* NIF: under opposition military pressure has offered self- determination referendum to various Sudan People' s Liberation Army factions most recently Colonel John Garang's; seen in north as divide-to-rule and time-buying tactic: process can be dragged on; it believes it can buy southern leaders but can only rent them; some in NIF think ‘losing' non-Muslim south is price of power in north; for others southern resistance ‘to Islam' and to the government makes south Dar el Harbera (Land of War as opposed to Dar el Islam); this is sub-text to countless atrocities and in effect to ‘kill or convert' policy; policy of spreading ‘civilisation project' abroad needs south as springboard; Hassan el Turabi has called the south the ‘gateway to Africa'; oil a further reason to hold south...
Vol 39 No 12 |
- EGYPT
- WATER
Last November Colonel John Garang de Mabior Chairman of the Sudan People's Liberation Army visited Cairo met Mubarak on 30 November and other senior Egyptians and gave a commitment that the SPLA would not seek to divide Sudan...
Jonglei Canal a project much praised by John Garang but which gives ecologists nightmares since reducing evaporation could cut rainfall in West Africa...
The glittering prize now is Colonel John Garang de Mabior's SPLA once again the southern political magnet...
This is the heart of his own claim to southern independence and a main cause of his split with John Garang in 1991...
That aside it has recaptured none of the ‘liberated areas' seized by Colonel John Garang de Mabior's Sudan People's Liberation Army or Brigadier General Abdel Aziz Khalid Osman's Sudan Alliance Forces...
It is nearly a year since John Garang with his SPLA fighters raring to go announced Juba was ‘about to fall'...
This month as the international media began noticing the famine in Bahr el Ghazal the SPLA leader Colonel John Garang was touring in Eastern Equatoria...
The decision to threaten Kadugli stems from concern that Khartoum will pull much of its armour and heavy weapons north to the Nuba Mountains if Colonel John Garang de Mabior captures Juba...
The first Nuba Advisory Council was convened by Sudan People's Liberation Army Commander Yousif Kuwa in 1992 after 400 of his troops died trying to bring ammunition into the Nuba Mountains through the battles raging to the south between the forces of John Garang and Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon...
Then soon after the November visit to Cairo by SPLA chief John Garang President Hosni Mubarak (who had met Colonel Garang) improbably announced Khartoum was ‘abandoning terrorism'...
But the coming dry-season could be critical: if John Garang de Mabior's Sudan People's Liberation Army takes Juba the NIF-held capital in the South things could start to unravel very rapidly for Hassan Abdullah el Turabi's Islamist government...