National freedom had come, but it was precarious on the border, but even more so within the borders. President Salva Kiir had been an able military commander. He had to become a statesman if he were to avoid a warfare state with one-party (or one-tribe) rule. Salva Kiir had won his war, but could he win the peace?
Chapter 11
Aftermath
Khartoum kept its title of the Republic of Sudan. Omar al-Bashir was still in power, although he had ‘lost the south’ according to his internal critics, mainly in the military-intelligence nexus. Some securocrats even quietly suggested that their president’s ICC millstone was an impediment to his continuation in office. The majority of the NCP stalwarts stayed loyal to the president, however. Most of the senior leaders I spoke to felt that the president had shown courage in risking all for a southern peace deal. One of the most powerful party leaders, Dr Ibrahim Ghandour, told me: ‘We never gave up trying for unity. We gave them what was in the CPA … We worked until the last minute, although half-way through [the CPA process] we felt they would go their own way’. He said starkly, ‘They are not ready for government.’ He also said that the president felt ‘disheartened’ by the breakdown of the CPA. ‘But he went to Juba and stated publicly that he would accept the result of the referendum. We were the first state to recognize the new government.’ The president’s take was poignant. He told me: ‘I saw the suffering of the people in the south and the famine. I decided it was better to have two Sudans with peace.’
Border fighting continued after southern independence, especially in Blue Nile State. Khartoum was blamed for air raids into the south. In October 2011 Salva Kiir made his first visit to Khartoum as head of an independent state. Al-Bashir and Kiir had always had a good military man to military man relationship. Al-Bashir said of their relationship: ‘Personally, we’re good friends, but sometimes he had some bad guys around him.’ So they sat down alone to try to resolve their disputes on the border and oil revenues. Despite their personal rapport, the dynamics of the conflicts, especially in the south, now seemed almost beyond their control. And al-Bashir still had to contend with the ICC. A Kenyan judge issued an arrest warrant for the president and said if he visited the country again he would be arrested. At the same time, the ICC’s chief prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Sudan’s defence minister for alleged war crimes in Darfur. The fighting continued there; in December 2011, the JEM leader, Khalil Ibrahim, was killed by government forces. But one source of turmoil in Darfur was removed. Using the oasis town of Kufra, Khartoum sent military support to the rebels in Libya and finally helped topple a bitter enemy, Gaddafi. Ironically, in this war, al-Bashir was acting as an ally of NATO.
Then the big north-south break erupted. In January 2012 South Sudan turned off the oil because of failure to agree on transit fees. This made little sense for the struggling new state. Nearly all its income came from oil and, although state spending was slashed, the shortfall could not be made up by foreign aid. The influential American Foreign Policy magazine graphically summed up the situation: ‘World Bank to South Sudan – Are you out of your freaking mind?’ The closure was costing at least $20 million a day.
Meanwhile, Juba’s new administration was failing. Overstaffing with so much unemployment was understandable. But ninety ambassadors were appointed and, in typically African fashion, the cabinet grew in inverse proportion to the economy.
Corruption had become rampant and blatant in Juba. It was discovered that government payments were being made to individual cows. Although many of the wonderful lyre-horned cows in the country do have their own names, the money was intended for humans. Many SPLM members felt a sense of entitlement: cronyism and graft were dues for fighting in the liberation struggle and for long years in the bush. Even when caught with their hands in the till, the guilty party members would say brazenly to accusers, ‘What were you doing when we were fighting?’ Salva Kiir had to resort to writing letters to request seventy-five former and serving senior government officials to return an estimated $4 billion in stolen funds. Much of it had ended up in banks in Nairobi and the sums disclosed were just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The former freedom fighters had become public looters. Graft and the new austerity because of the oil stoppage could not be easy bedfellows. Nor could the oil simply be turned back on – closing and re-opening the pipelines and refineries required months of repair and maintenance to get the black gold flowing again, even if the politics were sorted. Turning the taps off made no sense.
