Africa

by Guy Arnold

  A human tragedy of major proportions is in the making in Sudan, where President Jaafar Nimeiri seems determined to plunge the country back into bloody Civil War. Nimeiri decided last year to split the Southern end of the country into the three regional provinces, thereby weakening the local power structure and bringing the region more directly under the control of his regime in Khartoum. He did this over the objection of most of the political leaders in the South and in flagrant contravention of the solemn peace treaty that ended Civil War between the North and the South in 1972.3

  In the period immediately preceding the coup that toppled Nimeiri it seems likely that the US and other Western powers encouraged a propaganda campaign to get rid of him. Further, it seemed almost certain that US Vice-President George Bush was involved in the reshuffle that brought Gen. Sewar El Dahab to the most prominent position in the Sudan military. He was appointed Defence Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces on 16 March 1985, just a few days before Bush visited Khartoum.4 Nimeiri was overthrown on 6 April and Sewar El Dahab became interim ruler. It was admitted in some Western media that the coup of 6 April took place in accordance with a plan made jointly by the generals who took power and Sudan’s regional and global allies. According to Africa Confidential Dahab and other generals ‘made arrangements in advance with Egypt and possibly the United States, in order to pre-empt moves by middle rank officers and civilians’.5 The Sudanese were glad to see Nimeiri go but were not happy at a continuation of military rule. Even so, 30 political parties and 77 trade unions emerged. Exiles returned and hundreds of political prisoners, including Communists, were freed. By July the US had become uneasy when Sudan’s new rulers concluded a military pact with Libya; Gaddafi now agreed to cooperate with regard to the southern problem. As the Sudanese Defence Minister said, the Libyans ‘promised that they would no longer aid the southern rebels’.

  AFTER NIMEIRI

  Ali Mazrui commented on the fall of Nimeiri that ‘In the streets of Khartoum in 1985, young people protested against President Jaafar Nimeiri and forced the army to intervene and bring Nimeiri down after more than 15 years in power. Civilian rule was later restored.’ Possibly it was the young people but civilian rule would not last very long. Immediately, the Transitional Military Council (TMC) ruled Sudan for a year before elections were held in April 1986. Sadiq al-Mahdi’s Umma Party (UP) won 99 seats, Osman al-Mirghani’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) won 63 and the National Islamic Front (NIF), led by Dr Hassan al-Turabi, won 51 seats. In the south voting in 37 of 68 seats was suspended because of violence. Sadiq al-Mahdi became Prime Minister of a coalition government. In July he held talks in Addis Ababa with the Americaneducated Christian Dinka, John Garang, who was the leader of the SPLA, in an effort to end the civil war. The talks came to nothing. In 1988 al-Mahdi was reelected prime minister by the assembly, obtaining 196 of 222 votes cast. The three main parties – UP, DUP and NIF – agreed to implement an Islamic code although al-Mahdi stressed this should not infringe the rights of non-Muslims. In August 1988 the worst floods in the country’s history rendered two million people around Khartoum homeless. Sadiq al-Mahdi’s government was overthrown in a bloodless military coup on 30 June 1989 by army officers who had been pressing for peace in the south; negotiations had been stymied under the coalition because the NIF wanted to impose Sharia on the south. The new government, headed by Gen. Omar al-Bashir, was welcomed by Egypt and, more discreetly, by Britain and the US. Garang, however, mistrusted Bashir because he wanted to leave the question of Sharia to a national referendum, which would give Muslims an automatic majority.

  The US was an important factor in the political calculations of Sudan’s leaders throughout the decade. In the mid-1980s and later, the US provided Sudan with substantial aid: US$67 million in 1988, US$77.4 million in 1989. This aid kept the government afloat but did little for the ordinary people. Garang meanwhile had expanded his base of support. In 1987 he persuaded the Nuer to join him: their organization, Anya Nya II, was heir to the first Anya Nya that had directed the civil war that ended in 1972. Garang won other support as well and for a time appeared to be developing into a formidable war leader. In January 1988 his forces occupied Kapoeta on the Uganda border in the extreme south of the country. The costs of the war were massive and by the summer of 1988 three million people were close to starvation and 385,000 had crossed the border into Ethiopia. Refugees were dependent upon internal relief organizations for their survival and US aid officials accused the Khartoum government of genocide in the south. However, the politics of aid were always devious; thus the US restrained its criticisms of Khartoum’s policy towards the south for fear of driving it into the arms of Libya’s Gaddafi. By February 1989 the US State Department reported that between 100,000 and 250,000 had died of starvation in the south as the military on both sides in the conflict intercepted relief supplies. What soon became apparent after the June 1989 coup was that with the backing of the NIF, which moved swiftly to repress other political parties, Sudan was set for military rule and Islamist politics. By March 1990 it was apparent that the new regime had turned to repression and on 22 April, according to the government, there was an attempted coup. This failed and four days later 28 senior army officers were executed by firing squad. They had been opponents of the application of strict Sharia.

