Having risen serendipitously through the party ranks of the now defunct National Islamic Front to reach the top in 1989 in a bloodless coup that toppled the democratically-elected government of Sadig Al-Mahdi, leader of the National Umma Party (NUM), Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir has made the Islamisation of Sudan his priority. The policy cost him the loss of South Sudan with its vast oil reserves and the consternation of Sudanese opposition groups. This week, in the Ugandan capital Kampala, there was a gathering of Sudanese opposition forces encompassing an impressive spectrum of political groups, including Al-Mahdi's NUM, the Popular Congress Party (PCP) of Al-Bashir's onetime ideological mentor and Sudan's chief Islamist ideologue Sheikh Hassan Al-Turabi, who was incarcerated by Al-Bashir and the erstwhile foe of the Sudanese president and his Islamist clique, the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP). They signed a key document entitled the “New Dawn Charter”. The aforementioned Sudanese political parties were joined by a formidable array of armed opposition groups including the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) affiliated to the SPLM ruling party in South Sudan. The development of the peripheral backwaters of Sudan that border South Sudan and Darfur has been left trailing dangerously and has engendered a feeling of separation that threatens to split Sudan further. It is for this reason that the New Dawn Charter was also signed by parties belonging to the umbrella opposition coalition called the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) and which includes the SPLM-N as well as Darfur armed opposition groups namely the Justice and Equality Party (JEM), the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA, Abdel-Wahid Nour faction) and SLA Minni Minnawi faction. All these groups signed the New Dawn document and caused much havoc in Khartoum. “This charter is the first document to be signed by people from all over Sudan that calls for the changing of the identity of Sudan,” Nafie Ali Nafie, former national security chief and a close associate of President Al-Bashir. SPLM-N secretary-general, Yasser Arman, a charismatic politician and SPLM-N Chairman Malik Agar denounced Nafie's allegations. Nafie, was referring to the Islamic identity of Sudan. Arman and Agar want to see a democratic, secularist state established in Sudan with the possibility of re-unification with South Sudan. This is precisely what Nafie and Al-Bashir fear. Conventional wisdom has it that Sudan under Al-Bashir will struggle to retain its Islamist identity. Yet there are signs that other Sudanese political forces are reluctant to accept the New Dawn charter. Al-Mubarak Al-Fadel Al-Mahdi, a cousin of Sadig Al-Mahdi, disbanded his party in 2011 and rejoined the NUP. However, he sounded sceptical about the New Dawn deal. He released “The Final Opportunity Document, Background and Secrets”. “Do not waste time and use these minutae details to escape from the national responsibility,” Mubarak Al-Fadel declared. Sudan on Monday banned the activities of opposition political parties that recently signed the New Dawn document. Sudanese Vice President Al-Haj Adam Youssef said that the Sudanese opposition parties assembled in Kampala to topple Al-Bashir's NCP government will not be permitted to exercise their political activities until they renounce the document. The New Dawn is being bandied as a grand new plan for Sudan's salvation and political future. The document is somewhat wooly, but sounds refreshingly ambitious. The reforms the New Dawn charter urge are long overdue and should be enacted swiftly if Sudan is to remain as a united political entity. Ultimately, the success of the New Dawn deal's agenda will depend on how much the leaders of the Sudanese opposition will deliver. This may require them to be less consensual and more assertive as far as the Al-Bashir administration is concerned. Sudanese opposition forces have a history of trumpeting highfalutin statements of lofty ambitions which have been brought down by the conflictual nature of Sudanese politics.
