South Sudan: Who Says Al Bashir and His Cohorts Will Honour Agreements?

For South Sudanese it is not a surprise but the senior officials of AU secretariat in Addis Ababa who propel the wheel of talks and agreements between Sudan and South Sudan should begin to understand the Sudanese mentality in dealing with other people on crucial issues of national, regional and international dimensions.

When Southern writers like Justice Abel Alier, a respected personality at all levels who had worked at the top echelon of the Government in Khartoum as second Vice President during the era of Jaafar Mohammed Nimeiri (1969-85) can say boldly that the Arabs dishonoured many agreements in Sudan it was not for fun but for information to the world about the dishonesty of these people in that country.

Recently when the two negotiating teams from the two countries were brought closer by narrowing the gap in their protracted negotiations on several crucial issues related to post independence concerns, the AU thought they had made it when the two signed an agreement on citizenship and border demarcation.

But see how they were misled by Sudanese negotiators especially that man called Idris Abdel Gadir a former senior security officer who is one of the confusing elements in the Sudanese political system led by National Congress Party NCP. Just as some people in South Sudanese community are debating whether it would be the right thing for our President to host Al Bashir, the most wanted criminal for committing crimes against humanity, carrying out genocide and other serious offences in a summit at the beginning of coming April, the Sudan as usual have come out with their conditions which takes the agreement back to AU secretariat in Addis Ababa.

There are two conditions the Sudanese have come out with boldly before implementation of the 15th March Addis Ababa AU sponsored agreement on citizenship and border demarcation. Their foreign minister Ali Karti the commander of mujahideen (soldiers for defence of God) had presented his government condition that before any summit they have a security issue with South Sudan to settle first and that they believe South Sudan supports the SPLM-N and Darfur rebels in their resurrection against their government. Yet South Sudan on several occasions in unequivocal terms stated its position that it does not support these rebels.

Therefore should South Sudan accepts to sit with Sudan to settle what the former claims as security issues emanating from its support to Sudanese rebels then the country would have entangled itself in a web of conspiracy aimed at holding it responsible for the rebel fight against the government in Khartoum with its support. South Sudan had been throughout stating that it has no hands in the rebellion in Sudan and that it does not support the SPLM-N and the Darfur rebels.

By putting as a condition South Sudan repudiation of its position of supporting the rebels first before the summit between Al Bashir and Kiir to ratify the 13th March Addis Agreement on citizenship and border demarcation, the Sudan had already thrown the agreement into the dustbin before even the ink with which it was signed could dry.

The other obstacle to ratification of this agreement in the proposed summit was the widespread condemnation of the agreement by a politico-religious extremist group whose imams last Friday throughout the Sudanese capital comprising of the three towns preached from the pulpits their outright rejection of estimated 500,000 South Sudanese residing in Sudan because they claimed these Southerners would be a security risk to their nation and themselves.

Both the official and public reaction to the agreement from the Sudan are unfavourable for the way forward. AU and the international community should think of a better way of demarcating the border between the two nations based on the borderline of 1956. As for the 500,000 inhabitants of South Sudan still in the North their country has abundant space of land and they should think of coming home instead of waiting for the outrages of the Just Peace Forum group led by racist Al Tayed Mustafa, the maternal uncle of Omer Al Bashir.

Sudan is not a country where our people should fix their hopes for better lives because they will be enslaved like their 35,000 fellow South Sudanese who are kept as domestic slaves in Arab households including that of Al Bashir and his ministers.