Mahgoub El-Tigani

November 27, 2004

November 26, 2004, the SPLM Spokesperson Mr. Yasir ‘Arman and other party officials criticized the Sudan Government's negative attitude towards the processed peace and the peace partner, the SPLM. This bitter critique indicates the occurrence of mounting dissatisfaction with the anti-peace policies of the government among peace advocates, in general, and the SPLM peace partner, in particular. Alarmingly, the situation requires extra support from the national and international entities to help proceed with the peace process despite the government’s media hostilities.

In his address to the UN Security Council (Sudan Tribune: November 2004), the SPLM Chairperson Dr. John Garang de Mabior faced his peace partner the Government of Sudan with the urgent tasks conferred upon the government to complete the peace process. Asking the government to stop denying the necessary allocation of a national budget for the two armies of the country (the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army) plus the significant allowance of the South oil revenue in hard currency, the SPLM leader mentioned many other workable demands to ensure good administration for the next South Sudan Government as well as the central government of the country.

The NIF continuous assaults on the country’s peace opportunity, notwithstanding this sisterly appeal by the SPLM leadership, have been mounting up with unnecessary hostilities against the peace supporters as the government continues to detain political opponents. Equally important, the government tightened up the persecution of civil society and the press by the unlawful intrusions of the State Security Department.

Instead of the immediate release of the Peoples’ Popular Party leaders and the other DarFuri military and civilian personnel that have been arbitrarily arrested and detained for long periods of time despite the ongoing negotiations with the DarFur SLA and JEM, further hostilities have been recently incited with the NDA opposition by the harsh outlawing of the Khartoum humanitarian group, the DarFur Call, and the untimely arrest and detention of NDA leader Abd al-Aziz Khalid, despite recurring appeals by the NDA to collaborate with the democratic opposition in accordance with the general amnesty of the president.

Spreading false news about the SPLM peace partner when it is only a few weeks to fulfill the Government/SPLM Memorandum of Understanding before the UN Security Council to finalize the peace agreements adds seriously to the unabated security plans to undermine the SPLM peace efforts that significantly aim to unify the South, reconcile differences with southerner armed groups, and continue the most important governance task – the establishment of a stable civilized rule by the next South Sudan Government that should allow regular application of the international human rights norms by peace agreements in both parts of the country.

The Government of Sudan, regardless of its partisan political orientation, should work closely with the SPLM peace partner and the other political forces to strengthen the next South Sudan Government with all kinds of positive support, as envisioned by the peace protocols. Besides the NIF feverish zeal to weaken the SPLM administratively, financially, and politically all over the country, specifically in the South, the NIF Government has been negatively acting against the NDA/DarFur alliance by offensive security policies to maintain the June junta oligarchic rule.

It is evident the government power politics has lately split into two competing clans: the regular state executive and legislative bodies, which virtually lost momentum since the 2000 NIF split between the Turabi party-faction and the Bashir palace-group, and the triumphant palace security clique that sidelined the president and is now ruling under command of the surviving security executives of the June military, Lieutenant-General Bakri Hassan Salih, the field commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces and PDFs, Lieutenant-General Abd al-Rahim Hassanin, the top commander of the police force and Janjawaeed militias, and Dr. ‘Ali Nafi, the NIF State Security mentor and his Iran-trained personnel in full collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood highest political committee led by the first vice president ‘Ali Osman Taha.

The issue of Sudan’s peace is unfortunately placed under the closed clique of these security chiefs who work in the service of the International Brotherhood to obstruct the peace process versus the NDA alliance with the African Sudanese movements of the SPLM in the South and the rebels of DarFur to disrupt the ongoing peace agreements in order to re-impose the Arabization-Islamization Project in the long run, irrespective of the national, regional, and international pressures to finalize a comprehensive settlement of the Sudan’s Crisis.

Many observers noted, the more peace partners make, the more war security plans. The NIF Government is evidently determined to apply the 15-years’ tactics of "deceiving the International," as it apparently bows in acquiescence before the storming protest of its anti-peace policies only to strike again with additional obstruction as soon as storm is over! One questions the real aim of the government's elusiveness when it is already certain the SPLM has gone a long way with national and international support to work out the Naivasha Agreements in peace while the NDA and the DarFur opposition closely collaborate with their political partner the SPLM for establishment of the permanent and just peace.

In the absence of wise state leadership, the NIF Government, despite all pledges of peace, proves that it is the only entity that is practically capable of obstructing the peace process under direct guidance of the State Security Department over the other political, executive, and legislative bodies of the State. The Sudan Government is regrettably playing a dangerous game to frustrate the Sudanese peace plan. The government is especially determined to frustrate the southerners’ expectations that have been legitimately raised and lined up behind the cause of the just and permanent peace for whose sake millions perished and hundreds of thousands still suffer the traumatizing life of displacement camps while awaiting a decent return to the Homeland.

The government’s persistent anti-democratic mode has largely motivated every other part of the country to straighten out the NIF bad governance, which escalated the horrors of war over larger sections of the population in the South and in DarFur and would possibly stretch to new areas of the disenchanted East and North to aggravate the whole region and the world peace. The same anti-peace policies have directly moved the Security Council to oversee the peace process, which despite the soft non-penalizing tone of the Nairobi session bears varying possibilities with respect to the ongoing national efforts to stabilize the bilateral protocols with a universally recognized comprehensive settlement and might equally impose international penalties upon the State.

There is still thin hope that a central government of Khartoum would wisely take up the State’s national and international responsibilities to disable the Security Supremacy over State Presidency as a fundamental prerequisite to prepare the productive climates of the peace agreements. The Sudan Government must release all political opponents, ensure freedom of the press and the other rights and liberties, pursue principled peace negotiations with the NDA and the DarFur rebels, and act faithfully with the SPLM - without hostilities - to establish the New South-North governments of Sudan.