Dramatic ironies in field battles and negotiating tables
Quoted from Asharq Al-Awsat
The long path paved with fire, gunpowder and tears that the current Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement walked is full of "funny and tearful" paradoxes that necessitated being enumerated for memory, lesson and even amusement (!!) and we write them down here in bullet points: - Two million people fell victim in the civil war that ended yesterday with the mere signing of papers...!!
The ruling National Congress, which is an extension of the Islamic Front, was rejecting the Sudanese peace agreement (Mirghani-Garang), in which there was no mere hint of self-determination or the three regions..!!
Dr. Riek Machar, former head of the South Sudan Independence Movement, whom it was reported would nominate for the position of Vice President of the Republic, fluctuated between the movement and the government. He began the negotiations in Abuja, Nigeria, as an integral part of the movement and in 1998 he led the government’s negotiating delegation after he became an assistant to President Omar al-Bashir.
After the Khartoum Peace Agreement, he returned again to the SPLM in 2000, participating in its current negotiating delegation. This is the same case for Dr. Lam Akol, the leader of the United Faction, who led the SPLM delegation to the first direct negotiations with the Bashir government in Addis Ababa in 1989. However, he joined the government in 1997, against which he rebelled again at the beginning of this year, and joined the SPLM and is now more present in Nafasha, the Kenyan seat of the negotiations.
The Popular Movement continued to insist in all rounds of negotiations on including the faces of a group of people from the north in its negotiating delegation, and many names emerged, such as Dr. Mansour Khaled, Yasser Saeed Arman, Mohamed Saeed Bazraa and Abdel Hamid Abbas.
Dr. Ali Hajj Muhammad, head of the government negotiating delegation for ten years and the most knowledgeable government leader at the time about the peace file, is now on the opposition side of the government in his self-imposed exile in Germany after he preferred to split with Dr. Hassan Abdullah Al-Turabi of the Popular Congress Party, and Muhammad Al-Amin Khalifa, one of the military leaders of the coup by General Omar Al-Bashir.
The head of the first government delegation to the Addis Ababa negotiations is now in prison on charges that his Popular Congress party supported a coup attempt last April. Khalifa, who handled the negotiation file at one point, wrote a book. What is strange is that he holds Dr. John Garang was responsible for the failure of the previous rounds because he did not want peace, and after his defection, his party signed a number of agreements with the SPLM..??!
Most of those who signed the Khartoum Peace Agreement in 1996 AD went to the afterlife in tragic accidents, the first of whom was Lieutenant General Al-Zubair Muhammad Saleh, the former First Vice President of the Republic, and Karpenyo Kuanen, one of the leaders of the returning factions and the most prominent of those who led the rebellion in 1983 AD, along with Arok Tun Arok, the prominent military leader, along with Samuel Arro, the veteran politician who died as a result of an illness.
- Dr. Ghazi Salah al-Din al-Atabani, Bashir's former advisor for peace affairs, remained silent since his dismissal last year until he spoke out in opposition to the progress of the negotiations last week. The question that is being asked now is where he is in the peace process in which he personally made great strides.
Others died on the path to peace in various plane crashes in the south while they were preaching peace and mobilizing the southern masses, such as Ahmed Al-Radi Jaber, the southern Muslim politician and one of the missionaries of peace from within, Muhammad Abu Qasisa, one of the prominent Islamists, and Brigadier General Kamal Ali Mukhtar, director of military intelligence and one of the prominent architects of the rescue coup.
Many in the SPLM also remember Commander Youssef Kawa from the Nuba Mountains, who participated in many of the first rounds of negotiations and who died of cancer, and Lieutenant General Mohamed Youssef, Chief of Staff during the Numeiri era and advisor to Mohamed Othman al-Mirghani, head of the Democratic Unionist Party, who was used by the government to soften the positions of Garang, who was his subordinate before his rebellion in 1983. Youssef suddenly moved to the side of his Lord this year.
In the negotiations related to Southern Blue Nile, in one of the negotiating rounds, Malik Aqar led the movement’s delegation, while the government side was led by a person from the same family named Farah Aqar.
