The SPLA-United continued to seriously hamper the rival official movement, but soon failed to live up to its own name of ‘United’. Inter-Nuer tribal clashes as well as traditional non-political disputes with neighbouring tribes caused many casualties, especially now government arms were plentiful. The SPLA-United held its first major congress at Akobo in September 1994 to re-organize itself. In the traditional southern manner, a new name, it was thought, would work wonders. Some of the commanders who had been considered too close to Khartoum, such as Akol and Kerubino, were ousted. Machar, the great survivor, took command of the newly minted South Sudan Independence Movement/Army (SSIM/A). The strategy failed and Machar retreated to a government outpost at Kodok on the White Nile. Many of his Nuer troops and commanders rejoined the official SPLA. Desperate, Machar travelled to Addis to join up with the exiled opposition to Khartoum, the National Democratic alliance, in which Garang was already a prominent, if ill-fitting, member. Machar, however, was kicked out of the country by the new government. He tried reviving his local support in Nuerland, but he was, for the time being, a busted flush.
He had nowhere else to go but Khartoum. With Kerubino at his side and other tribal leaders, he signed a separate peace, more an unconditional surrender, with President al-Bashir in April 1997. It was based on the Peace Charter signed a year before. The charter made clear that Sudan would remain unified, but at some unspecified date southerners could have a referendum on a federal system. This was a great propaganda tool for the government. In the summer of 1996 I travelled around the south on the so-called peace train. The tall imposing Machar, charismatic despite his lazy eye and gap-toothed smile, could charm foreigners with his educated manner (he was awarded a PhD at Bradford University in the UK) but – except for his ever-loyal core of Nuer – he seemed to have trouble persuading the smallish crowds in government-held towns such as Wau that he could replace his arch-rival, Garang, or that Khartoum would grant meaningful southern autonomy. A sad brass band, dressed in a strange uniform apparently from the French revolutionary period, greeted Machar when he arrived at the main government garrison inside Wau; it was the most tuneless music that I had ever heard in my life. It was symbolic of the pointless charade.
According to one acute observer, ‘The Peace Charter had not only not brought peace, but it had failed to halt the SPLA’s political and military resurgence. Neither Riek nor the government had much to show for their collaboration.’3 It also accelerated the civil war within the Nuer. Machar had helped to weaken – temporarily – the SPLA and also effectively handed over the control of the oilfields to Khartoum.
Paulino Matip, who had been made a major general in the Sudan army, was incensed that Machar had been chosen by Khartoum to lead the Nuer and refused to serve under him, though the government continued to pay Matip to deploy his Nuer militia to protect the oil installations at Bentiu. Machar had disgraced himself in the eyes of many southerners. The SPLA had been battered by infighting and heavy government offensives in 199394. In April 1994 Garang had convened a large congress at Chukudum. Roughly half the 500 delegates were civilians, the rest were commanders from across the south and the Nuba Mountains and the southern Blue Nile regions. Garang wanted to demonstrate his support from both civilians and military, and that he was concerned about the peasantry, despite numerous allegations of human rights abuses. The SPLM was poorly organized abroad, but a handful from the diaspora also attended. The question of independence versus the unified ‘New Sudan’ was not resolved, but the appearance and some of the substance of the SPLA’s claim to represent all the southern peoples were attempted.
The resurgence of the SPLA, along with the effective collapse of Machar’s army, meant that the bulk of the fighting was now done not by pro-government southern militias, but the regular army and the PDF. Khartoum endured heavy casualties, including the death of one of President al-Bashir’s brothers, Ahmed, who had been a volunteer in the PDF. Government forces started to pull back as the SPLA won a series of victories in Equatoria in late 1994 and in Bahr al-Ghazal in early 1995. In these reverses the PDF especially, as well as the regular army, suffered thousands of dead and wounded in the first months of 1995. Despite strict censorship, Khartoum was always a leaky place for secrets, and soon reasonably accurate reports spread on the rumour mill. Volunteers for the PDF dried up. At the beginning of 1996 morale was so low in the government forces that occasionally garrisons in the south would refuse to leave their fortifications. Al-Bashir conducted another purge of officers to remove the defeatists. Except for a number of major towns, the SPLA now took control of almost the whole south; militias which had been long-term Khartoum allies turned their weapons in favour of the SPLA. Even tough Arab militias in the Nuba Mountains made deals with the SPLA. A whole battalion of the Sudanese army surrendered at Yirrol, south-east of Rumbek. By spring 1996 the SPLA looked unstoppable. The military-led northern revolution seemed to be stuttering; al-Turabi’s emphasis on forging a new jihad by moral conversion could not work against the guns of the SPLA. Society might have been changed, but the battlefield had not.
