www.africa-confidential.com 13 October 2000 Vol 41 No 20 AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL SUDAN 2 SUDAN Duel in Khartoum The NIF still gets foreign mileage No room at the Security Council from the much-hyped dispute The NIF regime fails to shed its pariah status after its bruising battle between President Bashir and NIF to win support at the United Nations ideologue Turabi. At home the quarrel has taken on its own As we went to press, Sudanese were still celebrating Khartoum’s failure to get elected to the United momentum and now threatens the Nations Security Council on 10 October. This is the same Council which imposed sanctions on the Islamist government. National Islamic Front government in 1996 for its role in the assassination attempt against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the Organisation of African Unity summit in Ethiopia (AC Vol 41 No CONGO-KINSHASA 3 13). The NIF (now officially the National Congress but still called NIF) badly wanted the seat, in the hope that it would give it international respectability to go with its new-found oil wealth, which Dropping Kabila has been drawing European and Asian businesses to Khartoum. It contrived to get itself proposed Secret discussions between by the OAU as Africa’s candidate, won Arab League support and portrayed itself as a victim of regional leaders in Kampala, Kigali, United States’ imperialism. Luanda and Paris hold the best In Africa, only Uganda publicly opposed it, although many states said privately they would vote hope for peace in Congo-Kinshasa. against Khartoum. In February, NIF founder Hassan Abdullah el Turabi had boasted that Their common theme is growing Khartoum had ‘financed elections which were won by African Muslim presidents while the stupid impatience with President Kabila and his continuing obstruction of people of the West were not aware.’ In the UN contest, Mauritius won in four rounds by 113 to 55. the peace process. Angola is now The Security Council will not after all be chaired by Sudan’s UN Ambassador, El Fatih Mohamed paying for most military operations Ahmed Erwa, a former security major who was in Juba in 1992 at the height of government in support of Kabila. atrocities against civilians. The NIF works hard to get onto UN committees and includes the UN Human Rights Commission NIGERIA 5 in its tally. Strategic too is its membership of the Arab League Interior Ministers’ working group on ‘unconventional crime’, as the League calls computer crime and online political opposition, A military makeover terrorist or otherwise. Few question President Obasanjo’s knowledge of and Manipulating Egypt standing within the military. Two Even the NIF can’t manipulate everything and Sudanese now speak more openly than since its 1989 years ago he said that 90 per cent coup. Events are moving faster than it can control but this does not mean it is about to collapse. It of training officers joined the could, if the Yugoslavs have caught the Sudanese imagination enough, but the NIF is very different military for a political career. That would have to change if Nigeria from the regimes of General Ibrahim Abboud or Gen. Ja’afar Mohamed Nimeiri, which civilians were to move forward, he said. overthrew in 1964 and 1985. It will fight for the survival of its Islamist vision - and itself. Now there are signs that some of The NIF knows change means the end of its Islamism and is sucking individual politicians into his ideas are beginning to work. deals. However, the popular mood is not one of compromise and it is still feared the NIF may fight to the finish. Abroad, it will accentuate the charm campaign of which the failed UNSC bid was a SOUTH AFRICA 6 part. It will also try harder to appear as peacemaker, emphasising its talks with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development and with Policemen plod on the opposition National Democratic Alliance. Having used Egypt, opponent of southern self- determination, as a stick to beat the NDA with, it has manoeuvred the NDA into agreeing to talk South Africans feel unsafe. Fear of crime demoralises people and about a ‘comprehensive settlement’ and hopes to vacuum up more of the Alliance’s disparate pieces. is a major cause of emigration. In Asmara this month, President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir met NDA Chairman Mohamed High expectations therefore attach Osman el Mirghani, hoping both to tempt the Democratic Unionist Party chief on board (as it to the first black Commissioner of tempted his old Umma Party rival El Sadig Sideeg el Mahdi) and to demonstrate abroad, in time for Police, Jackie Selebi and the gung- the UN vote, that the NIF was keen to talk to the opposition. We hear Omer wanted to get Maulana ho Minister for Safety and Security Steve Tshwete. on his own but the DUP boss insisted on President Issayas Afeworki’s presence at their 50-minute meeting. (The Eritrean President’s current flirtation with Khartoum included a three-day visit just before the UN vote.) POINTERS 8 The NIF seemed taken aback when Mohamed Osman brought along a high-level NDA delegation, including such adamant political secularists as Brigadier Gen. Abdel Aziz Khalid Osman (Sudan Cameroon, Libya, Alliance Forces), Pagan Amon (SPLA) and urbane barrister Mansour Khalid, once Nimeiri’s Egypt and Zambia Foreign Minister and now representing the SPLA while staying close to the DUP. He helps to Pride of Lions; racist rage; maintain the crucial dialogue between the SPLA boss, Colonel John Garang de Mabior, and the democratic deficit; laying off hands. DUP, a link the NIF longs to break. 