Mubarak Al-Fadil, current head of the pro-government Federal Umma Party, participated in one of Naivasha’s tours with a delegation from his party, but before 1999 he was Secretary-General of the rally and a personal ally of the movement. He was the one who convinced it to enter the opposition rally and provided it with money and regularly visited the movement’s sites.
The movement fought and negotiated with all the governments that ruled Sudan since 1983 AD.
The Salvation Government, despite the bitterness of war and the martyrdom of dozens of its senior leaders at the hands of the movement’s fighters, insists that it is able to overcome the seas of blood and move to an ideal partnership with the movement.
Although the Islamic Front came to power under the pretext that the movement expanded until it approached the gates of Khartoum, the reality is that it expanded inside the south during the era of salvation.
Throughout Nimeiry’s reign, the movement was unable to cross the Ethiopian borders due to Ethiopia and the movement’s fear of the joint defense agreement concluded between Nimeiry and Sadat. It was later proven that this agreement did not exceed two lines and talked about mutual defense between Sudan and Egypt in the event that they were exposed to an external invasion that was intended for Libya.
All IGAD countries that lead mediation through the secretariat, except for Djibouti and Somalia, have political or border problems with the Sudanese government.
In the meeting between Al-Bashir and Garang in 2002 in Kampala, in the presence of Ugandan President Museveni, Garang played the role of translator between Al-Bashir, who speaks Arabic, and Museveni, who speaks English.
From Addis to Naivasha, via Abuja and Frankfurt
The story of the longest negotiations to end the longest wars of the century
On June 19, 1994, former Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi informed both sides of the Sudanese government and the SPLM that there was a general impression that the Sudanese peace talks had gone on for a long time without tangible results. He hoped that (this) round would be the final round to achieve peace in Sudan. And here the two parties are, after more than ten years since then, fulfilling the hopes and aspirations of the Kenyan president by reaching a peace agreement yesterday.
After many, many waters flowed under the bridge, including Moi leaving his position, but the incident proves the reality of the longest negotiations and the longest war witnessed in the twentieth century, similar to the war of Dahis and Al-Ghabra, and in another version, the war of Al-Basus.
That is historical
The war began in South Sudan in 1955, before the country gained its independence in 1956, but attempts to suppress it did not stop during the various political eras that ruled Sudan, starting with the Juba Conference, through the Round Table Conference, and reaching the Addis Ababa Agreement between the South Sudanese rebels and the government of former President Jaafar Nimeiry in 1972.
Which stopped the war for nine years before it broke out again in 1983, but under a new leadership and with a new name, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, led by Dr. John Garang, whose name emerged stronger than that of any other leader.
On the other hand, attempts were made to extinguish the volcano, with the conviction that dialogue is the best means for governments to solve the multi-dimensional problem of the South. After the popular uprising that overthrew the Numeiri government in 1985, all post-uprising parties took the initiative to submit proposals and studies on ways to solve the problem, and some parties even jumped.
To conduct direct negotiations with the Popular Movement, such as the Democratic Unionist Party, with which it had already reached an agreement later known as the (Mirghani-Garang) agreement in November 1988. It almost entered into force had it not been for the military coup by General Omar al-Bashir, which in June 1989 led to the current government taking control of the reins of affairs in Sudan for a period of up to 15 years now.
Kick-off
On August 18, 1989, a government delegation headed to Addis Ababa, headed by Major General Mohamed Al-Amin Khalifa, a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, on August 18, 1989, to participate in the first trip of the leaders of the new regime to conduct direct meetings with the Popular Movement. Indeed, the first meeting took place on August 19, 1989. It did not end with anything as much as it was an opportunity to feel the pulse and read ideas, which quickly faded away. Even its results of calming thoughts.
Only a few months passed until former US President Jimmy Carter intervened to mediate between the government and the SPLM to renew their contacts. His initiative was accepted by both parties, which met again in Nairobi, this time in the presence of Carter himself. The result was one, a big zero for the North.
