We have all no doubt seen the pictures of the famine in Southern Sudan. Painful images. But, it is doubly painful when the images before your eyes are not of people whose anguished eyes you can put to the back of your mind after the initial shock; when the emaciated figures are from your home and not from some remote region whose name you soon forget.

Dr Zakaria Boldeng a general practitioner working in Birmingham for the past ten years is a Denka from the Bahr Alghazal region. One of the areas most affected by the current food shortage. ‘It is painful to watch any human fall down and die from starvation but, when it is one of your own people it is like watching your own brother dying.’ He said.

Determined not to feel helpless and powerless in the face of the crisis he has taken the initiative to mobilise Sudanese people living in the United Kingdom to fund raise for the relief initiative. ‘Ours is a morale lifting operation,’ he explained. ‘We are to collect money, dry foods and clothes. Then, the various Sudanese Committees from the whole of Britain will gather and vote two members, one of whom will be a medical doctor to actually take the assistance to the region. The impetus behind this effort,’ he said ‘is that hunger does not know politics.’ Dr Boldeng wants the people in the Bahr Alghazal region who are on the receiving end of the political, racial and religious elements that have proven to be so divisive and destructive throughout Sudan’s modern history to know that their fellow Sudanese have not forgotten them.

All around Britain small communities of Sudanese people from the north and south of Sudan and across religious, political and ethnic lines have taken up Dr Boldeng’s plea. They are putting their differences aside and pooling their efforts and resources together to raise funds for the emergency relief effort.

Last weekend at a school in Westminster the London committee organised a Sudan open day. It was very much in the spirit and scale of a school fete. An opportunity for members of the Sudanese community to get together. Money was raised through an entrance fee and through paying for tea and coffee and buying a traditional Sudanese meal that the women prepared themselves.

For a people at war, for a people divided by religion and race and in a conflict that can rank amongst the longest running and bloodiest, there was a tremendous amount of rapport between Southerners and Northerners in that school hall. An idealist might say: being foreigners and some of them political refugees in a foreign land brought those people together and somehow diluted their differences. But, even a pragmatist may concede that they were respecting Dr Boldeng’s plea in the face of this crisis. They were determined to not allow politics to sour their objective of gathering assistance for those on the brink of famine. A cynic may say it’s a fragile truce. One wrought in a far away country and in the neutral territory of a school hall. Whatever view one takes it is remarkable that all sides seem to be able to summon the goodwill and the political discipline to work together in a crisis.

Indeed this is an anomalous world conflict if ever there was one. Its people can rally together in a crisis. They interact socially with ease and, even in Khartoum despite great economic hardship and disparities in wealth there is very little racial tension. This civil war has been with Sudan on and off since its independence in 1956 from an Anglo Egyptian alliance. Exactly what is this conflict about? For almost half a century though the colonial policy was to keep the cultures of North and South apart no positive plans were made to integrate the southern provinces with the Black African territories of Kenya and Uganda. In 1947 as independence for Sudan became more of a possibility the policy of isolation was reversed. The British Civil Secretary stated that Southerners must be "equipped to stand up for themselves as socially and economically the equals of their partners in the North." The decision to integrate North and South came too late and too suddenly. An international Sudanisation committee was set up to arrange for the transfer of Civil Service and Administrative posts from colonial hands onto Sudanese hands. Before 1 January 1956 the date pre-set for Independence. Out of 800 hundred jobs to be Sudanised only 6 went to Southerners. As the date for full independence drew near Southerners began to realise that the better-educated northerners were going to have the greater advantage, they feared northern domination. In August 1955 the Equatorian Corps of the Sudan army in Toriet mutinied against their northern officers. Disorder spread throughout the south and thousands of northern residents and traders were massacred. Revenge massacres against Southerners in Khartoum took place. Order was quickly restored among the civilian populations but the rebellion lingered and gave birth to what is now the Civil War.

