David Hirst
The Sudanese opposition, a broad coalition of African southerners and Arab Muslim northerners known as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), held a conference in Cairo this month to plan the next stage of its struggle against the Khartoum government. It is the first time Egypt has hosted such a gathering, and it is another blow to the Sudanese leader, Hassan al-Turabi, and his National Islamic Front.
Reports in Cairo suggest that President Hosni Mubarak has decided to start playing a more active role in the affairs of Egypt’s vast southern neighbour. He is alarmed by the worsening conditions there, including the widespread famine, the growing scale and complexity of the civil war, and above all the danger Sudan’s territorial disintegration poses to Egypt’s vital stake in the waters of the Nile.
Egypt has taken second place to others in relations with the NDA. Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda have supported the alliance’s cross-border military operations, while the United States, Europe and the African states directly or indirectly involved in the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (Igad) have been promoting a peace process between Khartoum and the southern rebels of John Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).
The NDA is mainly composed of the two traditionalist parties of the north – Sadiq al-Mahdi’s Umma and Mohammed al- Mirghani’s Khatimiya; various so- called “modern” forces, including communists and army officers; and the SPLA, which is by far the most important element militarily.
Before the conference opened, the three main opposition leaders – Mahdi, Mirghani and Garang – met Mubarak, who stressed the “grave dangers” Sudan now faced. The conference follows directly on the collapse of the latest round of talks, in Addis Ababa, between Khartoum and the SPLA.
Last year, in a “peace-from-within” deal with a group of southern leaders opposed to Garang, Khartoum accepted in principle the hitherto heretical notion of southern secession. But although secession is an option officially envisaged in the Igad negotiations, it appeared to be one thing for Khartoum to grant it to its own protgs, quite another to concede it to Garang.
The Addis Ababa talks apparently broke down on an SPLA proposal to turn Sudan into a north-south confederation for a two-year transitional period, to be followed by a referendum on southern self-determination.
Evidently Cairo saw the talks’ collapse as an opportunity to step in. Though generally on bad terms with Khartoum – which it has accused of sponsoring Islamist terrorists – it has been ambivalent about the NDA’s military campaign, which has recently spread from the south to the Port Sudan and Kassala area of the north.
It has not been keen to throw its weight behind a movement which, far from seizing power in Khartoum, might dismember the country. Its nightmare is that control of the Nile’s headwaters might fall into hostile hands.
It is doubtful whether Egypt’s new- found support for the NDA adds up to unconditional acceptance of its aim to bring down the Turabi regime, or supply it with the arms to do so.
“The important thing,” said Omar Nuraldayem of the Umma Party, “is that for the first time Cairo has now recognised the opposition.” Egypt’s support depends on assurances that the NDA will not countenance Sudan’s break-up. Cairo needs such promises less from the NDA’s northern members, who hold the same fears, than from Garang. His military strength makes him the key power-broker in Sudan, in respect of both the Khartoum government and his own NDA allies, who in private are deeply apprehensive of the ascendancy which he and the south might acquire in any new order.
In public at least, Egypt got what it wanted. On only his second visit to Cairo since he took command of the SPLA in 1983, Garang said: “I want to assure everyone of our commitment to the unity of Sudan … on a new basis.”
He said Egypt had “practically and effectively” joined the Sudanese people’s struggle against a regime which could not be “reformed or improved”, only “removed”.