"A Summer in Sudan" | by Sarah Nouwen

On the request of the Netherlands Embassy in Khartoum , Sarah Nouwen, a Dutch student in Cambridge , worked as political and legal adviser in Sudan . Initially coming only for the holiday-weeks, she got entangled in the fascinating web of Sudan 's fragile and volatile peace-process, deferred her PhD and stayed for a year in the world's hottest capital. A personal account of a student on a quest for peace, development, rediscovery of self and a balance between academia and the “real world”.

‘A haboub is coming.' The driver, picking me up from Khartoum airport in the early morning, announced it with an eerie voice. There was no escape. Arcane red air replete with the blinding sand hermetically domed the Sudanese capital and contained the heat as in a pressure cooker. The merciless sandstorm could burst out any hour.

Was the menace of the storms mirroring the social and political climate of the country where I had just landed? Had the clouds absorbed the spirit of ‘martyr' John Garang, 22 years leading freedom fighter of South Sudan and only for 21 days Sudan 's Vice-President, buried a few hours before my plane touched ground in Khartoum ? Or the spirits of the 130 people who had been killed in inter-ethnic violence the previous days, incited by conspiracy theories about the helicopter crash in which the South Sudanese hero had been killed? Or did the clouds carry the two million lives taken in Africa's longest civil war, or the thousands decimated in the country's west, Darfur , yesteryear?

More importantly, if the weather reflected the mayhem of the previous week, what did it adumbrate? A paroxysm of more violence, striking a final blow to the fragile North-South peace that had officially started only six months before? The nemesis of the comprehensive peace agreement, if opposition parties claiming that the agreement is all but comprehensive but a duet of the dominant northern (NCP) and southern (SPLM) parties, use the vacuum left by Garang's death to undermine the peace process? Or will the loss of the founder and only leader of the SPLM rekindle the Armageddon in the South, unleashing the fissiparous bonds between the various Southern groups? Or, by contrast, will it provide a catharsis, expunging the tensions of last week and clearing the path to move forward along the lines of the peace accord? Will the bereavement of Garang then only have been a delaying impediment to the implementation of an inexorable process, or even, a uniting moment for Africa's biggest country, in danger to fall apart South, East and West?

With these questions in mind I was driven from the airport to the Netherlands Embassy, my employer for the next few weeks of Cambridge holidays, during nightly curfew-hours in early August 2005. Surrounded by all this tension, reflected by the threat of a haboub, omnipresent wrecks of burnt out cars, roadblocks and soldiers shielding behind their Kalashnikovs, my internal tension, built up during months of MPhil thesis writing, evaporated. I had fully enjoyed my studies in International Relations in Cambridge , but whereas my intellectual side had flourished, other features of self had hibernated. Before diving into a three year PhD in International Law I needed a break, a break in the real world, to have those features be appealed on, be kissed awake and to revive. Convinced that the snapshots in the news, epitomizing the world's imbroglios in a pandemonium-competition, only reflect part of the reality, I gratefully accepted the offer to fill the temporary vacancy of legal and political adviser in the Netherlands Embassy in Khartoum , for the couple of weeks before returning to Cambridge for a PhD in October.

However, late September I saw the plane take off. Self-confident, nose in the air, it pushed back Khartoum's dust, sand and heat, lifted itself out of Sudan's political, military and humanitarian high pressure zone and left behind the Sudanese's boiling concerns, demands and expectations. It was my plane, my plane back to my home in Western Europe, back to my past, back to my future, the PhD in Cambridge . Sweating like a fountain -40ºC- during my daily morning run I saw it ascend. I had missed it on purpose. The desire to do a PhD still flew through my veins, but the current of a strong wish to stay had won. I could not leave Sudan , not now. Although if we are to believe our political leaders, historical moments occur every day again, Sudan is indeed in critical times. The peace process is fragile, but viable. Being able to be part of the cause, no matter how modest, had revived the elements of self that had been paralyzed in Cambridge . On the request of the Embassy, and with Cambridge permission, I decided to extend my “summer” in Sudan . And in Sudan summers linger…

From the very first day I immersed, like a grain of sand in the Sahara , in my new world, new work and new life. As a legal and political adviser I reported to the Netherlands about the implementation of the peace process, and tried to contribute to that process by communicating with key Sudanese and international actors. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement was my bible. Nation-building by guide-book. It is fascinating.

