By Franz Schurmann

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Prediction #14 for Tuesday, May 18th,1999

Peace Coming to the World's Longest War

• Introduction:
  The Sudan is Africa's biggest country. It also is one of the oldest countries in the world. From 2,700 BC on it was known to the ancient Egyptians as Cush. Sudan, in Arabic, means country of black people. Depending on one's point of view the Sudan was either a bridge between the Middle East and Africa or its southern African half was semi-enslaved by its northern Hamito-Semitic half for five millennia.

  These two divergent points of view in good part explain a war that has been going on between the two halves since 1959. According to one of two editorials on the Sudan recently published by the Washington Post more people have been killed in this war than in Kosovo, Bosnia, Chechnya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Algeria etc. There is nothing new in this information.

  But new are three actions America has taken vis-a-vis the Sudan. One has acknowledged that the US made a mistake when it bombed Sudan's biggest pharmaceutical plant last year. It agreed to pay damages to a Sudanese woman who suffered serious medical consequences because the bombing denied her medicine. This action amounted to an official apology to the Sudanese people and government by the American government.

  The second action was lifting all sanctions on the Sudan along with those on Libya and Iran. Libya's Col. Muammer Qadhafi has become a key mediator in the effort to bring Sudan's government and opposition together to end the war. In Cairo, Qadhafi --- with the public support of Egyptian president Husni Mubarak --- arranged for a meeting in Geneva between the most powerful ideological figure in Sudan's Islamic government, Dr. Hassan al-Turabi and Sadiq al-Mahdi, the great-grandson of the Sudan's revered Mahdi, "messiah." That meeting has paved the way for talks between the northern opposition and the Khartoum government.

  An even more important meeting has also been arranged for Nairobi between the Sudanese government and the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) headed by American-trained Col. John Garang. The key mediator here is Kenya president Daniel Arap Moi.

  Over the last years there have been many meetings and many false-starts in the never-delivering Sudan peace process. But this time there is a big difference: this peace initiative has come directly from President Clinton. After spending years fighting Islamic fundamentalism and Arab terrorism Clinton has accepted the old American wisdom: "if you can't lick 'em, join 'em." He has de-demonized Qadhafi, asked mediation help from American allies like Mubarak, Moi, Uganda president Yoweri Museveni and, possibly, Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi and Eritrea's Isaias Afwerke as well. While pursuing neither peace nor prosperity in Kosovo he is doing just that in other parts of the world.

  There is more than just talk going on this time. It appears the Clinton administration has been a principal mover in a new plan for peace in the Sudan. The core of that plan is to turn the Sudan into a "confederation" in which the South will have far-reaching autonomy.

  The London-based Arabic daily "As-Sharq al-Ausat" in its May 5 issue published the main points of the confederation plan. There will be not one but two states, one Northern and the other Southern. Two presidents will together govern the confederation executive. Each state will have a parliament from which confederation ministers will be selected.

  The confederation plan brushes aside the two alternatives that have been on the negotiation table for decades: either a single secular state within a unified Sudan or independence for the South. Confederation also resolves the slavery-or-bridge conundrum that has bedeviled South-North relations for so many centuries.

  The leaked information indicates that serious informal discussions have already taken place within an obscure but influential organization well known to East African political elites, the Inter-Governmental Association Against Desertification (IGAAD). IGAAD was formed well before the Islamic Salvation Front took power in the Sudan in the late eighties. It was sponsored --- and quietly dominated --- by the US and included all the key Horn and East African states: Uganda, Kenya, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somali and the Sudan.

  Unique about IGAAD was that even after relations between all the other states and the Sudan deteriorated the Sudan was not kicked out of IGAAD. It gradually became a neutral place where issues going way beyond desertification could be seriously discussed. The leaked draft document explicitly mentions this: "talks had been going on amongst the parties concerned within the IGAAD organization; now sufficient progress has been achieved to make these basic principles public."

  An Arabic-language article summed up why this time the talks could be promising: "the force of circumstances is pushing all the parties involved toward the language of talks and away from the language of weapons. But the distrust among the conflicting parties demands unsparing international efforts to mediate and offer guarantees."

