Bargaining noise

An AFP piece today carried an ominous statement by Bashir before parliament. The President reportedly said “despite our commitment to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement we will not accept an alternative to unity”. The President made no details as to the consequences of the expected yes secession voting in the coming referendum. The statement I suppose comes in tune with Bashir’s supposed disappointment at his deputy’s public support of secession. The corrective though is that Bashir has made a habit of both making fiery statements and eventual retreat. In NCP discourse there is a constant discrepancy between the outpourings, usually fierce and fiery, intended for internal consumption and popular mood management and positions on the bargaining table behind closed doors. The media messages intended for the international community to chew on are a third category, also quite distinct.

Combining Kiir’s statements and demand for UN troops to guard the border zone between North South together with the shared accusation of SPLM and SAF over border encroachments, the declared failure of the American mediated SPLM-NCP Addis Ababa talks over Abyei, and this latest Bashir statement it is easy to conclude that the whole North-South peace arrangement is on the verge of collapse.  On a more serene note, and washing out the ‘Clooney’ effect, the ruling partners are still talking, with more of a media scare involved, but they are still bargaining it out. The talks on Abyei are planned to resume end of October with a view to homing Abyei into the larger political trade arrangements between the two partners, referendum and post-referendum concerns. Two proposals have been tabled in regards to Abyei, the more probable involving a ‘re-division’ into a Northern Misseriya Abyei and a Southern Ngok Abyei, which is to say the least the modus operandi of the whole CPA battle-out. Although media quotes of war ready Misseriya and Ngok are many it is important to interpret them in their appropriate context. Both the Ngok and the Misseriya lack leverage over their respective patrons, SPLM and NCP. In fact, both groups have all reason to fear a sell out. The SPLM that supposedly would not budge on the initial Abyei Borders Commission report eventually accepted a re-drawing of the map by the PCA. The NCP that promised the Misseriya the delivery of Abyei in whole whatever the costs was more concerned with retaining oil fields than securing grazing land for the pastoralist survivalists. In threatening war Ngok and Misseriya are also seeking to pressure their patrons into more resolute bargaining positions.

The joint SPLM-NCP statement in conclusion of the failed Addis Ababa round carried an agreement “to examine Abyei in the context of a larger comprehensive approach to the upcoming referenda and post-referenda arrangements”. Frankly, I don’t blame the Ngok and Misseriya. The fate of Abyei might well be sealed with much beyond Abyei. 

Nugud's civil state

Nugud, Sudan Communist Party chief

In a recent interview with Khartoum’s al-Ahdath Mohamed Ibrahim Nugud, Secretary of the Sudan Communist Party, re-tabled his concept of the ‘civil state’ as an adequate replacement of the ‘secular state’ marred in Sudan everlasting feud over sharia. Nugud suggests that the notion of a civil state includes by definition the rule of law and democratic institutions, whereby Sudan’s secular experience did not preclude dictatorial rule as under the secular Abboud, and again under the twice secular Numayri, in his pre-sharia phases. In his argument for civil instead of secular Nugud makes notice of the European experience that the idea of secularism suggests, whereby the concept civil guards the virtues of democratic rule, and does not ban religion from public life but seeks to house it within the institutions of a democratic state.

Nugud presented his concept as an opposition MP in 1988 during the short lived 1985-1989 democracy in the midst of the heated constitutional debate over the fate of Numayri’s sharia laws. At the time Sadiq al-Mahdi had just sacked his second coalition cabinet (Umma-DUP) and was about to invite the National Islamic Front into government with the promise of enforcing comprehensive Islamic laws within 60 days. The Umma-NIF government of May 1988 featured the NIF chief Hasan al-Turabi as attorney-general. He declared then that ‘the draft (sharia) laws may stir up controversy, but eventually the assembly is likely to endorse them by a large majority’. The balance of ‘parliamentary’ power did not remain long though in NIF’s hands. Pressured by the public will to peace, and more directly by the army officers’ memoranda of February/March 1989 endorsed by the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary opposition the prime minister eventually gave in announcing a broad coalition government of Umma, DUP, Communists, Ghaboush’s Sudan National Party, Southern Sudan Political Association, Sudan African Peoples’ Congress Organisation, and representatives of trade unions, his fifth and last cabinet. The re-configured house voted on 10 April to delay the debate on sharia till convention of the planned ‘constitutional conference’ with SPLM participation according to the clauses of the DUP-SPLM accord. Sadiq al-Mahdi did not attend the session in person, apparently in protest over a vote to freeze sharia. NIF MPs walked out voting next time with their guns on 30^th June 1989 (for a full account see Ann Mosely Lesch, The Sudan, Contested National Identities).