  THE ROOTS OF THE CONFLICT

  One over-simplistic explanation for Sudan’s long-drawn-out civil war has been offered by Huntington in his Clash of Civilizations in which he argues, ‘Cleft countries that territorially bestride the fault lines between civilizations face particular problems maintaining their unity. In Sudan, civil war has gone on for decades between the Muslim north and the largely Christian south’. Later in his book, he says, ‘The bloodiest Muslim-Christian war has been in Sudan, which has gone on for decades and produced hundreds of thousands of casualties.’6 Huntington clearly wants Sudan to fit his thesis of the clash of civilizations yet many others accept his explanation that the north-south conflict is basically a religious one. In relation to Eritrea, fighting its secessionist war against Addis Ababa, he argues, ‘In Sudan during the 1980s the government adopted increasingly extreme Islamist positions, and in the early 1990s the Christian insurgency split, with a new group, the Southern Sudan Independence Movement, advocating independence rather than simply autonomy.’ Always emphasizing the religious divide, Huntington underestimates the realpolitik that dictates political strategy in a war situation. Thus he says, ‘In Africa Sudan regularly helped the Muslim Eritrean rebels fighting Ethiopia, and in retaliation Ethiopia supplied “logistic and sanctuary support” to the “rebel Christians” fighting Sudan. The latter also received similar aid from Uganda, reflecting in part its “strong religious, racial, and ethnic ties to the Sudanese rebels”. The Sudanese government, on the other hand, got US$300 million in Chinese arms from Iran and training from Iranian military advisers, which enabled it to launch a major offensive against the rebels in 1992. A variety of Western Christian organizations provided food, medicine, supplies, and, according to the Sudanese government, arms to the Christian rebels.’7

  It is true that the war in Sudan is usually described in terms of a struggle between Islam and Christianity with the side effect, no doubt pleasing to Christians who see the struggle in this light, of suggesting that the southern Sudanese have no coherent religions of their own. Instead, they are referred to ‘with depressing regularity as “Christian and animist” (or sometimes even “Christian animist”). “Animism” is an archaic term with little descriptive value. In its original sense it referred to a theory of the origin of primitive religion. It has since been adapted as a pseudo-scientific replacement for “pagan”, to avoid the latter’s pejorative overtones acquired from centuries of Christian propaganda.’8 The same author goes on to examine the wide range of problems that have acted to separate north and south. These include a habit of the centre versus the periphery derived from slavery and slave raiding in the past; the inequalities of developmen
t during the colonial period; the introduction of militant Islam during the nineteenth century; Britain giving independence in 1956 before disparities in development between north and south had been sorted out; northern nationalism creating an Arab-based state; the growing southern awareness of its strength in resources that were generally exploited by the north for the north; and the impact of the Cold War that included a massive flow of arms into the region. As Douglas Johnson argues cogently:

  The final paradox of Sudanese independence was that it was thrust upon the Sudan by a colonial power eager to extricate itself from its residual responsibilities. It was not achieved by a national consensus expressed through constitutional means. A precedent was set that has haunted Sudanese politics ever since: the precedent of taking the popular will for granted, and therefore circumventing agreed legal procedures in all major constitutional issues. The first post-independence Constituent Assembly was dissolved in 1958 rather than allow it to take a decision on federalism; the referendum in the South was aborted in 1982 rather than let the people of the South register their opposition to the subdivision of the Southern Region; parliamentary government was overthrown in 1989 rather than let it reach a compromise over the Islamic state. Those acts were all committed by Sudanese leaders; but they learned from Britain at the very inception of the Sudan’s independence the rewards for ignoring democratic and constitutional procedures.9

  Development or the deliberate withholding of it from the south by the north is at least as important a divisive factor as is religion and Khartoum ever since independence has shown itself more concerned to extract the south’s resources with a minimum return to the south than to build a modern comprehensive state. In these circumstances it was hardly surprising in 1983, when the civil war was resumed, that the SPLA attacked the two most profitable developments in the region, the Jonglei Canal project and oil extraction. Nonetheless, the SPLA fought to change the government of the Sudan and not to secede.