This peace agreement is supposed to do more than ceasing the fire. The hundreds of pages long Comprehensive Peace Agreement is on the one hand indeed, despite its name, a deal between two parties (the former Government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement) to stop fighting and share power, wealth and provide security. Militias and groups that (justifiably) claim to have been marginalized (Darfurians in the West, Nubians in the North, Beja in the East, “democratizing parties” in Khartoum) complain that they have been excluded from a peace deal in which the two parties divide the cake among themselves, with the endorsement of the international community. On the other hand however, this peace agreement is more than an agreement to end hostilities between two parties, allowing one party to join in power and wealth with the former monopolist. It is a blueprint for a new Sudan, not only opening for fundamental changes in the South, the war's apple of discord, but also the core of the power itself, the North. In detailed implementation modalities it outlines how a new constitution is to be adopted, a new government of national unity to be formed, a new constitutional court to be established, human rights to be respected, state constitutions to be drafted, oil revenues to be divided, armies to be partially merged, a national judicial service commission, a civil service commission, a fiscal and financial monitoring and allocation commission to be established, etc, etc, etc.

The international community tends to complain that it is going too slow, slower than envisaged in the modalities. However, in the few months that I was allowed to be part of that process, fundamental steps were made.

The day of my arrival Dr John Garang, face and voice of the SPLM, was buried after a fatal helicopter crash. Riots had erupted the days before; suspicions about foul play set in motion a chain of retaliatory actions. However, the funeral as such symbolized the vision of the deceased: unity. Garang had presented himself not as a separatist leader, fighting for the independence of his people, the Southerners. The strong Garang wished to be the icon for all the Marginalized, Christians, Western Arabs, Eastern Beja, northern Nubians. While the “joint integrated units” of soldiers of the Sudan Armed Forces and the former rebel army SPLA, envisaged in the peace agreement, are hard to form, at Garang's funeral northerners and southerners spontaneously provided the security. Juba, until a few months ago a sleepy town in the hands of the Northern army, was suddenly host to dignitaries from all over who paid a final tribute to an instantaneous world leader.

Since that day a new Vice-President has been sworn in, a new Parliament convened, a Government of National Unity was formed, the first laws were passed, a constitution for Southern Sudan was drafted, a Southern Legislative Assembly formed and a Government of Southern Sudan established. It is always surprising. The formation of some commissions seemed to drag on (politically more contentious than we as outsiders envisaged), while other laws were passed to the astonishment of the international community that was still working on teams to start drafting the law. Perhaps the timeframes agreed upon by national and international negotiators in the conference rooms have not been fully complied with. However, bearing in mind the time it can take in Western countries to form a coalition government (in Germany negotiations had been taking place for weeks at the time), I am not taken aback that the implementation of an agreement between two parties that fought each other for over twenty years, comes in fits and starts.

Even if North and South find each other, Sudan's peace is not secured. Notwithstanding the African Union's presence, the West, Darfur, seems to spiral down into a cycle of impunity and lawlessness. Full-fledged attacks on villages have decreased, partly because millions already live in Internally Displaced Persons camps. Assaults on camps, humanitarian transports and travelers seem to have become the order of the day. Who is in control? With factions proliferating and unidentified attacks, it is highly questionable whether all those currently at the negotiating table in Abuja are. Since the first casualties of international peacekeepers (AMIS) have fallen, the international machinery in Washington, New York, Brussels and national capitals has produced series of condemning resolutions, statements and declarations, and rightly so. I have my doubts though about language suggesting that the AMIS soldiers were at the wrong spot at the wrong moment. They saw an ambush and intervened. Rather than shielding away, they fulfilled their mandate. And two of them paid with their lives. That however is peace-keeping, or better in this situation, protection. Srebrenica should have taught the lesson that the primary mission of peace-keepers with a protection-mandate is not to run or look away, but to stay and to intervene, not to protect the armed self, but the vulnerable third. The time still has to come in our western parliaments that the political price of civilian casualties due to our peacekeepers' inaction is higher than the political price of body bags due to fulfilling a mandate. The AMIS soldiers were at the right place at the right moment. (as always and as with this entire article: this view does not reflect the official view of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but only and entirely of the undersigned:)).