The Egyptian assassination attempt
Al-Turabi did travel to the south on occasions to rally the faithful in their regional jihad, but he was still obsessed with the international mission. His third Popular Arab and Islamic Congress was held in Khartoum in March 1995. All the main Islamist groups attended, including those on the frontier of the Umma, the mujahedeen from the Philippines, for example. A major sticking point for some attendees was the use of ‘Arab’ in the Congress title. Many African delegates were unhappy, as was Louis Farrakhan’s delegation from America. Farrakhan, a calypso singer-turned imam, led the Nation of Islam. Amid the fractiousness, al-Turabi did manage to broker an agreement between rival banned jihadist groups from Egypt. This seriously discomfited the Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak, who had a strong personal distaste for al-Turabi’s Islamist ventures. Cairo had on occasions used the ancient territorial disputes between Sudan and Egypt to crank up pressures on Khartoum. He also cracked down again on the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates at home.
The March summit of Islamists was used by Egyptian radicals to finesse a plot to kill Mubarak, according to Egyptian intelligence. It had been planned for over a year. Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, later to lead al-Qaeda after its founder’s death, was allegedly the ringleader (though bin Laden was a resident of Khartoum at the time). Two months later, on 26 June 1995, President Mubarak flew in to the airport at Addis Ababa to attend the annual OAU summit. Egyptian intelligence had prudently provided their president with an armoured limousine to drive him from the airport into central Addis. A blue van pulled in front of the limo and two men came out firing machine guns, while snipers on nearby rooftops joined in. Mubarak was saved by his bullet-proof glass and his bodyguards, who killed five of the would-be assassins. The president ordered his limo to return to the airport from where he promptly flew home and gave an impromptu press conference at which he blamed Sudan for the attempted assassination (the third of six serious attempts during his career). It was lucky that Mubarak turned around to go back to the airport, because a second ambush awaited his cavalcade. Later, the assassins were identified as coming from Egypt’s Jamiat al-Islamiyya, aligned with the Islamic Jihad. Cairo, however, immediately denounced al-Turabi as the mastermind of the plot. Khartoum issued a bland denial and condolences, though al-Turabi rather undermined the government’s attempt at fence-mending by calling the assassins ‘messengers of the Islamic faith’. Adding insult to injury, the narcissistic al-Turabi also said that he found Mubarak ‘to be very far below my level of thinking and my view, and too stupid to understand my pronouncements’. This was not an ideal way to treat the leading Arab nation and a sensitive neighbour with a powerful military. Khartoum was often its own worse enemy in the diplomatic game. At his comfortable but rather ordinary home in Khartoum North, al-Turabi gave interviews to journalists denying his involvement in the Mubarak plot, but nonetheless praising the attem
pt to get rid of the ‘Egyptian Pharoah’.
A UN report later revealed that the weapons used had been flown into Addis by Sudan Airways; a bit of a giveaway, that. And stupid because Ethiopia was awash with weapons and it would have been much easier, and more deniable, to smuggle the guns across the porous border. Some of the assassins had been issued with Sudanese passports and had sojourned in Sudan. Khartoum had been caught redhanded.
