The decision could ruin the vote and damage the region's faltering peace process, writes JODY CLARKEin Nairobi
THE PROBLEM with Sudan, which was cobbled together by the Ottomans in the 19th century, then the British in the 20th, isn’t so much that it is a failed state. It is that there is no state.
It is governed by an educated Arab elite in the capital, Khartoum, and the concerns of the country’s 300 or so tribes go mostly unnoticed by them and their well-to-do supporters. That goes some way to explaining recent events in the country.
Most opposition parties have pulled out of next week’s elections, accusing Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir of rigging the country’s first multi-party poll in 24 years.
Meanwhile, al-Bashir has threatened to reject next year’s referendum on independence for South Sudan if the elections are postponed as a result of the allegations.
Call it principled or strategic, but there is method behind this posturing.
On al-Bashir’s side, members of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) want to retain power in order to keep their hands on the country’s wealth.
Since coming to power in 1989, “they are mostly concerned with funnelling money to themselves from the country’s oil boom”, says John Voll, a professor of Islamic history at Georgetown University in Washington DC.
Having a fair election might jeopardise that.
For al-Bashir himself, winning big could give him more legitimacy in the international community and force the International Criminal Court to withdraw their war-crimes indictment against him. At least that is what he might be counting on.
It certainly explains why the NCP has had “long-term plans to rig” the poll, as the International Crisis Group put it this week.
On the opposition’s side, participating in an election that will neither be fair nor free is hardly in their best interests. And anyway, the NCP’s main challenger, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), is more concerned with next year’s referendum on independence for Southern Sudan than an election that will most certainly put their long-term rival back into power.
But no matter what either side is thinking, the recent manoeuvres have moved the country and even the region into dangerous territory.
“The country is now in a very fragile and critical situation,” says Fouad Hikmat, a Sudan specialist at the International Crisis Group in Nairobi. “All possibilities are open, from a political breakthrough to a coup d’etat – or even a resumption of war.”
Countries have fought over less, and in recent months both sides have accused the other of rearming in preparation for a resumption of hostilities.
Given that two million people died in the two-decade war between the south and the north, it is hardly an outcome that anyone inside or outside Sudan would want.
Surrounded by nine countries, Sudan at war drags others with it, as the continued existence of northern Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army proves.
This is just one reason why the US and the rest of the international community have invested so much in the peace agreement between the two sides. United States special envoy to Sudan Scott Gration is now in Khartoum, shuttling busily between both sides looking for a way out of the current impasse.
Given the lack of trust between them, this won’t be the easiest task to achieve.