Peace process raising hope in the south - report

The people of southern Sudan are optimistic about prospects for peace in the war-torn region, according to a new report by the US National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI). The report, released on Friday in Washington DC, was based on interviews conducted in collaboration with the New Sudan Centre for Statistics and Evaluation in southern Sudan between late August and mid-October 2004. "People are grateful for the tentative peace they have enjoyed for the past two years, though some are concerned that the negotiations are taking a long time to finalise," Traci Cook, who led the research team, said during the presentation of the report's findings in Nairobi. "This peace of ours is like a sick man in the hospital," Cook quoted one man as saying during the interviews she conducted. "You don't want to say for sure that he is going to be coming home because as long as he is in the hospital and sick, he still might die." The report indicated that the southern Sudanese see themselves essentially as "one people", notwithstanding inter-ethnic strife and frequently harsh views expressed about other ethnic groups. It found a broad consensus on issues the new government of southern Sudan would need to address urgently after a peace agreement had been signed. Featured highest was education, followed by food, health care, clean water and security, and settling disputes among southern tribes and neighbours that many anticipated. According to the report, both men and women rejected the notion that the conflict in southern Sudan was centred on religion. Christians mainly inhabit southern Sudan, while most of the people in the north are Muslims. Many of those interviewed pointed to historic grievances about discrimination [of the south by the north] in access to higher education and in the allocation of resources and government jobs. Nevertheless, animosity towards "Arabisation" in the south - enforced use of the Arabic language, Islamic proselytising, and mosque building - was close to the surface, the report said. The war between the SPLM/A and the Sudanese government in the south erupted in 1983 when the rebels took up arms against authorities based in the north to demand greater autonomy. Peace talks have been going on in the Kenyan town of Naivasha since mid-2003 and are expected to be concluded before the end of the year.