Khartoum, May 26: Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir is to be sworn in for a new term on Thursday, ahead of a vote on southern independence and with an international war-crimes indictment hanging over him.
Beshir’s latest mandate in his 21-year rule is considered crucial for the future of Africa’s largest country, where former southern rebels are seeking to secede and with deadly violence continuing to plague the western Darfur region.
“The biggest challenge Sudan faces in the next five years — I would even say in the coming months — is whether it will head toward unity or slide into division,” said Abdel Moneim Suleiman, an opposition activist.
Beshir will oversee the run-up to a referendum on the independence of the south which is scheduled for January 2011.
The vote was promised as part of a peace deal between the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the Khartoum government that ended Africa’s longest-running war in 2005.
Salva Kiir, who heads the SPLM, was sworn in as the first elected president of the autonomous region of south Sudan on Friday.
In a speech celebrating his disputed re-election victory last month, Beshir vowed to campaign for unity against the ambitions of southerners.
And on Monday, newly elected parliament speaker Ibrahim Ahmed al-Taher focused on the referendum in his inaugural speech.
“The assembly’s first task is to call upon southerners to preserve the unity of Sudan because that is what serves their interests,” said Taher, a member of Beshir’s National Congress Party, which controls parliament.
“Separation will only bring division and war,” he added.
Taher said parliament “will also have to resolve the conflict in Darfur.
“Weapons and murder have not provided an answer to the demands of the people and it is up to the representatives of the people to complete the path to peace,” he said.
But there are few signs that Beshir, who won the first multi-party vote since he seized power in a 1989 coup, plans to cooperate with his opponents, further undermining hope for unity.
Just last week Sudanese authorities arrested Islamist opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi, once Beshir’s mentor but now one of his fiercest critics.
Like many observers, critics say a vote backing southern independence is now largely inevitable.
“I do not think that the Sudanese of the north will stop feasting on oil,” a resource largely found in the south, Suleiman said.
“But I also think that the southerners will not give up their demand for self-governance,” he added.
Analyst Beshir Ahmed says the country’s future hinges on a balancing act — meeting the demands of southerners, containing the crisis in Darfur and facing international pressure.
“Separation in Sudan is entirely possible,” Ahmed said.
“You have the demands of marginalised groups inside combined with pressure from the international community, which is keeping a watchful eye on the country.”
Few heads of state are expected to join Beshir in celebration on Thursday and the US-based Human Rights Watch last week called for a boycott of his inauguration.
In March 2009, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Beshir for alleged war crimes in Darfur.
But Beshir continues to reject the jurisdiction of the ICC, the world’s only independent permanent court with authority to try genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Darfur, an arid region the size of France, has been gripped by civil war since 2003 when minority rebels rose up against the Arab-dominated government, complaining of marginalisation.
The war has left 300,000 people dead and displaced around 2.7 million, according to the United Nations.
Khartoum puts the death toll at 10,000.
—Agencies