Osama Yousif
In 1983, the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) formed in opposition to Sudan's Islamist military regime. The SPLM called for the liberation of Sudan from poverty, for peace, for a solution to the oppression and discrimination in the country's south and other marginalised areas and for equal distribution of the country's wealth.
An uprising in 1985 led to a new military regime that promised to hand over government to civilian political parties within one year. Before the handover, Sudan was run by a military council in conjunction with a civil council, and Islamic sharia laws were enforced. Believing its aims had not been achieved, the Sudanese People's Liberation Army — the SPLM's armed wing — continued its war with the government.
The right-wing parties that ruled after the 1986 elections didn't cancel the Islamic laws, so the SPLA persisted with its struggle.
Just one month before the June 30, 1989, coup launched by Lieutenant-General (now Field Marshal) Omar Hassan al Bashir and his National Islamic Front that installed the present regime in Khartoum, the government had agreed to repeal the Islamic laws and hold a constitutional congress. Stopping this from happening was the motivation for the coup by the NIF, subsequently renamed the National Congress Party (NCP).
The right-wing Islamist regime that ruled Sudan for the following decade-and-a-half used Islamist ideology to justify its continued war on the predominantly non-Muslim, non-Arabic people of southern Sudan. The regime recruited people in the north into "popular defence" units, in which citizens were given minimal training and sent into the war zones. In the mid-1990s, the government created a system of compulsory military service, requiring all high-school students to enlist. This is how it created a large army.
Most of the national budget was used to fund the war — with war spending running at around US$1 million per day.
The regime was also marked by corruption. Public utilities and state-owned industries were sold off cheaply to the rich elite in the NCP. Health and education, previously free for all, were privatised and became out of reach for most of Sudan's poor.
The two main reasons for the war in the south were unequal development and Khartoum's attempt to impose an Islamic/Arabic culture on a non-Muslim, ethnically diverse population (there are more than 250 different languages spoken in Sudan).
In the early '90s, the SPLM became a member of the National Democratic Alliance — formed in October 1989 by the opposition parties. In 1995, the NDA adopted the SPLA/SPLM's demand for self-determination in the south, and also supported the armed struggle by various forces in the east of Sudan.
In the late '90s, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, a regional conflict-solving body, began hosting peace talks between the Sudanese government and the SPLM. During 2000-03, there was some progress toward a peace agreement. This is when Washington became strongly involved.
It is no coincidence that this followed the discovery in 1998 of oil reserves in Sudan. Most of the oil reserves are based in the south, but exploitation of them has been hampered by the war.
On January 9, a Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed. On July 9, SPLM leader John Garang travelled to Khartoum to take up the position of Sudan's vice-president. He was also installed as the head of a new autonomous state government in the south. Just 21 days later he died in a helicopter crash.
The signing of the peace agreement was a historic step forward for Sudan. It ended the war and finally brought peace to the country's south. It means that money wasted on the military can be invested into public services, and it has brought some democratisation of political life to Sudan.
However, there are some weaknesses in the agreement. Firstly, it was reached between the government and the SPLM, and thus excluded the rest of the opposition in the NDA. There was also a lack of freedom of speech in Sudan during the negotiations, with people still being arrested for engaging in peaceful political activity.
There are problems with the distribution of wealth settled in the agreement — a 50-50 division of oil revenue between the north and south. This is not an equal allocation and was not agreed on by all opposition parties. Oil revenue distribution should be based on need, not on location.
Under the agreement, for the next three years, Bashir's NCP will hold 52% of parliamentary seats and continue to dominate both the central and northern region governments. The remaining seats in the central parliament are to be divided between the SPLM (28%), some other northern parties (14%), and 6% for other southern parties.
The composition of the parliament and the government should be decided by the people, through a general election, rather than through a carve-up of positions between the leaders of some parties.
For peace to prevail in Sudan, the people need greater freedom of speech and a freer political life. Without this, the people cannot become involved in the implementation of the peace agreement.
[Osama Yousif is a member of the Sudanese Communist Party and an activist in the Socialist Alliance in Sydney.]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 17, 2005.
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