By Gamal Nkrumah Few people had a more perceptive eye for the finer points of diplomacy than Ahmed Abdul- Halim, appointed ambassador of Sudan to Egypt at a critical point in the history of relations between the two countries. Indeed, tensions were running so high that the outbreak of hostilities between the two neighbours could not be ruled out. Fondly referred to as " Am Ahmed" by many of his friends, including President Hosni Mubarak, Abdul-Halim was a self-effacing man. Affable and hard-working, he found his vocation late. Though he served as ambassador to Egypt he was not a career diplomat and had earlier trained as a librarian. He was a scholar, well-read and cultured, even if for most of his life he was an industrious bureaucrat and government official. His first high-profile public office was in 1972 when he joined the government of former Sudanese president Jaafar Numeiri soon after the signing of the Addis Ababa peace agreement between the Sudanese government and the separatist southern Sudanese armed opposition group Anyanya II. The Addis Ababa agreement ushered in a period of relative peace and prosperity for Sudan during which Abdul-Halim was able to make his mark, serving as minister of information and culture more than once. He rose through the ranks to become secretary-general of the then ruling Sudanese Socialist Union. Though the Numeiri regime was toppled in 1985, Abdul-Halim was a political survivor par excellence. He worked with successive Sudanese regimes of different ideological shades and his personable nature won him the admiration and trust of the people he worked with. Even his political foes concede that he had a winning personality. When he was asked by President Omar Hassan Al-Beshir to serve as Sudanese ambassador to Egypt Abdul-Halim saw the post as a golden opportunity to put his diplomatic skills to the test. No stranger to Egypt -- Abdul-Halim was educated at Alexandria University and was familiar with the Egyptian political scene -- he set out to promote stability and solidarity between Egypt and Sudan. Suspicious of the Sudanese regime, Cairo had accused it of harbouring Egyptian militant Islamists. The then speaker of the Sudanese parliament, Hassan Al-Turabi, Sudan's chief Islamist ideologue, was persona non grata in Egypt following his threats to export Sudan's Islamist experiment across the country's northern border. Worse, members of the Sudanese government were suspected of involvement in the assassination attempt against President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1995. Undaunted, Ambassador Abdul-Halim worked tirelessly to build on the historic ties that bind the two countries. There were serious hurdles. He was the emissary of a government that hosted Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden. The militant Islamist regime he represented was in cahoots with one of the world's most feared terrorist organisations and Egypt was embroiled in a battle with Islamist militants who were said to be infiltrating the country from Sudan. Yet Abdul-Halim set out to work on mending fences with Egypt and in less than a decade Egypt and Sudan were once again fraternal neighbours. Turabi was imprisoned and Khartoum toned down its militancy. Abdul-Halim was neither a dogmatic politician nor a doctrinaire Islamist. He was a member of the Sudanese Communist Party in his youth, but soon discarded his early political affiliations to adopt first a liberal and then moderate Islamist political stance. Ahmed Abdul-Halim, former communist activist and much later information minister for Numeiri, who mercilessly persecuted Sudan's communists, now played cupid between Egypt's moderate regime and the Islamist militants. Despite his deteriorating health, he kept an interested and increasingly concerned eye on current events. Ahmed Abdul-Halim died in London. He is survived by his widow, three sons and a daughter.