  At the same time that the north-south conflict developed into an endless war of attrition, the government in Khartoum, with the support of the West and the conservative Arab states, allowed the Eritrean nationalist movements to menace the Ethiopian regime as long as it maintained friendly relations with the USSR. By 1983–85, in any case, the Ethiopian offensives against the Eritreans had pushed hundreds of thousands of them over the border into Sudan. There existed a close link between Eritrea and Sudan. ‘The peasants of western Eritrea look to Sudan principally for sales and purchase of necessities which include food, other consumer items, seeds, tools etc. The normal currency for transactions… is the Sudanese pound… Moreover, the trade with Sudan is mainly explained by the fact that the two economies are complementary to each other, and even if there had not been a war, the people of western Eritrea would still have bought and sold on the Sudanese market and might have been as dependent on it as they are today.10

  ETHIOPIA

  By 1980, with massive Soviet and Cuban assistance, Mengistu had re-established his control over the whole country except for Eritrea. The wars in the Ogaden, Tigray and Oromo provinces that had escalated during the late 1970s had degenerated into ongoing guerrilla actions. At this point, the most favourable for such action, Mengistu might have inaugurated successful policies to unite the country, but he failed to do so. In 1984, despite massive international aid, one million people were to die as a result of the famine. The fighting was to continue throughout the 1980s while policy increasingly became the prerogative of Mengistu alone since he had eliminated his rivals to make himself effective dictator of Ethiopia. The greatest, most consistent challenge to Mengistu’s regime throughout the 1980s came from Eritrea whose Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) pursued its objective of secession with the single-minded determination of all true freedom fighters. They still, however, had a long war to fight. Their alliance with the revolting province of Tigray that lay between Eritrea and Addis Ababa was to prove strategically crucial to their eventual success.

  On 12 September 1984, on the tenth anniversary of the revolution, the Workers’ Party of Ethiopia (WPE) was inaugurated. In retrospect, Western fears of Soviet influence and Communism in Africa appear hugely inflated but at the time the West feared that the Ethiopian revolution would encourage revolutionary movements throughout the region and that Ethiopia would become ‘a Soviet showcase in Africa as a whole’ and that this would ‘not be desirable for the West, since what happens in Ethiopia affects not just the Horn of Africa, but the Red Sea, such conservative Gulf States as Saudi Arabia, and the countries through which the Nile River flows, including Egypt and Sudan’.11 This was to extend the ‘domino theory’ with a vengeance. Mengistu was to survive for as long as he did as a result of Soviet support but when that was withdrawn at the end of the decade, he faced a series of increasingly severe defeats as his forces were driven out of most of Eritrea and the Tigrayan rebels took control of their province and then, in early 1991, launched what turned out to be the last, decisive offensive against the regime in Addis Ababa.

  Economically Mengistu’s rule was a disaster and quite apart from the famine of 1984 and lesser famines in subsequent years, the imposition of Marxist orthodoxy simply did not work but was rejected by the Ethiopians as a whole. Instead, Mengistu only succeeded in making Ethiopia both poorer and more backward than it had been when the revolution had been carried out in the 1970s, for although at that time there had been real elements of the popular will at work, by the 1980s it had become a revolution imposed from above for which there was little popular consent.

