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| THE KHARTOUM GOVERNMENT Since Sudan's independence in 1956, an Arab elite with ancestral Egyptian roots has ruled the country from its vast capital city of Khartoum, where the Blue Nile and the White Nile rivers join. The current president of Khartoum's government is Omar al Bashir, an upstart general who came to power in a 1989 coup -- the fourth coup in Sudan since its independence. Many predicted al Bashir wouldn't last long. They saw him as a puppet of the popular Islamic cleric Dr. Hassan al Turabi, who was credited for recognizing the west Sudanese Muslims and bringing them into the country's Islamic movement. But after a split in 1999, al Bashir ousted al Turabi from his position as speaker of the National Assembly and threw him in jail. This left al Bashir leading a tight-knit cadre of like-minded Islamists, who established sharia law. Under al Bashir's leadership, Khartoum expanded its use of Arab militias in the south, where the government has been at war with the largely Christian Sudan People's Liberation Army for almost two decades. By the late 1990s, Sudan had gained notoriety as a haven for Islamic fundamentalist radicals, including, for a period, Osama bin Laden. Today, a cabal of security officers is seen as holding the real power in Khartoum. According to human rights advocate and Sudan specialist Alex de Waal, this group is concerned only with preserving its powers and riches. Some say Khartoum, which has agreed to share its wealth with and concede regional autonomy to the oil-rich south, simply can't afford to placate another rebel group in Darfur. To do so might encourage discontented minorities in other parts of Sudan, which could unravel the patchwork quilt that makes up Africa's largest country. Others charge that Khartoum's assault on Darfur is but another phase of its Arabization plan. The world community is divided on what the Darfur conflict is and what the international response should be. Major European countries, including France and Germany, are at odds with the United States and its perception of the Darfur crisis as genocide. Within the U.N. Security Council, China, Russia, Pakistan and Algeria, all of which hold economic interests in Sudan, have made it known that they will not support economic sanctions against the country. Nigeria and Rwanda have offered several thousand of their own troops to serve as peacekeepers, but other African countries have been slow to join them. |