---------- Sent from my Nokia phone
------Original message------ From: John Ashworth <[email protected]> To: "Group" <[email protected]> Date: Sunday, January 22, 2012 4:22:24 PM GMT+0300 Subject: [sudan-john-ashworth] Sudan: The future is military "Since 1989, the NCP has used carefully calibrated aggression and outright war as an effective policy instrument" Africa Confidential has kindly given me permission to circulate this article. They asked me to mention their website. www.africa–confidential.com, and to point out that individual articles can be purchased from them online. They have an e-mail alert service to let you know what articles are in each edition. BEGIN Sudan: The future is military Africa Confidential • 6 January 2012 • Vo l 53 - N° 1 The main question this year is how far Khartoum will pursue militarism to compensate for its loss of the South – and to maintain its grip on power Billboards in Khartoum celebrate the regime’s military prowess and its increasingly bellicose tactics against the newly independent South. Massive pictures of the President, Field Marshal Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir, and the Defence Minister, General Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein (now also wanted by the International Criminal Court), stare down, in uniform and unsmiling, at the dusty streets. ‘Long ago, our ancestors told us to look after the nation’, runs one poster, echoing an old song. As opposition groups step up protests and the regime responds by arresting human rights and political activists, this sounds like a threat. Many Northerners blame the regime for the Independence of South Sudan and now openly talk of the regime’s failures. The loss of Southern oil has gravely weakened the economy (AC Vol 52 Nos 21 & 23). The International Monetary Fund forecasts a -0.4% change in real gross domestic product and a 17.5% rise in consumer prices, with hundreds of thousands of job losses. The question now is whether the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) will try to claw back resources by attacking the most valuable oil fields. These are mainly in the northern part of the South, in Unity State, and bordering Abyei and Southern Kordofan, already a war zone. Although an invasion of what is now a sovereign state could prove counterproductive, senior leaders, including military officers, may believe they could escape serious censure. Since 1989, the NCP has used carefully calibrated aggression and outright war as an effective policy instrument: its current bombing of civilians in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile, and most recently in South Sudan itself, replicates its earlier strategy in those areas, as well as in Darfur. It also shows that financial constraints do not limit its battle options. Its main military partner, Iran, will not send in the bailiffs. The alternative scenario is ‘an accretion of acts of attrition’, as one Western former official put it: ‘One day, we will wake up and realise that North and South are at war again and, in fact, have been for many months’. One aim would simply be to intimidate the Juba government into sharing its oil 50-50, said a Southern Sudanese analyst. Southern feeling is strongly against this, so Khartoum’s strategy involves multi-pronged attacks. A Southern journalist warned that more Khartoum proxies, this time Central African rebels, wait on the CAR border with Bahr el Ghazal. On 30 December, Southern officials said 40 people had died in the Western Bahr el Ghazal capital, Raja, during air strikes by Khartoum, which denied it. Both governments are massing troops along their joint border. Khartoum’s war in the ‘Three Areas’ – Blue Nile, Southern Kordofan and Abyei – draws in both the South and the Northern opposition. War there will intensify. While Juba is clearly helping its former comrades- in-arms in the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-North, the latter has its own dynamic: to play a lead role in galvanising opposition in Northern Sudan. The Sudan Revolutionary Front which the SPLM/A-N formed last November in the Nuba town of Kauda with Darfur’s Sudan Liberation Movement factions of Abdel Wahed Mohamed Ahmed el Nur and Minni Arkou Minnawi, and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), will draw in other groups and continue to build its political structures. Appeasing Khartoum Interested Western, African and Arab governments remain cautious. Activists in Khartoum and elsewhere ask why the West does not support Sudanese democrats as it has their Tunisian, Egyptian and, especially, Libyan counterparts. One Darfur activist slammed the international community’s ‘soft and appeasing manner’ towards Khartoum. The NCP proclaimed that by killing JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim Mohamed Achar Foudeil Taha and ‘30 leaders...in clashes’ on 23 December, it had crippled JEM, which had fled to South Sudan. JEM says only one other person was killed, with no clashes: a missile from a jet fighter hit Khalil and only foreign military have such precision equipment. JEM blames Chad, AC understands, claiming it is seasoned in locating and killing opponents by locking on to satellite telephones. Chad’s President Idriss Déby Itno last year drove his relative Khalil out of Chad. A more likely candidate might be Khartoum’s soul-mate, Tehran. We hear that JEM has bits of the missile deployed that could be traced. Khalil had recently reorganised JEM’s command structure so it seems unlikely to collapse. His death