  The war in Tigray was both separate and yet crucial to the eventual success of the Eritrean war. In 1979 the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) had captured several towns in Tigray and cut the road which connected Addis Ababa and Eritrea; the towns were recaptured by Ethiopian forces although the TPLF retained control of the countryside. The Ethiopians, therefore, ravaged the countryside yet despite high Tigrayan casualties the Ethiopian army failed to reoccupy Western Tigray. There was a similar campaign in 1983 and then in 1984 Tigray was badly affected by the famine. Throughout the decade Tigray was central to the war since it lay athwart the road to Eritrea, and the defeat of the EPLF was Mengistu’s first priority. The war in Tigray escalated in 1987 and famine returned to the region in 1988 but the Ethiopian army was unable to regain control of the province though it continued to hold the towns. In the spring of 1988 the Ethiopian military faced a double defeat: its forces were badly mauled in northern Eritrea by the EPLF while the TPLF mounted a second offensive in Tigray and the Ethiopian army was reduced to defending the road through Tigray to Eritrea while abandoning its attempts to hold the rest of the province. A year later, in March 1989, the TPLF broke out of its home province to invade Gondar, Wollo and Shoa in what was to be the final stage of the war.

  One bizarre and provocative side issue was the operation to ‘save’ the Falasha Jews from Ethiopia. Preparations to save the Falashas had got under way in the United States in 1981 under the aegis of the extremist American League for Defence of Ethiopian Jews, which then began work in Sudan, and though some Sudanese politicians opposed the move they were forced to back down by US pressures. In early 1985 the ‘rescue’ operation was carried out and some thousands of Falashas were persuaded to cross into Sudan whence they were airlifted via Italy, Belgium or Switzerland to Israel. They came to about 10,000 all told. The whole operation was deliberately provocative to Ethiopia. At the same time Israel became involved in the war but though it provided some support to the EPLF and TPLF, its real interest was in the propaganda rescue of the Falashas. ‘The Israeli government was aware that Haile Selassie’s regime oppressed national minorities including the Jews. But still it fully supported the regime and raised no issue about the plight of the Falashas.’12 Its concern for the Falashas when Mengistu was in power was clearly motivated, in part, by considerations of US support. However, the new Sudanese government that came to power under Sewar El Dahab on the fall of Nimeiri soon demonst
rated that it was not to be a puppet of US pressures and ‘made clear that it was not going to collaborate with the US and Israel against Ethiopia by organizing and effecting the exodus of the Falashas to Israel. In fact it established a Commission of Inquiry with the declared intention or prosecuting those who were involved in the affair.’13

  In May 1989 a major coup attempt by senior army officers nearly ended the Mengistu regime. It was put into operation when Mengistu was on a state visit to East Germany (DDR), forcing him to cut short his visit and hurry back to Addis Ababa. There was substantial fighting between military loyalists and the coup makers. After the collapse of the coup Mengistu initiated a nationwide hunt for the coup-makers: 15 generals were executed and eventually 176 Army, Navy and Air Force officers, including 24 generals, were court-martialled in Addis Ababa. Although Mengistu had survived, the opposition to him and his policies had become widespread and he only had two more years in office ahead of him. The end for the Mengistu regime was signalled during 1989 when it became clear that, as a result of Mikhail Gorbachev’s new policies, the USSR intended to bring to an end its ongoing commitments to the Dergue. In any case, the war with Eritrea appeared to have no end while the implementation of Marxism had brought upon the Ethiopian people hardship rather than relief. By that time the USSR had provided Ethiopia with an estimated US$10 billion in aid. During September, as the final 3,000 Cuban forces left Ethiopia, an attempt to negotiate a settlement was tried at Jimmy Carter’s Centre for Conflict Resolution in Atlanta but it failed: the EPLF wanted independence, Ethiopia insisted on the integrity of the state. Then, in February 1990, the EPLF launched a final offensive and attacked Massawa, and the Soviet Navy offshore did not assist the Ethiopians. The EPLF then laid siege to Keren and Asmara, the government’s final outposts in Eritrea. The TPLF, meanwhile, had gained control of all Tigray; it established a united front, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) with the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement, a largely Amhara organization, and other revolutionary groups. The EPRDF took the offensive and by early summer its armies were within 60 miles of Addis Ababa. The final collapse came the following year when, on 21 May 1991, Mengistu resigned and fled to Zimbabwe. On 25 May the Eritreans captured Assab to give them control of the whole province. On 27 May the Ethiopian Army surrendered to the rebels and the EPRDF entered Addis Ababa to bring the rule of the Dergue to an end.