The battle for creating a new Sudan is tight and peace talks are a travesty of democracy, writes Gamal Nkrumah This week witnessed the resumption, with due sense of irony, of the Darfur peace talks in the Nigerian capital Abuja. Meanwhile in Cairo, reconciliation talks have begun between the Sudanese government and the northern-based umbrella grouping the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The NDA includes most of the major northern opposition parties and the southern-based Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). The battle for Sudan's heart has begun. With growing stridency, northern Sudanese opposition forces say it is high time for them to participate more meaningfully in the Sudanese political process. The Sudanese government and the SPLA signed a comprehensive peace accord on 9 January 2005, but the anguish among the Sudanese people -- northern, southern, eastern and western -- has not diminished. "We expect a conclusive peace deal to be signed on Sunday," Hatem Al-Sirr, official NDA spokesman, told Al-Ahram Weekly. He said the NDA demanded a greater share of power than stipulated by the agreement between the SPLA and the Sudanese government. A meeting is scheduled for today between SPLA leader John Garang, NDA leader Othman Al-Mirghani and Sudanese Vice- President Ali Othman Mohamed Taha. Taha, who arrived in Cairo on Wednesday, said he was confident that a deal would be clinched within the next few days. He also praised the mediatory role of Egypt. NDA leaders concurred. "We are especially grateful to the Egyptian authorities for the arrangement of the various Sudanese parties to meet on Egyptian soil to discuss the political future of Sudan," Al-Sirr told the Weekly. The peace talks are taking place against the background of intensified fighting in many parts of the sprawling country, Africa's largest. Fighting broke out in the eastern part of the country between Sudanese government forces and members of the Beja people. The Beja represent the dominant ethnic group of eastern Sudan, numbering an estimated three million inhabiting a vast arid region that encompasses three countries: Egypt, Sudan and Eritrea. The Arab Rashaida tribesmen also took up arms against the Sudanese government forces. Politically, the Beja Congress and the Rashaida Free Lions, two groups claiming to represent the interests of the Beja and the Rashaida, are fully-fledged members of NDA. Sudanese officials say this might not matter. What matters is that the two groups accept the terms of the agreement between the Sudanese government and the NDA. In previous meetings, the Beja Congress and the Rashaida Free Lions refused to participate in talks between the NDA and the Sudanese government. The Egyptian, Eritrean and Saudi authorities mediated between Khartoum and the two groups. Reluctantly, the two eastern Sudanese movements have agreed to join other NDA parties in peace talks with the Sudanese government. The opposition warns that Khartoum seems bent on deflecting demands for empowerment. Sudan, they say, is so imperiled that fighting for its survival is not merely right but a sublime duty. It is in this context that the Sudanese authorities charged Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) with concocting a false report that tarnishes Sudan's international image. MSF employees Paul Foreman and Vincent Hoedt were arrested last month and released shortly afterwards on bail. The incident drew much international criticism and the United Nations envoy for Sudan Jan Pronk demanded that the charges against MSF be dropped immediately. The Darfur peace talks in Abuja are convened under the auspices of the African Union (AU). The organisation has taken a keen interest in resolving the Sudanese political impasse. Even so, the sheer nastiness of the Darfur violence has generated a powerful ground swell of angry Sudanese that are in opposition to conflict. JEM and SLA have contrasting political agendas and ideologically they are diametrically opposed. JEM is a militant Islamist organisation closely affiliated to the Popular Congress Party, which is led by Sudan's chief Islamist ideologue Hassan Al-Turabi. The SLA, on the other hand, is a secularist group. The two views have not produced radically different conclusions -- both JEM and the SLA want to have a say in how Darfur is run. The lumping of a range of political parties and opposition armed groups that happen to have a Muslim colouring -- some of them at root ethnic like the Darfur-based Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) -- tramples on the real grievances behind many of their causes. In Abuja, JEM and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) -- the secularist Darfur armed opposition group not to be confused with the southern-based SPLA -- expressed optimism about the results of the peace talks they are holding with the Sudanese government. "There is no doubt that we are committed to lasting peace in Darfur," SLA spokesman Ahmed Ibrahim said in the Nigerian capital earlier in the week. "The present talks will definitely be fruitful because the AU mediation team has done a lot to soften the ground," he added. Humanitarian officials in Darfur warn that the conditions of the civilian population in Darfur have deteriorated sharply because of the upsurge in fighting between the rival armed Darfur opposition groups. Fighting erupted last week between the SLA and JEM. Such willful blurring of lines is made easier by the general state of lawlessness and violence in Darfur and the brutal fashion in which the war is conducted. In Abuja, the Sudanese government objected to the participation of representatives of the Eritrean government as observers at the Darfur peace talks. Many Sudanese opposition forces, and in particular the NDA, are headquartered in the Eritrean capital Asmara. The SLA and JEM, on the other hand, strongly resent the participation of Chad as an observer at the Abuja talks. The SLA and JEM say that the Chadian authorities have sided with Sudanese government forces in the Darfur conflict. Chad is now the temporary home of an estimated half a million refugees rendered homeless because of the conflict in Darfur.