Momentum of initiatives
After that, a number of initiatives were put forward, the number of which reached 14, all of which sought to mediate between the government and the SPLM rebels, the most prominent of which was the initiative of Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, who failed to bring together Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and John Garang, head of the SPLM, and the American initiative adopted by Herman Cohen, who was responsible for the Horn of Africa file during the administration of President George H.W. Bush, which was not sufficiently accepted by the government. Otherwise, it was the initiative of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who has excellent relations with the SPLM, which received his support. During the rule of Numeiri, his arch rival, in addition to that, an initiative by Nigerian President Obasenjo emerged, another by the Secretary-General of the Organization of African Nations, Salim Ahmed Salim, and the Secretary of the Council of Churches, and a French, Ugandan, Zimbabwean, and Ghanaian initiative. The matter was multiplied to the point of ridicule and joke, because even company heads had their attempts, such as Tiny Rowland, owner of Lonro International.
After the government found the way closed for it to reach a peace agreement with the SPLM, it opened another path in which it took advantage of the splits that the movement witnessed in the mid-nineties, when it held talks with the dissident faction in Frankfurt, Germany, in January 1992, with which it reached some understandings, the most important of which was agreeing to give the right to self-determination to South Sudan, which thus entered strongly into the dictionary of solutions to the problem of the South for the first time, especially since Dr. Riek Machar.
Dr. Lam Akol and others are among the southern leaders who believe most strongly in separating the South in the event of failure to achieve unity with the North. Contrary to what Dr. John Garang, leader of the Popular Movement, who raises the slogan of national unity on new foundations, believes. The Frankfurt talks later and in a separate axis contributed to reaching a campaign of agreements with a number of southern factions, such as the Khartoum Peace Agreement, the Nuba Mountains, and Fashoda, while the negotiations were faltering with the main faction led by Garang.
But on April 10, 1993, Garang met for the first time in person, based on a Ugandan initiative, with Dr. Ali Hajj Muhammad, the most influential person at the time in Al-Bashir’s government, in the Ugandan city of Entebbe. It seems that Garang wanted to confirm his presence in light of the breakthrough that the government had achieved for his movement.
IGAD Initiative
IGAD is a regional organization that includes Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, and Eritrea after its independence. According to its charter, the organization is concerned with combating drought and desertification and achieving development. It officially requested acceptance of its mediation to end the war in South Sudan. This was in January 1994, and soon the two sides of the government and the movement expressed their agreement, and the issue gained the support of the heads of IGAD in one of their meetings in March 1994, followed by Sending invitations to the two delegations to meet in Nairobi.
The first session under the new umbrella was held on March 21 of the same year, and on May 17, IGAD put forward a package of proposals called the Declaration of Principles, consisting of nine main items, the most important of which is the assertion that a military solution will not solve the problem, which will only be solved in a peaceful solution based on the principles of the right to citizenship and achieving political justice.
Granting the southerners self-rule, establishing a secular and democratic state, and separating religion from the state. In the event of disagreement on these principles, the two parties resort to agreeing on procedures according to which the south is granted the right to self-determination through a referendum for its citizens to choose between unity or secession.
However, the Sudanese government not only faced the declaration with rejection, but even doubted the intentions of the countries that prepared it after rejecting it completely, and everyone remembers how Dr. Ghazi Salah al-Din al-Atabani, head of the government delegation, turned the tables in the face of the IGAD foreign ministers in September 1994, which led to the round being dismissed in just one day, and the talks were not resumed.
Then, only in November 1997, after the government was subjected to intense international pressure, which prompted it to return to the table and accept the Declaration of Principles, which it had rejected three years earlier. One of the virtues of the coincidence, and it may not be the case, is that Ali Othman Muhammad Taha, the first vice president of the republic, who is now leading the negotiations, is the one who headed the delegation when he was serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Great stagnation
Despite the government's approval of the declaration and the optimism it brought about, disputes erupted over the borders of South Sudan and the confederation demanded by the movement, the issues of the Nuba Mountains, the Blue Nile and Abyei regions, and the application of Islamic Sharia, while the military machine did not stop even during the negotiation rounds, which amounted to more than seven rounds.
It achieved nothing but further divergence in the negotiating positions, while the years 96-97-98-99 witnessed an internal movement in the axis of peace from within, which the government bet on, which led to the participation of Riek Machar and his group in power. They even participated in government negotiating delegations with the SPLM, thus becoming part of the government, at a time when the negotiations continued to no avail and with stagnation colder than the North Pole.