There was no evidence to directly implicate President al-Bashir who was still keeping a low profile, but Mubarak also lashed out at him calling him a ‘pygmy despot’ (though he was of average height). Soon Mubarak found out that the house in Addis used by the assassins had been rented by a Sudanese agent acting on behalf of Sudanese intelligence. He became incensed and called Khartoum a ‘fountain of terrorism’ and run by ‘thugs, criminals and crackpots’. He even threatened to invade Sudan and attack the alleged terrorist training camps. Anti-Sudan protests were organized in the streets of Cairo. Troops from both sides faced off along the border of the disputed Halayeb Triangle. This territory along the Red Sea, 7,950 square miles, was created in 1902 by the British colonial passion for drawing borders with straight lines, cutting through tribal allegiances. In addition, some oil was found there. The Egyptian army ejected Sudanese police and officials and took possession, although to this day Khartoum claims the territory – practically the one thing on which the government and the rebel Beja Congress (which claims its tribal possession) can agree on. The fact that Khartoum almost fought a full-scale border war with Egypt in 1995, while waging, in the Sudanese context, an almost total war in the south, demonstrates the high-wire act that the government was attempting to pull off. Somebody would soon fall off. In the military in Khartoum, al-Turabi was blamed for the crisis with Egypt, as well as many other problems. The man couldn’t keep his mouth shut, was the opinion of some senior officers.
The Islamist jamborees, the influx of mujahedeen (although the visa requirement for the brothers was quietly reinstated in 1995) and finally the assassination attempt on Mubarak had alienated the country’s neighbour. Egypt was literally up in arms. Libya was hostile and still trying to encroach in Darfur. Ethiopia was truculent, not least because of the assassination attempt on its own soil, and Khartoum’s on-off support for Islamists in Somalia. Kenya and Uganda were staunchly supportive of their black brethren in the south. Zaire, the Central African Republic and Chad were unstable and sometimes hostile. Eritrea had changed sides and was now supporting the Beja Congress attacks in eastern Sudan. Some Arab states, notably Syria, were concerned about Khartoum’s appetite for radical Islamists. And the West was generally hostile to the north and increasingly supportive of the southern rebellion. Would the military regime in Khartoum collapse again? African experts predicted that outcome almost daily.
It got worse. The UN Security Council ordered Khartoum to extradite three surviving gunmen from the Addis attack on Mubarak who had sought refuge in Sudan. Khartoum dragged its feet, not least in the UN. It takes a lot to unite the Security Council, but Khartoum managed it: in January 1966 Resolution 1044 imposed UN sanctions on Sudan. In addition, the US accused Khartoum of providing a safe haven for terrorists. A few months later, more sanctions were imposed on the country, for example restricting travel for its diplomats. Sudan had become a pariah state, surrounded by enemies on all sides. One way out was to offer Osama bin Laden as a sacrificial lamb.
Osama bin Laden and the intelligence conundrum
I had long taken an interest in bin Laden since I had worked in Afghanistan in 1984 and his base was next to where I was temporarily located. The Afghan mujahedeen I was accompanying were rigorously kept away from ‘the Arabs’, so I didn’t get to meet him. I followed his career from then on, however. In summer 1996 I flew out to Khartoum hoping to interview him, but he had flown the coop shortly before I could get there. After he had left Sudan, Khartoum launched a PR campaign to say that the Americans, British and Saudis had refused intelligence contacts that suggested Khartoum would have done a deal over Osama. The Sudanese emphasized that they had handed over Carlos the Jackal to the French in 1994. Was the bin Laden offer genuine? If it were, then the whole of world history might have been different. The story is still shrouded in mystery, however. The Sudanese Mukhabarat was good at ‘grey ops’: mixing some facts with clever disinformation. Nevertheless, President Clinton admitted in his memoirs that turning down the bin Laden offer was the ‘greatest mistake’ of his presidency. This was hindsight, however, five years before the abominations of 9/11.
Washington regarded the ejection of bin Laden from Sudan as a victory. Grabbing him was not apparently on the radar. On 18 May 1996 a chartered C-130 plane took bin Laden, his wives, children and over 100 of his followers to Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. En route the plane refuelled at the Gulf state of Qatar – which had close ties with Washington – but was allowed to proceed unhindered.
If the handover offer were serious why didn’t the CIA respond, or at the very least react to a fax allegedly sent by the Mukhabarat detailing the exit plans of the Saudi Islamist? It would have been straightforward to intercept the plane, not least in Qatar. The deal was supposed to be that the US would drop sanctions against Sudan. And, moreover, Khartoum offered close intelligence liaison – this offer was taken up tepidly in 2000 and intensely after 9/11.
