AFRICANEWS

Sudan

Back to business in Sudan

The Islamic generals have recovered their poise and are running the show just like it has always been, if not more brutally. Calls for Jihad by senior government figures are back, threats by Khartoum to boycott all peace deals have surfaced and a fierce military offensive is on.

Mid last month, confident that American missiles won’t be heading its way following the September 11 bombings in the US, Sudan launched its own military offensive. Operating from two fronts, northern Bahr el Ghazal and western Bahr el Ghazal, Khartoum mobilised its army, airforce and militia allies, the mission being to conquer more areas in southern Sudan. Relief agencies say that the result has been a humanitarian crisis in the two areas. The rebel Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) backs these claims.

So when President George Bush’s peace envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, appointed on September 6, makes his maiden tour to the war-torn country this month, he will arrive in the midst of a brutal military offensive and attendant humanitarian crisis. He will see fresh vagaries of the 18-year-old-civil war especially in the areas around Raga in western Bahr el Ghazal or Aweil in northern Bahr el Ghazal. But it is not the offensive that could trouble Danforth, but rather than the changed political mood in Khartoum.

It is far from the panic that oozed following the bombings. The Islamic generals have recovered their poise and are running the show just like it has always been, if not more brutally. Calls for Jihad by senior government figures are back, threats by Khartoum to boycott all peace deals have surfaced and a fierce military offensive is on.

In September, Khartoum was conciliatory and offered to work with the US in dealing with international terrorism. Khartoum had reason to fear. It is among the ten countries that the US State Department has singled out as supporters of international terrorism. Also, the US attacked Sudan in 1998, following the bombing of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya by terrorists with links to the country. So when New York and Washington were attacked, Khartoum’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mustafa Ismail denounced the attacks and affirmed Sudan’s willingness to co-operate fully with the US government and the international community to “combat all forms of terrorism and bring the perpetrators to justice.” President Omar el Bashir followed suit condemning the attacks but expressed hope that Washington’s reaction will be “unemotional.” His Information and Communication Minister, Mahdi Ibrahim, reinforced the message stating that Sudan’s denunciations of the bombings were “a reflection of Khartoum’s sincerity when it comes to terrorism. Even the rigidly fundamentalist Imams in various mosques in Khartoum, said that the attacks “were crimes that should never have happened.”

Such statements and intelligence files that Khartoum sent to the US soothed the Americans. A few days after the bombing, US Secretary of State Colin Powell called Ismail and took note of Sudan's offer of co-operation in combating terrorism. It was the highest level communication between the two countries in years, and State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called the conversation a good beginning. It wasn’t revealed what type of information it was, but the US was happy. “Sudan has become suddenly much more interested and active in working with us on various items,” said Powell.

It wasn’t long before Khartoum started earning its reward. On September 29, the Bush administration effectively killed the Sudan Peace Act, a legislation passed in June by the US House of Representatives and Senate to delist from American stock exchanges foreign oil firms doing business in Sudan. This was after the US Senate withdrew the bill from the floor claiming that it wasn’t the right time. The shelving of the Act effectively removed the rug under the feet of western human rights groups that have made Sudan a top foreign policy issue in the US. “We've been worse than side-tracked. We've been betrayed,” said a shell-shocked Charles Jacobs, head of the American Anti-Slavery Group.

Before the anti-Khartoum forces could recover, the UN Security Council in a unanimous vote, lifted sanctions imposed on Sudan in 1996 after the country refused to surrender Islamic militants implicated in a 1995 failed bid to assassinate Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak. A beaming Ismail said: “The decision returns to Sudan its honour and its real face, which was distorted by charges of terrorism that had nothing in common with Sudan and its people.” In October the UN human rights rapporteur for Sudan, Gerhard Baum issued his report. Though he criticised Khartoum, he added “Sudan has made some progress in its human rights record.” With such music in its ears, Khartoum decided that it had got more than it wanted and it was time to get back to business. Instead of the unilateral support promised in September, Bashir started calling for UN-centred global initiative to deal with terrorism. “There must be a specific definition for international terrorism that is to be made under UN auspices and binding on all people and free of double standards,” he said. A few days later his government denied it had handed anybody to the US since the two countries don’t have any military treaty. When the bombing of Afghanistan started, Bashir was outraged: “We are against any attack in Afghanistan or any other countries in which civilians can be the victims of such an attack,” he told AP. The Secretary General of the ruling National Congress party, Ibrahim Ahmed Omar was more terse saying that “we are not prepared to abandon Islam for supporting a specific position.” On November 11, during a visit to Iraq, Khartoum’s Minister of Internal Affairs, Maj. Gen. Abdelrahim Hussein, pledged his government’s support for the lifting of UN sanctions against Iraq and praised Baghdad for its “fair battle against the Americans.”

