A Ray of Hope in War-Torn Sudan

TURALEI, Sudan —  The men of Turalei are reed-thin giants, scraping the sky at 7 feet. Armed with spears and automatic rifles, they bear themselves with a regal dignity undented by the rags they wear or their empty bellies. And in recent days, they seem to be standing even taller than usual.

After enduring 14 years of civil war, this corner of war-devastated southern Sudan has been “liberated” from the forces of the national government in Khartoum, 500 miles to the north.

The local people are excited by the possibility that victory is within their grasp and that they will soon be able to choose their own destiny.

Similar emotions now are sweeping much of southern Sudan, where since 1983 African Christians and pagans have been rebelling against the Arab Muslim government of the north.

On almost every front, government forces appear to be in retreat. Officers are defecting to the rebels. Garrison towns increasingly are cut off. And now, for the first time in at least five years, rebels threaten to capture Juba, the largest city in the south.

“This regime is on its deathbed,” said one anti-government activist, citing rebel advances not only in the south but also in the north and east bordering Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The war has ebbed and flowed repeatedly. It is possible that the National Islamic Front government, led by Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, will make a comeback. But it is also clear that in southern Sudan, at least, events are rapidly coming to a head.

“The war is over,” the rebel commander, Col. John Garang, boasted recently.

Garang has reason to feel satisfied. His Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, or SPLA--which says it wants to topple the rigidly Islamic government and create a “new Sudan”--has scored impressive gains since it teamed up last year with disaffected political groups from the Arab north.

Their coalition has managed to open up a second military front, this one in eastern Sudan, that imperils Khartoum’s power supply and the highway to the chief harbor at Port Sudan.

Government defenses have been stretched to a breaking point, allowing a resurgent SPLA that had been on its knees four years ago to secure most of Sudan’s south--except for Juba, Wau and a few other highly fortified towns.

Small wonder, therefore, that last month Bashir finally accepted a 3-year-old proposal to hold direct negotiations with the SPLA based on a “declaration of principles” that Sudan should be a secular state and that southerners should have the right to vote on whether to remain part of that state.

The outcome of those talks, scheduled to begin Oct. 28 in Nairobi, could have important consequences beyond Sudan.

The view from Washington is that if the Khartoum government falls, as some analysts believe it will, that will be a key blow to extremism in the Middle East.

Sudan’s 8-year-old government is among those that the United States likes least.

Washington has excoriated it as a center of Islamic radicalism and a sponsor of terrorism. U.S. officials say the regime, led by Bashir and parliament Speaker Hassan Turabi, who is the source of the government’s radical philosophy, has persecuted Sudan’s Christian minority, stifled political dissent at home and repeatedly tried to subvert its neighbors.

In a sign of disapproval, the United States last year withdrew its entire diplomatic staff from the capital, Khartoum, citing fears over security. And when word leaked last month that the State Department intended to send back some mid-level diplomats so as to better apply U.S. pressure, opposition in Congress quickly quashed the plan.

But the drama for the south is more immediate than the shaky regime’s ultimate fate. There, people are hoping that the year’s developments mean a chance to end years of bloodshed and misery that has laid waste to much of the land in Africa’s largest country.

Southern Sudan, a vast and remote territory along the upper reaches of the Nile, is a seemingly endless labyrinth of swamps and marshes. It is home to elephant herds, marauding hyenas and stoic, dignified tribes of cattle herders and farmers. Travel is by foot or air; there are less than 10 miles of paved road in an area two times the size of California. Everywhere, the air is thick with malarial mosquitoes, tsetse flies and other tropical pestilence.

But it is an alluring prize for both sides nevertheless.

It lies atop a potential treasure-trove of oil and mineral riches, not to mention rare timbers and abundant water. That, according to community leader John Mangok, explains why Khartoum is fighting so hard to keep it.

“They just need the land of southern Sudan. They don’t want the people,” he said.

Tensions between Arabs and Africans in Sudan is centuries-old. Its roots lie in slaving expeditions by Arab traders to the upper Nile.

But the current war, the resumption of an earlier conflict that raged from 1955 to 1972, has been a particular tragedy for the southern Sudanese.

Fighting, hunger and disease have killed an estimated 1.3 million of them--more than have died in Algeria, Bosnia-Herzegovina or Rwanda in recent years. Hundreds of thousands of others have been displaced.

Yet the world has paid little heed, almost ignoring the scorched-earth tactics, starvation, kidnapping, rape, land mines and aerial bombardment that have all been used in the conflict. This is partly because the war has been waged in regions difficult to reach and partly because the conflict has dragged on so long with few signs of significant change.

“People were getting sick of it, and who can blame them?” asked Alex de Waal of the London-based human rights group African Rights.

That may change with the start of negotiations in Nairobi under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, an East African regional grouping that includes Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Even if the talks do not progress rapidly, De Waal said, the government will be pressed to make additional concessions to the southerners, which then will tend to assume a life of their own.

Still, the rebels are staking their hopes more on their military progress than on Khartoum’s good faith. They have refused to stop fighting before the talks start.

“Negotiating is just a delaying tactic [by the government] to buy time,” said George Garang, an SPLA spokesman in Nairobi.

Garang, who is not related to the rebel leader, said he believes that the Islamists in Khartoum will never abandon what they see as a mission to spread their religion.

The SPLA forces are now about 30 miles from Juba, a city of 117,000. Having almost surrounded it, the rebels could soon be in position to bombard its airport, choking off the provisions that reach it by air, aid workers said.

Already, food is reported to be scarce. The World Food Program is planning an emergency food convoy of barges down the Nile in November.

Although it is on the military defensive, the government has been pushing a political offensive.

It has put together its own peace plan, promising a cease-fire in the south to be followed by a four-year interim period leading to a referendum on self-determination. The government enjoyed a public-relations coup in April when six rebel factions opposed to Garang and the SPLA accepted the pact.

The SPLA dismissed the government initiative as empty promises. It said the splinter rebel groups were already in league with the government.

The forces of rebel Kerubino Kwanyin Bol--who leads one of the splinter groups--have blazed a trail of destruction in the region around Turalei.

Many of the tukles, the conical mud-and-grass-thatch dwellings here, have been burned. The population is only a quarter of its former size. Those who remain subsist on wild leaves and grass seed because their livestock was rustled and crops could not be planted.

“You see no goats, no hens, nothing,” said Maro Mayom, 56, a local chieftain in the town, the childhood home of the 7-foot-7 former Washington Bullets center Manute Bol. “The area is devastated. So many people died, from hunger and from the killing.”

Yet Mayom is optimistic: “Yes, the war will end if the world forces the Khartoum government to accept negotiations.”

Daniszewski was recently on assignment in Sudan.