Master-stroke or mischief?

By Gamal Nkrumah
The unthinkable has happened. Hassan Al-Turabi, chief Islamist ideologue and former ally of Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, has joined the chorus of dissent against the Sudanese government. Last week in Geneva, Al-Turabi's opposition Popular National Congress Party (PNC) signed a "memorandum of understanding" (MOU) with the most powerful Sudanese armed opposition group, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).
Predictably, the Sudanese authorities reacted angrily to the news. The pact between the SPLA and the PNC is "detrimental to [Sudan's] security," a government spokesman explained, going on to describe the SPLA as a "terrorist" organisation. The Sudanese authorities promptly branded Al-Turabi a traitor and imprisoned him together with over 100 of his PNC associates. Among those arrested were Hamed Omar Abdul-Marouf and Khalifa Sheikh Al-Saif, two of Al-Turabi's closest political aides.
Bagan Amoum and Yasser Arman signed the agreement on behalf of the SPLA and Mahboub Abdul-Salam and Omar Ibrahim Al-Turabi -- former diplomat and Hassan Al-Turabi's nephew -- signed on behalf of the PNC. Among those working behind the scenes to facilitate the agreement was the director-general of the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organisation, Kamel Al-Tayyib Idriss, a Sudanese national.
The MOU does not call for the SPLA to forgo the armed struggle, though it does put an accent on increased political collaboration between the SPLA and the PNC.
"Sudan's political, religious and cultural diversity necessitate the formulation of a social contract that prevents discrimination due to religion, culture, race, gender or geographic region," the agreement states. It also stresses that self-determination is a "legitimate right" of the people of southern Sudan and "the unity of Sudan should be determined by the free will of its people." The memorandum also emphasises the "need for escalating peaceful popular resistance to force the regime to abandon its totalitarian policy."
The move came as a surprise to the SPLA's partners in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the umbrella organisation that groups most of the Sudanese opposition parties. The largest northern Sudan-based group, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), was "thrown off balance" and "nonplussed", according to a senior DUP official who declined to be named. Publicly, the DUP and other NDA members are putting on a show of unity, avoiding making statements that might embarrass Garang or compromise the SPLA. Members of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP), however, expressed outrage. "Since his debut on the Sudanese political scene in 1965, Al-Turabi has been hell-bent against the Communists. We are naturally perturbed by these developments," explained Al-Tijani Al-Tayyib, a senior member of the NDA and a veteran SCP activist based in Cairo.
Some ask why Al-Turabi was brought into the opposition now. "The SPLA has [never] refused to talk to anyone who would... listen to our legitimate demands," Garang told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Our people are suffering and... Al-Turabi has now committed himself to democracy, publicly condemned the 1989 coup and endorsed self-determination for the southern Sudanese people." The SPLA leader went on to defend the move by saying, "We have not betrayed our people. Rather, we have silenced our detractors who claimed that we were intransigent, unreasonable and extreme. We have not compromised our principles. We have won Al-Turabi over," Garang explained.
Southern Sudanese groups appear ready to embrace the Garang-Al-Turabi rapprochement, putting their faith in the memorandum's call for a "historic settlement and comprehensive peaceful solution" to the Sudanese political crisis. Southerners viewed Al-Turabi as the devil incarnate when he was the Murshid (spiritual guide) of the PNC's forerunner, the now-defunct National Islamic Front (NIF), which controlled the country in the 1990s. But Cairo-based Abdun Agau of the Union of Sudan African Parties, an NDA member, sees the Al-Turabi-Garang deal as a positive development. "The SPLA has been negotiating with Al-Turabi's right-hand men, including Mohamed Al-Amin Khalifa, for a decade now in Nairobi, Abuja and Kampala, under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Agency for Development (IGAD) initiative," he told the Weekly. "Al-Turabi is [even] more approachable now that he is out of power."
According to PNC mouthpiece Rai Ash-Shaab, the agreement threw government forces into disarray and seriously damaged the morale of government forces who were about to embark on a military campaign against the SPLA. Brawling erupted among Islamist students, pro-Al-Turabi PNC members and anti-Al-Turabi government supporters on university campuses in Khartoum and provincial capitals.
The breakthrough PNC-SPLA meeting immediately preceded the naming of a new government by the Al-Bashir regime. Last December Al-Bashir won another five-year term as president in elections that were boycotted by the opposition, including the Umma Party, the DUP and the SPLA. The Umma Party, no longer a member of the NDA, declined to accept ministerial positions in the new coalition government and welcomed the PNC-SPLA agreement. "This is a step in the right direction," said party leader Sadig Al-Mahdi. "It seems that all of the Sudanese opposition forces are finally coming round to seeing things my way," he said tongue-in-cheek, referring to NDA criticism of his meeting Al-Turabi in Geneva two years ago.
Questions remain as to possible religious friction between the SPLA and Al-Turabi, but both Garang and Al-Turabi downplay this aspect of their new relationship. "Now that Al-Turabi appears to have reneged on his Islamic civilisation project, or Al-Mashrou'a Al-Hadari , we can find common ground. We want a democratic, secular and united Sudan. The hardline [Islamists] concede defeat," Garang said. "Differences in religion will pose no danger to the dialogue between the PNC and the SPLA," Al-Turabi concurred. "Our dialogue with the SPLA promises to be fruitful because the organisation is led by intellectuals and thinkers and not by military men and security thugs," Al-Turabi said before his arrest.
It seems that both the PNC and the SPLA-led NDA have decided that they cannot defeat the government without each other. "There is a growing conviction among Sudanese parties that nobody can govern Sudan alone," Al-Turabi said. "The memorandum of understanding between the SPLA and the PNC marks a greater unity of action and vision," he added. For his part, Garang hailed the agreement as the beginning of the end of the Al-Bashir regime. "We do not want to join the regime and we are not interested in reaching a power-sharing agreement with the ruling clique. What we want is for the ruling [Islamist regime] to negotiate itself out of power, just like the apartheid regime of South Africa did," Garang said. The government in Khartoum has "reached a political dead end and we want them to negotiate the terms of their surrender of power," Garang told the Weekly.
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