On 5 January 2013, armed groups from Darfur (including the Justice and Equality Movement; Sudan Liberation Army-Minni Minnawi; Sudan Liberation Army-Abdel-Wahed; and the Sudan's People's Liberation Movement-North) plus parties and civil society groups from the north launched the New Dawn Charter in Kampala, Uganda. As it turned out, the charter brought into focus the tenuous situation of opposition parties in Sudan and the protracted nature of the conflict between the centre and the peripheries in this country. The charter, its authors claim, aims at bringing down the Khartoum government, through armed and not just peaceful means. Once the regime is overthrown, the signatories pledge to form a four-year interim government and write a secular constitution. As one may expect, the central government in Khartoum lashed out at the signatories and successfully bullied some of them into retracting their signatures. Also, the reference to secularism didn't sit well with the Islamist-leaning sections of the opposition. The endorsement by northern parties of armed as well as peaceful resistance to the regime is unprecedented. For years, the political parties of the north have failed to present the regime — in power since 1989 — with any credible threat. The most forceful challenge to the regime by these parties came in 1996, when Cairo-based Sudanese opposition groups formed an anti-government alliance, which won some regional and international support but failed to rally the nation behind it. Now it seems that these parties are changing tactics. Somehow, they hope that the militia who are fighting the Khartoum government in Darfur will defeat the regime, and then hand over power to Khartoum's conventional opposition. If the past is anything to go by, this sounds like wishful thinking. The armed groups currently fighting the regime are not risking their lives for the purpose of empowering conventional political parties, but in the hope of reversing the injustices done by Khartoum to the provinces. As soon as word of the Kampala charter came out, Nafie Ali Nafie, presidential assistant and ruling National Congress Party (NCP) deputy leader, harangued the Sudan Revolutionary Front and other opposition parties, calling them treasonous for siding with the rebels. The Sudanese Ambassador to Cairo, Kamaleddin Hassan Ali, for his part, criticised Egypt for giving shelter to rebel and armed groups, saying that this could jeopardise relations between Cairo and Khartoum. The charter's signatories reacted by sending emissaries to the EU and the US, seeking their support. Since the demise of Muammar Gaddafi's regime and the improvement in Khartoum's relations with Eritrea and Chad, Uganda has emerged as the destination of choice for opponents of Omar Al-Bashir. The Kampala document is a turning point for Sudan's conventional parties, who had so far refrained from addressing Sudan's most crucial issues, including the question of separating religion and the state. In a country that has always been an ethnic melting pot, conventional politicians are at long last beginning to appreciate the fact that Khartoum must share power with the provinces. For years now, a kind of symbiotic relation has evolved between the ruling party and the northern opposition. When the regime pushes the parties around, closing them down and censoring the public appearances of their officials, it allows them to appear more powerful than they really are. Conversely, when the opposition offers the regime little more than rhetorical resistance, they not only amplify its stature, but waste precious time — time that could have been spent raising political awareness and rallying grassroots support.
