[dehai-news] (AFP) Eastern Sudan former rebels facing crisis


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From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Mon Aug 25 2008 - 11:22:13 EDT


Eastern Sudan former rebels and damage of
 
Monday 25 August 2008 02:30.
 
August 24, 2008 (KHARTOUM) - East Sudan leaders are lost in transition
from guerrilla fighter to bureaucrat, sunk in a power struggle that
threatens to blow apart their coalition and destabilise a peace accord,
analysts say.
 
In one of a series of conflicts to have enflamed Sudan for years, the
Eastern Front signed a peace agreement with the government in October
2006 after rebels fought for a decade over lack of power and wealth.
 
The rebels in the east rose over similar grievances as their
better-known western counterparts in Darfur and southerners who signed a
comprehensive peace treaty in 2005 that ended a 21-year civil war with
Khartoum.
 
But a year after being sworn into a share of central government,
chairman Mussa Mohammed Ahmed and deputy Amna Dirar are at loggerheads
over how and who should best represent the undeveloped east in the
corridors of power.
 
"The peace agreement has led us to a new competition between the
different groups in the Eastern Front for sharing in power," conceded
Ahmed, sitting in a huge reception room at his grace-and-favour Khartoum
guest house.
 
"This competition has had a negative effect on the Eastern Front. This
is a crisis of transition. It's only been two years and it's normal," he
added.
 
The Eastern Front began as an umbrella alliance linking the Beja
Congress, named in the 1950s after the largest eastern ethnic group, and
the Free Lions of the Rashidiya Arabs.
 
Last August, chairman and Beja man Ahmed became an assistant to
President Omar al-Beshir. His deputy Dirar became a presidential adviser
and secretary general Mubarak Mabruk became a state minister for
transport.
 
"It is power struggle on tribal-ethnic lines," said one foreign
diplomat.
 
"In the end, we could see the disintegration of the Eastern Front... It
will also have a negative repercussion on the already slow-moving
implementation of the Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement."
 
Apart from apportioning the spoils of power on paper, little else in the
peace agreement has been implemented in a region that is home to Sudan's
main port and a crucial oil pipeline.
 
Easterners have yet to be fully incorporated into the civil service,
there is little evidence of sustained economic, cultural and social
development, poverty remains and few jobs have been created.
 
The government allocated 100 million dollars in 2007 to the Eastern
Sudan Reconstruction and Development Fund, which is supposed to receive
at least 125 million dollars each year until 2011, but only 25 million
has been spent.
 
The easterners' weakness has allowed the president's savvy National
Congress Party (NCP) to divide and rule.
 
"The NCP is not serious enough and the Front is weak," said lecturer and
journalist Murtada el-Ghali.
 
"He (Ahmed) is just sitting there as an assistant to Beshir but with no
mandate. He can do nothing with the budget, the money, disarmament,
demobilisation and rehabilitation, development in the east."
 
Easterners are overshadowed by a political climate obsessed with the
Darfur conflict and a possible international arrest warrant against
Beshir.
 
Although delays cloud implementation of the 2005 agreement that ended
war between north and south, and there has been little dividend from the
limited 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement, both accords had international
guarantors.
 
"The role of the Eritreans was prominent, but there was no international
guarantor and this is where the NCP is trying to implement selectively,
disregarding the concerns of the people of the east," said the diplomat.
 
Dirar says the Front is an independent political party open to everyone
and dismisses the Beja Congress as a tribal throwback. Ahmed says it is
an umbrella group that has failed to evolve into a party.
 
Dirar, who says people liken her to 20th century political icons
Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi, accuses conservative easterners of
sexism.
 
"Most of the fighting against me came because I am a female. 'Why is she
in this position? Why she can do that? Why she did that?'," she said.
 
Dirar announced this month that Ahmed had been suspended as Front
chairman. The Beja Congress then suspended her and threatened to take
action that could see Dirar and others dismissed from government jobs.
 
Both Ahmed and Dirar dismiss their suspensions as meaningless.
 
Although analysts do not agree, easterners warn fighting could erupt
anew unless the peace agreement is better implemented, particularly with
regard to demobilised forces who have not been given new jobs or been
paid.
 
"You cannot continue without getting money, without knowing what your
future is. The war in Sudan has not finished. It is still existing. So
it's easy for them to go back again," said Dirar.
 
(AFP)
 
 

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