Ban Ki-Moon is in Khartoum for talks with Sudanese officials and Darfur tops the agenda, writes Gamal Nkrumah Like any celebrity who is caught following the crowd, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon explained that he was in Sudan in order to publicly acknowledge the critical importance of instituting peace in Sudan. "I want to know first hand the plight of those we seek to help," Ban declared on the eve of his trip. "My goal is to lock in the progress we have made so far, to build on it so that terrible trauma may one day cease," he explained. Sputtering violence in the far-flung regions of Africa's largest state is the biggest albatross around Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir's neck. The tensions in Nubia and the humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur cannot be easily swept aside. A calculated stunt by Ban highlights the difficulties faced by the UN secretary-general. The UN's record in Darfur is abysmal. Take the case of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) humanitarian coordinator Suleiman Jamous, a widely respected Darfuri consensus builder, who is currently held for his own good by the UN. The aged and ailing Jamous is seeking medical treatment abroad. "Bashir said that Jamous would be taken to Kenya as soon as necessary arrangements had been made," Ban announced. Meanwhile, both the Sudanese government and the UN are pussyfooting over the veteran politician's fate. The last thing Ban needs is more unflattering light cast on the way he works. Ban's visit is being spun by both the UN and the Sudanese government as an historic achievement. Darfur is an old problem, but an intractable problem all the same. The challenge for Ban is to get the Sudanese protagonists to negotiate a lasting peace. As the humanitarian situation deteriorates in Darfur and other parts of Sudan, especially the far north of the country, political tensions escalate. Ban is seeking full Sudanese cooperation on the question of the deployment in Darfur of a hybrid UN-African Union peacekeeping force (UNAMID) of up to 27,000. There are those that believe that a huge UN military presence in Darfur will do far more harm than good. Sudan is effectively metamorphosing into a UN protectorate, with 10,000 UN troops already stationed in southern Sudan. Ban began a five-day visit to Sudan on Monday. He is also scheduled to visit Libya and Chad, two neighbouring countries embroiled in the Darfur conflict. Darfur emerged as the main focus of his visit, but he also made an effort to visit the capital of the southern Sudanese semi-autonomous region. More than 95 per cent of southern Sudanese revenue is generated by oil. The timing and length of Ban's visit coincides with tricky talks between the government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army concerning demarcating the precise border between northern and southern Sudan. Ban was fiercely criticised by the Sudanese authorities for stating that it had missed a deadline last month to re-deploy troops in the southern part of the country. Sudanese officials warned that Ban's comments were a gross infringement on the sovereignty of Sudan. In the meantime, the humanitarian situation in Darfur deteriorates further. The fear is that the conflict in Darfur will spill over into the rest of Sudan. Already there are alarming signals. This week, armed opposition groups of Darfur staged a surprise raid on a police garrison in the neighbouring province of Kordofan, which has a similar ethnic mix to Darfur. In the attack some 41 policemen were killed. The Sudanese government threatened retaliation, warning that the raid on the Kordofan police garrison spelt disaster and threatened to derail the Darfur peace process. The Sudanese government also has to deal with another crisis simmering in the far north of the country. The Nubians have long harboured grievances against the central government in Khartoum. Like the people of Darfur, the Nubians are Muslim but do not consider themselves ethnically Arab. Theirs is the ancient heritage of the kingdoms of Kush and Meroe, and they have their own languages and cultural specificity. Their economic conditions have been deteriorating sharply in the past two decades. Economic and political peripheralisation has led to social tensions with recent flooding exacerbating matters. Nubians are incensed about the construction of the 200-megawatt Kajbar Dam. Sudanese security forces intervened recently to police the area, only to be greeted with a hail of stones by angry Nubian youth. There are also palpable tensions between the Nubians and tribal ethnic Arabs of the region. The Arabs, like their brethren in Darfur, have sided with the government and have approached Khartoum for support. The Nubians, too, have rallied support for their cause from Western powers and humanitarian agencies. They are also organising on a political scale in order to advance their interests. Nubians are especially furious because their impoverished region is not partaking in the Sudanese economic boom. Sudan earns $4 billion a year from oil exports and economic growth is 13 per cent a year. The Kajbar Dam Resistance Committee was formed by concerned Nubians loathe to see their unexplored Nubian archaeological sites drown in the lake formed by the Kabjar Dam. The construction of the Aswan High Dam in 1964 and the forced relocation of 50,000 Sudanese Nubians and 800,000 Egyptian Nubians is still fresh in their memory. These are painful memories and even young Nubians born long after the permanent inundation of their ancestral homeland feel strongly about the preservation of a unique Nubian cultural identity. Accordingly, Nubia is probably the next Sudanese province to erupt into civil war if the tensions intensify. "We need to get rid of the Arabs. Our goal is to realise a new Sudan, by force if necessary," Abdel-Wahab Adam the leader of the Kush Liberation Front, an armed Nubian opposition group that lobbies for the interests of the Nubian people. They have threatened to take up arms against the Sudanese armed forces.
