WORLD VIEW:IT'S WHERE Arab faces off against African, Islam with Christianity, nomads with farmers, and old ethnic and tribal hatreds bubble up. Where three bitter conflicts divide a state into west, south and east, in Africa's largest country. Where, despite oil discovered in 1978, hunger and poverty still rule, writes
PATRICK SMYTH
At the heart of Sudan’s three political crises are the marginalising political and economic policies of the Islamist ruling party, the National Congress Party (NCP), and its leader, Sudanese president Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, who is sought internationally for war crimes in Darfur.
Then there are bandits. The ordeal of the kidnapped Goal workers, Dubliner Sharon Commins and her Ugandan companion, Hilda Kawuki, has dragged on for more than a month despite direct negotiations by senior Sudanese officials with the “bandits” holding them for ransom. Although both have been in touch with family and diplomats, assuring them of their good health, the prolonged stand-off does not bode well.
Despite assurances from Sudanese minister for humanitarian affairs Abdul-Bagi al-Jailani, who has been directly involved in the talks, that “these are bandits. They have nothing to do with the [Darfur] rebels, they have nothing to do with politics”, there are indications the gang’s clan leaders may have connections to the Janjaweed militias who have terrorised Darfur since 2003 with the NCP’s support. To date, they appear impervious, however, to pressure even from senior “friends” in the NCP.
There is no escaping politics in Sudan, as aid groups have found out. In March, Khartoum expelled 13 aid groups in response to the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant for Bashir. This week, five of those agencies complained that the authorities have since seized $5.2 million (€3.65 million) of their assets.
Last Thursday, the UN Security Council extended the mandate for the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission that has been slowly deploying in Darfur. Two-thirds of the force of 26,000 are now on the ground, and reports suggest the level of violence may be declining.
Some 300,000 are said to have died in the conflict between non-Arab Darfuri campaigners for regional autonomy and the Sudanese army with its allied Janjaweed. According to the UN, some 4.7 million in the region remain dependent on aid.
But Darfuri civilians and UN agencies this week took issue with recent suggestions from US president Barack Obama’s special envoy, Maj Gen Scott Gration, that refugees should begin to plan their return home. Conditions on the ground are still far from safe.
Gration last week also hinted that the US administration sees the possibility of carefully easing some of the sanctions against Khartoum. “We see that there is a spirit of co-operation and an attitude of wanting to help,” he told the LA Times.
The suggestions of a new engagement with the regime, slowly rewarding signs of co-operation, reflect Obama’s shift towards similar engagement with Islam and Islamist regimes elsewhere. And a carrot-and-stick approach will have a certain appeal in the region – African Union members have backed Sudan’s call for the ICC to pull back from charges against Bashir, seeing them as hindering attempts to make the regime honour its commitments to the UN and under various internal peace agreements.
Crucially, observers look to the elections due to be held in April 2010, which are seen as critical to cementing the precarious 2005 accord – the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) – between north and south that ended a long-running civil war and brought the south Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) into an uneasy coalition government with the NPC.
Two million died and some four million fled their homes between 1983 and 2005 in the conflict, which pitched the mostly Muslim north against the Christian south.
Now, with talks between the government and rebel forces in Darfur going nowhere, there is a fear that the CPA will unravel, with the potential of reigniting north-south civil war.
Gration rightly sees preservation of the CPA as a key priority. Others, such as the International Crisis Group, warn that he must use the ICC charges as leverage against Khartoum if the NCP is to be persuaded to honour its CPA commitments to remove repressive laws and, most importantly, to allow a credible census – a critical prerequisite for the promised referendum in 2011 that will determine whether, as it hopes, south Sudan can secede.
In its most recent report, the ICG warns that “the temptation is to accept a humanitarian, political and security quick-fix on Darfur in order to preserve chances to hold the 2010 general elections on time and move on to the 2011 referendum . . .
“That would be a mistake. Justice and peace are closely connected in Darfur. Judicial reforms and transitional justice mechanisms leading to reconciliation and a culture of accountability are essential to the success and sustainability of the peace process there. Nor will there be sustainable peace in northern Sudan if the system of impunity is not done away with and genuine change of governance promoted.
“The US and other international partners of the Sudan peace process should increase pressure on the NCP in order to create a chance for meaningful policy changes.”
In truth, Gration may not be as far from that position as the authors suggest. But hidden in the fog of this great game, and far from the minds of the protagonists, are two beleaguered aid workers who can only sit and wait.
Patrick Smyth is Foreign Editor of The Irish Times