The attempt to house sharia within the institutions of democratic rule, as Nugud suggests, did not succeed at the time. The politics around sharia were perceived by the players as a zero-sum game, where accommodation was not permissible. The NIF, fearsome of lasting marginalization before an alliance joining the political establishment, the left, and the coming SPLM, snatched government and ran away with it over the disparity between ‘freezing the September 1983 laws’ as proclaimed by the coalition, and its upper limit of ‘complementing sharia laws’.  

Great expectations!

In the New York Times Nicholas Kristof, obscenely bemusing himself with the fate of a country he hardly understands anything about, well, beyond catchphrases and an obsessive self-proclaimed mission to save it from itself, prophesied a dated Hollywood apocalypse as the fate awaiting Sudan over the next 100 days or so. The coming genocide in Southern Sudan, according to Kristof, is all but inevitable considering the feeble US pre-emption of Khartoum’s expected renegade on the referendum, the ultimate dispensation of the CPA. Kristof invites to the scene Arab militias supported by Khartoum to foil the referendum and prevent secession of the South, thus pushing Juba to declare unilateral independence and precipitating yet another Sudanese genocide.

If anything the CPA has provided Sudan’s major adversaries, NCP and SPLM, with a platform for talking. Despite accusations and counter-accusations and the gloomy atmosphere of internecine politicking the two partners have remained on talking terms without any considerable breach of the CPA ceasefire over the 6 years of the transitional period. The will to talk is of course not by necessity a will to peace, but for all good reasons it transpires of the unwillingness to fight. In the midst of the fury over secession and its consequences the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), contrary to my expectations, has remained remarkably reserved. High pitched war shrieks came not from the ranks of the army or its auxiliary structures but from the frustrated civilian leadership of the NCP. Even Mr. Bashir, quick to catch a flare over perceived ‘plots’ against the ‘nation’ has remained till now declaredly by his promise to deliver the referendum and recognise its outcome.

What Kristof does not recognise is that the current SPLM-NCP scuffle is not so much about the principle of secession, something both blocs seem to have approved, loudly in the case of the SPLM, and more or less tacitly in the case of the NCP, but on the exact terms of that secession, bluntly the calculation and division of spoils. Considering the baggage of war and the appeal of a sovereign South Sudan the mainstream of the SPLM has faced no major qualms in switching from the ‘New Sudan’ agenda to the cause of secession, argument being unity has not proved attractive. In effect the SPLM allies in the Nuba Mountains and the Southern Blue Nile, left out in the arrangement of the New Sudans, are now advised to re-group with the remnant Northern Sector of the SPLM, more or less in the dry. The NCP on the other hand faces greater challenges in popularising ‘secession’ in North Sudan. The latest public outbursts of NCP officials are to be read as attempts at marketing secession without openly approving it. With al-Intibaha back in print the NCP’s line I suppose is to declare South Sudan’s secession a virtue, whereby a homogenous North Sudan emerges purged of its Southern flock. The new gamble of the NCP is redemption before its almost satisfied Western patrons concomitant with preserve of its Islamist fetish to a domestic constituency, by all means weary of war.

That leaves us with Abyei, fashioned in recent reporting as Sudan’s Kashmir, which remains a bone of contention in the division of spoils, point being however ‘division’!

Drop the bluff

Mustafa Osman Ismail, the presidential advisor and former foreign minister, called on Sudan’s youth and students to prepare for a coming war in the case South Sudan does secede early next year. He also lashed out at the ‘West’ accusing it of injustice and aggression. The normally dovish NCP foreign affairs official was quoted by Akhir Lahza, an NISS associated Khartoum paper, but his fiery remarks found considerable attention on the radars of Sudan observers. 

Well, with the failure of NCP’s counter-insurgency jihad in mind, a drama well described in al-Mahboub Abd al-Salam’s book on the first 10 years of the Islamic Movement’s rule, I suppose Mr Ismail is stretching his words way beyond what his government and its sympathisers can afford, in military terms, as well as in internal political and international terms. 

Mr Ismail I guess is simply freaking out, and understandably so. The Sudanese pound – US dollar exchange rate reached 3.10 last week in Khartoum’s black market. The government, caught off guard, swiftly announced a range of increases in taxes and duties to curb imports and thus save foreign currency. Travellers leaving Sudan are currently allowed a maximum of 2000 Euros, and only on presentation of supporting documents. Internally the NCP is certainly not in immediate danger, but it is surely challenged. Come secession Khartoum’s sharp tongued politicians and activists will surely rub the event in to exhaustion. True or false, the NCP will shoulder the blame of the North-South divorce unassisted. 