Despite renewed talks, border fighting continued. At the same time, in the southern Jonglei state, ethnic clashes caused 100,000 people to flee their homes. Things were beginning to fall apart. On 10 April 2012 the SPLA made a surprise push into the north around the Heglig oilfield. Unexpectedly, SPLA armoured units made rapid progress. According to Khartoum intelligence sources, the SPLA elite units were accompanied by elements of JEM, SLA and SPLM-N. Mohammed Atta, the new NISS chief and successor of Saleh Gosh, said that he had intercepts to prove that JEM commanders had been ordered to destroy the installations, although Juba later claimed that it was Sudanese air force retaliation that caused the damage. The SPLA held the area around Heglig – which the south call Panthou – for ten days. The northern army, aligned with the South Sudan Liberation Army militia, fought back; over 100 SLA were wounded and sent to Khartoum for treatment. Several JEM troops were also captured in the hot pursuit. Although Khartoum had been taken by surprise, the northern army claimed to have killed around 1,000 SPLM-aligned troops. The Sudanese air force retaliated by bombing the Bentiu area in the south. In Khartoum there were calls for the defence minister, Abdel Rahim, to be sacked, but he was considered too close to the president. The official Sudanese military explanation was that they initially withdrew to avoid damaging vital oil installations, which may have been partly true, but the revitalized SPLA was now operationally more efficient. Enough American money had been spent on training it, after all.
For once, Khartoum was portrayed in the international media, especially in Africa, as the victim of the south. Lam Akol, the eternal survivor, was now leader of the opposition in Juba. He said, ‘South Sudan, which was the darling of the international community, was overnight being seen as an aggressor.’ The decision to shut down the oil production and then the occupation of Heglig upset even ardent supporters in Washington. The SPLM was now viewed as part of the problem and not just a victim of Khartoum. Barack Obama berated Kiir in a phone call to Juba. The frosty conversation was not helped by the fact that when the two men had met briefly in New York some months before the Heglig crisis, Obama had warned Kiir about the SPLA’s military movements. Kiir made the gross mistake of telling Obama ‘to check the accuracy of your satellites’. It is rarely a good idea to tell an American president that he is incompetent, or possibly a liar. The UN Secretary General also warned Kiir.
Khartoum’s surprise diplomatic advantage was undermined by a characteristic bout of presidential demagoguery. In private al-Bashir was a reserved and affable man, but once he was in front of a big political audience, he would wave his trademark eagle-topped cane and indulge his gift for fiery rhetoric. At a speech on 18 April 2012, on the eve of the successful northern counter-attack, al-Bashir roused the faithful at the NCP HQ in Khartoum. It was reported in the local media that he used an ugly pun. He talked about crushing the Arabic for ‘insects’ which is similar to ‘movement’. Typically shooting from the hip, he was referring to wiping out the SPLM movement. But even avidly non-PC critics picked up the insect reference in the context of the Rwandan crushing of cockroaches. In front of his close party supporters, he gave a direct warning to the SPLM: ‘Either we end up in Juba and take everything. Or you end up in Khartoum and take everything.’ Many foreign military experts predicted a resumption of full-scale war between the two states. Fortunately, the AU and UN acted quickly to get the SPLA to avoid a counter-attack against the successful northern recovery of Heglig.
To their domestic audiences both presidents d
epicted the Heglig crisis as a success. It boosted the nationalisms of both states and delayed an agreement on oil. Both sides had taken a beating either in the surprise advance or the bloody withdrawal. Riek Machar conceded, ‘We are not a pariah state. We don’t want to be isolated from the rest of the world. We don’t want sanctions against South Sudan, so we decided to withdraw.’ The fact the vice president mentioned sanctions was a stark indication that the fledgling state’s honeymoon period was over.
A year after independence, the UN claimed that over 650,000 people had been displaced in the border regions, with most of them fleeing south. In the north the termination of oil supplies forced Khartoum to cut subsidies on fuel and other vital goods generating popular anger. In June 2012 students clashed with police and speculation mounted that the Arab Spring would spread from North Africa and the Middle East. The unrest was soon contained, partly because the unrest in Egypt in particular was caused by factors largely absent in Sudan. For starters, Sudan had undergone its own Islamist revolution as far back as 1989.
