Congratulations to the Canadian NGOs. The Canadian company Fosters had obtained a large petrol concession in Upper Nile State and announced a $30 million exploration program. But now, in a letter to the shareholders of the company; the Chief Executive Officer declares Fosters is pulling out of the controversial petrol development project in Sudan; (because of) a campaign by human rights groups and the media that incited the financial backers of the project to withdraw...Do I have any regrets? Only that of admitting defeat. ... Perhaps my best opportunity in a thirty years career, when we sincerely thought we would do good for the country. I don’t understand wars especially civil wars». On its side, the Ontario Teachers’ federation announced that for ethical reasons it was withdrawing its $95 million investment from Talisman. As for the Khartoum regime, it is exporting petrol from the Shagarat refinery near Khartoum for the first time and is preparing to offer new concessions «in the Blue Nile basin and near the Chad border in the North». 

For some time  "The Black Book"  has been circulating like hot cakes in Khartoum.  It takes issue with the way people from Darfur and Kordofan have been marginalised within the Sudanese state by the regime. The included statistics show how the Arab groups of Northern Sudan along the Nile from Wad Medani to Dongola dominate all the power structures of the state. We learn that if Southerners have some official positions (purely honorary, it is true) people in the West are deprived of even that. The underlying idea is that in order to obtain a minimum from the state, one must wage a war against it. Rumour has it that the book’s author is Ali Al Haj, a Westerner close to Turabi and attributes the latter’s loss of the post of Secretary General of the National Congress to it. The Security forces are said to have considered taking action, but now to prefer discretion. (Read in same issue another document Ethnic cleansing of African Muslims in Western Sudan).

Two positive items of news have reached us. They concern peace at grassroots level. The New Council of Churches of Sudan (in the region under MLPS) instigated reconciliation first between the Nuer and the Dinka of the West bank at Wunlit in March ‘99, then between Lou Nuer at Waat in November’99.  These agreements still hold on. The same organization held another conference in May at Lilir, on the site of a battle, bringing together the Nilotic peoples of the East bank of the Nile, the Murle, and Anuak... Those taking part, traditional and civil leaders, women, and youth walked long distances across marshlands and plains to reach Lilir. As for Wunlit, the SPLA had promised to maintain peace in the region during the conference. Each group expressed its grievances and begged pardon for past offences. After the warning: » If the Southerners carry out tribal massacres, others are ready to help in the genocide », one hundred chiefs signed a peace treaty. Then a white bull was sacrificed. Apart from that, a peace treaty was signed on 1 June between the Dinka chiefs of Aweil and Baqqara Misseiriya and Rizeikat who made a habit of carrying on razzias on these Dinka. Since then, the Baqqara pasture and trade in Dinka country. In the same time, they must find and return the persons their tribesmen enslaved. The Dinka can go back to their borderlands. No weapon may be carried when on the other’s land.  Participants to the conference are uncertain about the success of this treaty, above all through fear of the government, which has already shown discontent at seeing its war ended at the base at Wunlit. The rest is royal game.

Garang has been invited to Egypt. He satisfied his hosts by showing favour to Egyptian mediation on condition that it is allied to that of Igad, and above all by returning to his 1984 speech adverse to a partition of the Sudan. This last declaration caused emotion amongst Southern groups who fear that a peace treaty of that sort would be as little respected as that of Addis-Abbeba in 1972. Beshir refuses both secularism and independence for the South, yet continues to extol national reconciliation. He writes to Al Mahdi and Al Mirghani, receives polite but dilatory replies; he suggests the opposition participates  in forming a government of national unity. He has little leeway to hold on to power. He does not seem to think that he should perhaps seek peace. He knows he must allow some freedom to lessen popular discontent and please the West. In the same time he knows that only a reign of terror prevents him to be overthrown. However the Security forces are utterly opposed to any form of liberalization or democratisation. (Some ill wishers of Khartoum say they are financed from abroad, among others, Iran). Its members would risk losing a good position and might find themselves brought to justice; so they might be ready to plot a putsch.