Nuba Vision

Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2003

Khartoum’s decision to suspend peace talks on 26 January may have profound effects on the outcome of a process that was already foundering. The fact that the nominal reason was for it s chief negotiator, Vice President Ali Osman Taha, to attend the Hajj to Mecca was greeted with incredulity by the southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army.

The SPLA is "increasingly getting the strong impression that government does not want to focus on the peace process and only wants to buy time," warned Commander Yasser Arman. "The government leadership thinks if they buy time toward the American elections, the American administration will not focus on the Sudan peace process."

Ahmad Dirdiery, the Sudanese deputy ambassador in Nairobi, insisted that, apart from the fact that some of the people involved in the negotiations wanted to perform the hajj, "the talks have been going on for 58 days continuously and we needed a break to consult with constituencies".
SPLA spokesman, Samson Kwaje, said that "there was no reason for the adjournment. We have promised the international community and the Sudanese people a peace deal by the end of January and we should have delivered." He said that the hajj was being used as a pretext to avoid difficult and unresolved issues, which concerned the disputed regions of Abyei, Blue Nile and the Nuba mountains.

Another senior officer, Lt Col. Tulio, who runs the new SPLA web-site, commented "The window of opportunity for peace in Sudan may be closing unless international community intensifies pressure on the NIF government at this critical stage of progress in the peace process. It appears, despite the signing of these agreements and occasional positive overtures, the regime does not intend to go the last mile and sign a just peace with the South."

There is an increasing belief that Khartoum is attempting to achieve a military solution to the conflict in western Sudan before continuing peace talks on the south from a stronger position.

Tulio maintains that "The NIF government continues its brutal campaign against innocent civilians in Darfur State, in the west of the country. The heavy handiness in Darfur has some worrying links on the intractable position of Khartoum on peace talks. The peace process is being deliberate slowed down meanwhile many plans are in consideration. First opting for the destruction and suppression of the rebellion in Darfur. Secondly getting the axe of Washington to transit into elections blankness."

The SPLA has also been stressing Khartoum’s connections to terrorism and suggesting that the government hasn’t really changed its spots.

"Prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, the NIF regime had been dragging its feet on counter-terrorism cooperation. After the terrorist attacks, the regime realized that its survival depended on cosmetic changes to appease the United States. They are even displaying characters in their delegation as being benign, even though are listed as war criminals on the loose. They cooperated with the United States as long as it served their interest, but never abandoned their old bad habits. Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists are still welcomed in Khartoum by this regime."

The SPLA admits that it sympathises with the rebels in the west, claiming that they both represent communities marginalised by the government. The southern rebels now object to Khartoum attempting to talk peace while still conducting widespread human rights abuses and ethnic cleansing.

"We condemn in the strongest terms the continuous bombardment by the Sudanese army against the innocent villages of Darfur resulting in thousands of refugees crossing the border to neighbouring Chad. We warn the government against using its militia, and against its human rights violations which amount to ethnic cleansing in Darfur." said Yasser Arman.

Despite increasing international concern about the situation in Darfur and its overspill into neighbouring Chad, Khartoum described its 30 January recapture of the border town of Tine as a present to the Sudanese people for Eid al-Adha.

"The gift that the armed forces, backed up by elements of the popular police and popular defence forces, gave to the Sudanese people on the blessed feast of sacrifice was their entry into the town of Tine, the expulsion of the enemy and the complete securing of the town," said an official statement.

The international community sees little cause for celebrating a conflict that has displaced almost a million people. In late December, the World Food Programme launched an urgent appeal for 11 million dollars for refugees in Chad. By late January, just 800,000 dollars had been pledged. The crisis "has the potential of a real disaster if the international community doesn’t assist," warned Robbie Thomson, of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Amnesty International warns that the crisis in Darfur risks undermining the entire peace process. UK Director Kate Allen said: "Amnesty International is receiving reports of hundreds of civilians who have been killed and their villages destroyed, and thousands of people seeking refuge in neighbouring Chad. We understand that more than 200 people have been killed this week, most of them women and children. We also have the names of children said to have been abducted by government-supported militias. Important progress has been made at the peace talks in Kenya on the long-running civil war in the south of the country. But at the same time the conflict and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur is worsening. A lasting peace cannot be secured in Sudan while the human rights abuses of the war in the south are being repeated in Darfur."

The UN Hugh Commissioner for Refugees recently described Darfur as "the forgotten emergency". Others have used stronger language.

In late January the Darfur Lawyers Union filed charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against 26 named members of the Khartoum government, including the president and vice president and various military security and militia leaders. Their case is backed by the rhetoric of the US Sudan Peace Act signed by George Bush on October 21, 2002: "The acts of the Government of Sudan . . . constitute genocide as defined by the [United Nations] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)."

Although they were initially taken to the International Criminal Court (an institution not recognised by the United States), as "crimes of universal juristiction" they also intend to press charges in the various countries of the European Union, a process that could cause difficulties for those states currently involved in supporting the Sudanese peace talks.

Although many observers regard these charges as politically-driven exaggeration, a recent Stockholm conference marking World Holocaust Day (in the run-up to the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan massacres) Sudan was identified as one of the countries most likely to experience genocide in the near future.

Sudan, Myanmar, Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo are in greatest danger of genocide, Barbara Harff of the US Center for International Development and Conflict Management told the conference. They all meet five of the six risk factors outlined by Harff, who, at the request of US president Bill Clinton in the 1990s, designed a theoretical model for risk assessment and early warning of genocidal violence. The factors are prior genocides or politicides - in which victims are identified by their political affiliation or opposition to a regime in power; upheaval since 1988; existence of a minority elite; exclusionary ideology; the type of regime and trade openness.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told the Stockholm International Forum on Preventing Genocide that the slaughter in Yugoslavia and Rwanda could have been prevented if the world had taken action earlier. "The events of the 1990s, in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, are especially shameful. The international community clearly had the capacity to prevent these events. But it lacked the will," Annan said, insisting that it must do better in future.

The escalating violence in Darfur is also affecting other parts of the country, particular those areas that

feel either excluded or betrayed by the peace process. Ali al-Safi of the Beja Congress explained that his movement was uniting with the western rebels due to anger at being left out of the IGAD-sponsored peace talks. "The Beja Congress is struggling for a federal arrangement for the region here in eastern Sudan where the people can govern themselves. And the Darfur people are also struggling for the same objective, that is a federal arrangement within a united Sudan. The details have not been worked out yet, but both parties will struggle together in a very closely, coordinated way."

He insists that both rebel groups would rather negotiate a settlement than fight but he claims that Khartoum has made it impossible for them to take part in the peace talks in Kenya. Inhabitants of the three contested areas are also unhappy at the arrangements worked out thus far.

The failure to reach agreement over Abyei has meant that the SPLA is now reconsidering the status of the Nuba and Blue Nile as the situation in Darfur is increasing the fears of the northern minorities about being left under government control. Khartoum’s claims that 90 percent of the issues regarding the marginalised areas have already been resolved ignores the contentious issue of sharia law, which still remains in dispute, as does the issue of self determinaton.

Although negotiations are due to resume on February 17 it is clear that the peace process is rapidly losing momentum. Confidence has been severely dented. If and when talks resume it is likely that the SPLA will demand far greater guarantees from the international community and expect more concessions from Khartoum. A workable final settlement looks more distant with every passing day.