The SPLA: Contras of the Sudan
by Richard Okot with Wells Staley-Mays
A number of Sudanese people who live in Portland attended PAM's annual meeting in May. They came to tell us that their country has been at war longer than any other country in Africa, and that the international community is doing nothing to stop the killing. They pointed out that they are in disagreement with Richard Okot, a Sudanese man who is a member of PAM's disarmament committee, and who has spoken out against the sanctions imposed on Sudan by U.S. pressure on the UN, and the arming of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army, the rebels who are opposed to the government of Sudan, in Khartoum. From their point of view the people of the south must be allowed to defend themselves against the government of the north. Due to limited space, we have decided to present Richard Okot's position in this issue of PeaceTalk and have asked the others to respond in the next issue.
"When two elephants fight, the grass suffers" --- old Sudanese proverb
Since Great Britain relinquished its colonial control in 1956, Sudan has experienced three civil wars. Control of the country has alternated between civilian and military governments. As each government was unable to solve Sudan's many problems, the military would take over. One such coup, in 1969, brought Gaafar Nimeiry to power. In 1972, he recognized special autonomy for the south and ended the civil war. However, his program to impose Islamic law (sharia) on the whole country, rekindled the civil war and eventually led to a coup in 1985. The officers involved sponsored free elections in 1986, but the new government was unable to end the civil war and improve economic conditions. In 1988, when fighting prevented relief supplies from reaching drought-stricken areas, at least 250,000 people died.
The mostly Arab Moslem northern part of the Sudan has been attempting to Islamicize the mostly Christian and animist (pagan) southern part since the nation gained its independence.
The third civil war, which started in 1983, continues to the present day. The National Salvation Revolution Command Council (RCC), headed by Lt. General Hassan Bashir, suspended the 1985 constitution and banned all political parties and trade unions. Bashir's regime focused on the war against the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement and Army.
The SPLM wants autonomy for the non-Muslim south, but it is riven by internal divisions. Rival factions have destroyed villages, and terrorized their inhabitants. Hundreds of thousands of people became refugees during the 1990s, forced to flee drought and the fighting. Many remain in camps in neighboring countries; others joined various rebel groups.
Since 1983 international restrictions on the trading or shipment of weapons of mass destruction, including anti-personnel landmines, from any superpower nation to third world nations have been lifted, and since 1993, economic sanctions on Sudan have been imposed, leading to the deaths from starvation, disease and malnutrition of another million Sudanese. These dead represent the poorest of the Sudanese population, mostly Black, tribal peoples, women and children. Current estimates of civilian dead in this civil war are between three and four million.
The first two civil wars were about liberty, freedom and democracy. The third has dropped all pretense toward such noble goals. Since 1983, the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), the rebels, led by Colonel John Garang, has turned against the tribal peoples of the south, while claiming to be defending them from the Sudanese Arab Muslims of the north. Its campaign of terror has been supplied with weapons and instruments of torture from the United States and Great Britain through neighboring countries. The SPLA's terror campaign has caused many of the peoples of the other southern tribes to join the army of the oppressive Sudanese government as the lesser of two evils.
The United States and Great Britain supply Garang and the SPLA through routes in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Egypt. The governments of those nations feel threatened by the militant Islamicization policies of the Sudanese government and believe it is in their best interest to assist in arming the SPLA rebels. Egypt has an intense interest in not allowing the south to separate from the rest of Sudan because the largest oil deposits in the world were discovered in 1978 in the southern Sudan; In addition, the southern Sudan controls the headwaters of the Nile and could divert the water from Egypt. Britain and the United States see their interests in the area threatened by the Islamic government in the north. The C.I.A. is involved in U.S. armed forces support for Garang in order to assure U.S. access to the oil fields of the southern Sudan.
Many tribes have suffered at the hands of the S.P.L.A. The SPLA has looted their cattle and grain and scattered landmines along the southern borders of Sudan in order to prevent refugees from fleeing the country. U.S.-based humanitarian organizations working in Sudan, including CARE, World Vision, Church World Service, Save the Children and the American Refugee Committee, no friends of the Sudanese government, have gone on record to the effect that the SPLA has "engaged for years in the most serious human rights abuses, including extra-judicial killings, beating, arbitrary detention, slavery, etc."
A small group of elite from the Dinka tribe control the SPLA, profit from the sale of weapons and have bank accounts in Switzerland. The Dinka elite also profit from the abduction of Sudanese youth from refugee camps in Kenya and Uganda. Many of these youths are forced into the SPLA army, sold into slavery, or brutally tortured.
The SPLA plays the same role in the southern Sudan that the Contras played in Nicaragua. In addition to using surrogates, the United States has provided military training to the SPLA by CIA and special forces instructors. U.S. army generals, for example, have been present during Ugandan army exercises held in conjunction with SPLA forces and Eritrean army units. The American military was there in the guise of advisors on anti terrorism. Africa Confidential has confirmed that the SPLA "has already received U.S. help via Uganda" and that U.S. special forces are on "open-ended deployment" with the rebels.
Back to Peace Talk Index, June 2000