It is in this magnetic field of rejecting and repelling forces that I, as a small temporal addition to the Netherlands Embassy, ran around, armed with peace agreement, constitution, UN resolutions and human rights conventions, from hotel lobbies to the Presidential palace, ministries to embassies, talking to parliamentarians, diplomats, ministers, judges, professors and, in particular, my cell phone.

However, in this world of decorum where the stage property easily leads one to believe that one is playing an important part, one tends to lose sight of where the reality is taking place, where the peace is won or lost, every second again: in each and every individual mind of the about 37 million Sudanese dispersed over Africa's biggest country. The field, that is where it is really happening.

I need not travel far to see the field. I live on the Embassy compound, but when cooking my kitchen-view is on squatters. I live in a relatively wealthy area of Khartoum, but when running I enter poverty within a few minutes. I see, I enter, but do I know? Do I understand?

I probably never will, but the great element of my assigned theme of “good governance and rule of law” is that Hilton lobbies, board rooms and ties are only the political side of the coin. The other is the development side of the field. So whereas I had let go the homeward bound plane going North, I took several planes of the United Nations and the World Food Programme South and West, to Southern Sudan and Darfur. They pushed away the Khartoum-rhythm of report-writing, meeting with UN agencies, political parties, ministers, emergency-calls, more meetings, and much more writing. They lifted me out of Khartoum's heat and sandy surroundings. They flew over hundreds of kilometers of emptiness, emptiness that for some is home. They surmounted impassable areas, areas where hundreds of thousands internally displaced persons went and will go through in their odyssey. The planes to the South traced the Nile that disregards it banks, creating marshes harboring those who are the greatest terrorists for most people here, transporting the most destructive weapon of mass destruction ever: flies transmitting malaria.

The planes to the South took me to Africa. Khartoum has African strokes, but it beams Arabic dominance. Southern Sudan, for the moment still part of Sudan, but potentially, after the referendum planned for 2011 an independent state, breaths Africa: mud roads, women like ballerinas carrying water undisturbed by heat, rain, green and distance, children, children, children and more children, everywhere, surrounded by cattle and poultry.

A WFP-flight had taken me and a great friend/colleague from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to Malakal: a town in the South, but until the transition that previous summer, a garrison town in hands of the by Northerners monopolized government. Upon arrival it seems a tranquil settlement. And indeed, after the transition and now with the deployment of troops of the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), life seems peaceful. However, in the greater region where no official authorities rule but only the temporal strongest, cattle-raiding, militia and feudal fighting continue. Also in the close surroundings of Malakal the war is literally all around.

Having asked whether it was safe to go for a run, I went the next morning. After a couple of minutes the main street became more like a path leading from a few huts here and there to some others more in the distance. Then I reached the open fields. Stunned by the rich range of coloring of mounting sun and energetic green grass, the smell of fresh rain finding its way in a welcoming soil and the interplay between heat, humidity and happiness, it took a while before I heard the callings. A soldier. Running after me. At first it was a reason to run only faster, but out of breath I stopped: this man was really adamant. The fact that we did not share a language was not an obstacle to him conveying the life-saving message. He only had to point at some green elements in the grass, size and shape of an average soap-bar and then to mime an explosion. They were all around us. Landmines.

Last January's peace agreement, meticulously negotiated over several years, may on paper have ended the 23 years of North-South war, but does not remove the omnipresent landmines and all the other remnants of war, varying from weapons, militarization, destitution, insecurity, rule of lawlessness and wounded ness. War may have ended; peace is still to break out. The peace agreement has held for nearly a year at the time of writing. But the undermining landmines are still ubiquitous.

Malakal's physical environment, the wide river Nile, flat marshes, rain, and bicycles reminded me of home, both Holland and Cambridge. The dominance of guys in uniforms, whether government-forces strongly tied to the omnipotent security forces, the militias or the former rebels, on each and every corner reflects however that the underlying political landscape is hillier than the Dutch polder-model. Removing landmines is a concrete measure to eliminate war from a landscape. But how does one construct the political canvas of peace?

