A Victory for Humanity

Of all the brushfire wars that have raged in black Africa during the early years of independence, none has been uglier or more intractable than the civil war in the Sudan. For 16 years, the 4,000,000 black Africans of the southern Sudan have been pitted against the 11 million mostly Arab northerners. An estimated 500,000 Sudanese, most of them southerners, have been killed; hundreds of grass-hut villages have been bombed, sacked and burned by the northern army and sometimes by the southern guerrillas, the Anyanya (named for the poison extracted from scorpions or cobras).

Suddenly, however, that most relentless of civil wars appears to be at an end. One day next week, if all goes well, a peace treaty will be signed at Addis Ababa, the capital of neighboring Ethiopia, by the leaders of the two sides: Major General Jaafar Numeiry, President of the Sudan, and Major General Joseph Lagu, commander of the Anyanya.

The negotiations began in mid-February under the auspices of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, and almost foundered over how to guarantee the southerners' security against reprisals following the signing of an agreement. At that point the Emperor called the negotiators to his palace and guaranteed the southerners' well-being in his own name and that of the 41-nation Organization for African Unity. The rebels then abandoned their demand for a separate army, and the Sudanese government in Khartoum agreed to grant more autonomy for the south than it had originally intended.

Under a new constitution, the south will have its own Regional President, parliament and police; only foreign affairs, currency and defense will be controlled by Khartoum. The army in the south will be evenly split between southern and northern commanders and men. A majority of the approximately 12,000 Anyanya will be amnestied into the Sudanese army.

The settlement must now be accepted by the fighting men on both sides. That will be made easier for the southerners because Lagu--a diminutive career soldier who in recent years built the Anyanya into a unified military and political force--will likely become their first Regional President. He shares credit for the settlement with Numeiry, who has worked for reconciliation with the south against strong opposition within his own hierarchy. On the eve of last month's peace talks, Numeiry dismissed his army commander and defense minister, Major General Khalid Abbas, who opposed the negotiations.

In a sense, the peace settlement runs counter to modern Sudanese history, ignoring as it does an enmity that has existed between the region's Moslems and blacks since the days when Arab slave traders made regular forays into southern Sudan. Yet both sides will obviously benefit from what a Uganda newspaper described as "a victory for humanity." The Khartoum government will be freed at last to develop a sprawling country.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.