  If over the next weeks something positive comes from this new Sudan peace process it will radiate these positive effects southward into Sub-Saharan Africa and northeastward into the Middle East. President Museveni has already made offers to one of his cardinal foes, Joseph Kony, head of the Lord's Army which, with Sudanese help, has been ravaging Uganda's northern regions. If these regions settle down that will spur the parties involved in the complex and bloody Congo conflicts also to come to agreement. Here too President Clinton is playing a key role from behind the curtains.

  The election of Ehud Barak removes one of the greatest obstacles to Mideastern peace: the unending nay-saying of "Bibi" Netanyahu. Already being talked about behind the curtains is another confederation: one between Israel, Palestine and Jordan. As mentioned in Prediction #11 numerous peace signs are appearing all over the Middle East.

• Prediction:
  The next key sign in the Sudan peace process is the Nairobi meeting. To succeed it must have the presence both of Col. Garang of the SPLA and General Omar Al-Bashir of the Khartoum government.

  I predict that no later than early June such a meeting will have been held or at least a firm date in the near future announced.

  But I also make a second prediction. Concrete steps towards the formation of the proposed Sudanese confederation will have been made before the end of the year.

• Outcome:
  The first prediction will be evaluated on June 8, 1999

  The second prediction will be evaluated at the same time as Prediction #11, "Piecemeal peace coming to the Middle East": November 30, 1999. The reason for this simultaneity is that I believe the Sudan peace process is closely connected to the Middle East peace process.

In the Introduction I noted the signs of a Sudan peace process that justified making the two above mentioned predictions. In this section I shall explain what I believe are the reasons for those signs.

The main reason is one I have mentioned in several earlier predictions, to wit that President Clinton has put together a grand vision for global peace, prosperity and freedom. He talked about that vision in two major speeches in San Francisco. And it is clear he wants to realize as much of that vision as he can in the 20 months or so that remain in his two-term presidency. That means a big presence in the history books.

The bloody war which an American-dominated NATO is waging in Yugoslavia overshadows the peace and prosperity moves he is making in other parts of the world. It is now evident that NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade only briefly derailed the close relations between America and China. With the decisive victory of Ehud Barak in Israel the Arab-Israeli process will quickly resume. Jordan King Abdullah's presence in Washington suggests that an economic confederation between Israel, Palestine and Jordan has been discussed in the White House.

Africa is finally being noticed in Washington with something more than perfunctory interest. There was a big Africa conference in Washington a few months ago and another one is scheduled for the Bay Area early in June. Last year President Clinton spent ten days in Africa. I can think of many reasons for this interest but one keeps coming and coming to my mind. That reason is only comprehensive political security and substantial economic development can reduce the huge outward flows of migrants to the developed countries. Africans along with Latin Americans, East Europeans and Asians form the world's four great migrant streams. The worse the wars and poverty the greater the streams.

America now has unprecedented power in the world. It has become a great de facto empire. In Africa the power and influence of the old colonial powers, especially France and England, have declined. Newer powers like China and Japan have had only minimal impact. America alone now looms large over all of Africa.

President Clinton seems to have made a big mistake last year when in Africa. Many East Africans believe he encouraged Ugandan President Museveni to send troops into the former Zaire. The violence and wars that were ignited by those moves did a lot once again to destabilize Africa after it seemed that peace processes were setting in.

Yet just as Clinton realized there could be no peace in the Middle East unless all Arabs and all Israelis are brought in, so he now understands that real peace in all of Africa is the indispensable sine qua non for economic development. I think he probably also knows that where peace has prevailed --- as in Uganda, one of his favorite African countries --- there economic development has followed in impressive ways.

But if this is so why doesn't he show the same broad-minded wisdom in Kosovo as he does in Africa and the Middle East? The only answer I can give is that in Kosovo he is mainly fighting for the third principle of his grand vision, freedom. He has again and again voiced his loathing of ethnic cleansing and sees it as killings which violate humans' most basic right: the right to life. It seems to be in Europe that he now wants to realize all three aims of that vision. Western Europe already has peace, prosperity and freedom. If Milosevic would only surrender, he believes, then Serbia soon could have the same.

In the rest of the world he seems content to aim first at peace and prosperity and leave freedom to later times.