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| Africa: Horn |
| Turabi's waning influence in Sudan |
| 2004-04-06 |
| Sudanese opposition leader Hassan Turabi helped President Omar el-Bashir seize power in a coup 14 years ago and transform the country into a haven for Osama bin Laden. Now he's accused of trying to topple el-Bashir as the Sudanese leader attempts to steer the African country away from Islamic fundamentalism in response to the U.S.-led war on terrorism. Turabi was arrested Saturday, along with about 30 soldiers, policemen and members of his Popular Congress party. El-Bashir's ruling National Congress Party said they were involved in plans to assassinate top figures and attack power stations and military installations. Turabi denies the accusations, and is to undergo further interrogation before a decision will be made on whether he will face trial. In 1989, Turabi enjoyed a very different relationship with Sudan's political elite. That was the year he helped el-Bashir topple Sudan's last democratically elected leader, former Prime Minister Sadiq el-Mahdi. Over the next decade Turabi became one of Sudan's most powerful figures — the main ideologue of the Islamic fundamentalist government that was set up after el-Bashir seized power. In a 1998 interview with The Associated Press, Turabi said the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania were "understandable" and that he considered bin Laden a hero. In recent years, however, Turabi's influence has waned, in part because of the intense international pressure on Sudan to end its ties with terrorism. U.S. sanctions ban American companies from doing business in Sudan, which Washington has listed as a sponsor of terrorism. Sudan's 20-year-old civil war has also cost Turabi support. The country's move toward fundamentalist Islam exacerbated the conflict between the Muslim, Arab government and the animist and Christian southerners. The war has killed more than 2 million people through combat and attendant famine and disease. However, analysts say Turabi is still a challenge to the government. "I believe the government knows that he is a pragmatic man, a man who does not accept half-solutions, and who can to anything to achieve his plans," said Al-Hajj Warrag, co-editor of the independent Al-Sahafa newspaper. El-Bashir and Turabi fell out in 1999 after the president accused Turabi, then speaker of parliament, of trying to grab power and stripped him of his position. El-Bashir began to move away from Islamic fundamentalism, in part, experts say, out of eagerness to get foreign aid and technology from the West to exploit his country's oil resources. Turabi, meanwhile, formed the Popular Congress and became the most prominent Islamist in opposition. Turabi spent two years under house arrest after his party signed a peace deal with the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, leader of the southern rebellion. His return to custody Wednesday comes just five months after authorities released him from house arrest, ruling that "circumstances that had led to his arrest are no longer valid." Turabi is now being linked with a different Sudanese conflict in the restive western province of Darfur, where local tribes have been in revolt since early 2003. Hassan Mekki, a political science professor at the International African University and the University of Khartoum, said Turabi's arrest was preventative. The government has strong reason to believe Turabi is the "brain" behind the internationalization of the Darfur conflict, he said. "So they want to remove him from the scene for the time being. What is happening now is a summer tumult, it might soon dissipate." In the interview published Saturday, Turabi said el-Bashir's government wants to blame the Darfur conflict on his party to win favor with the West by saying Islamists are behind the violence. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 None of this has stopped them from continuing to "ethnically cleanse" the black Africans near the border with Chad |
| Posted by: Not Mike Moore 2004-04-06 11:58:54 PM |