/ 17 January 2005

An impossible peace

Last Sunday more than 20 heads of state arrived in Nairobi to attend the signing of a final agreement between the Sudan government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/ Movement (SPLA/M) that formally ended Africa’s longest running civil conflict.

But the pronouncements about peace and stability throughout Africa’s largest country that this triggered are premature.

In the first place, the agreement reached in Naivasha, Kenya, is between the Khartoum government and only one of at least three regionally based armed groups that are resisting it. Even as Sudan’s President Omar al Bashir announced that he wanted “no more wars in any part of the country”, his forces attacked a Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) base near Mellit, about 50km north of Fasher, capital of northern Darfur in the west of the country.

United Nations observers report that fighting is still raging in Darfur, a situation described by the UN before the recent tsunami disaster as “the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet”.

However, Al Bashir has announced he will be prepared to hold “power and wealth sharing” talks with rebels in the west. This is at the core of the agreement with the SPLA/M, which controls much of the south of the country.

The suggestion has been met with caution by the two main rebel groups in Darfur, the SLA and the Justice and Equality Movement. They point out that the Khartoum government has reneged on a series of agreements struck in the recent past with various international agencies, including the UN.

Al Bashir, his Vice-President and chief Naivasha negotiator, Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, and his Foreign Minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, have also insisted that the Naivasha agreement cannot serve as a “model” for Darfur.

President Thabo Mbeki, who has mediated in the conflict on behalf of the African Union, has stressed that the deal includes an undertaking to rewrite the Sudan Constitution. This, he maintains, should override the fact that the Naivasha agreement does not deal with the conflict in Darfur or with the simmering rebellion in the east of the country led by the Beja Congress.

Rebel groups in these regions disagree, and not only because the agreement includes controversial reference to the application of Islamic sharia law. The insistence by the government in Khartoum on applying this religious law throughout the country has been one of the causes of conflict.

However, the government agreed at Naivasha that sharia will not extend to non-Muslims. This effectively creates two classes of people within Sudan, something that has infuriated, for different reasons, both the hard-line Islamist wing of the government and many Muslims in the west, east and north of the country who do not wish to be governed by the form of sharia imposed by Khartoum.

The Darfur and Beja rebels also point out that clauses in the Naivasha agreement allow for a decentralised administration and wealth sharing only in the south. The agreement for a referendum on secession in six years also only benefits that region.

The SLA and Justice and Equality Movement continue to claim that the Khartoum government, using its Janjaweed militia, is mounting an ethnic- cleansing operation. In an apparent concession to the hardliners, Al Bashir has refused to disarm the Janjaweed.

Given this situation, diplomats in Khartoum remain sceptical about the prospects for a lasting peace. But the European Union has announced it will start to release development funds that have been blocked since 1990.

The AU is, in the meantime, still trying to persuade Khartoum to accept an increase in its peacekeeping force in Darfur. But the government insists that peacekeepers are not necessary; that the task of the AU force should only be to protect AU observers deployed in the region.

Apparently fearful of creating further tensions in the fledgling AU, African states, led by South Africa, have also filed “no-action” motions regarding Sudan in the UN General Assembly human rights committee.