Africa News blog

Dancing to the last beats of a united Sudan

Half way through the evening you felt this is what a united Sudan could have been like.

It was an engagement party thrown by a beaming, white-robed Khartoum patriarch with pulsing music provided by Orupaap, a group of mostly southern musicians and dancers.

The band was barely into its third song when the northern, southern and foreign guests swarmed on to the stage raising their arms and clicking their fingers in one of the few African dances easily mastered by awkward middle class Englishmen.

“Where is the band from,” I shouted at the host above the amplified music. “I think the musicians are Shilluk,” he replied, referring to a group with its heartlands around the southern city of Malakal. “They’re from here in Khartoum.”

Northerners and southerners have lived and fought and traded together for centuries — and over the last five and a half years they have been experimenting with an even closer form of cohabitation.

In 2005 they ended decades of civil war and signed a peace deal that set up a joint north-south government.

Southerners moved up to Khartoum to take up government positions and politicians made speeches about making unity “attractive” to both sides.

Sudan-a tale of two countries

As delighted southern Sudanese voted in a long-awaited referendum on independence, visitors to the north and south could be forgiven for thinking they were already two separate countries.

Far from the orange dusty landscape of Khartoum, newcomers landing at the airport in south Sudan’s capital Juba wander off the runway to be greeted by a smack of wet, humid heat driven by the surrounding lush tropical forests.

Beer adverts and often drunk soldiers adorn the few Tarmac roads in the would-be capital of what is likely to be the world’s newest nation state, a culture shock to anyone coming from the Islamic north where alcohol is banned.

Visitors enjoy Nile-side restaurants where they can sip a glass of wine and eat pork unavailable up north. The south’s population is mostly Christian or follows traditional religions.

African music blares throughout the town’s markets, run by Ugandan and Kenyan traders. Residents shout at each other in an Arabic dialect almost incomprehensible to northerners.

In the north, Arab music or Islamic verses are heard in the minibuses which hurtle around the capital.

Driving Sudan towards paradise

Back in1978, Sudanese statesman Abel Alier decided he had had enough of negotiating with troublesome locals over a controversial development project. Exasperated at the endless obstacles, he vowed to force it through without an agreement.

“If we have to drive our people to paradise with sticks we will do so for their own good and the good of those who come after us,” he infamously said.

Something similar must have been going through the minds of mediators in recent weeks as they tried to push for an agreement between Sudan’s intractable northern and southern politicians.

Sudan is now just 48 days away from the scheduled start of two referendums — the first on whether the oil-producing south should declare independence, the second on whether the disputed central Abyei region should join north or south.

Time is running out but both sides remain at loggerheads on a list of basic issues. To date, they haven’t even been able to agree on the membership of a commission to organise the Abyei vote — most privately agree it will have to be postponed or canceled.

There were signs of some progress a week ago, on the eve of the Islamic Eid al-Adha holiday, when African Union mediators said both sides reached a framework deal, at least agreeing the form of future negotiations. But politicians returned from their break this weekend, refreshed and ready to restart their war of words.

The “framework agreement” was unsigned and only in principle, they said. Both sides called press conferences accusing each other of breaking peace deals, and intimidating voters. One step forward and several steps back.

Breaking down the walls – Sudan’s oil transparency push

It was a just another seminar on transparency in the oil sector. Seemingly banal.

But this was being held in Khartoum, involving live debates between northern and southern Sudanese officials, a minerals watchdog and the international media, who were allowed free access to publicly grill those who administer what has for years been an incredibly opaque oil industry.

What emerged was surprisingly positive and all walked away feeling that — at least until the Jan. 9, 2011 referendum on southern independence — this was the first step towards finally unpicking all the stitches that have sewn the sector tightly shut to outsiders.

We are “PR stupid” said the newly appointed Minister for Energy from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, Lual Deng, who instigated the forum.

He said this to explain the discrepancies in oil production and oil prices uncovered by Global Witness, a non-governmental organisation, whose report “Fuelling Mistrust — the need for transparency in Sudan’s oil sector” provoked the discussion.

These discrepancies include oil prices published by the ministry of finance web site with little clarification of how they had been calculated, even citing barrels of Sudanese oil selling for as little as 15 cents a barrel.

Global Witness also found discrepancies between China’s CNPC, which dominates a Sudanese oil sector dogged by U.S. sanctions, and Sudan’s energy ministry output figures. Those figures were easily explained as the difference between gross production and net of water, gas and solids on Wednesday.

Confusion rules as Sudan’s elections loom

These are confusing times in Sudanese politics — so confusing that even the activists are struggling to keep up with the shifting positions of their own parties a week ahead of national elections.

This morning, a spokesman from south Sudan’s dominant Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) called round journalists inviting them to a demonstration in Khartoum.

The grassroots members of the SPLM’s Khartoum branch, he said, would be handing over a memorandum to the party leadership calling on it to end its boycott of Sudan’s looming presidential ballot and reinstate its candidate Yasir Arman.

