North vs. South

Sudan's long, bloody civil war may be over, but 'former' rebels in the south say they still don't trust Arabs in the north.

RUMBEK, South Sudan - The sergeant blows his whistle, and they begin to form up under a giant cypress tree.

Some have uniforms, a mix of camouflage from any number of world armies. Others are just wearing street clothes: sports jerseys or t-shirts with the images of American rap stars. Some tote battered AK-47 assault rifles while others carry sticks. Their footwear isn't much better. A few of the officers have boots, but most march in nothing more than plastic sandals. But what they seem to lack in military style, the soldiers of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army make up in determination.

Their revolt, let by former Sudanese Army Chief John Garang (who died in a helicopter crash in July), forced the Arab-dominated northern government into a power-sharing agreement that is beginning to take shape. But great suspicion and mistrust remain, especially among the former rebel combatants.

"I defected [from the army] when Commander Garang defected," says SPLA Col. William Kersid Makuac from a dilapidated barracks near Rumbek. "During that period the struggle was very hard. We had difficulty finding food, feeding our soldiers, getting ammunition. And we never had any vehicles. Our soldiers mostly deployed on foot, sometimes walking for days."

The civil war itself was Africa's longest and deadliest. The conflict lasted more than two decades, taking the lives of more than two million people (mostly through famine and disease) and creating a small nation of four to six million internally displaced people.

It is a struggle that has pitted black Sudanese, Christians and animists from the south against Arab Muslims in the north. Southern Sudanese say they have always been marginalized and discriminated against by what they call the northern Arab "elite."

The last straw came in 1983 when the Sudanese president at the time imposed Islamic Sharia law across the land, prompting Garang to leave the Sudanese military and lead the SPLA's rebellion.

All across the south you see the remnants of the war -- buildings bombed into standing jigsaw puzzle pieces -- and almost everyone has a story of loss to tell.

In a circle of 20 SPLA fighters, I ask them to raise their hands if they have lost an immediate family member in the fighting. Every hand goes up.

"Sometimes [the Sudanese army] would bomb four or five times a day," Col. Makuac says, "and then into the night. We didn't have any anti-aircraft guns, so we shot at them with our AK-47s and RPGs [rocket propelled grenades]. We brought a lot of them down," he says of the Russian-made Antonov planes the northern government used against them.

Most of the men here say they joined the SPLA because of atrocities committed against them by Arab tribal militias known as Janjaweed. The SPLA claims the Sudanese government sponsored the Janjaweed, a charge the Arab government in Khartoum denies.

SPLA Sgt. Tihong Garang says that 10 of his family members were killed, including six children, when the Janjaweed attacked their village.

"They looted everything, raped the women and shot the children. After, they burned it all down," Garang says.

In 1999 the Janjaweed also attacked the village of SPLA Sgt. Guot Kueth while he was away.

"They killed many people," he says, "and also burned the village. They took my wife and two children."

He hasn't seen them since. Not his wife, not his three-year-old daughter, Piol, nor his two-year-old son, Guot.

"I can remember their faces," he says, "but I've tried to forget them. It's easier since I don't know if they're alive or dead."

Last January the government and the political arm of the SPLA, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to set up a federal government that would share national ministries, oil wealth and even incorporate some of the SPLA into a joint force of 40,000 with the Sudanese army.

The agreement doesn't include the western Darfur region, in which a different group of rebels rose up in 2003 with the same claims as the SPLA. The

And for the south the Comprehensive Peace Agreement has an "out clause" that calls for a referendum in six years on whether the north and south would unite permanently as one Sudan -- or if the south would secede to form an independent nation.

Most of the men here laugh when I ask them about combining military forces with the Arab north. I ask them why.

"We laugh," one says, "because the Arabs have always been our enemy. They still have the upper hand and used the Janjaweed to attack us."

Another says, "We've been fighting them for so many years. We don't trust them. We should have our own country."

But staying together, at least in the short run, could be profitable for Sudan, which has untapped oil reserves and hundreds of thousands of acres of land that could be cultivated, if the fighting stops long enough.

There is also international aid -- about $4.5 billion pledged -- if both sides can adhere to the agreement.

But already things are off to a shaky start, with criticisms from the south that the north is reneging on a host of items, including ministries in the new government that were promised to members of the SPLM leadership.

Johnson Marur Awou is a grizzled SPLA veteran who's been around for all 21 years of the conflict.

"We haven't had anything," Johnson says. "The northern Arab elite have treated the blacks [southern Sudanese] as slaves."

He says it will take pressure from the international community to make the idea of one Sudan work.

"The northern Arabs are like foxes," he says. "The international community will have to monitor very carefully if there is going to be peace."

And if there is not? He and others say they've fought for 21 long years for an independent south Sudan. If they have to, they say, they can wait for another six.

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