Separatist wildfire reaches South Kordofan even as Khartoum signs a peace accord in Qatar with one of Darfur's most insignificant opposition groups, notes Gamal Nkrumah Shorn of South Sudan, Khartoum is desperately trying to cut through the Gordian knot into which it has tied itself in Darfur. For decades, successive Sudanese governments ignored the pressing demands of the people of Darfur, one of the country's most impoverished and underdeveloped regions. Today, somewhat belatedly Khartoum is trying desperately to make amends. It must be honest with the people of Darfur or scale back any vision of a unified North Sudan. Even as Sudan is struggling to put together its house in order after the secession of South Sudan, warning signs keep flashing of an erosion of trust in its commitment to appease the marginal non-Arab peoples of Sudan's far-flung regions. Darfur is a hard nut to crack. And the Sudanese authorities know this all too well. Some 60 per cent of the lower ranks of the Sudanese army come from Darfur. Few of the higher-ranking top officers, however, hail from Darfur. This has been a perennial bone of contention between Khartoum and the people of Darfur. This week, the Sudanese government and the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM), not to be confused with the much larger and influential Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) signed a peace accord in Qatar. The reconciliation between the LJM and the Sudanese government was coordinated under the auspices of the Qatari government, the United Nations and African Union. The LJM does not command the same authority as does JEM or the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) another of the armed Darfur opposition movements, both of which have declined to sign the Doha peace accord with the Sudanese government. Without the blessing of the SLA and JEM, a permanent and pervasive peace cannot be secured in Darfur. It is against this grim backdrop that few Sudan observers are satisfied with the latest Darfur peace accord. Only now is the Sudanese government getting to grips with a festering problem it should have confronted some years ago. There is still, however, a mountain to climb that is even higher than Darfur's sacred Jebel Marra. The people of Darfur need more than the usual diet of half-hearted deliberations by the powers that be in Khartoum. The Doha peace accord is a step forward, but clearly it is not enough. Sudanese presidential special advisor on Darfur Ghazi Salah Al-Din stressed that this is a new beginning. Yet the omens do not bode well. JEM and the SLA have rescinded on two previous peace talks with the Sudanese government. The SLA actually signed a peace accord with the Sudanese government in May 2006. Its leader Minni Arku Minawi joined the government in Khartoum only to withdraw later after a brush with Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir. JEM, too, engaged in peace talks with Khartoum in February 2009 only to pull out of the negotiations in frustration with what it termed the Sudanese government's duplicity. The Qatar-hosted peace talks were meant to ensure a "trust-building and good intentions" agreement. Yet the 2009 peace deliberations ended in failure. "The 2009 peace document called for a halt to the violations against the displaced people in refugee camps, and the stopping of indiscriminate bombing by the Sudanese government forces in addition to the exchange of prisoners," JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim told Al-Ahram Weekly. "We are still fighting for our legitimate rights," he added. The main stumbling block as far as this week's peace accord with the LJM was concerned revolved around the prickly question of whether the vice-president of Sudan should or should not be a native of Darfur. The LJM insisted that in any future Sudanese government the vice-president should hail from Darfur, a request that Khartoum resisted as being an ominous prelude to future secession with Darfur following in the footsteps of South Sudan. Khartoum argues that Darfur is an integral part of Sudan and therefore the vice-president should not necessarily be a native of Darfur. Here is what is not getting its due attention. The crisis in Darfur is in danger of spreading to neighbouring regions with similar problems. Of key concern is the rapidly deteriorating situation in South Kordofan, a region with a similar ethnic mix to that of Darfur. The Sudanese government has long viewed the Nuba Mountain people of South Kordofan suspiciously as fifth columnists. The ethnic Nuba have long supported the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the ruling party in the newly independent South Sudan. The political sympathies of the ethnic Nuba lie with the SPLM. The UN has deployed 4,000 Ethiopian peacekeeping troops in Abyei, the disputed oil-rich enclave sandwiched between Darfur, South Sudan and South Kordofan. The international community has deemed that there is a need for an inquiry into alleged atrocities committed by the Sudanese government against the ethnic Nuba in retaliation for their apolitical allegiance to the SPLM. Violent clashes between the Nuba and Arabised nomadic tribal groups intensified in recent months. "I think we are all extremely worried about the situation [in South Kordofan] and the alarming allegations we are hearing of mass graves, disappearances of civilians, and the targeting of people on an ethnic basis," said Valerie Amos, UN undersecretary of state for humanitarian affairs. "It is very important that these allegations are investigated," Amos told Al-Jazeera recently. The Sudanese government, however, views the international allegations as gross interference in its domestic affairs and an infringement on Sudan's national sovereignty and territorial integrity. "I can assure you that there was not a single civilian casualty during those operations which targeted SPLM forces," Daffa-Allah Al-Hajj Ali Osman, the Sudanese ambassador to the UN, told Al-Jazeera. However, the conflict and political tensions in Darfur have left the Sudanese government looking shifty and inept. If it wants to recover its good name, Sudan would have to resolve both the Darfur and South Kordofan crises once and for all.