The same time, Bashir’s deputy, Ali Osman Taha, a former protégé of detained Islamist, Hassan al Turabi, vowed that he will never abandon Jihad in his war against the south. Speaking to a group of Islamic warriors heading for the warfront, Taha said that “jihad is our way and we will not abandon it and will keep its banner high.” Taha’s men are the top political and security advisers to Bashir. They are also some of the most committed fundamentalists in Sudan. Top are Ghazi Salah Eddin, in charge of peace and Gotbi al-Mahid political affairs.

It is these men who Danforth will talk peace with much as they are known to be firm backers of the Libyan-Egyptian peace plan, which rules out self determination for the south. Indeed, last month, Salah Eddin said that he is not going to waste any more time with the IGAD peace talks calling them a waste of time. “We have told IGAD chairman, President Daniel arap Moi, of our decision to grant IGAD one last chance in its bid for an end to the war and for reaching peace….The government has become fed up with the failure by IGAD initiative to reach positive results in eight years,” he said.

On November 9, Salah Eddin said that Khartoum had reviewed its peace strategy to be presented to Danforth, but he wouldn’t divulge specifics. He could only say that the Sudanese government was keen to “assess what peace proposals” Danforth has. Salah Eddin's statement was made after the US mission in Khartoum told the Sudanese government that Danforth would be arriving in two days time. By the time of going to press, Danforth, a former Senator, had already arrived in Khartoum and was scheduled to meet with Bashir, Taha and Salah Eddin among other top government officials. The US mission in Khartoum said that Danforth, an ordained Episcopal minister with no prior experience on the Sudan war, was also expected to tour camps of displaced people around Khartoum and tour the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan and Rumbek in the south before leaving for Kenya.

Meanwhile, the military offensive in the south was on. It started on October 6 in the battle for a strategic town of Raga in western Bahr el Ghazal. Government planes bombed the area killing 20 people according to the SPLA. This forced the World Food Programme to abandon a food distribution exercise in the area. With the US fixated by Khartoum’s intelligence files and rest of the world keen on the goings-on in Afghanistan, the bombing went unnoticed even when Raga fell to government forces a week later. The SPLA claims after taking Raga, Khartoum unleashed Arab militias to clear civilians perceived to support the rebels. On November 1, the group warned of a “humanitarian crisis of major magnitude” in western Bahr al-Ghazal State ”if the government intensified continued bombing the area around Raga town where the army and the militias were attacking civilians. The situation is extremely desperate, particularly for the elderly, women and children,” said SPLA spokesman, Samson Kwaje. But when Bashir visited Raga on October 31, he said that the army and pro-government forces would “continue to defeat and pursue the outlaws until Sudanese soil is rid of the traitors and agents.” Subsequent reports from the warfront show he wasn’t joking. The situation in northern Bahr el Ghazal isn’t better with the government taking advantage of the start of the dry season to move troops, provisions and equipment further south. Relief workers report that Khartoum is moving up to 5000 assorted troops- the army, Muraheliin and the paramilitary Popular Defence Forces (PDFs)- all who are escorting a train bringing provisions to government forces stationed in Wau. Independent humanitarian sources confirmed to IRIN that there were large-scale troop movements in northern Bahr al-Ghazal and they are also attacking civilians.

On November 1, the Swiss based Christian Solidarity International (CSI) claimed these troops had killed 93 people in Aweil town and abducted 85 others. Rubbish, said Ahmed Diedery, Khartoum’s Charge d’Affaires at the Sudanese Embassy in Kenya. Diedery added that CSI is an organisation that “had repeatedly shown itself to be biased and the latest allegations were more or less in line with what the government had always heard from it.” CSI might have a controversial reputation, but this time it was right. A day after Diedery denied any fighting, a Kenyan relief worker working with Church Ecumenical Action in Sudan (CEAS) was seized by PDF partisans. AFRICANEWS has confirmed that 27-year-old Juliana Muiruri is being held in Khartoum after being detained in Aweil town for more than a week. The only reprimand from Washington has been the extension on November 1 by one year of the US sanctions on the country. That is just as slap on the wrist and Khartoum can afford to wait now that it is in Washington’s good books.

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