SSIM blasts Garang as `bloody dictator'
Executive Intelligence Review February 14, 1997

    {The following statement was issued by the Secretary for External Affairs of the South Sudan Independence Movement (SSIM), Costello Garang Ring Lual, on Jan. 25, in Germany, and presented the same day to the Washington, D.C., forum on Africa sponsored by the FDR-PAC. It is entitled, ``The Position of SSIM and the Other Southern Charter Signatories Concerning the Ongoing Events in Southern Blue Nile and Eastern Sudan.''}

      By signing the Political Charter with the GOS (Government of Sudan) on the 10th of April 1996, the SSIM and its other Southern allies made their position crystal clear on how to solve the South-North conflict. A high-ranking SSIM delegation, headed by Secretary for External Affairs Costello Garang Ring Lual, toured the U.S.A. from the 20th of June to the 20th of August, followed by the European countries listed below, to explain the position of the Southern Charter's signatories.
      The delegation visited Norway, France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany; and thereafter, two leading members of the Movement, Joseph Malual Dong and Dr. Stephen Abraham Yar, who accompanied the Secretary for External Affairs on his visit to the U.S.A., proceeded to Great Britain to present the position of the Southern Charter's signatories to the British government.
    Our position, which we still hold, was that:
      1. We were willing to take the opportunity of a negotiated peace settlement. We were not going to engage in speculations regarding the intentions [of the GOS] as the good or bad will of GOS would be proved at the roundtable. The Charter, for SSIM and its other Southern signatories which we represented, is like going to marriage where one does not ask whether it is going to work or not, but one goes into it with all optimism and intention to make it work.
      2. The ruling Islamic-oriented politicians in Khartoum are realistic and intelligent enough to acknowledge the fact that Sudan is multiracial, multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multireligious. No pure ``Islamic theocratic political system,'' as feared by the West, could be established all over the country, under such circumstances with large, non-Islamic groups in the South and elsewhere also aspiring for their own cultural and religious identities. Our cooperation with the current GOS would give the ruling groups a sense of security and would, in the long run, also dilute some of the current ideological outlooks, which are considered by the West and the South alike as ``Islamic fundamentalist.'' The right of self-determination for the People of South Sudan is the price we demanded, and are going to get, for the ongoing cooperation. If the ruling Islamic-orientated groups reneged on it--we don't believe they would--we will stop all sorts of cooperation.
      3. For the SSIM-SSIA and its allies, the oppositional northern political parties in the NDA [National Democratic Alliance] are not a better alternative to the current GOS, as far as the South is concerned, for several obvious reasons:
      a) The Umma Party and the DUP [Democratic Unionist Party] are like the NIF [National Islamic Front] Islamic parties which intend to create an Islamic state in Sudan. They have for several years ruled the country and were not able to solve the ongoing conflict.
      b) It was the former Prime Minister and Umma leader Sadiq al-Mahdi who introduced the arming of northern tribes during the time of his premiership in order to use them against the SPLM/SPLA. Robbery became the order of the day and the South was devastated as a result of the Umma-DUP Southern policies.
      c) The fact that the SSIM-SSIA was rejected for NDA membership and the very fact that the northern oppositional parties were collaborating with a bloody Southern dictator, namely, the SPLM-SPLA leader, Dr. John Garang, shows that these parties are for sure no more democratic than those ruling in Khartoum, as the NDA tends to openly claim.
      4. The SSIM-SSIA would see to it that there is linkage between the solution of Southern Sudanese problems and those of the neighboring countries and will address Egyptian fears concerning the flow of the Nile water, which is, after all, not used in Southern Sudan for irrigation, since the South enjoys enough rainfall.
      5. The U.S.A. and its Western allies should encourage reconciliation of Southern rebel groups and abstain from endorsing the SPLM-SPLA as the ``main resistance'' movement. The SPLM-SPLA leader was portrayed by the delegation as a bloody dictator who has misused Southern Nationalism for personal ends. No Southern Sudanese is fighting for the creation of what the SPLM-SPLA leader terms ``democratic, secular, and united New Sudan.'' If the current conflict could be solved peacefully and through a negotiated settlement, there is no need, from a Southern viewpoint, for the continuation of war, even if the whole country is temporarily being ruled by an Islamic political grouping.
      6. To underline the fact that the SPLM-SPLA leader is a dictator with no respect for even the lives of the people he claims to be fighting to liberate, a list of leading Southern politicans who were extrajudicially murdered in cold blood by the SPLM-SPLA was handed over to the personalities met by the delegation during the visits. Documented on the list are, for example, the names of the following Southern leaders who were either first detained and then murdered by the SPLM-SPLA security agents, or just shot in cold blood:
      1) Joseph Odubo, 2) Martin Magier Gai, 3) Martin Makur Aleyou, 4) Martin Kogiburo, 5) Joseph Malanth, 6) Benjamin Bol Akok, 7) James Gatwec, 8) John Jok Gai, 9) James Gaijiath Thoat, 10) Dol Manguok Jr., and many more.
      From the above-mentioned point of view, the SSIM-SSIA and its Southern Charter Allies categorically condemn the ongoing so-called ``NDA Offensive'' in the Southern Blue Nile and eastern Sudan, because the only visible, logical aim behind it is denying a chance to the Peace Charter and, hence, denying a peaceful solution of the North-South conflict. The situation is being intentionally complicated by making out of the North-South political and social conflict an ideological, anti-Islamic war, but at the same time, the SPLM/SPLA leader, well known for his opportunistic tendencies, is allying himself with the traditional northern Islamic parties, which he termed in 1983 the ``enemies of the People.'' Garang stated that the objection of his ``revolution'' was to ``free the Sudanese masses'' from the domination of the Mahdi and Mirghani family, whom he, together with those in Khartoum and Geizira, termed ``the ruling clique.'' Whether in Southern Blue Nile, Nuba Mountains, eastern or southern Sudan, it is the Southern and the Nuba youth who are being used as cannon-fodder by the NDA. The traditional Islamic leaders in the Umma Party and the DUP are not, and would never be, willing to send their daughters and sons to go and struggle, fight, and die for the ``freedom and democracy'' they emptily and loudly claim to be striding forward toward.