Gamal Nkrumah highlights how hard it is out there in Sudan and Somalia The legend is that Sudan never lives up to its vast potential. It could easily become the bread basket of Africa and the Middle East. More is at stake today than at any historical moment in Sudanese history. Sudan is a country of the future, and all the big players know it. Political theatre in Sudan has long tended to the absurd. Since independence from Britain in 1956, the vast country -- Africa's largest -- has been embroiled in civil war and political turmoil. Oil in abundance has been discovered mainly in the south of the country, but the economic promise has eluded the long-suffering Sudanese people because of continued political instability and war in the outlying regions of the country. And the reason for the theatrics? The Sudanese military has found it extremely difficult not to intervene in Sudanese politics. There are many reasons why the Sudanese conflicts have remained intractable: national identity, history, colonial divide-and-rule policies, religion and underdevelopment. The scars of violence and the meddling of foreign powers, too, have played a conspicuous part in the waning political fortunes of the country. But one factor that gets less attention than it should is its tremendous economic potential. This economic potential against the backdrop of the two unamalgamated worlds of predominantly Muslim northern Sudan and mainly Christian and non- Arab southern Sudan bodes ill. These are awkward times in the fraught 52 years of Sudanese independence. The scramble for appropriating Sudanese riches threatens to undermine the revenues that are expected to accrue in the years ahead. How Sudan deals with its wealth is a mounting preoccupation for its leaders. An international coalition of 29 human rights groups urged the arrest of two prominent Sudanese suspected war criminals. The announcement was made this week on the first anniversary of the decision to issue warrant arrests for Ahmed Haroun, Sudan's humanitarian affairs minister, and Ali Kushayb, a notorious leader of the Janjaweed militias reputed to be responsible for much of the violence and human rights violations in the war-torn westernmost Sudanese province of Darfur by the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court. New rules became inevitable the moment Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir usurped power in a military coup d'état in 1989. And, in spite of the Comprehensive Peace Accord signed by the Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army on 9 January 2005, the risk of collision still looms large. So Sudanese national integration must proceed along three tracks: institutionalising a secular constitution and political system that accommodates both Muslims and non-Muslims and that would encourage the latter towards allegiance to the Sudanese state; working out a fair wealth-sharing mechanism that would enable the Sudanese people in rural backwaters to partake of the country's newfound economic boom; and ensuring that the people of the periphery have a say in the decision-making processes that directly impact their lives. Sudan's predicament is only overshadowed by Somalia's descent into hell, though the situation in Somalia is rather different. While the militant Islamists are well entrenched in Somalia, they were deprived of any position in its political establishment. That is largely because of the intervention of Ethiopia, encouraged by the US and the UN, which created the secularist Transitional Federal Government (TFG). The Islamists, represented by the Council of Islamic Courts (CICs), however, have wide popular appeal and were in control of the country at one point, until Ethiopia occupied the country and installed the TFG. But there are good reasons to hesitate before plunging headlong into a purge of the Somali political system. First, the CICs were not solely to blame for the Somali crisis; it was rather the tribal warlords who fomented trouble. It is often said that the CICs lulled the Somali people into a false sense of security. The fact is that this radical political fringe did manage to restore peace and quiet for almost a year, in the face of foreign disapproval. They may know less about international relations and they may be less experienced in the art of diplomacy, but they have proven that they could run the country under very difficult circumstances. As if internecine fighting was not enough, it is natural and right that both Somalis and Sudanese should seek lessons from their immediate past. Starting with their mistakes. Somali violence is steeped in tribal tradition. Economic mess, political chaos -- it would be convenient to blame Somalia's CICs for all that. The tempting answer would be to try to wriggle free from the dilemma with a compromise that would permit the CICs to share power with the TFG. Back to Sudan. "The losses of people who suffered murder, rape and persecution in Darfur deserve justice," Dismas Nkunda, co- chairman of the Darfur Consortium of African and Arab NGOs, was reported as saying by Amnesty International. "The Sudanese government has shown blatant disregard both for the authority of the Security Council and for the victims of their brutality," warned Richard Dicker of the International Justice Programme of Human Rights Watch. Why should Sudan be taken seriously when its leaders refuse to cooperate to remove such cancer from their midst? Buttering up the Sudanese government because of Sudan's vast reserves of oil, mineral and its agricultural potential, the Chinese and other emerging Asian economies are creating a new mood among business people, including even a few Gulf Arabs. A string of Westerners are poised to become equally obsessed with Sudan. Outsiders have caught the positive mood. Still the war, debt and high oil prices in the past before it was discovered in Sudan, derailed the country's previous growth spurts. Millions of southern Sudanese have fled the ruins of their once blooming country. The South's battered survivors have a will to stay the course. Challenges remain. Yet there are good reasons that one of Africa's most promising countries is starting to count in the world. The burden of the Darfur political impasse falls on those already at the margin. Against this backdrop, it is unreasonable to expect the Sudanese cabinet ministers to vilify in public their most wicked colleagues.
