The agreement signed between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, on January 9 has been hailed as a “historic peace deal” that ends a long-drawn-out and ruinous war between the “Muslim north” and the “Christian”-animist south.
When Khartoum and the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) signed the Machakos peace deal on July 20, American officials said that they would exert pressure to make the deal stick.
Having bludgeoned the Sudanese government into cooperating with the “war on terrorism”, American officials now appear to believe that they can also bully it into accepting their plan to end the 19-year war between Khartoum and southern Sudanese rebels.
Always smooth, Dr Hassan al-Turabi, leader of Sudan’s opposition Popular National Congress (PNC), has been honing his skills lately. But the latest rabbit he pulled out of his turban, the alliance the PNC forged with the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), has landed him and scores of his supporters in prison.
Among the numerous allegations levelled against the government of Sudan, that of slavery has perhaps had the greatest negative impact. How could slavery be allowed in this day and age, is a common refrain heard in the west.
Third June last year a group of British experts on Sudan met in London to discuss Sudan -’Sudan in crisis’. Taking part in the closed meeting were officials from the ministries of defence and trade and industry, from the British aid agency, ODA (Overseas Development Administration)...
Sudan’s borders with Ethiopia had always been peaceful and, therefore, lightly defended with only symbolic units in the border posts. Kurmuk and Qaysan were two such small garrison towns on the Ethiopian borders.