The CIA had initially fingered bin Laden for the 1993 World Center attack, assumed he had a hand in the assassination attempt on Mubarak, and certainly, the Americans said, he had organized terror training bases in Sudan. After US sanctions were imposed in 1996, the US embassy was closed in Khartoum and this reduced the quality of American intelligence, which had to rely on well-paid but unreliable if imaginative local sources. The Sudanese insisted that bin Laden was engaged only in engineering projects and charity work. Nevertheless, Washington leaned heavily on Khartoum to kick out the Saudi, saying that he could go anywhere, except Somalia. Washington was still smarting from its military debacle in Mogadishu. According to a senior Sudanese minister who knew bin Laden well, the Saudi was ‘very angry’ at his ouster. Bin Laden told the Minister, ‘The Saudis and the US didn’t even pay you; you are throwing me out for nothing.’ Nor was bin Laden paid the large amount of money he was owed by Khartoum for his extensive construction projects, especially road building. Bin Laden had become the largest private landowner in the country, with vast interests in the east. It was also estimated that he had left $50 million in equipment and other assets. The Saudi’s parting shot was to call the Khartoum government ‘a mix of religion and organized crime’.
During this international intelligence debate, I interviewed Lieutenant General Gutbi al-Mahdi, who had just (officially) retired as head of the Mukhabarat. He denied that bin Laden had been energetically setting up the embryonic al-Qaeda while in Sudan. The spymaster said:
When he was here, he was under close surveillance. We were watching him. He was busy. He was preoccupied by his business … Kicking him out was a big mistake … In Afghanistan no one could watch him, not even the Americans.
He said that he offered the CIA the bin Laden files in mid-1997. The Mukhabarat had watched his every move, literally. Equally important were the details of the many Islamists who had travelled to meet the Saudi.
Could the information in those files have prevented 9/11?
‘Definitely,’ al-Mahdi said. ‘The Americans didn’t want to look at those files.’
Why on earth not?
‘Because their preoccupation was demonizing the government of Sudan rather than tracking down terrorists.’
A key question remains: if bin Laden was not up to anything in Sudan, why were the files intelligence gold?
Once bin Laden had gone, Sudanese intelligence conveniently played up their alleged offer of the Saudi warlord’s head on a platter. The many opponents of Khartoum argued that Khartoum was too implicated to hand the Islamist over to the CIA. Inside the Washington intelligence community there was intense debate, mostl
y after the Saudi had moved to Afghanistan. Most intelligence experts said to me, in essence: ‘If the offer was really there, we would have taken it. Why not?’ A good question. With hindsight, the State Department worried that no hard evidence was available to convict bin Laden in an open court in the US. Others considered the Khartoum offer a bluff. Even if it were not, intelligence dialogue would weaken the sanctions pressure on a ‘rogue’ state the US was trying to isolate.
The Sudanese line at the time was the American campaign to kick out bin Laden and Khartoum’s compliance angered the Saudi so much that this turned him on to his international jihad. Prevented from plying his trade as an engineer, war was the obvious alternative. This is not an entirely satisfactory psychological explanation for bin Laden’s behaviour, especially as he had trodden the warlord path in the 1980s in Afghanistan.
In 1998 bin Laden was held responsible by Washington for the US embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, with heavy loss of life. Partly in response to these bombings, the Pentagon launched a wave of cruise missiles against Sudan (and Afghanistan). Unfortunately, the main target in Sudan turned out to be not a chemical weapon precursor site, but the al-Shifa medical facility, which produced anti-malaria and veterinary products. Embarrassingly, the British ambassador had recently attended the opening of the facility. I carefully checked through the site, after the bombing, and saw only destroyed medicines. Scientists in British intelligence confirmed this to be true and the Americans, much later, admitted the factory had no proven connection to bin Laden or chemical weapons, although they did not rush to compensate the innocent owner of the facility. Moreover, the film cameraman I worked with had been given total licence to film inside al-Shifa just before the missiles completely destroyed the factory. There were no guards there at all, my colleague said.
Omar Al-Bashir and Africa's Longest War Page 17
