SUDAN: Durable solutions elusive as southern IDPs return and ...

From the mid-1980s, the Congress’s political focus, which had previously concentrated on the
marginalisation of the Beja, started to shift towards the preservation of Beja culture and land,
largely as a reaction to the demographic transformation of the region due to the influx of refugees
from Eritrea, IDPs from southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains and economic migrants from
the north and west of the Sudan.
Together with other political parties, the Congress was banned in 1989. In the period that
followed, the Government of Sudan accused the Congress of fomenting political destabilisation in
eastern Sudan. Repression against Beja dissidents and the continued alienation of land
contributed to a resurgence of Beja resistance. The Government of Sudan accused Eritrea of
training Sudanese Beja, while the Eritrean government severed diplomatic relations with Sudan in
December 1994 following accusations that Islamic terrorists trained in Sudan and then infiltrated
into groups of returning Eritrean refugees. The Beja Congress resurfaced again in 1995 in
Asmara under the umbrella of the exiled National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition of
northern opposition parties a well as the southern Sudanese Sudan People's Liberation
Army/Movement (SPLM/A).
Hundreds of young people went to training camps in Eritrea and returned to launch guerrilla
attacks on government installations as well as the Khartoum-Port Sudan highway and the oil
pipeline. The border was mined, with terrible consequences for traditional pastoral migrants.
Together with other factions of the NDA, including the SPLA’s New Sudan Brigade, a Joint
Military Command was established that enabled the former to conduct full-scale operations on the
“eastern front” by 1997.
In 1996 the Beja Congress was charged with having backed a failed coup attempt in Port Sudan
in August of that year and fighting between the parties intensified in the southern area of Tokar
and Kassala Provinces, with the opposition groups eventually occupying most of the area
between the border and the areas surrounding Tokar town in spring 1997. The area around Tokar
was retaken by government forces shortly afterwards, but the NDA continued to control much of
the border region, including the towns of Telkuk and Hamashkoreb.
Congress leaders worked to expand their political platform to other groups living in eastern
Sudan, which led to the formation of the Eastern Front in February 2005. The Front is a political
alliance between the Beja Congress, the Rashaida Free Lions and representatives from other
small ethno-political groups. The formation of the Front was an attempt by the Beja Congress and
the Rashaida Free Lions to de-ethnicise their political agenda and appeal to other communities in
eastern Sudan to unite in the fight against the marginalisation and the underdevelopment of the
region. However, in the eyes of members of non-Beja and non-Rashaida groups the Front
remained closely affiliated to its two main ethnic groups and therefore not representative of other
eastern Sudan communities, including immigrants from northern, western and southern Sudan.
In January 2005 the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed between the government of
Sudan and the SPLM/A. The Agreement did not address the demands of the people of eastern
Sudan, or the people of Darfur, despite the fact that these demands were often no different from
those of the SPLA/M in the south. Eastern Front leaders emphasised that lack of development,
basic services and employment in eastern Sudan were the direct result of the concentration of
power in the hands of a restricted elite, resulting in political marginalisation and lack of attention
to the all of the country’s peripheral areas. The CPA ignored the interests of the other groups in
the country in the redistribution of power and wealth.
On 14 October 2006 the Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement (ESPA) was signed in Asmara
between the Government of Sudan and the Eastern Front. It provided for the establishment of the
Eastern Sudan Reconstruction and Development Fund, and the reintegration of the Eastern Front
military forces in the SAF and the police force. Despite continued divisions among Eastern Front
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