In the North of Sudan as in the South the people are ethnically diverse in themselves but the uniting cohesive ingredients here are the Arabic heritage and Islam. The northern Arab tribes are significantly mixed with Nubian and southern tribes and though there is an imbalance in the value and acknowledgement they give to this African heritage there are no issues of racial inferiority or superiority. To me, Sudan seems to be one of the few countries where colour is not at all an issue. In the same family you can have people ranging from a creamy to caramel to milk chocolate to plain chocolate complexions. Colour is a feature like any other but it is definitely not political. ‘Oh yes when they go abroad the Sudanese realise that they are all black together.’ Dr Boldeng agreed. The racism northerners encounter when they go outside Sudan educates them in their own attitude to the south.’ But what is the experience of being a Southerner in Northern Sudan I ask him. ‘In North Sudan on an individual, personal level interaction is amiable and of course if a Southerner is a Muslim then he is pretty much accepted as one of them. It is more a religious and cultural arrogance on the part of Northerners I suppose and at the level of politics where the real differences lie.’

The issues of Southern identity and economic inequality are the historical legacies at the heart of this conflict. The SPLA’s rebellion in the past fifteen years which forms the latest and most protracted episode in this Civil war was sparked when the former President Jaffar Nimiri in a bid to win popular support in the north introduced Islamic law in September 1983. Issues of religion and state continue to widen the rift between North and south as the current Government which came to power through a bloodless coup in June 1989 is committed to continuing in its Islamist political framework. On the Economic development front the South has never been able to extract itself from a subordinate status vis-à-vis the north. In a country that is poor even by third world standards the southerners are poorer still. This is partly due to a centrally and urban focused pattern of Government expenditure and partly to the ongoing Civil War which has been significant in hampering the establishment of infrastructures in the south.

The human suffering those spans half a century of conflict is unquantifiable but this war is crippling the country. According to a DTI report on Sudan in 1997 80% of the Sudan Government’s budget was allocated to military expenditure, this in a country where most rural communities still do not have basic amenities like running tap water and electricity. Every family in Khartoum if they have not lost a son in the war they know of someone who has. However, it is in the south, the arena of battle that the cost of this conflict has been most dear. I ask Dr Boldeng what it would be like to return to Abyei the border town where he grew up. ‘Terrible he said people have lost their cattle, whole communities have been displaced. They have fled their villages. Throughout the south the whole fabric of rural society has been disrupted.’ DrBoldeng’s hometown is destined for greater tension. Not only is Abyei a Border town, oil has been discovered in this territory. At the Nairobi peace talks last year the SPLA produced a new map including Abyei in southern territory should cession prove to be the only workable solution. Already skirmishes between Baggara Arabs and Denka settlers who for generations shared the land peacefully are proving fatal as both communities have found themselves armed pawns in this war.

Claire Short attracted controversy when she claimed attempts at resolving the conflict in Sudan should be attempted before launching into an emergency relief operation. Clearly she is frustrated by the use of food as a weapon of war. The areas most affected by the famine are those in SPLA hands and it is SPLA soldiers who administer the relief food. But the irony is that the Government of Sudan accepts this fact and has allowed WFP planes to air lift food Aid to the affected areas. A large-scale famine will attract bad publicity to the Sudanese Government. But, perhaps like the SPLA they realise that a resolution to this war will at least in the short term prove intractable, more so now that Oil has entered the equation and with it greed. The human cost of this war is plain enough to see. According to WFP estimates 2.6 million people desperately need emergency food Aid. Drought and fighting during the planting season means that the harvest when reaped in a couple of months time will not sustain the communities affected by food shortages this year. WFP forecasts suggest they will be dependant on international assistance until April 1999. The question as to who is funding this war effort and why remains to be investigated.

In April 2000 under the terms of the Khartoum agreement the south will decide its fate. A separate state or unity. A peace achieved through secession is bound to be inconclusive, as a border acceptable to both north and south has not been agreed upon. Both the Government and the SPLA agree that a united Sudan is vital to the country’s stability and prosperity. However, when it comes to translating this at the political, at the constitutional and policy level efforts at peaceful resolutions seem to flounder.

I wonder sometimes if my optimism for Sudan is unrealistic. I asked a white haired wise looking gentleman on the coffee queue at the Sudan open day whether we will ever see a peaceful united Sudan. ‘Just look around you in this Hall,’ he said. ‘With a little education the people on the ground in Sudan can live peacefully and respectfully together. It’s the political process that lets us down.’

Reference:

Reuters wires

The Arabs by Peter Mansfield (Penguin pub)