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"After Years of War, Sudan Rulers Losing South"
Since 1983, rebels have fought. The latest developments are viewed positively in Washington.
By John Daniszewski
LOS ANGELES TIMES
phillynews.com:80/inquirer/98/Jan/25/international/SUDA25.htm
TURALEI, Sudan -- The men of Turalei are reed-thin giants, many of them scraping the sky at 7 feet. Armed with spears and automatic rifles, they bear themselves with a regal dignity unaffected by the rags they wear or their empty bellies. And recently they have seemed to be standing even taller than usual.
After enduring 14 years of civil war, this corner of war-devastated southern Sudan has been "liberated" from the forces of the national government in Khartoum, 500 miles to the north. The local people are excited by the possibility that victory is within their grasp, and soon they will be able to choose their destiny.
Similar emotions are sweeping much of southern Sudan, where, since 1983, African Christians and pagans have been rebelling against the Arab Muslim government of the north.
On almost every front, government forces appear to be in retreat. Officers are defecting to the rebels. Garrison towns increasingly are cut off. And now, for the first time in at least five years, rebels threaten to capture Juba, the largest city in the south.
"This regime is on its deathbed," said one anti-government activist, citing rebel advances not only in the south but also in the north and east bordering Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Up and Down
To be sure, the war ebbs and flows, and it is possible that the National Islamic Front government led by Gen. Omar Bashir will make a comeback. But it is also clear that in southern Sudan, at least, events appear to be coming to a head.
"The war is over," the rebel commander, Col. John Garang, boasted recently.
Garang has reason to feel satisfied. His Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) -- which says it wants to topple the rigidly Islamic government and create a "new Sudan" -- has scored impressive gains since it teamed up last year with disaffected political groups from the Arab north.
Among them, they have managed to open up a second military front, this one in eastern Sudan, that imperils Khartoum's power supply and the highway to the main harbor at Port Sudan.
Government defenses have been stretched to the breaking point, allowing a resurgent SPLA that had been on its knees just four years ago to secure most of Sudan's south -- except for Juba, Wau, and a few other highly fortified towns.
Small wonder, therefore, that in October Bashir finally accepted a three-year-old proposal to hold direct negotiations with the SPLA based on a "declaration of principles" that Sudan should be a secular state and that southerners should have the right to vote on whether to remain part of that state.
The outcome of those talks could have important consequences beyond Sudan. The view from Washington is that if the Khartoum government falls, as some analysts believe, it will be a key blow to extremism in the Middle East.
Center of Terrorism
Sudan's eight-year-old government is among those the United States likes least. Washington has excoriated it as a center of radical Islamism and a sponsor of terrorism. It charges that the regime, led by Bashir and Parliament Speaker Hassan Turabi, the source of its radical philosophy, has persecuted Sudan's Christian minority, stifled political dissent at home, and repeatedly tried to subvert its neighbors. It accused the government of aiding a 1995 attempt to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
In a sign of disapproval, the United States last year withdrew its diplomatic staff from Khartoum, citing fears over security. And when word leaked in September that the State Department intended to send back some midlevel diplomats, so as to better apply U.S. pressure, opposition in Congress quickly quashed the idea. But the drama for the south is more immediate than the shaky regime's ultimate fate. There, people are hoping that the year's developments mean a chance to end nearly a generation of bloodshed and misery that has lain waste to much of the land in Africa's largest country.
Southern Sudan, a vast and remote territory along the upper reaches of the Nile, is a seemingly endless labyrinth of swamps and marshes. It is home to elephant herds, marauding hyenas, and stoic, dignified tribes of cattle herders and farmers. Travel is by foot or air; there are fewer than 10 miles of paved road in an area two times the size of California.
But it is an alluring prize for both sides nevertheless; it lies atop a potential treasure trove of oil and other mineral riches, not to mention rare timbers and abundant water. That, according to community leader John Mangok, explains why Khartoum is fighting so hard to keep it. "They just need the land of southern Sudan," he said. "They don't want the people."
Tension between Arabs and Africans in Sudan is centuries old. Its roots lie in slaving expeditions by Arab traders to the upper Nile. But the current war, the resumption of an earlier conflict that raged from 1955 to 1972, has been a particular tragedy for the southern Sudanese.
War, hunger and disease have killed an estimated 1.3 million of them -- more than have died in Algeria, Bosnia or Rwanda in recent years. Hundreds of thousands of others have been displaced.
Yet the world has paid little heed, almost ignoring the scorched-earth tactics, starvation, kidnapping, rape, land mines and aerial bombardment that have been used in the conflict. Partly it is because the war had been waged in regions difficult to reach; partly it is because the conflict has dragged on so long, with few signs of significant change.
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