13 October 2000 Africa Confidential Vol 41 No 20 Duel in Khartoum The National Islamic Front still gets foreign mileage from the much ● 4 Jan 2000: Turabi says he has refused offer to chair party. hyped dispute between President Omer el Beshir and chief ideologue ● 6 Jan: NIF National Congress denies trying to expel Turabi as Hassan el Turabi. At home, the quarrel has taken on its own leader. momentum and threatens the Islamist government. A quick survey of ● Egypt endorses Omer against Turabi; so do other Arab states, some key dates shows: no ideological gap between the two; an attempt apparently including Saudi Arabia. to show Omer as traditional military ruler to Turabi’s fanatic; the NIF ● 16 Jan: Turabi ‘fears’ Omer ‘is heading for centralised and hardcore is with Omer (in effect, their figurehead); a real power- dictatorial rule’. struggle (AC passim) was highly stage-managed; and, unused to such ● 24 Jan: NIF announces compromise. subtleties, an angry factionalised NIF rank-and-file is causing real ● Eritrea and Uganda report normalising relations with Sudan; problems. Enter Turabi, elderly NIF ‘Emir’, and President Omer, Egypt and United Arab Emirates back Omer. public face of Turabi’s middle-aged rival and deputy, Vice-President ● After mediation, Turabi says dispute is over. Ali Osman. [AC comments in square brackets]. Key events: ● New Leadership Council packed with veteran Islamists. ● December 1998: Senior NIF hardliners, including security supremo ● 25 Jan: Defence Minister, speaking in Cairo, says Turabi ousted. Nafi’e Ali Nafi’e and Bakri Hassan Salih, sign ‘Memo of Ten’ ● 8 March: Constitutional Court declares Omer’s moves legal. against Turabi; all later side with Omer. ● Turabi [who founded Court] calls it ‘a lame duck’. ● 12 December 1999: Omer declares state of emergency; dissolves ● 5 May: Omer accuses Turabi of inciting the army, security, police parliament. and mujahideen against the government. ● 13 Dec: Turabi condemns ‘a plain and clear coup d’état’; Egypt ● 7 May: Turabi accuses Omer of betraying the Islamist movement ‘at supports Omer’s ‘efforts to restore Sudan’s stability’. the hand of the agents of the West’. ● Libya’s Colonel Moammar el Gadaffi backs ‘national ● Information Minister Ghazi Salah el Din says Turabi free to form reconciliation’ in Sudan. his own political party [he later sets up Popular National Congress - ● 14 Dec: Omer meets Turabi’s envoys but keeps emergency measures. and asked to join opposition National Democratic Alliance]. ● Turabi claims ‘public liberties and the just distribution of power and ● 12 May: Turabi says Omer ‘has stretched his reach into the whole wealth’ are threatened. works of the state...’ [something NIF did long before]. ● 15 Dec: Omer says [first time] he had ‘always been a committed ● 9 June: Police break up pro-Turabi protest by NIF Youth Union. Islamist’ and ‘seized power on orders from the Islamic movement’. ● 24 June: Turabi says ‘The Sudanese people have a way of dealing ● Arab League Secretary General Esmat Abdel Meguid supports ‘the withmilitary rule that suppresses freedom’. legitimate power in Sudan’ naming Omer. ● 26 June: Turabi stripped of party Secretary General’s post. ● Egyptian journalist Samir Ragab, close to Hosni Mubarak, says ● 27 June: Turabi says he’s forming breakaway party. Turabi was behind ‘terrorist plots hatched against Egypt’. ● 8 July: Turabi says, ‘The government intends to introduce secularism ● 18 Dec: Turabi admits [first time] the NIF masterminded the 1989 in response to foreign pressure from countries hostile to Islam.’ coup. ‘He [Omer] went to the Palace and I went to prison so that the ● 22 September: Government accuses Turabi’s supporters of rioting Movement would not be exposed.’ [protests in many towns started by opposition, Turabi’s people then ● 19 Dec: Turabi warns of street violence but denies calling for it. joined in]. ● 20 Dec: Omer calls for ‘a broad national front... we will discuss the ● 8 October: Student demonstrators fire on police: government form of their participation in power’. accuses Turabi’s people [noteworthy that Turabi’s militias bear ● MPs ask for emergency to be lifted.