So far so newsworthy. The SPLM’s decision to withdraw Arman from the presidential race last week, in protest against widespread fraud, sent shockwaves through Sudan’s political scene.

Now the SPLM membership was organising a rally calling for Arman’s return. What did it all mean? A split in the party? A stage-managed event to smooth the way for Arman to change his mind and return to the political fray?

The press corps duly turned up and watched 50 to 60 people waving banners outside one of the SPLM’s Khartoum offices, dancing and chanting “Come back Arman. Come back Arman.”

After about half an hour, it was clear something had gone wrong. Some of the officials inside the party office were egging the rally on, handing out posters. Others were standing round, talking quietly.

Are you the Darfur Justice and Equality Movement?

There is a classic scene in Monty Python’s film The Life of Brian where the hero sets off in search of a secret band of insurgents. “Are you the Judean People’s Front,” he asks a group of malcontents. “The Judean People’s Front!” they reply in disgust. “We’re the People’s Front of Judea … The only people we hate more than the Romans are the f***ing Judean People’s Front … And the Judean Popular People’s Front. Splitters!”

Darfur’s more Islamic rebels will not appreciate the Judean comparison. But there has been an undeniable Pythonesque quality to recent efforts to negotiate with the splintered insurgent factions in Sudan’s strife-torn west.

Last month, Khartoum signed a ceasefire with Darfur’s rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). Days later, JEM threatened to pull out of further peace talks saying it was furious about Khartoum’s decision to sign a similar deal with the new rebel umbrella group the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM).

JEM lashed out at LJM, saying most of its constituent groups were bogus with no military strength, many of them government stooges. (The LJM’s member parties, who deny JEM’s accusations, include the United Resistance Front – URF, the Sudan Liberation Movement Mainstream – SLM-M and the Democratic Justice and Equality Movement – D-JEM, together with even more obscure bodies.)

LJM leaders lashed out at JEM, saying JEM had no right to monopolise the negotiations taking place in Qatar’s luxury hotels and conference centres.

Meanwhile the whole process was dismissed as a farce by the faction of the insurgent Sudan Liberation Army/Movement still loyal to commander Abdel Wahed Mohamed al-Nur (SLA/M – Abdel Wahed), as well as by Abdel Shafie of the rival SLA/M – Abdel Shafie.

There is a serious point to make behind the Monty Python references and the ever thickening stew of rebel acronyms.

Sudan leaders scuffle as time runs out for peace deal

It started with a small scuffle over a confiscated bag of protest banners outside Sudan’s parliament. And it ended in confrontations between baton-wielding police and protesters on the dusty streets of Omdurman.

At the finish, once the tear gas and protests leaflets had settled, just one victor emerged — in the propaganda stakes at least — the protesters from a loose alliance between south Sudan’s dominant Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and mostly northern opposition parties.

The SPLM and opposition groups called Monday’s protest to urge north Sudan’s dominant National Congress Party (NCP) to push through a raft of reforms they see as essential to elections, now just months away in April.

The Khartoum authorities played their part perfectly, first by banning the rally, then by starting the day detaining two prominent SPLM leaders.

Tear gas was fired, protesters beaten and at least one reporter detained. Opposition supporters sent round text messages saying Yasir Arman, the SPLM’s deputy Secretary General, had been hospitalised after rough treatment in a police cell.

International groups from the United Nations to Amnesty International released statements of outrage and criticism.

A couple of hours later Arman, apparently none the worse for wear, was being carried on his supporters’ shoulders into a packed, back-slapping victory rally at an SPLM base in Khartoum.

Soccer match creates Arab diplomatic rift

Is an independent south Sudan now inevitable?

So, is it now inevitable that Sudan’s oil-producing south will decide to split away from the north as an independent country in a looming secession referendum in 2011?

That was the conclusion of some observers of a bluntly worded exchange of views between two leading lights from the north and the south at a symposium in Khartoum on Tuesday.

Sudan’s Muslim north fought a two decade civil war with southerners, most of them Christians and followers of traditional beliefs. The 2005 peace deal that ended that conflict set up a north/south coalition government and promised a referendum on southern secession.

Sudan’s foreign minister Deng Alor told journalists at the symposium most of his fellow southerners, embittered by decades of northern oppression and imposed Islamic values, “overwhelmingly” wanted independence. Only a miracle would change their minds, he said, going on to appeal for a “peaceful divorce” should the south choose to split.

Two days earlier, southern president Salva Kiir shocked many when he openly told a cathedral congregation they should choose independence if they wanted to be free and unity if they wanted to be “second class” in their own country.

Powerful northern presidential advisor Ghazi Salaheddin countered on Tuesday by accusing southerners of paranoia, “living in victimhood” and mismanaging their own semi-autonomous region. The comments were unusually blunt and personal for such a public venue. To many, their tone was a bitter reminder of the rhetoric routinely thrown around before the signing of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

Sudan commentator Alex de Waal wrote on his blog that many of the comments echoed what had been said in earlier closed sessions in the U.N. sponsored conference.

Is Sudan’s Darfur crisis getting too much attention?