The Shifting Sands Of Sudan - Time (Canadian Edition), June 25
Despite the civil war, there are signs that the hard-line regime may be softening up
By SIMON ROBINSON, Khartoum
The opening of an exhibition at artist Rashid Diab's Khartoum gallery two months ago was one of the social events of the year. Painters chatted to actors, writers engaged politicians, and partygoers gulped down soft drinks and scoffed plates of cocktail food. But when the newly appointed Minister of State for Culture stopped in front of a large canvas by young artist Yassir Abualharam, the hubbub died down. The painting showed naked women cavorting in an ocean, their breasts protruding above the waves.
Would the Minister object and order the moral police to shut down the gallery? Would he shred the canvas on the spot in the same way a predecessor had destroyed "idol" sculptures just a few years ago? "At the time he didn't comment," says Diab. "Later he told me he wouldn't buy it. But the important thing is he didn't seem to mind that it was there. It's an indication of a different period, not so fanatical."
Sudan's image in the West has never recovered from the beheading by Islamic nationalists of British Governor Charles Gordon 116 years ago. The current regime, which came to power in a 1989 coup, has long been seen as a bunch of terrorist-sponsoring, slave-running, warmongering villains. "Sudan is a disaster area for human rights," President George W. Bush said recently.
But the view from Khartoum is less clear-cut. Though the long-running civil war continues, diplomats, aid workers and even Sudanese human-rights wor-kers in the capital say that over the past two years the regime has softened. Girls wearing revealing clothes under their outer garments are no longer dragged before street corner tribunals and whipped for indecency; a few clubs are allowed to serve alcohol to foreigners on special occasions.
There's even an independent daily newspaper, the Khartoum Monitor.
Ideology may slowly be giving way to economics. "We need peace and unity and we need technology," says Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail. "You can't get peace and unity without openness and freedom. And to get technology we need good foreign relations. We're ready to talk."
Why the sudden words of moderation? For one thing the regime feels stronger now. The country began exporting oil in 1999; today 210,000 barrels a day are being pumped from the vast flat plains around Heglig, in the southern half of the country. The oil fields provide a focus for the fighting that has ebbed and flowed across Africa's largest country for 33 of the 44 years since independence and pits southerners -- most holding to traditional African beliefs, though some are Christian -- against Islamic Arab northerners.
But as the government has boasted, oil revenues also allow Khartoum to buy weaponry like Hind helicopter gunships and Polish tanks with which to fight the south and to build a weapons and ammunition factory of its own on the outskirts of Khartoum. Rebels and aid groups in the south charge the government with pursuing a scorched earth policy around the oil fields. Southerners also complain that the north is again exploiting resources that don't belong to it. "What is happening now is stealing," says Peter Adwok, a former rebel fighter.
A shake-up within the government has also consolidated the power of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Until 1999, the regime's ideological leader and key policy maker was Hassan al-Turabi, a hard-line Islamic cleric. Today Turabi is under house arrest for treason and the government is allowing a few freedoms where once there were none -- even if doing so goes against their nature.
Human-rights lawyer Rifaat Makkawi recently taught humanitarian law to a handful of government soldiers. "The term human rights two or three years ago was very dangerous," he says. "I think the government is forced to obey or listen. They are not keen on this but the international community is interested in doing business."
With U.S. sanctions still in place (see box), Canadian oil firm Talisman Energy and European companies are leading the charge. The European Union argues that its policy of engagement has helped take some of the rough edges off the regime. By supporting moderate elements within the government, the E.U. hopes to encourage more change. "We should not try to get this government out of the way either by military means or arming the rebels," says Dutch Ambassador Wim van der Kevie, the current head of the E.U. delegation to Sudan. "We have to put pressure on both sides. But the American policy appears to see it only as one bunch of fundamentalists."
A complete image makeover will take some time -- and require a few crucial changes. Sudan has gone a long way to prove it no longer sponsors terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, who lived in Khartoum before masterminding the 1998 attacks on two U.S. embassies in east Africa. The government has cooperated with American and United Nations' investigators on the bombings and other terrorist activities and sanctions against it may be lifted later this year.
But Sudan is still vulnerable to criticisms of slavery -- at least 15,000 people, mostly southern women and children, have been captured and used as slaves in the past decade according to estimates by the Dinka, the largest southern tribe -- and the aerial bombardment of civilian targets in the south. The regime admits the existence of "abductions" -- it prefers the term to slavery -- but denies involvement.
"Human-rights violations are a natural by-product of the war," says Madhi Ibrahim Mohammed, a presidential adviser. "The other factor, yes, the government can stop aerial bombing." But while the President has promised to let up at least three times in the past year, attacks continue.
The changes in Khartoum come as the Bush Administration reviews its policy toward Sudan. Longtime interest from the Christian right has found fertile ground in the Bush White House, and it has been joined by a sudden upsurge in attention from prominent liberal black politicians outraged over the continuing reports of slavery. The issue is now so mainstream that even Michael Jackson has contemplated a visit to Sudan under the auspices of his new children's charity. "Politically, Sudan has become like South Africa was, an issue that cuts across the ordinary lines and divisions," says William Saunders, a U.S. adviser to Sudan's Roman Catholic Bishop Max Gassis.
But while Bush is expected to keep talking tough, the U.S. could well move toward greater engagement with Khartoum, as European countries have. "We're not interested in isolating or containing Sudan, we're interested in ending the war," says a White House official. "We're offering them two alternatives -- continued pariah status or a movement into respectability."
It's a choice not lost on the Khartoum elite. "It is our responsibility to project what is really happening in Sudan and actually, today, to be frank, we are not good at that," says adviser Mohammed. "But we are trying."
-- With reporting by Jay Branegan/Washington
canoe.ca |
