بعد وصف مصطفى عثمان لثوار دارفور بالقمل، مستشار آخر يصف ثوار الشرق بالباعوض

Quote: Misery Churns in Eastern Sudan, Away From Spotlight Jeffrey Gettleman/The New York Times A little-known war drove Ali Hamid Ahmed, center, and his Beja tribesmen to a particularly barren area of desert. “All we have is dirt,” he said. Sign In to E-Mail This Print Reprints Save By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN Published: October 28, 2006 TOGLEY, Sudan — Ali Hamid Ahmed used to be the elder of a village full of green fields and thousands of goats. Skip to next paragraph Related U.N. to Limit the Role of Its Envoy Expelled by Sudan (October 28, 2006) Enlarge This Image Jeffrey Gettleman/The New York Times Women in eastern Sudan have one of the lowest rates of literacy in the country. The dominant Beja tribe discourages education for girls. The New York Times Togley is impoverished, yet the region’s port and oil riches are there. But a little-known war between the government and a spreading rebel force drove his people from their homes to a camp at the far eastern edge of Sudan, where the horizon is paper-flat and the land is about as fertile as a sandbox. The people here are battered by the sun, the wind and the sand; the tribal scars cut into Mr. Ahmed’s face when he was a little boy are constantly creased with dust. Mr. Ahmed’s people still call him “the chairman,” but out here, Mr. Ahmed says, he is the chairman of nothing. “We have no animals,” he said. “All we have is dirt.” It is a scene of desolation and despair in a country with much of both. But what is different about the crisis in eastern Sudan is that few outside organizations are paying attention. While there are an estimated 25,000 aid workers in Darfur, the war-ravaged region on the other side of the country that has become the focus of a ceaseless flurry of diplomatic activity, here in Togley there are not even plastic tarps for the huts. Eastern Sudan is forgotten Sudan, an intriguing, isolated, sun-blasted corner of the country where a conservative culture and a slow-burning war have conspired to keep the people mired in neglect despite the area’s port and oil riches. The war may finally be over — eastern rebels who had been fighting for a greater share of the country’s resources reached an agreement with the government on Oct. 14 to lay down their weapons in exchange for political representation and a share of the nation’s oil money. But the neglect will take years to reverse. Eastern Sudan, which encompasses roughly 180,000 square miles and nearly four million people, is the poorest part of the country, with the highest infant mortality rate and a per capita income in some areas of 25 cents a day, a small fraction of the national average. In remote villages, most women cannot even write their own names, partly because of a strict Muslim culture that forbids education for girls and confines them to their homes. “These women have nothing to do but sit around and drink coffee and scar themselves,” said Niyal Mohammed al-Haj, a teacher in Kasala, one of the biggest towns in the east. “Girls don’t go to school; boys drop out, and nobody cares.” One of the reasons that the east has largely gone unnoticed is that the scale of fighting could never compete with the conflicts in Darfur or southern Sudan. The fighting here is thought to have claimed between 2,000 and 5,000 lives in the last 10 years, compared with hundreds of thousands in Darfur and the south. Yet, the east is increasingly vital to the nation, home to gold mines and the country’s major oil pipeline and port. As the troubles intensified in Darfur, Sudan’s leaders in Khartoum, the capital, could hardly afford to fight another escalating rebellion. “Khartoum was facing so much pressure on other fronts, it had to put out this fire,” said Ahmed el-Amin Terik, an adviser to the state governor here in Togley. “It wasn’t like the eastern rebels were so much of a threat. But even a mosquito doesn’t let you sleep.” The eastern rebels do not appreciate being likened to mosquitoes. Most are Beja herdsmen, a proud and traditional group, who strut around in white robes and dusty waistcoats with three-foot-long sabers tucked into their belts. They waged hit-and-run attacks against government soldiers from the backs of their camels. Some are already grumbling about getting a raw deal in the peace effort. The Beja leadership wanted regional autonomy but instead was given nominal positions in the central government. The Beja also pushed for a bigger cut of Sudan’s growing wealth, which is driven by oil exports, and asked for one dollar for every barrel shipped from Port Sudan, which would amount to around $150 million each year. Instead, the Sudanese government set up a $600 million eastern development fund, a substantial commitment, but one that is guaranteed only for a few years. These issues are similar to what set off the bloodshed in Darfur and the south, where long-marginalized regional ethnic groups have taken up arms against the ruling group of Arab Sudanese in Khartoum. Critics of the central government say the three separate peace deals that have been reached — for the south in 2005, for Darfur this spring and now for the east — are not only shaky, but may encourage wider unrest. “The message seems to be, if you want more development, you need to pick up arms,” said Abda Yahia el-Mahdi, a former finance minister now in private consulting. When it came time to sign the eastern peace deal at a ceremony in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, just east of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, showed up in Beja dress. “It was ridiculous,” said Hashim Hangag, a spokesman for the Beja Congress political party. “Here was a guy who has never stood with the Beja, pretending to be one of us.” Beja political frustrations have been percolating since the 1950s. The central government dammed their rivers and took their grazing land, while delivering few schools, hospitals or roads. The Beja have always been among the poorest and least educated people in Sudan, marooned in an arid, thinly populated area rife with tuberculosis and malaria, and they hardly had the means to fight back. In the 1990s, that changed. Sudan’s government tried to undermine the Eritrean government by arming Islamic fighters who were waging a holy war against it. Eritrea, in return, began arming the Beja. Rebels from other tribes and other parts of Sudan flooded into Beja territory and opened a new front against the government, an eastern front — and the alliance eventually took that name. One misimpression of Sudan’s rebel movements is that they are isolated to one area and fighting to secede. Many, however, including Darfur’s rebel groups, have national ambitions and dream not of carving out their own piece of territory but of overthrowing the Arab-led government. The fighting displaced thousands of people, including 3,000 now in Togley, who drifted from village to village until all their animals died, and then settled on a chunk of land so dry and fruitless that nobody else wanted it. A turning point came on Jan. 29, 2005, when government troops in Port Sudan killed 25 unarmed Beja men who were protesting what they called a legacy of exclusion. That drove hundreds more into the ranks of the Eastern Front, and the central government began to fear another Darfur. Serious peace negotiations started this year, culminating in the October agreement. Several Beja rebels said they had been pressed to accept a less than satisfying deal because the Eritrean government, which had allowed them to operate out of camps along its border, was eager to normalize relations with Sudan and gave them little choice. The government and some Beja leaders say that peace will bring desperately needed investment, and with the area safe, more foreign aid will flow in. Right now, just a handful of aid organizations operate here, mostly distributing food. Mr. Ahmed, the chairman of Togley, hopes to lead his people back to their village, but there are literally minefields between here and there. “I know Darfur has problems,” Mr. Ahmed said. “But what about us?”

Quote: Togley. “It wasn’t like the eastern rebels were so much of a threat. But even a mosquito doesn’t let you sleep.” [/QUOTE تراجي.