Sudan officially ends its two-decade southern civil war next week with the signing of a peace deal. Amid the jubilation is hope that ending one war may spark a solution to the country’s second — in western Darfur, where a separate but equally brutal conflict has led to a massive humanitarian crisis.
Sudan’s president, caught up in the excitement of the long-awaited southern peace deal, has said he now will be willing to consider wealth- and power-sharing agreements with the Darfur rebels.
”The deal in the south puts Sudan on the doorstep of a new era of peace for the whole country,” said Jean Baptiste Natama, a senior political officer with the African Union, which is mediating the Darfur peace talks. ”It is a means to the solution in Darfur, a necessary bridge.”
But continued outbreaks of fighting in Darfur — despite repeated assurances from both sides to honor a recent ceasefire pledge — indicate just how difficult the problem might be to solve, even with new momentum.
The comprehensive peace deal for the southern war will be signed on January 9 in Nairobi, Kenya. It comes after the government and southern rebel officials on December 31 concluded two years of peace talks by signing a permanent truce, and endorsed a detailed plan to end the conflict.
It includes power- and wealth-sharing agreements and a proposed government for an autonomous southern Sudan.
Even before the southern deal was reached, officials inside and outside Sudan had linked the two conflicts, saying peace in the civil war will be key to making progress on the so-far intractable Darfur front.
Efforts for a Darfur solution have gone in fits and starts — a November 9 ceasefire signed in Abuja, Nigeria, between the government and the two main rebel groups has been repeatedly broken by both sides. And new insurgent groups have recently arisen to add strength to the resistance.
On Tuesday, the rebel Sudan Liberation Army accused government soldiers of attacking a base in North Darfur and threatened that rebels would step up military operations in retaliation.
Nevertheless, in its new focus on peace, the Sudanese government has given assurances that it is serious about solving the Darfur crisis.
Darfur is ”definitely” next on the government’s list of priorities, said Deputy Information Minister Abdel Dafe Khattib, saying the conclusion of the southern peace deal has brought a positive feeling.
”There is a different mood, one of trying to mend fences. I think it’s going to help” with Darfur, he said. ”The government itself is trying to mend fences with all factions, inside and out, be it American, European or our neighbours.”
The southern deal was a result both of Western pressure and Sudan’s desire to end its pariah status in the international community, said Charles Gurdon, an analyst with a British consultancy firm.
”If Libya and Iraq and others can come off the United States list of state sponsors of terrorism, Sudan also has to try,” he said. ”It is a calculated position — this way they can have more time to sort out western Sudan.”
He said Darfur is more important to the government than the south, because its population is Muslim, like most of the north, and because the bulk of the army comes from there.
However, the area never had much political nor economic power.
It was that feeling of marginalisation that led non-Arab rebel groups to take up arms in February 2003 against what they saw as years of state neglect and discrimination against Sudanese of African origin.
The government responded with a counterinsurgency campaign in which the Janjaweed, an Arab militia, has allegedly committed wide-scale abuses against the African population.
About 70 000 people have been killed from disease, hunger and attacks just since last March, and nearly two million are believed to have fled their homes. Many more are believed to have died in the fighting.
There are parallels with the southern crisis, in which rebels made up mainly of Christians and animists demanded greater autonomy from Sudan’s Islamic-dominated government and a greater share of the country’s wealth for the south. That war left more than 2,5-million people dead, mostly from hunger and disease, and has driven more than four million people from their homes.
The international community has put intense international pressure on Sudan to end the Darfur conflict, which has been labelled the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Two United Nations Security Council resolutions have threatened possible sanctions, as has a Bill signed by US President George Bush in December.
Natame, the AU official, said the southern peace deal and reforms that should come from it include all of Sudan’s marginalised areas, and urged the Darfur rebels to scrutinise the agreement closely.
”I think it will be of some interest to the rebels in Darfur to get a glance to see whether their interests are addressed,” Natame said. — Sapa-AP