Jealousy and longing in northern Sudan
Jealousy and longing in northern Sudan | Nesrine Malik | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
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With less than a week to go before the referendum on the secession of southern Sudan, the juggernaut's path is fixed and there is no turning around. Southerners in the north have started making their way to the southern provinces – most of them voluntarily and with enthusiasm, though others are complaining of pressure to move back.
The northern government, essentially the National Congress party, has run out of ways to avert the inevitable, and is beginning to make noises indicating that it is starting to seriously envisage a future without the south.
The NCP's main challenge now is to redefine itself, yet again. It has gone from being a hardline Islamist government that threw itself wholeheartedly into the war with the south, to a dove carrying an olive branch when negotiating the peace agreement, to the sponsor of an "attractive unity" policy for the past five years.
Reduced to a hard core alliance of business, military and residual religious interests, the NCP, under the leadership of Omar al-Bashir, it is still echoing the mantra of unity out of inertia, but has declared that it will accept the results of the referendum and is starting to turn its eye inwards.
Last month, in the wake of a video that showed a Sudanese woman being flogged, President Bashir came out in defence of the punishment and added that, after the separation, sharia would be implemented with full force in northern Sudan. This sent the media and some Sudanese in the north into a flurry of speculation. Many feared a return to the dark days of the 1990s during the height of the Islamist phase. In the north, opinions regarding the post-referendum situation oscillate between predictions of the NCP's demise and its expansion into a beast with pride so wounded that it is going to wreak its misplaced revenge on the hapless victims of the north.
By making provisions for secession in the comprehensive peace agreement, then desperately trying to avoid it, then failing to avoid it, the northern government has lost credit. It has alienated southerners while making northerners feel that they have sacrificed the south in order to secure short-term interests.
In recent days Bashir has been on the mass rally circuit, addressing the nation with his usual rhetoric about Sudan's unassailable sovereignty, but lately he has also extended an invitation to opposition parties to create a "broad-based government" in order to "unite the national front".
Following that, two of the biggest opposition factions in Sudan merged into one. Whether they did so in order to accept Bashir's invitation or to create a more significant counterweight to the NCP remains to be seen. But the opposition's language is becoming more outspoken, with Hassan al-Turabi, the ousted spiritual godfather of the Salvation Revolution, even calling for regime change.
As southerners resign their jobs in the north and head home, those northerners who bid farewell to them in Khartoum express a mixture of jealousy and longing – longing for that clean slate, and an escape from the protean agenda of the NCP, which for ever overshadows the political climate in the north.
However, whatever arrangement the northern government comes to, it is unlikely that there will be a return to the dark days of curfews, a fundamentalist popular culture and a hardening of the attitude towards the outside world. Money has begun to flow, the political elite have tasted affluence, and long-term business interests have been created – which will temper the regime, forcing it to mature.
In a recent article, Simon Tisdall states:
"In these scenarios Bashir becomes the leader who 'lost' the south for no return. Moderate opponents might see this as the moment to mend fences with the US, even to deliver the president to the Hague. But hardline Islamists, decrying a great betrayal, might turn Sudan into a sharia-touting, revolution-exporting Islamic republic like Iran."
Although opposition parties have become emboldened, it is unlikely that such dramatic events will come to pass. Moderate elements (sadly) lack the amount of genuine popular support that Bashir has managed to drum up, and Islamist elements are almost fully domesticated under the umbrella of the NCP.
There is a palpable feeling in the north that the potential loss of the south has shaken the government. This has already triggered another spell of experimentation, which will result in a new version of the original regime that came to power in 1989.
This is what is worrying. An insecure NCP is more dangerous than a confident one. Until it manages to come to new arrangements with both southern and northern leaders, securing its financial and political interests, the northern government is not strong enough to desist from random acts of oppression, nor weak enough to be overthrown.
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