prompted tributes from across Sudan’s political spectrum, although he was a former National Islamic Front minister and recruiter for jihad (AC Vol 49 No 11). JEM insists it has no connection to NIF former leader Hassan Abdullah el Turabi, who offered warm condolences. Change will also continue within the more traditional opposition of the National Umma Party and Democratic Unionist Party. Umma chief El Sadig Sideeg el Mahdi and the DUP’s Mohamed Osman el Mirghani both deployed their sons into the NCP’s largely unchanged ‘new’ government in late November. Accordingly, Abdel Rahman el Sadig Sideeg el Mahdi, a security officer who commanded the small Umma contingent in the opposition armed forces in Eritrea in the 1990s, and Ja’afar el Sadig Mohamed Osman el Mirghani, are now Presidential Assistants to Omer. Such posts have power only when held by NCP stalwarts. Joining them in late December was El Sadig el Hadi el Mahdi, a former London exile who joined up with the NCP in 2001, and is a nephew of El Sadig el Mahdi and brother of Nasr el Din el Hadi el Mahdi, the Umma Party Co-Deputy President who is also active in the broad opposition alliance. The youth wings of both the Umma and DUP are challenging their veteran leaders’ willingness to appease the NCP. Mohamed Osman came under unprecedented pressure after negotiating with the NCP and fights broke out among DUP members at party headquarters. These signs of young people’s increasing impatience will grow. In Khartoum, angry activists tried to shout down ex-Prime Minister El Sadig el Mahdi during an Independence Day speech on 1 January when he advocated talking to the regime rather than trying to overthrow it – although he said that joining it would not change it. This characteristic juggling has also convinced many Southerners that the ‘sectarian’ (religious-based) parties have not changed. That and calling Southern President Salva Kiir Mayardit’s recent visit to Israel ‘satanic’ have lost a lot of the goodwill El Sadig had won by attending Southern Independence on 9 July. In the 1985 Intifada (Uprising) against President Ja’afar Mohamed Nimeiri, the ‘Modern Forces’ (secular) outflanked the sectarian parties (Umma and DUP) – which may get left out next time. The combination of growing street protests in the cities and resistance to Khartoum’s militarism in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile province (the ‘New South’) encourages the view that the regime will be fighting for its survival this year. The NCP has been rallying foreign friends to win votes in international fora and create a fig leaf of respectability for those wanting to do business with it. This won it the leadership of December’s Arab League human rights monitoring mission to Syria. General Mohamed Ahmed Mustafa el Dabi took over external security when Nafi’e Ali Nafi’e moved sideways after 1995’s assassination attempt on President Hosni Mubarak. In 1999, he took over Darfur security as the NCP began its ethnic cleansing. ‘He brought 1,500 soldiers from Khartoum and began to burn the villages from Barey to Kudumuli,’ said a rebel (AC Vol 50 No 23). United Nations and human rights bodies confirm his ruthless reputation. Western governments have been unprecedentedly critical of Khartoum’s bombing of the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile, yet no one is expecting serious pressure. Although backing a swingeing reduction in Sudan’s foreign debt, Britain wants this to be conditional on the regime’s commitment to ‘peace with justice’ in Darfur, resolving outstanding North-South issues and ending the conflict in Blue Nile and Kordofan. None are likely soon. Meanwhile, Khartoum is shoring up its Islamist alliances. On 26 December, UPI news agency reported that Israel had again attacked arms convoys in Sudan en route for Gaza (AC Vol 50 No 7). We hear Britain, Israel and the United States are concerned by Iranian-Sudanese cooperation, and share intelligence on it, including the supply of arms to the Harakat al Muqawama al Islamiya (Hamas), which rules Gaza. This coincided with well publicised visits by Gaza Premier Ismail Haniyeh and colleagues, and a visit by Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal. On 31 December, Saudi Arabia’s Asharq al Awsat said the Hamas Shura (Consultation) Council had met in Khartoum to announce the formation of ‘Hamas-Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood’. A decade ago, the NCP cultivated an image of being ‘no longer Islamist’. As pressure mounts, it may revert to its origins and the only friends it trusts. END ______________________ John Ashworth Sudan, South Sudan Advisor [email protected] +254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile) +211 919 695 362 (South Sudan mobile) +27 82 853 3556 (South Africa mobile) +44 750 304 1790 (UK/international) +88 216 4334 0735 (Thuraya satphone) PO Box 52002 - 00200, Nairobi, Kenya This is a personal e-mail address and the contents do not necessarily reflect the views of any organisation -- The content of this message does not necessarily reflect John Ashworth's views. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, John Ashworth is not the author of the content and the source is always cited. You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sudan-john-ashworth" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.co.za/group/sudan-john-ashworth -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "South Sudan Info - The Kob" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/SouthSudanKob?hl=en.