However, the end of 1999 marked the beginning of the end for the internal peace agreements, perhaps due to the government’s feeling of their futility, or as a result of the southern factions that signed them, feeling that the government was not serious and persisting in not implementing the agreements. This led to their complete collapse and the leaders’ entry into the jungle of rebellion once again, so that reliance and betting on IGAD returned.
This happened at a time when regional and international interest in the issue doubled, with both sides feeling themselves in failure to end the war in their favor.
Penetration
In the year 2000, international interest reached its peak and new conditions were created. In the year 2001, IGAD remained alone in the arena of Sudanese mediations after the failure of other mediations, especially what was known as the Egyptian-Libyan initiative with an Arab dimension. In the same year, a report was issued by the Center for International Studies in Washington and was approved by the administration of the current President George Bush. It later formed the basis for solving the problem, noting that the report also relied on the IGAD initiative.
Accordingly, negotiations resumed with major changes, even at the level of heading delegations, especially on the part of the government, whose delegation was led by Dr. Ghazi Salah al-Din al-Atabani, who at that time firmly held the keys of power and the peace file specifically, and who was later relieved.
With the intensity of international pressure, especially the American one, the first breakthrough and the first real success occurred in agreeing on a ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains region, one of the disputed areas. This was in January 2002, but the biggest breakthrough was also on July 19, 2002, with the two parties signing the Machakos Framework Protocol, which established general solutions.
In the field of the relationship between religion and the state, so that Sharia law is applied in northern Sudan, excluding the south, and the right of the south to self-determination was approved after a transitional period of six years, in addition to setting principles for sharing wealth and power between the north and the south.
The Sudanese spirit at home and abroad was filled with optimism after the signing of the protocol, which received an international welcome that was unparalleled by any Sudanese welcome. Everyone started counting down to the hour of reaching the final agreement, and after rounds, no new breakthrough occurred despite the meeting that brought together for the first time between General Al-Bashir and John Garang in Uganda, in which they agreed to speed up the wheel of peace and open hotlines between them if negotiations faltered at the lower levels.
It is strange that the two parties had not yet reached any agreement on a ceasefire, and at the time when the heads and members of the two delegations were exchanging documents and smiles, the soldiers in the field were exchanging fire. In this atmosphere, the major setback came in September 2002 when the Popular Army loyal to the SPLM carried out a military operation that ended with its occupation of the city of Torit, one of the large cities in the south, which prompted President Al-Bashir to issue a “revolutionary” decision.
By withdrawing the government delegation from the ongoing tour, he even ordered it to return to Khartoum. At the same time, Al-Bashir pledged not to return the delegation until after the liberation of Torit. However, the matter did not reach that seriousness when the SPLM opened another battle front in the east of the country, in which it took control of the (holy) city of Hamashkorib, which is considered one of the largest Sudanese complex for teaching the Qur’an, and this doubled the tension in the negotiating situation.
The government was able to recover Torit.
The two parties returned to negotiations, but after signing a ceasefire agreement, as the government wanted. However, this did not reflect positively on the overall results, which did not achieve anything significant, which made international observers weary, as well as the general public, who continued to suffer great disappointments after each round.
In August 2003, the two negotiating delegations agreed to raise the level of delegations, and this was a green light for everyone Ali Othman Muhammad Taha, the first representative, and Dr. John Garang to hold the negotiation file for each party and lead the negotiations directly between them, so that the two men entered into daily dialogues since last September, which succeeded.
First, in October, an agreement was reached on security arrangements during the transitional period, the most important of which was the formation of joint forces in the south, the Blue Nile, the Nuba Mountains, and Khartoum, with a strength of 36,000 soldiers distributed in specific proportions, provided that the government army withdraws from the south and the People’s Army from the areas it controls in the north, and other provisions.
In early January 2004, Taha and Garang reached another agreement regarding the division of wealth between the North and the South. The focus was clearly on the division of oil extracted in the South. Since that date, negotiations have frozen over the terms of the capital, Khartoum, in which the movement demanded the application of secular laws, while the government insists on considering it a part of the north in which Sharia must be applied. Disagreements also increased regarding the status of the Abyei region, which the movement considers part of South Sudan, and other disputes over the division of power and the Blue Nile regions. And the Nuba Mountains.