Al-Bashir and Salva Kiir met in Ethiopia to try once more to resolve the chronic economic problems facing both countries because of the oil cut-off. They agreed on a demilitarized border buffer zone, but failed – inevitably – to resolve the three main contested zones, especially Abyei. Abyei had become a parallel to Kashmir, likely to cause friction and war for generations. If al-Bashir had ceded more territory, he knew he could suffer a coup from his security chiefs already chafing at the economic setbacks inspired by Juba’s demented decision to turn off the oil. The most that al-Bashir could do was to promise to pull out the regular army from Abyei. The northern security chiefs were already edgy over renewed fighting in Darfur and South Kordofan. Rebels in both states as well as Blue Nile had formed the Sudan Revolutionary Front, which acted with the SPLA-North. Parts of eastern Sudan along the border with Eritrea were restless too. In the far west and far east, many of the problems were connected more to genuine banditry and criminality rather than politics. As ever, the country was fraying at the edges, but attacks came in the centre too. Khartoum’s intelligence chiefs were caught off-guard by a long-range Israeli air raid on an alleged Iranian arms factory outside Khartoum said to be making weapons for Hamas. In the eastern Sudanese desert, the Israeli air force also hit a convoy of arms destined for Hamas. Eritrea had leased one of its small offshore islands, not far from Djibouti, allowing Israel to create the largest air base outside its borders. Jerusalem, of course, made no comment about either attack, but a warning message had been sent to Khartoum.
The capital was on edge in November 2012 when a coup was thwarted at the heart of the security establishment. Saleh Gosh, head of the National Intelligence and Security Service until 2099, was arrested, along with twelve other serving senior military personnel. Gosh, for long the president’s right-hand man, had retired, apparently on grounds of ill-health in 2009, but remained a presidential advisor. Khartoum was on alert, because of the positioning of tanks and armoured vehicles at strategic points. The security forces were still very largely loyal. Nearly all of the middle-ranking army officers commissioned since 1993-94, after the immediate post-revolution purges, were NIF/NCP loyalists. A handful of more senior officers – brigadiers and generals – had survived because of their competence, despite being former communists or socialists. The vast majority of the top brass were apolitical Islamists. The breakdown in the NISS was approximately 95 per cent loyal. The vast majority came from the Brotherhood or were sympathizers, with a handful of apolitical professionals. With such a small number of potential dissidents, the coup didn’t quite happen. Despite the (very short) prison terms, either a deal was done to forestall the coup or it went off at half-cock. This palace coup didn’t really get out of the palace. Nobody was hurt, but the opposition to al-Bashir from such trusted sources was a worrying development for the president. A considerable backlash had built up in the intelligence services because Gosh was seen to represent a consensus view on what was going wrong, especially in the south. Some of the jailed or suspended intelligence and army personnel were quietly rehabilitated for the sake of national unity. When I asked the president about the coup, he was understandably reluctant to discuss it, brushing me off politely with ‘It’s all sorted now’. But the mini-rebellion in his core constituency probably played a part in his stated desire to retire by 2015. Some of his old army comrades had tried to bend his ear about getting out of politics.
Besides disquiet in Khartoum’s security community, the president had to face growing popular discontent with the deepening economic crisis. In March 2013 al-Bashir managed eventually to persuade Juba to turn the oil back on, fourteen months after the closure had rocked both economies. It would take months, however, to get the oil up to previous output. The southern economy was in meltdown, while the more diverse and advanced northern economy was in clear difficulties. In September 2013 waves of protests shook the north, because of more austerity measures. The nationwide protests were met with heavy-handed police counter-measures and at least thirty-six protesters were killed, according to official figures.
