Fears are rising that Sudan’s 2005 comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) that ended decades of north-south conflict is about to collapse as it approaches its biggest test — a national referendum on southern independence scheduled for January 9.
This intensification of international misgivings was largely predictable.
The ruling National Congress party was never going to accept southern secession without a fuss.
After all, what government would blithely accede to the partition of its sovereign territory?
Ongoing disputes about borders, oil revenues, the Abyei region and voting reflect long-standing mutual mistrust, tribal enmities and the organisational limitations of a vast, underdeveloped, relatively poor country.
“Good guys” and “bad guys”
All this is raising the temperature. But a less obvious reason why the alarm bells are ringing so loudly is the growing tendency among United States politicians and pressure groups to divide the rival Sudanese leaderships into “good guys” and “bad guys”, into freedom fighters and evil-doers.
Five years ago the US and other interested parties decided a peace deal was more important than apportioning blame for the war or the crisis in Darfur.
This pragmatic impartiality is now dissipating. Northern Sudanese officials and diplomats are convinced the Obama administration in particular and the West in general is rooting, Kosovo-style, for southern independence, the referendum’s expected outcome.
Salva Kiir, the southern president and Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) chief, is a persuasive advocate, as he showed again recently during a visit to Juba by UN Security Council envoys.
His smooth political skills contrast with the tough-guy style of Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir.
Favourite of US officials
He seems to have become a favourite of Susan Rice, the US ambassador at the UN, and her boss, the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. Both are highly critical of Bashir.
US pressure groups, backed by the Christian right, purposefully pursue the demonisation of Bashir’s government and accuse Bashir of planning another bloodbath.
Abdullahi al-Azreg, Sudan’s ambassador to London, dismissed predictions of looming mayhem as exaggerated but admitted there were serious problems.
Kiir had broken the south’s word over the CPA by pressing for independence rather than trying to make unity attractive, as he undertook to do, he said.
He insisted that the north would not resort to violence if the south voted for independence. “[US politicians] constantly distort our image.
They depict us as demons. It is part of the general atmosphere of Islamophobia. How do I persuade you we are not demons?” —