due to the uncertain security in the region, Garang said, “Oil is a weapon of war in our situation. We’ll continue to put military pressure on (foreign oil companies in the region) until they all pack and go.”

But Garang insisted that the SPLA will remain fully committed to the U.S.-backed peace process that has achieved four confidence-building agreements between the rebels and the National Islamic Front (NIF) government, including a cease-fire in the Nuba Mountains and a ban on targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure, such as schools, hospitals, and food distribution centres.

During his visit, Garang, who was accompanied by a 15-member delegation, met with Secretary of State Colin Powell and his chief Africa deputy, Walter Kansteiner, Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Andrew Natsios, and Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, as well as an inter-agency team with representatives from the intelligence community and sympathetic lawmakers.

“Once he met with Powell, all doors seemed to open,” noted one Congressional aide, who credited Garang’s access to the unusual advocacy network backing him, which ranges from the Christian Right to the Congressional Black Caucus.

The SPLA, which has been fighting for self-determination for the largely African and Christian or animist population of southern Sudan since 1983, is the strongest member of a larger coalition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that opposes the mostly Arab, Islamic fundamentalist NIF.

Before Garang’s visit, SPLA supporters here had expressed growing concern about U.S. policy toward Sudan, particularly after Sep. 11 when the NIF regime stepped up what until then had been minimal co-operation with Washington’s demands for information about alleged terrorists and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, which was based in Khartoum from 1991 until 1996.

In addition to opening about two dozen sensitive files and offering investigators a chance to question two or three suspected al Qaeda operatives, Khartoum, which remains on the State Department’s list of states that support international terrorism, offered to assist U.S. anti-terrorist operations and its military campaign in Afghanistan.

Such co-operation earned the NIF rare public praise from Powell and other U.S. officials, at the same time that Bush’s Special Envoy for Sudan, former Sen. John Danforth, appeared to play down SPLA aspirations for self-determination during visits to the region in November and January.

Danforth’s mission was aimed at gauging whether both the NIF and the SPLA were sufficiently committed to negotiate a political solution to their 19-year-old civil war to justify stepped-up U.S. involvement in the peace effort.

Danforth proposed four confidence-building measures (CBMs): the setting up of “zones” and “times of tranquility” in contested areas for vaccination campaigns; the creation of an international commission to investigate the NIF’s role in slave-raiding by Arab tribes against the southern population; the Nuba Mountain cease-fire, and the ban on attacks on civilians, which the SPLA signed here Tuesday.

The NIF had long insisted that that it would sign the ban on civilian attacks only if oil facilities, which earn the regime about 500 million dollars a year in export earnings, would be protected by it.

But Washington refused to go along, and after a particularly deadly attack on a World Food Programme (WFP) feeding centre in the south last month by two NIF helicopter gunships, cut off all further discussions with Khartoum. After several weeks and just before Garang’s arrival here, the NIF signed the ban.

As a result, Danforth will submit a report to Bush within the next few weeks that will conclude both sides are sufficiently committed to a peace process to justify Washington’s further involvement, according to knowledgeable sources.

U.S. officials say they will now set up a “troika” consisting of Norwegian, British, and U.S. diplomats and observers to oversee implementation of the four CBMs and revive the long-stalled peace process sponsored by the eight-year-old Nairobi-based Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD).

IGAD’s peace efforts are based on a Declaration of Principles (DOP) signed by both parties in 1994 that includes the right to self-determination, the separation of religion and state, and a referendum to be held in the south after a final accord, with secession as an option. It is understood that a much vaguer Egyptian-Libyan Initiative (ELI), floated 18 months ago and favoured by Khartoum, is to be folded into the IGAD process.

Under the accord signed by the SPLA Tuesday, verification missions will be based in Khartoum and Rumbak to quickly investigate any alleged “serious violations” of the ban. U.S. officials said a series of two or three “serious violations” could result in United Nations sanctions. “We expect them both to test us,” said one high-ranking diplomat.

Garang said the SPLA will abide by the accord and stressed his willingness to negotiate a “peaceful, political settlement for the end of the war with the NIF regime”.

But he stressed that dealing with the NIF, which he called “the Taliban of Africa”, was not necessarily his preferred option. “Their co-operation with the U.S. on international terrorism,” he said, “is strictly tactical. The NIF has not changed, cannot change, and will not change.”

The NDA, for which Congress has earmarked 10 million dollars in political aid, should be supported as an alternative to the NIF government, Garang said, stressing that the coalition includes credible representatives from throughout the country, including the Arab Islamic north.