SUDANESE Peoples Liberation Army chief John Garang died just three weeks after the long-awaited Final Agreement was signed between his SPLM and the Sudanese junta led by Gen. omar el-Bashir, after a long and protracted civil war lasting over two decades and costing as many million lives. Far from being a harbinger for a better tomorrow, the agreement has all but sealed the fate of Sudan, its stability and territorial integrity, assuming that there was any, and that of quite a few of the neighbouring states.
The new constitution signed in July 2005, is a sequel to the January 2005 peace treaty, ending bloodshed. The deal makes Beshir the President, Garang the First Vice President, which is nothing but a euphemism for two independent Presidents for the Muslim North and the animist South of the country. The share in cabinet posts is 52 percent for Beshir's nominees, 28 percent for Garang's men and remaining 20 percent for smaller groups. This is a six year transition arrangement, following which a referendum on independence shall be held in the South. Three central regions of the Nuba mountains, blue Nile, and oilrich obiye have been given special status since both North and South believe them to be their part. Literally all the contentious issues remain unresolved and this is likely to trigger acrimonious disputes sooner than later, as would the simmering discontent among the various disgruntled segments all over the country who are uncomfortable with the concessions given to Garang and his allied warlords.
Sudan derives its name from the Arabic phrase Bilaad-us-Soudan (literally: the regions inhabited by the blacks), as it was known to the Arabs inhabiting in the lower Nile, presently Egypt. This unique country had the double distinction of being area-wise the largest country in the Muslim world as well as that in continental Africa. A short time hence, this fact will be history, and it is debatable whether even the areas around Khartoum would like to remain being known as Sudan. While celebrating what the peace agreement says, the myopic leaders of the African Union are turning a blind eye to what the agreement does not say, and so are world leaders elsewhere. What the agreement says between the lines is also the writing on the walls. With the failures galore in state building all across Africa and the Middle East, one shudders at the fact the world leadership has yet to understand that fairly and democratically elected leadership, subjected to the checks of independent judiciary, sovereign parliament, a vigilant press and a vibrant civil society is the only path to national integration. And that a pact between tyrants, war criminals, and liars is not worth the paper it is written upon.
Sudan is a chronic case of state failure, only that it was not suggested so in writing, that has been mercifully done now. Rich in oil and gold deposits, fertile in land and alluvial assets around the blue Nile, booming in cotton and food harvest, and a teeming enterprising nation, it missed in just two elements; democracy and the rule of law. And this duo is the thing that determines the fate of the state. Dictators disintegrate their countries; Said Barre broke Somalia, Yahya Khan broke Pakistan, Suharto broke indonesia and the list awaits the inclusion of Bashir for being the last ruler of the Sudan with its present boundaries. Sudan is a chronic case in many respects, but not an exception, as decency and democracy, not tyranny, is the exception in the developing world. From Morocco to Angola to indonesia to Uzbekistan, autocracy is the norm, albeit in democratic facade. one could wish that the G-8 leaders understand the annual $50 billion aid projected to Africa, will exacerbate the poverty and disparity in Africa to astronomical proportions, unless and until the era of sham democracy, manipulated parliaments and judiciary, and crony capitalism is shown the door.
on paper, Sudan is a democracy, where generals rule by "getting elected" by killing, incarcerating and maiming all the prospective competitors. The SPLA and SPLM are putatively "people's movements" where their only "relation" to people is that they have been killing their own people. The world tries to paint Bashir as an islamist theocrat, although, to be fair to the devil, this is one thing he is not. He somersaults his ideological identity
triennially on the average. He rebelled against the constitution and law by overthrowing a democratic civil government through a military coup in 1989. Ever since, he has been in search of legitimacy.
First, he thought he was a revolutionary leader but then dissolved his handpicked Revolutionary Command Council, eliminating a few powerful generals in the process, and became a selfproclaimed third world hero, a la Qaddafi-style. When the US bombed him in 1998, he became an islamist and adopted Shariah Law. And when this did not work as the anticipated Arab petro-dollars did not flow in to prop up his regime in the name of islam, he started jailing and torturing his religious allies including his spiritual ideologue Hassan Turabi. He chose to become a democrat by holding farcical polls and trying to pose as elected President, as this sells easily with the donor agencies, but when Parliament asserted its powers, he dissolved it on treason charges and these days the general is "busy" fighting the politically-correct war on terror. Under his rule, one of the greatest genocides against Muslims is being religiously carried out in Darfur.
John Garang was as much a devout Christian as Bashir is a mullah. Garang, a Ph.D in agro-economics from the US, was a graduate of Grinnell College, iowa, and later Fort Benning Military institute. Much as he would pose as champion of Christianity, he was born in 1945 in sky-worshipping Dinka community in the South. An officer in the Sudanese army, while on a mission to quell a mutiny in 1983, he himself mutinied against the lawful authority in 1983, and became an outlaw. His ideological
convictions, mercifully, he did not know. He was nationalist, then became a Marxist, and in the days leading to his death was a Christian fundamentalist, exploiting his links with such groups during his sojourns in the United States, in channeling money for his militant activities. And this aid from Christian extremist groups worldwide explains the swelling of SPLA/SPLM ranks to 50,000 plus, from the peak of twelve poorly equipped and loosely commanded units consisting of 12,000 men in all, in the mid-1980s and the financing of his "Voice of Hope" clandestine radio station, operated by Christian extremists from neighbouring Uganda.
The commonalities between the two great sons of Sudan, Beshir and Garang are their cunningness, opportunism, and vindictiveness. Both eliminated dissent in their ranks with ruthless murders, both survived many life attempts (Garang's death was a natural accident) and both killed countless numbers of their own peoples. The agreement between them has converted the de facto bifurcation of Sudan into a de jure one. South was practically independent and the dusty town of Rumbek, a combo of hundreds of destroyed hamlets with no electricity, water, or sewerage, has been off bounds for Khatoum rulers from as far back as in early twentieth century.
Neither Beshir, nor Garang was sincere in embracing the other. Beshir wants a breather to spare his troops for throttling political dissent in the North, while Garang wanted to cement his iron grip in the South. Fate decreed otherwise and he died in a helicopter crash. The arrangement envisaged raising the 320,000 barrels per day output to nearly half a million bpd by next year, to be shared equally between the North and South. With oil prices soaring at sky-high $62 a barrel, the accruing petro-revenues will make the two sides fight like hell. Egypt's unease at another upper riparian state on the Nile with israel's obduracy to finance SPLM on his islamophobic antics, means that Sudan's problems would have wider regional ramifications. The SPLM, with commitments of $4.5 billion from Christian groups, already in its pocket, is prompting islamic organisations worldwide to be sympathetic to Beshir.
Sudan is a big potential volcano, and the civilised world needs to act now to preempt the destabilising and debilitating effects that loom large for Africa. The United Nations should launch a special non-military operation in Sudan, to assist the country in moving towards multiparty democracy, rule of law, and free market economy. otherwise, the signs on horizon are foretelling doom.
Saad S. Khan is an Oxford-published author and a widely read analyst on politics, law, and governance in the Muslim world.