After the intelligence split, and in protest against the police crackdown, a small group of reformists in the ruling NCP broke away to form alliances with the old secularist and leftist parties or what remained of them, although by definition all the parties considered themselves Islamic. Younger political activists also set up Girifna (‘We are fed up’), a new political movement outside the traditional parties. Although most of the NCP stayed intact, the departure of some of the (slightly) younger and abler politicians, such as the suave UK-educated surgeon Ghazi Salahuddin Atabani, meant that this was the biggest shake-up since the big split with al-Turabi. The shift towards a reformist direction perhaps also spelled the final death knell of the Islamist revolution. The president had already initiated a regeneration programme in the party. Some of his long-serving allies, such as Ali Othman Taha, wanted to retire (although others didn’t). Al-Bashir also announced a ‘dialogue’ with his traditional opponents, including hereditary leaders such as al-Mahdi and his enduring nemesis, al-Turabi. Resurrecting these yesterday’s men would not exactly satisfy the younger and especially female demands in the NCP for a party renaissance. Al-Bashir made the tough former defence minister, Lieutenant General Bakri Hassan Saleh, the first vice president and officially his successor, should the president suddenly die. General Bakri was not exactly the renaissance man the young reformers were hoping for. As one of the most senior NCP bosses confessed to me, ‘Bakri is a man of the palace, not the people.’ Despite the so-called ‘dialogue’ with opposition parties to create an atmosphere of national unity, the government was still prepared to crack down on protests and it again arrested Sadiq al-Madhi, prompting the moribund troika of British, American and Norwegian foreign ministers to issue a formal protest to Khartoum.
The northern party-political turmoil was nothing compared with what was happening in the south. In June 2013 President Kiir sacked two senior ministers to attempt to address the blatant financial corruption in his government. But the southern president faced fundamental political differences in his party, not least over his authoritarian style. The danger was that many in the SPLM felt that no democratic outlet for political change existed – except via the tribe. Nor had the CPA developed proper Truth and Reconciliation measures, especially for the south. The southerners spent more time and effort killing each other rather than fighting Khartoum, and probably would have done so even without northern manipulation.
In July 2013 Salva Kiir fired his whole cabinet, including Vice President Riek Machar. By year end, the contemporary political differences had degenerated into ancient tribal rivalries, especially in elite military units in the capital. It was assumed in Juba that the inveterate troublemaker Riek Machar was trying to stage a coup. According to northern intelligence sources, still very well-informed on the inner workings of the new state, there was no coup. For once, apparently, Machar was innocent of the charges. It didn�
��t matter. Soon, fighting between the two main tribal wings of the SPLA – Nuer, led by Machar, and Dinka, led by Kiir, although the tribal distinction was never that precise – led to all-out civil war. Dissident warlords had already been active in the south before the December crisis. Now the two rival armies, as well as the inevitable militias, tried to occupy their traditional tribal constituencies, especially around the oilfields. Machar’s forces initially captured three state capitals, Bor, Bentiu and Malakal. All were devastated in the fighting. Ugandan troops and aircraft came in on the side of President Kiir, who also appealed to al-Bashir. The northern president shuttled regularly to Juba on peace missions. He was back in the role of regional peacemaker. He knew Machar and Kiir well and tried to bring them together. Towns such as Bentiu were captured and recaptured sometimes two or three times in one week. It was a highly fluid semi-conventional war, with both sides well-equipped. Hundreds of thousands of southerners were again made refugees. The UN and IGAD pushed the rival leaders together, and a number of peace agreements were made, and broken almost the next day. In these Addis summits the divisions were not necessarily tribal; some of Garang’s family were in Machar’s negotiating team, for example.
By the summer of 2014 full-scale civil war raged unabated in the new state of South Sudan. Juba had spent some $1 billion on weapons since the start of the civil war in December 2013. In June 2014 China North Industries Group, the country’s biggest arms manufacturer, shipped a large consignment of equipment, consisting of missiles, grenade launchers, machine guns and ammunition, to Juba via Mombasa. At exactly the same time humanitarian agencies were appealing for $1.3 billion to feed four million starving people in the country. Even the capital faced acute shortages of basic food. What food there was cost five times more than the same staples in next-door Uganda. Yet even the mass suffering of their own people did not stop the warlord class from re-arming and fresh recruitment. Besides the largely Dinka rump of the SPLA versus Machar’s mainly Nuer supporters, a host of other gun-toting groups joined in the mayhem. Besides the Ugandan forces and existing southern militias, Sudanese intelligence reported on the heavy presence of Darfurian elements, especially JEM as well as, curiously, a detachment of M23 guerrillas from the Congo’s East Kivu. M23 took its name from the 23 March Movement, which had been led by a colourful commander with the nom de guerre of The Terminator. South Sudan had enough terminators of its own – it didn’t need more well-armed psychopaths. So far, independence had been a disaster.
Omar Al-Bashir and Africa's Longest War Page 29
