Sudan's ruling National Congress Party is missing a golden opportunity to restore the country's territorial integrity, laments Gamal Nkrumah Sudan's ruling National Congress Party (NCP) guards its privileges jealously in the name of religion and Arab nationalism. It insists that it is protecting Sudan's cultural identity at a time that its detractors point out that the NCP's intransigence has cost Sudan dearly. The country lost a third of its land mass, a quarter of its population and 75 per cent of its oil wealth, when South Sudan became an independent and sovereign nation in July. The NCP's attitude was a defiant "good riddance". Now is the time to heal festering wounds, though, a moment that should not be squandered. Instead, a new south is in the making in the peripheral border areas between Sudan and South Sudan. The debate about timelines is almost over. A new formidable military opposition grouping announced last Friday the commencement of its crusade against the NCP. The armed opposition group, the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), has already cautioned that if Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile go, so goes the Sudanese nation as we know it. The SRF's political star is on the rise in Sudan. Yet it would be rash to extract an anti-NCP resurgence from the SRF threat. It has been a long time coming, but the recent formation of an armed alliance against the Sudanese government has finally ushered in a new era in Sudanese domestic politics. The much-heralded move promises a manifesto for political change and social justice in Sudan. The new alliance is playing to a powerful secularist Sudanese non-Arab majority long marginalised and burned up with moral outrage against Arab hegemony. This may look like poetic justice to the peoples of the peripheral parts of Sudan such as Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile, whose inhabitants insist that they may be Muslim but they are certainly not Arabs. The SRF fighters sport dreadlocks and consider that they are black Africans and not Arabs. Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir's anxiety is understandable. Khartoum's trump card is its Pan-Arab posturing. South Kordofan and Blue Nile may look like Darfur writ large. However, the truth about the sinister happenings in the huge swathe of Sudan bordering South Sudan is far more complex. Darfur is in disarray. A quieter hope was that its predominantly Muslim population might save it from secession in the mould of South Sudan's. Darfur is an oversize South Kordofan and Blue Nile. President Al-Bashir triumphantly visited Kurmuk, the provincial capital of Blue Nile last week after the Sudanese government forces liberated it from Sudan People's Liberation Army -- North (SPLA-N) control. He claims that South Sudan is supporting the insurgents in Blue Nile. The SRF vowed to retake the town. Insurgencies are gaining momentum in the border states -- Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile -- and a growing number of Sudanese are impatient with the economic malaise gripping the country. The South Sudan secession is also viewed as a tactical error on the part of Al-Bashir and the NCP. His political and economic blunders turned a natural religious right wing and Pan-Arab constituency against the Sudanese president. Al-Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court based in The Hague, Netherlands, for committing alleged war crimes and genocide. Khartoum, meanwhile accuses South Sudan in connivance with the West of supplying the insurgents in the border states with arms and ammunition, a charge Juba hotly denies. The formation of SRF has highlighted how badly Al-Bashir has handled the Sudanese economy and the secession of South Sudan. "This is a military and political alliance," remarked Ibrahim Al-Hilu, a spokesman for the SRF. "We will coordinate fighting to end this government which wants no peace," Al-Hilu stressed. Some SRF stalwarts go further and demand that Bashir be served up a la Gaddafi. The international community, however, was not impressed by the SRF's agenda. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon urged the SRF and the Sudanese government to "refrain from the use of force". He also expressed his "deep concern" about developments in Sudan and called on the Sudanese government and its adversaries to "recommit to negotiated settlement". The SRF is composed of four main armed groups -- the SPLA-N, Darfur's Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the two splinter groups of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA). The SLA is split largely along tribal lines. One SLA group is headed an ethnic Zaghawa leader, Minni Arkou Minnawi. An ethnic Fur Abdel-Wahid Mohamed Al-Nour leads the other SLA group. The SLA began as a predominantly ethnic Fur organisation, the Fur being the largest of Darfur's ethnic groups after whom Sudan's war-torn westernmost province was named. Later members of the two other main ethnic groups in Darfur, the Zaghawa and the Masalit, joined forces. "The objective of the SLA is to create a united, democratic Sudan," Minnawi explained. "Sudan's unity must ultimately be based on the right to self-determination and the free will of the various peoples of Sudan�ê� on an economic and political system that addresses the uneven development and marginalisation that have plagued the country since independence," he extrapolated. JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim, author of the celebrated The Black Book: Imbalance of Power and Wealth in Sudan, concurred. He warned that Arabs have a disproportionate representation at top levels of government and administration in Sudan which is bound to engender an uprising to rectify the historical injustices committed against the indigenous non-Arab peoples of Sudan. As a political manifesto his book is considered a rallying cry to the disadvantaged groups in the country. Ibrahim's declaration of his more contemplative faith has been steered by his spiritual mentor Sheikh Hassan Al-Turabi Sudan's chief Islamist ideologue and the leader of the opposition Popular Congress Party. A onetime close political associate of President Al-Bashir, Al-Turabi is now one of his most vociferous adversaries. Al-Turabi has a large following in Darfur, but a majority of the SLA groups are secularists and leftists. The political orientation of the SRF alliance as a whole is progressive and anti-militant Islamist. The Sudanese government claims that the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was JEM's chief backer, a charge Ibrahim hotly denies. Ibrahim's quest for social justice does not necessarily extend to other aspects of political Islam. Yet JEM adopts popular Sudanese open-minded and liberal thinking on political Islam. It refuses to play to the religious rightwing gallery in the ruling clique of Khartoum. JEM and other groups within the SRF alliance abhor the militant Islamist agenda adopted by the ruling NCP. The storm clouds are gathering in the border states and if Bashir doesn't step down or make radical concessions in the immediate future, his prospects look very dark.
