10 September 2001
The World Summit on Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa, last week was the occasion for verbal clashes between Sudanese and Ugandan envoys as to the nature of the conflict in Sudan and the level of Ugandan involvement in it. Sudan said that in the current Sudanese war, which began in 1983, Uganda provided assistance to rebels in the south of Sudan.
There was a training centre for rebels in Uganda, and the rebels in Sudan receive military and financial assistance through that base, a UN press statement quoted its envoy as saying. To call the Sudanese war a religious conflict was meaningless and ill-founded, since cultural and religious freedom in Sudan was respected under the 1998 Constitution, he added.
Sudan alleged that the President of Uganda [Yoweri Museveni] was part of the causes of the civil war there but, when the conflict began in 1956, Museveni was attending primary school, the Ugandan delegate, Foreign Minister James Wapakhabulo, replied. Sudan claimed that the conflict was a civil war and not a racial conflict when, in fact, it was the result of an attempt by the Sudanese ruling class to forcibly Islamise and Arabise the black Christians in the southern part of the country, he said. There would be no end to the war until the policy of cultural and religious hegemony was abandoned, he added. Sudan had openly stated that it supported Ugandan anti-government rebels [the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)], allegedly in retaliation for Uganda's support for the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) yet the SPLA was nowhere near the Uganda/Sudan border when the Sudanese Government first armed Ugandan rebels in 1986, according to Wapakhabulo.
He said the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) peace process on Sudan was based on a declaration of principles, key among them the recognition of cultural diversity and the need for religious tolerance in Sudan. It stressed the need to create a secular state in the Sudan so that Shari'ah [Islamic] law could be abolished in the south of the country. Uganda stood ready to work with its neighbours to find a durable solution to the civil war in Sudan but that could not be done without acknowledging its racial dimension, Wapakhabulo added.
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