But now, after 10 years, as we indicated in Daniel arap Moi’s speech, the two parties have reached an agreement on everything, and there is no agreement left on implementation, which is supposed to actually begin six years after the date of the final signing.
Why?
The question seems logical, necessary, and acceptable: Why all this lengthening, and the answer is much greater than reducing it to a few reasons, but the insistence of both parties on tactics and maneuvering and in all methods is one of the reasons, and with it the circumstances of fluctuations within the two parties, including internal divisions from which the two sides did not escape, and without us in that the famous dispute between Al-Turabi and Al-Bashir on the side of the government, and the disputes between Riek Machar and Lam Akol on the one hand, and John Garang on the other hand, and so on, as well as international circumstances.
Its repercussions and the constant change in the composition of the delegation delegations, and all of these reasons, or with them the reasons that we did not mention, may cast a shadow even in the implementation of the final agreement, which everyone considers the biggest challenge in light of the fears of a new book about persistence in violating covenants.”
10% almost torpedoed the signing of the Sudanese peace agreement
The Sudanese held their breath yesterday for more than 14 hours before negotiators last night in the Kenyan city of Naivasha signed the last three framework protocols that were standing in the way of reaching a comprehensive peace agreement that would end the bloody war that lasted more than 20 years. After 23 months of marathon negotiations, two representatives of the government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement signed the framework protocols, in a ceremony that was more than 14 hours late, raising doubts and fears that it might be cancelled. Hundreds of Sudanese and Kenyan officials, in addition to foreign diplomats, including US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Charles Snyder, Norwegian Minister of International Development Hilda Johnson, British peace envoy Alan Golte, and his Canadian counterpart Mbena Jaafar, were forced to wait in a hotel near Nairobi to attend the celebration, which was scheduled for one in the afternoon (1000 GMT). Snyder was forced to cancel a press conference he was going to hold last evening due to the delay. Reliable sources said in the negotiations that it was confirmed that the National Congress Party would be given 52% of power in the government and parliament of the north (the center), as confirmed by “Asharq Al-Awsat” in its issue yesterday, while the Popular Movement got 30%, while the rest of the political forces got 16%, compared to 2% for the citizens of the Nuba Mountains and the southern Blue Nile, the two marginalized regions. As for the distribution of power in the Mountains and Blue Nile regions, the government obtained 55% of power in them, compared to 45% for the movement. It was agreed that the presidency of the government in the two regions would be rotating between the two parties (a year and a half for each side). Elections will be held 3 years after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. As for the government of the south, the movement obtained 70% of power, compared to 15% for the government, and 15% for other political forces.
The United States announced yesterday that the signing in Naivasha was delayed due to a circumstance that occurred at the last minute. However, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that US Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke with Garang and Taha yesterday and that he received assurances in this regard.
Peace efforts from independence to “rescue”
The Anglo-Egyptian invasion of Sudan and the establishment of dual rule there was the beginning of the transformation in the history of South Sudan, as it paved the way for European countries and the Christian religion to enter Sudan. From the beginning, the foreign colonial rule strived hard to fight Islam and limit the spread of the Arabic language. It was clear that this policy sought to separate the South from the North by making the southerners believe that they were oppressed by the northerners and developing many policies to spread division between the north and the south.
In 1922, the British administration issued a law making southern Sudan a closed area with the aim of preventing the leakage of southerners to the north. It created a local army from the people of the southern region led by English officers. What further intensified the separation between the south and the north was the weak economic development in the south and its failure to keep pace with development in the north.
The Closed Areas Law aroused the doubts of educated northerners, so the Graduates Conference (1938) tried to find a connection with the southerners by sending an Islamic delegation to the south, but to no avail. In 1942, it submitted a memorandum demanding the abolition of that law. In 1944, the Advisory Council was formed in the south alone, claiming the backwardness of the south, so the northern parties boycotted it. When the Legislative Assembly was established as an alternative to the Advisory Council, northern public opinion opposed it.
