Struggles of the South

BY TINA SUSMAN | Newsday Staff Correspondent

May 21, 2006

JUBA, Sudan - On a sweltering afternoon, the university clock tower reads 8:55, just as it has for years. It is a symbol of a dilapidated city stopped in time, along with the fans that hang motionless from ceilings of most buildings, and the rusted wreck of a boat run aground in the dark, muddy Nile, a few feet from where women wash clothes in the murky water.

For lack of a better alternative in a place with few habitable buildings, the shade of a huge mango tree on a downtown corner serves as a gathering spot for locals to debate the affairs of state and read the daily papers. It was here that 26-year-old Maker Manyiel sat one February day, seething under his black baseball cap as he watched two boys trying to drum up customers for their shoe-shine business.

"These kids are supposed to be in school. Are they in school? They are not!" he said in disgust before going on to blame the southern Sudan government that he, a former fighter of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army, helped put in power. "The poor man, the common citizen, he can't get $1 a day. What kind of government is that? And these are the people I fought for. I'm regretting it."

A new dominion in the south

On the other side of the mango tree sat David Dokori, a parliamentarian in the new government of south Sudan, which was formed in September 2005 as part of an agreement that ended Sudan's 21-year north-south war between mainly black, Christian rebels and the Arab, Islamic government. The deal gave the SPLM/A a role in the national government and guaranteed the south half the proceeds of Sudan's 500,000-barrel-per-day oil industry, which depends on crude pumped from southern fields but which the rebels said had only enriched the north.

With that, Juba became the capital of the south, a concept that made Dokori guffaw as he compared it to its northern counterpart, Khartoum, where the ruling National Congress Party is based and where people kill time in air-conditioned Internet cafes and malls, not under mango trees.

"Juba is just a big village!" he exclaimed, before rushing to defend what Manyiel said was southern leaders' failure to turn it into a thriving metropolis. "Nothing was left after the war. No community, no clean water, no education," he said. "We are like a baby. We can't just stand up. We have to take small steps."

But more than a year after signing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2005, the south is barely crawling, and its inertia is stirring dissent among impatient southerners and alarm among international observers. They say the south's slow-motion progress is putting the peace pact in jeopardy and that the deal's collapse could have a ripple effect on other conflicts in the country, particularly the war in the southwestern region of Darfur.

At the heart of the problem is oil, which helped fuel the war, helped facilitate its end and which could now derail the peace if profits from the industry do not soon transform places like Juba.

Critics of Khartoum's northern leaders blame the regime for the south's slow progress, saying it has reneged on key parts of the deal, such as the sharing of oil wealth. But the blame flows in both directions, for southern leaders have been unable to transform a guerrilla army into an effective government, a struggle made harder by the sudden death last July of John Garang, the only leader most of them had ever known. Garang, who founded the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army in 1983 and led it until his death, was killed in a helicopter crash just as he had become president of southern Sudan and a vice president of the new post-war Government of National Unity in Khartoum.

Oil is key to sustaining the pact

"This oil money is going to be the fuel that sustains the agreement. This is going to be what allows the government of south Sudan to function, to build a civil service," said David Mozersky, a Sudan expert with the International Crisis Group, a non-partisan think tank. Its latest report said President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's ruling party has the capacity to make the deal work but lacks the political commitment, while the former rebels are committed to the deal but are weak and disorganized. "There is a real risk of renewed conflict down the road" unless things change, the report said.

Of particular concern is the impact a fraying north-south deal could have on the war in the western region of Darfur, where rebels demanding greater autonomy took up arms in February 2003. That war has displaced 2 million people and killed anywhere from 180,000 to 400,000, according to international human rights groups. "This is very much about building trust," one Western diplomat said of the north-south agreement. "If the Darfur rebels haven't seen a positive example from it, if this process fails, it will be that much harder to instill the confidence and trust we need to settle Darfur."

Even with the north-south deal, which was supposed to bring unity, Sudan feels disjointed, like a huge jigsaw puzzle yet to be solved. In its 50 years since independence, it has enjoyed only 10 years without civil war. Most stemmed from the awkward borders resulting from colonialism, which left the African south under the rule of the Arab north. The north-south conflict erupted in 1983 as Khartoum's leaders attempted to enforce Islamic law across the nation, but religion was only part of the battle.

"We were not fighting because of Christianity versus Islam. We were fighting for justice and equality," said El-Hadi Eiassa, a former southern rebel fighter who also happens to be a Muslim from Darfur. He accused the government of portraying the war as religious to prevent non-Christians from supporting the rebels. In reality, he said many northern Muslims supported the southern rebels' demands for more development, more oil revenues, and less control by Khartoum's hard-line regime. "I'm a Muslim, I'm SPLM and I'm proud," he declared.

Peace came after years of U.S.-led efforts, galvanized by pressure from the Christian right and the black Congressional Caucus to end a conflict that had killed 2 million people and driven more than 4.5 million from their homes, either into neighboring countries or displaced camps in Khartoum.

Under terms of the deal, the south became an autonomous region with its own legislature, in addition to becoming a partner in the newly created Government of National Unity in Khartoum. Five years from the deal's signing, in January 2011, southerners are to vote on whether to end that partnership and secede.

That's a day many of them live for, from southern politicians to people who fled the war and now live in displaced persons' camps near Khartoum.

"What is unity?" Ameta Ayii Akol, 22, said scornfully as he sat outside a makeshift tent in Wad al-Bashir, one of the sprawling camps on the edge of Khartoum, which hold an estimated 1.8 million southerners. Around him, the rust-colored, rocky terrain stretched like the Martian landscape into the distance, dotted with mud huts and sagging tents made of everything from colorful rags to pieces of cardboard. Even in mid-winter, the temperature hovered near 90 degrees as the sun blasted onto the sandy, desolate settlement that Akol has called home since 1991, when the war drove his family from the south.

"As you can see, this is a very rubbishy life," he said, indicating his own tent, which resembled a quilt pulled together from someone's torn castoffs. Like virtually everyone interviewed in these camps, Akol said his wish was to leave the north, go back south, and vote "yes" for secession. "People say we are now together," he said, referring to national leaders' claims that the peace deal had mended Sudan. "But I don't believe that. If people want unity, they must treat us well. I can't stay in a place where there are no benefits, where I am thrown into the sun. We are still living in cartons."