We did get news of the death of four Sudanese members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in South Sudan after the freeing of two Swiss Red Cross (Crescent) hostages of the SPLA. The Controversy that broke out over the responsibility fort these murders, one group accusing the other, reminds us of an often forgotten fact : there are no witnesses to the war in Southern Sudan and we cannot even imagine the amount of violence and suffering endured by the civilian population and also by the soldiers in the conflict.

The media that bring us a few shock-pictures when there is a more urgent food crisis only visit refugee camps that house a very small part of the most abandoned or the most accessible part of the population and that for a short period of several weeks. They go only when invited by aid organisations seeking to attract public opinion to their action and in view of getting further funding.

The rest of the time, over a vast area the zones devastated by war are as if on another planet for the media.

One of the paradoxes of this war is that the NGOS themselves, though numerous in the field are carefully kept away from combat zones, while Operation Lifeline Sudan, in the South for the last ten years, does not give the least on hand information about the atrocities committed by both sides in the conflict.

When Colonel John Garang was in Geneva, both he (for the SPLA) and the Sudanese government accused each other of acts against human rights and crimes against humanity. All this seemed irrealistic in the given context. If the Khartoum government only keeps hold on power through the reign of terror of its security forces in the North and because of the tribal militia, bent on plundering and killing and those fanatic contingents for which paradise is at the end of the Jihad, then the results of the sixteen years’ existence of the SPLA are most alarming.

John Garang is a very friendly person in private life and shows a certain charisma in public, but his autocratic manner is such that he has never taken human lives into account. Proof of this can be seen in the end of all who oppose him within his organisation but also in the lack of interest he has always shown for the improvement of conditions of the civilian population Still today the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (SRRA) is only a ‘humanitarian’ annex of the SPLA with its action limited by the political or even economical considerations of the military organisation.

Yet it would be very easy to put the protagonists back to back as in Kosovo, the aggressor is clearly identified and the continued policy of the Khartoum governments to control Southern Sudan’s resources by relentlessly subduing or eliminating the local population is exactly like that of Serbian nationalists. It has to be admitted that those who refuse to submit to the Islamic regime are not the primary cause of the conflict, whatever may be their ways, their corruption and violence. In addition, the war has another consequence : it prevents the emergence of democratic leaders within the population of the south.

The French authorities having chosen to support somewhat the Islamic government through concern for realism and competition on African soil together with certain members of the good friends of NATO *, would do well to meditate on the fact that their Khartoum friends, French-speaking as some may be, would have some reason as Milosevic and his cronies to appear before an International penal Tribunal.
 
 

*A  significant and recent example is the reply made by Mr Charles Josselin Delegate Minister for Cooperation and Francophony, to Mr Louis Mermaz, a Deputy for Isère on 18 November 1998 at the National Assembly :
« France has become very involved in aid to Sudan through different organisms such as Secours Catholic and the humanitarian aid organism of the European Commission ECHO. Till now France had donated 113 million francs to this work.  But you are right, the real question is the restoration of peace. Tomorrow we shall take part in a meeting organized by the intergovernmental authority at Rome to (try to) convince the different parties in the conflict to continue the cease-fire. We attach a great deale of importance to this. At the same time, a renewed dialogue with the Sudanese authorities should allow a lull in the region; However the question remains : just how far one should continue to help rebellions that have no other effect than that of prolonging the suffering of the local population ».