He sought to change its policies, but on the other hand, the southern administrators opposed the recommendations of the Sudan Administrators Conference calling for unity between the South and the North. At the Juba Conference, which was held in 1947, both sides recognized the necessity of unity between the North and the South to avoid the harm resulting from their separation by ensuring respect for southern cultures and equality among citizens. This conference paved the way for the participation of southerners in the Legislative Assembly, unifying educational policy, and introducing the Arabic language into southern schools.
This new policy and plans for economic, educational and social development led to the creation of a kind of cohesion, cooperation and harmony between the North and the South.
Events of the period between 1953 - 1958
This period was characterized by the activity of political parties and the emergence of a policy of regional autonomy in the south, but it was also characterized by the neglect of these parties - which were preoccupied with their political conflicts and work to fight English colonialism - of the problem of the south, and the lack of participation of southerners in the discussions that took place in Cairo prior to the signing of the autonomy agreement.
Between Egypt and England, there is clear evidence of neglect and lack of interest in the problems of the South. In addition, the Sudanization Committee ignored the southerners and appointed northerners to jobs in 1954, which led to the awakening of political awareness among the southerners and the establishment of the Southern Liberal Party. All these elements came together and crystallized in the great rebellion.
Which was carried out by the Equatorial Division of the army in August 1955. The rebellion resulted in an agreement on the problem of the south and some reforms. The southern parties agreed to find a solution to the problem within the framework of a federal system. This led to the approval of the southern members of parliament to declare independence from within parliament in late 1955.
The national government and the southern issue
The national government saw that the only solution to the problem of the South lay in two matters: Islamization and Arabization. The coercive method of spreading Islamic and Arab culture came to increase division and disparity. In 1957, the Southern Union Party appeared, and its goals included separating the civil service in the South from the North, considering the Christian religion as the main religion, English as the official language, and creating a separate army.
Abboud government
The November 17 government, led by General Ibrahim Abboud, followed the same coercive method to spread Islamic and Arab culture by expelling foreign missionaries and isolating intellectuals, which forced them to flee outside the country and thus the emergence of the refugee problem and coordination between churches and rebels abroad. To limit this activity, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces issued a law regulating missionary bodies, and as a result the Sudanese Christian Association and the Sudanese African National Union of South Sudan were formed.
The Sano Party, which sent a letter to the United Nations in which it demanded the independence of the South from the North and the emergence of the Anyanya organization on the scene of events in 1962. A policy of violence began to emerge, which led to the government taking some disciplinary measures, such as hanging some members of the Anyanya.
October Revolution government
During this period, the Round Table Conference was held from March 16 to 29, 1965, in which negotiations took place between the southern parties (the Sano Party from outside the country and the Southern Front from within) and the northern parties, which recognized in this conference the special status of the south in terms of ethnic and cultural differences and economic and social backwardness. The southern parties disagreed between secession, a federal system, or the right to self-realization, and the conference decided to form a committee to discuss constitutional and administrative issues to solve the problem within the framework of a unified Sudan. And establishing a system of government based on decentralization.
May government
This government witnessed several initiatives to solve the problem of the south, including:
Relief and Settlement Conference for the Southern Region, February 21-23, 1972. Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972 between the Mayo regime and the Anyanya Movement (1), whose recommendations were crystallized in the Regional Autonomy Law of March 1972, which established a decentralized government in which the South enjoyed self-rule under a unified Sudan. The implementation of this agreement guaranteed stability for South Sudan for a period of eleven years 1972-1983.
The government of the parties and the uprising. This government witnessed several initiatives, including: - The initiative of the transitional prime minister, June 1985. Initiative of the Chairman of the Umma Party, July 1985. Washington symposium, February 1987, and London meeting, November 1987.
African Parties Assembly and Initiative, September 1987.
Inter Action Initiative - Harare, March 1988.
Initiative of the Democratic Federal Party between March and November 1988.
An initiative in the period between February - June 1989 AD was represented by the Ambo Workshop, February 4-7, 1989 AD, and the Bergen Forum, February 23-24, 1998 AD. The Southern Issue Seminar was held in Washington on June 15, 1989.
All of these initiatives emphasized the necessity of national unity, the unity of Sudanese territory, the principle of peaceful coexistence, the importance of economic development, the sharing of power and wealth, and the recognition of cultural diversity.