Tensions between southerners and northerners over next year's Sudanese referendum are worryingly high, writes Gamal Nkrumah Identity politics are invariably the cause of angry words between northerners and southerners in Sudan. Uncertainty has bedeviled policymaking since Sudan's independence from Britain in 1956. Today's uncertainty is no less scary, but it is even more confusing than at the onset of the National Islamic Front (NIF) during the 1990s. Surprises and conflicting signals abound. Notionally at peace since 2005, Sudan remains on high alert. The ruling National Congress Party (NCP) of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir and its reluctant, albeit major, coalition partner the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) are testing each other's resolve. The focus is now on the upcoming referendum that will determine the political destiny of southern Sudan and the country as a whole. The referendum will determine whether southern Sudan will become an independent nation or remain part of Sudan. The SPLM has succeeded in turning the referendum into a contest. Several points remain in the party's favour, including its appeal to secular forces throughout the country. Al-Bashir's NCP is threatening to match the SPLM gaffe- for-gaffe. The risk of a major confrontation between the NCP- led Islamists who dominate the Sudanese political establishment in Khartoum and its protagonists in the far-flung peripheries of the country cannot be discounted. Moreover, much of the criticism of the SPLM by the NCP and other northern political parties has been specious. For instance, reports this week resurfaced of the SPLM's alleged harbour of Darfur armed opposition groups and giving shelter and support to the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), perhaps the most powerful Darfur armed opposition group. What many in the north fail to understand is that the SPLM has never seen itself as an exclusively southern political party, but rather a national party with a devoted following in every corner of Sudan. Against this backdrop, the SPLM does have a strong southern constituency, but also with an influential retinue in the rest of the country, including the national capital Khartoum and fringe parts of sprawling Sudan, Africa's largest nation. The SPLM has traditionally seen itself as the champion of the underdog with a strong following in peripheral non-Arab areas of northern Sudan such as the Nuba Mountains of Kordofan, the disputed oil-rich enclave of Abyei and the southern Blue Nile region. Much of Sudan's pain is self-inflicted. A botched attempt to rectify the shortcomings of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed by the SPLM and the government of Al-Bashir in January 2005 has put off the bulk of southern Sudanese. More damagingly, the failure of the CPA to resolve the fundamental problem of the feeling of alienation prevalent among southern Sudanese and non-Arab peoples of Sudan in general exacerbated political tensions. This in turn has damaged the image of the signatories of the CPA and cast a long shadow of doubt on the credibility of the CPA. Dissatisfaction at the Byzantine intriguing that led to the widely perceived failure of the CPA remains strong. This is understandable because the expectations of the southerners in the aftermath of the signing of the CPA were exceptionally high. The powder keg in Sudan exists precisely because the reasons behind the Sudanese civil war -- that lasted over two decades, Africa's longest running conflict -- have not been properly dealt with. The concerns of the southern Sudanese and other politically marginalised non-Arab peoples of Sudan have, if anything, sharpened since the signing of the CPA. The NCP-supported Arab militias are systematically raising defences and acquiring increasingly sophisticated weapons. In Darfur and Kordofan, in western Sudan, they constitute a threat to peace and security as far as the indigenous non-Arab population is concerned. The outlook in these areas does not look bright. The protagonists in these remote backwaters of Sudan have pledged to escalate violence sharply if long-lasting peace does not prevail. That this would be a disaster for Sudan is quite evident. The SPLM, it must be acknowledged by all and sundry, has a key role to play in Darfur as its political clout and influence is not restricted to southern Sudan. The NCP, too, claims that the aggressive talk it adopts is itself just a form of deterrence. It would be comforting to believe that cool heads on either side would establish law and order. The worry is that in the current tinder-box environment in Sudan a small flare-up in Darfur could escalate and have dire consequences for the peace process in Sudan and negatively impact the result of the referendum scheduled for January 2009. A comprehensive answer to the political impasse in Darfur and Sudan as a whole will only be found through a comprehensive negotiated settlement. A number of key outstanding issues are widely seen as a bone of contention between the SPLM and the NCP. The conflict of interest between the SPLM and the NCP is depicted as a clash of wills between southerners and northerners in Sudan. Among the outstanding key issues is the drawing of the precise territorial boundaries between northern and southern Sudan. The frontier regions between north and south happen to be among the areas of the country richest in oil reserves, including the disputed oil-rich enclave of Abyei. Recently, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, ruled that Abyei belongs to southern Sudan. Abyei is peopled predominantly by the Dinka Ngok ethnic group but the north claims the disputed territory as its own because it has a sizeable minority of nomadic Messeiriya Arab tribesmen and their cattle. The SPLM has warned the NCP is resettling large numbers of ethnic Arab permanently in Abyei to change the ethnic composition of Abyei in favour of the Arabs, a claim the NCP disputes. Peace in Abyei has been kept through a cobbled- together system of mutual deterrence between Dinka Ngok and Messeiriya. If the southern Sudanese people decide to secede, the people of Abyei, the Nuba Mountains, southern Blue Nile and Darfur might be tempted to follow suit. With so many trigger-happy combatants in the far-flung regions of Sudan, a permanent conflict resolution formula in the entire country should be found. But until a deal is clinched, the best course is to sit quite still and hope for the best. Or better still, just jaw-jaw.