To the disappointment of the NCP public opinion in North Sudan has not swallowed the ‘virtues’ of secession as the price for a homogenous Northern state left unmolested. Incapable of curbing the secession drift of the SPLM/A in favour of a hasty re-division of spoils, and equally incapable of effectively manoeuvring beyond the SPLM/A or within it, the NCP is hard pressed to push the blame on the Western table, and claim the ‘nationalist’ highlands. Now, this may have sold well 20 years ago, but at a time when the same NCP is bargaining investment arrangements with UK firms, and demanding cancellation of Sudan’s debts as the price for a smooth secession, apart from openly admitting intelligence cooperation with the ‘satanic’ CIA, I wonder if it is not just too cynical to catch on. 

That said, the scare scenario NCP officials are now nourishing, considering the series of controversial war-mongering statements made by Haj Majid Siwar, the sports minister, Kamal Obeid, the information minister, Ali Karti, the foreign affairs minister, and now Mustafa Osman Ismail, the presidential advisor, is the announcement of a price hike in NCP cooperation precipitated by the not so promising outcome of Ali Osman Mohamed Taha’s New York engagements. The NCP is not out to get the SPLM/A and prevent secession, it cannot afford that. It’s out to get the price it deems appropriate for facilitating secession, before it is too late.

An unworthy client

According to last Sunday’s edition of al-Quds al-Arabi the Lebanese Hezbollah has promised to commit a battalion of its fighters to the ‘struggle against colonialism in Darfur’. Two lecturers in German universities apparently carried a message of that content to the Governor of North Darfur, Mohamed Yusif Kibir. Al-Quds quoted the Khartoum paper al-Ahram adding that Kibir expressed his gratitude for Hasan Nasralla’s message and confirmed his desire to support the Palestinian and Lebanese causes. Notably Kibir complained to his ‘Western’ guests of the regression in NGO assistance to the IDPs in Darfur, promising a government takeover of the ignored duties, and demanding that the NGOs double their efforts to restore the situation to its previous stand!

The German faculty presented a lecture at the University of al-Fasher organised by its Peace Studies Centre in cooperation with the Sudanese Media Centre, a media outlet associated with Sudan’s intelligence service, where they explained the role of the Zionist lobby in agitating the Darfur conflict and the Israeli plot to divide Sudan, and thus, I presume, the background to the claimed Hezbollah readiness to fight the enemy perking on Sudanese soil.

Kibir, my goodness, wants to eat on all tables, Hasan Nasralla’s anti-Israeli jihad and the plotting intriguing Zionist associated NGOs, just whoever happens to pay here and now. That however is no surprise or should not be, it is symptomatic of the Sudanese elite’s utter extraversion. Even when extending support in matters of principle, the complex anti-colonial struggle in Palestine and Southern Lebanon, the bargain is on ‘reward’. Probably Kibir would have something equally thrilling to say had he been visited by India’a Maoist insurgents or the Basque ETA or the Columbian FARC for all he cares. The point is what does he get out of it, a contract, a share, a cut? Now, Kibir may well wish the Darfur fiasco away under the title of an Israeli plot, but that does not save him or his government from facing up to the responsibility of the Darfur they shattered with ethnic labels and cheap government.

Israeli involvement in Sudanese affairs is no secret. Anya Nya officers prior to the Addis Ababa agreement of 1972 received military training in Israel, including the late John Garang, and ties between Joseph Lago and Israeli intelligence and military were beyond cordial. Numayri was a friend of the Israelis and readily facilitated the transport of Ethiopian Jews to Israel via Sudan. In that sense Israeli undertakings are not in the realm of the mythical or the transcendent conspiratorial, but can be concretely established, practically always involving Sudanese counterparts, even the most unexpected like sectarian figureheads, and Islamist collaborators. The question thus is not the Israeli or the Iranian ties but the drive to extraversion and clientelism that bewitches the country's ‘national’ politics. That’s colonialism for you Mr Kibir, start with yourself.

Insane identity

Last week Salva Kiir, the President of GoSS, stated that Northern Sudanese in his territory are welcome to reside and do business, a friendly token short of ‘citizenship’, but in any case a more positive note than Saturday’ utterances by NCP’s Kamal Obeid, the Minister of Information. I quote al-Ray al-Aam: “Come secession, a Southerner will not be a citizen in the North; Southerners will not enjoy the rights of citizenship, employment and other advantages, or the right to buy and sell in Khartoum’s markets”. He then added “we will not give him (a Southerner) even an injection in hospital”. Obeid was speaking on radio to a largely Northern audience.