The UNDP Access to Justice Programme, funded by the Netherlands Embassy, is one attempt to contribute to that canvas. In this area in transition, where the several powers are still searching for their position after turmoil on the magnetic field, where the SPLM moves in, where government forces fear for their future, where militias rummage around for new legitimacy, where Bangladeshi UNMIS troops settle in their UN-enclave, where no government salaries are paid as long as the governor has not returned, where the police only knows what happens in the town, where the laws of the jungle rule where the settlement ends, where five prosecutors are responsible for three entire states, we come to assess a “Rule of Law-project”. Bitten by mosquitoes, sweating, sitting in the dark due to a broken generator, a few of the elements of this fundamental and beautiful concept that underpinned my LLM come back to me. Even the government is bound by law, human rights protect minorities from democratic tyranny and everyone is entitled to access to justice to enforce those rights. Where does one start in a world where law has been synonymous to military strength, human rights violations and impunity?

At the bottom. While plans are being drafted for multi-million programmes through Multi Donor Trust Funds to set up a judiciary, build court houses, reconstruct prisons and train police, the UNDP Access to Justice Programme starts with the individual. After a week of human rights training in which authorities, students and civil society organizations were made familiar with basic concepts of rule of law, human rights, the peace agreement and the new constitution, twenty of the most dedicated are trained as Paralegals. One week, one course manual, a small community centre, two trainers; not to be compared with the years of studies, the meters of legal materials, huge lecture halls and eminent professors that characterize my “legal studies.” However, alternatively, here I find an enthusiasm, dedication and commitment to make a change that in Dutch lecture-theatres seemed buried under apathy and shiftlessness. Will the enthusiasm beat the hostile environment? A comparable UNDP-programme in Darfur, the world's current emblem of lawlessness, seems to prove that even in the greatest legal emptiness there are people who stand up to plant the seeds of any long-term protection: making people aware of their rights. While IDP-camps continue to be attacked and the government remains implicated in attacks on villages, human rights seminars spread the message of the individual born with rights, paralegals take up cases and Justice and Confidence Centers provide legal shelter. These efforts do not guarantee peace and respect for human rights and a cynic may point out that there is more need for food aid and peace-keeping protection. However, while at the moment WFP-food droppings and international peacekeeping are indeed indispensable, these additional more long term programmers plant the seeds for ultimate protection in the future, no matter how vulnerable at the moment. The threat that blazing violence destroys the seeds is always there. All we do is making an attempt, trying to contribute, even if it is planting one seed, to something viable, something that survives… Don't we all, in our own ways?

We all, scholars, civil servants, business(wo)men, politicians, parents, we can all contribute. As Coelho writes, we all have to live our own legends. But what is mine? In an early morning late November, a few days before now really going home to Holland and Cambridge, I run in Darfur. It is chilly. Leaving North Darfur's capital Fasher behind me, I pass the station where hundreds and hundreds WFP-trucks are loaded with food. I mount the hills, face an ascending sun that sheds a warm light over the valley, where in the distance an old lady and a donkey pursue their journey. Breath taken –and out of breath- I look back, on the valleys passed and the passed months. For a moment it is hard to believe that this place, where young couples used to spend their honeymoon, is now the world's symbol of ongoing crimes against humanity, and according to some, genocide. It does not take long before the view of roadblocks remind me of reality: in what seems to be no man's land, an invisible border, only recognizable by this roadblock, separates the government troops from rebel controlled areas. Also the view of the camp close to Fasher, where 70.000 internally displaced at that hour still miss blankets, but in a couple of hours will be overwhelmed by all penetrating heat, sand and light, remind me of where I am. At that moment I know that although I long for time to think, study and write, I will accept the next six months job that has just been offered to me, if Cambridge allows me to defer my PhD until October 2006. Before learning more in unrivalled Cambridge, I wish to use the degrees obtained, apply knowledge and learn more from the “real world.” Like all of us, I can only live my own legend by following my own internal haboub, the warm and blinding sandstorm. The quarters of my compass point at Sudan.