Sudanese politicians learn all the wrong lessons even as Juba is taking small steps to catch up with Khartoum, expounds Gamal Nkrumah The Sudanese people face lessons in the harsh facts of life after the secession of South Sudan. Khartoum is running into serious economic trouble. Sudan, bereft of the South, is on the verge of economic collapse. This may have implications for the country's attempt to shift from being an economy dependent on oil exports to one based on cheap labour, remittances from abroad and agriculture as it strives to catch up with North African and Middle Eastern living standards. Cool heads and good luck may help avert an economic meltdown and political disaster. The role of South Sudan in rescuing Khartoum has become paramount. Sudan's large domestic market compared with neighbours such as Chad, Eritrea and the Central African Republic may help it withstand the slump in its main export markets to the north such as Egypt and other North African countries. Sudan's traditional trading partners in North Africa such as Egypt and Libya are still reeling from the birth pangs of democratisation and political reform following the Arab awakening. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have seized the Sudanese economic downturn as an opportunity to invest. This is particularly palpable in the agricultural sector. The promise of oil revenues has given way, however, to cautious plodding towards averting economic disaster. The construction sector is a case in point. A number of Khartoum's boulevards are packed with jostling imported plush cars and lined with a few gleaming, Gulf Arab commissioned and Chinese constructed gleaming skyscrapers. Yet the pavements of the Sudanese capital city are thronged with beggars, donkey-drawn carts and drab people weighed down by back-breaking inflation. Omdurman, Khartoum's twin city across the Nile, is decrepit with fetid alleyways leading to nowhere. Against this grim backdrop it is difficult to imagine a peaceful transition to democracy that involves no bloodshed and little retribution to the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir. The Arab Spring has passed Sudan by. With the independence of South Sudan, Khartoum has failed to shed off its African cultural outlook and uproot its African heritage in spite of Al-Bashir's strenuous efforts to re-affirm Sudan's Arab identity. More worrisome, to Al-Bashir and his cohorts in the NCP, is the emergence of a new "South" in the frontline states of Blue Nile, South Kordofan, Abyei and Darfur that are geographically adjacent to the newly independent South Sudan. Ominously for the militantly Islamist NCP, the bulk of the population in these peripheral states of Sudan are politically inclined to pay allegiance to the ruling party in South Sudan, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). Given the choice most of the indigenous non-Arab people in these remote backwaters would rather vote for the SPLM and its affiliate political parties. This week's visit by South Sudan President Salva Kiir to Khartoum designed to iron out political differences with his Sudanese counterpart and strengthen economic links is seen as a historic event by Kiir and his hosts in Khartoum. Juba is concerned about Khartoum's attempts to sabotage the export of South Sudanese oil via pipelines ending in the main oil terminal on the Red Sea, Port Sudan. Khartoum is using the oil pipeline vital to the economic well-being of South Sudan as a trump card in its desperate bid to bring the restless regions of Darfur, Abyei, South Kordofan and Blue Nile under into firm grip. Khartoum also eschews the very notion of the SPLM participating in a multi-party pluralist political process in Sudan. How can the ruling party of a neighbouring state with economic clout play a decisive role in a fully-fledged Sudanese democracy? The SPLM insists that it be entitled to play a pivotal role in Sudanese politics. That is the challenge facing Al-Bashir. How can prudence and circumspection become a Sudanese characteristic, a remarkable turnabout from the cavalry flair of the Janjaweed Arab militias and Islamist parties' risk-taking and back-stabbing that used to be encoded in the Sudanese national DNA? Restraint has become the hallmark of the triumphant SPLM in South Sudan as well as in the North. Gone is the earlier bravado over winning over non-Arab indigenous peoples of Darfur, Abyei, South Kordofan and Blue Nile. The SPLM's caution and political acumen extends to its handling of the prickly economic questions and in particular oil that has fuelled exasperation, resentment and even indignation in both Juba and Khartoum. The SPLM has also worked patiently to raise South Sudan's regional and international profile and make Juba an earnest player in East African and Nile Basin politics. As the SPLM has seen that Juba's core interests lie within Africa, the bloom has come off the relationship with Khartoum and the Arab world at large. After meeting with Kiir, Al-Bashir flew to Qatar for further consultation and the soliciting of funding for several key projects. Qatar hosted peace talks on Darfur mediating between Al-Bashir and a number of Darfur armed opposition groups. The NTC has mooted the idea of talks with Sudan's major opposition parties to outline a reform strategy. Opposition groups, however, are sceptical concerning the NTC's intentions and are pressing for a transitional government of national unity, a notion the ruling NTC flatly rejects. Al-Bashir now needs to reset strained relations with his African neighbours. His tactics have so far failed to bear fruit. The Sudanese president's trick is that Khartoum tries to shake off the aftereffects of South Sudan's secession while embarking on a further set of oil-free economic and social reforms aimed at continuing the country's transformation, all without upsetting Al-Bashir's ruling NCP's dominance. Building political and civil society institutions and a strong market economy still has a long way to go in Sudan as any intrepid investor caught up in red tape in Khartoum or Port Sudan can attest. South Sudan in sharp contrast has found its place in the heart of Africa. And that place is much closer to the fledging democracies of Africa South of the Sahara than the troubled nations of the Arab awakening. For Khartoum, the rising star of the SPLM and South Sudan in Africa threatens to be a classic case of good news and bad news. The good news is that Juba is, or could soon be, a buoyant trading partner. The bad news is that the price for closer economic cooperation is political collaboration. The corrupt and autocratic order in Sudan is now wobbling so badly that it must come to an abrupt end. There is an innate animosity in Khartoum to the sponsorship and promotion of core Western political values such as pluralistic democracy and individual rights by the SPLM. However, the SPLM sponsorship of secularist values is nowhere near as brutal or as overt as the traditional repression by successive Sudanese governments including Al-Bashir's NCP of the peripheral non-Arab peoples of South Sudan, Darfur, Abyei, South Kordofan and Blue Nile. Moreover, the United States has made it abundantly clear that Washington would not accept the violent suppression of uprisings by the indigenous non-Arab peoples of the "new South Sudan" in the making. Sudanese ethnic groups -- Muslim and non-Muslim -- who identify themselves as non-Arab constitute a demographic majority in the country. Nubians in the far north of Sudan, Beja tribes in eastern Sudan and the Red Sea littoral, and a host of indigenous peoples in areas bordering South Sudan are reclaiming their African cultural heritage and demanding a say in the decision-making process in Khartoum. Arman, who is currently embarking on a tour of Western nations, stressed that issues pertaining to the Sudanese people are of great interest to Western policymakers. "After a quarter of a century of struggle for the downtrodden in Sudan under the banner of the SPLM, I am optimistic. I understand that the war crimes committed against the politically and socially marginalised peoples of Sudan is not going to be resolved in Damazin, Kadugoli or Al-Fasher [the provincial capitals of Blue Nile, South Kordofan and Darfur respectively]. But, it will ultimately be resolved in Khartoum when a democratic political system is in place," Arman told the Weekly.