I am not sure if Obeid was simply taken away by resentment towards Southerners, a common dispensation of the NCP leadership and ranks, or if his grave declaration was a calculated message to the wider NCP constituency and the general public. Whatever the case may be the position he advocates is both dangerously chauvinist, and untenable. By all means the categories ‘Southerner’ and ‘Northerner’ are as ill defined as the notorious borders between North and South, and so is any supposedly ethnic category for that matter. Other than the 1.5 million Southerners who have taken refuge in Northern Sudan during the war generations of Southern Sudanese have lived and worked in the national capital and in major towns as part of the general flow from rural areas to urban centres. Those who fall between the seams of North and South are not just many there are uncountable. I wonder, what in Obeid’s mind is the fate of Southern Muslims in the North, or the Southerners allied to the NCP? By resorting to what amounts to a purge of Southerners from the North via an outright state-endorsed disenfranchise Obeid is inviting to his own doom a confrontation that Sudan has largely avoided over the years of its civil war fought between a guerrilla force and the state army, with the exception of the proxy militarisation of the frontline civilian populations generating pro-government ‘Arab’, ‘Dinka’ and ‘Nuer’ militias. Contrary to Taha’s proclamations of tamazuj (intermixing) and takamul (integration) Obeid is selling to his audience the prospect of a final solution for the ‘Southern Question’ in Fascist fashion.

In the same news report al-Rai al-Aam quoted the SPLM’s Luka Biong Deng, Minister of the Council of Ministers, stating that the Misseriya do not have the right to vote in the referendum on self-determination of the disputed Abyei area. The Misseriya according to Deng are only entitled to graze in Abyei. Nicely enough Deng welcomed the presence of all Sudanese in the South and called for an agreement on extension of the four freedoms between North and South. What Deng shares with Obeid is the subjection of citizenship to the examination of identity coupled with the prejudice of autochtony. The history of Abyei, a Dinka/Misseriya entwine, is not amenable to reversion by decree. A referendum decision to join Abyei to the South will by no means cause the troublesome Misseriya to disappear in a puff of democracy. The claim that the Misseriya are ‘exogenous’ to Abyei, and thus do not have the right to decide on its future, mirrors the proposition that Southerners are ‘exogenous’ to Khartoum and cannot enjoy its citizenship, both are false options. In the conclusion of an African Affairs paper titled ‘Social Capital and Civil War: the Dinka Communities in Sudan’s Civil War’ Luka Biong Deng pointed to inter-communal solidarity and societal networks such as the relationship between Arab nomads, Nuer, Dinka, and other communities, as aspects of social capital that merit further research in the context of civil war. Pick that up Dr Deng.

Save the referendum

The referendum on self-determination of Southern Sudan carries in concept the promise of offering the Sudanese polity a ‘restart’, an opportunity to redeem the Sudanese state from its colonial ‘pathology’ and conceive of politics anew along the paradigm of citizen rather than subject. To achieve this goal the referendum has to be imagined as a national political engagement of the first order.  That said the push and pull of SPLM and NCP, accusations and counter-accusations, carry the risk of turning a national affair into a feud of petty politicians. The risk is even greater bearing the fact of the swift readiness of both parties to market the referendum as a pass to American favour.

The current referendum debate focuses largely on division of assets, or spoils if you like, give us this oil well and we will give you this stretch of land, a grotesque demonstration of what Bayart termed ‘the politics of the belly’. Repetitively, local SPLM officials have been quoted in the press asking their subjects, the voters in the referendum, to make the right choices, and follow the right procedures. The higher ranking banjs were less blatant and demanded those who will not show up to vote not to register lest they spoil the count. International guardians and well-wishers, of course, opt for the more subtle awareness-raising and voter education, the blanket NGO business.

To its local constituency the NCP, incapable of politics proper except survival, is spinning the referendum into another element of what it pictures as an ever-determinant and obsessive conspiracy against its rule despite the noble motives and peace loving drive of all motions NCP. Internationally however the tone is on the referendum as a proof of merit. I guess Ali Osman said it all in New York in defence of Bashir. The rules of the game are thus laid. On all sides now it’s ‘freedom for the referendum’, namely cut us loose i.e. Bashir and Co, we let the referendum roll, and cut the SPLM loose.

What we are missing here is the potential of the referendum as an opportunity to educate our collective mind on why we need one in the first place, to address the history of the North-South entanglement as it were and charge our colonial entrapment head on. In principle the upcoming referendum constitutes in historical terms the first incidence of scrutiny by the vote of the structure of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, the precedent of independence was of course bypassed by a declaration of parliament. The referendum is the people’s earning, so bring it home.