Garang’s death within three weeks of becoming Vice President under an East African-brokered peace deal may well have been an accident, though yesterday Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, in whose crashed helicopter the SPLM leader perished, said he himself was still unsure. Angry supporters who rioted in Khartoum and Juba believed the worst and unfortunately their intemperate response caused over 100 deaths.

The SPLM leader had reportedly granted oil exploration rights in southern Sudan to British interests, in defiance of concessions previously granted to French concerns. Maybe outside hands were indeed at work. It seems impossible, however, that Sudan’s President Omar Bashir could be linked to any conspiracy theory. He and his government have worked intensely to bring about a peace that had eluded all of his predecessors. It was clearly not in his interests to see such hard-won success thrown away with the death of Garang. The president, clearly shocked, has called for calm and insisted that the peace deal must be honored.

Under its provisions, in six years’ time, the south of the country will vote on secession or for remaining an autonomous part of Sudan. Garang’s successor as Sudan’s Vice President and leader of the autonomous government of southern Sudan is his deputy, Salva Kiir Mayardit, who is known to favor independence.

Mayardit, though popular among his people, does however have a problem filling the shoes of his former boss, an authoritarian figure who brooked no opposition, dealing ruthlessly with those who challenged him. Some fear that without Garang, tensions that he repressed within the SPLM will now come to the surface and Mayardit’s leadership may be disputed.

It must be hoped that senior SPLM members will recognize that now is not the moment for political infighting. Their energies should now be wholly devoted to making the peace deal work, calming their angry and suspicious followers and delivering on their side of the bargain - the inclusion of the SPLM’s fighting units in a new multiethnic Sudanese Army.

The appeal for maintaining peace by Muslim religious leaders in their Friday sermons will prove of immense help to President Bashir, who needs to continue his moderate approach toward the currently disoriented SPLM, while watching out for extremists among the Arab community. Some of these will be tempted to take advantage of Garang’s death to try to rekindle the civil war. It would be tragic indeed if radicals from either side, who never wanted the peace freshly won at such bitter cost to both communities, should now act to destroy it.

Arab News, Saudi Arabia, 6 August 2005
Summary of report from Yei, Sudan.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni said yesterday that the helicopter crash that killed Sudanese First Vice President John Garang may not have been an accident; “Some people say accident, it may be an accident, it may be something else,” Museveni said, becoming the first official of any government to publicly suggest Saturday’s crash may have been the result of foul play. “The (helicopter) was very well equipped, this was my (helicopter) the one I am flying all the time, I am not ruling anything out,” he said, noting an international panel of experts had been appointed to look into the crash.

“Either the pilot panicked... either there was some side wind or the instruments failed or there was an external factor,” Museveni told mourners in Yei where Garang’s body was brought ahead of his funeral in Juba today. Thousands of Sudanese government troops and ex-rebel fighters were deployed meanwhile in the south’s main town Juba amid high tensions on the eve of Garang’s funeral.

Museveni’s comments were met with stony silence from the crowd, which had earlier greeted the arrival of Garang’s coffin with wailing, ululation and prayer. Garang’s successor as chief of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement Army (SPLM-A), Salva Kiir, declined to comment on the specifics of Museveni’s remarks but said the group was eager to hear the results of the probe. “All options are open and cannot be ruled out,” Kiir told reporters after calling on mourners to reject the violence that has engulfed parts of Sudan since Garang’s death and urging them to hold to their ex-leader’s vision for peace. “Let us follow the footsteps of our leader,” he told the crowd. “This is not the time for rioting.” He blamed unspecified opponents of peace for wanting “to provoke a situation that would lead us back to war.”

In Khartoum and Juba, senior SPLM-A officials cautioned against making any assumptions about the cause of the crash as did a diplomat in Bor, Garang’s birthplace where his coffin was brought after Yei. “We don’t have anything to suggest it was caused by sabotage,” SPLM-A spokesman Pagan Amun said in Khartoum.

In Juba, SPLM-A General Pieng Deng told reporters that the flight data recorder from the helicopter had been recovered at the crash site. “Up to now we believe it is an accident but let the investigation end... as leaders, we cannot say anything until the investigation is concluded.”

In Bor, a diplomat said Museveni’s remarks on the eve of the funeral were unfortunate and noted that the Ugandan leader “is under personal pressure because it was his own helicopter.” Garang and 13 others died when Museveni’s presidential Mi-172 helicopter crashed in the mountains of southern Sudan, sparking days of violence in Khartoum and the south that saw 130 killed and hundreds wounded. Garang’s death and the rioting raised fears that the landmark January peace deal he signed with Khartoum ending Sudan’s 21-year north-south civil war may now unravel.

Relative calm returned to the streets of Khartoum yesterday as shop-owners reopened for business amid a noticeably lower security presence. Nevertheless, many southerners believe Garang was assassinated and have refused to accept the initial insistence of Ugandan, Sudanese and other officials that the helicopter crashed due to bad weather. Museveni did not elaborate on what he meant by “external factor,” but there has been widespread speculation in southern Sudan that the helicopter may have been sabotaged or shot down.

In a bid to quell the speculation and restore calm, Sudanese President Omar Bashir has launched a formal probe, which Museveni said would be joined by aviation experts from Uganda, Kenya, the United States, Britain and Russia. Meanwhile, two planeloads of heavily armed Sudanese soldiers, including members of the elite presidential guard, landed and immediately spread throughout the town. Thousands of southern Sudanese descended on a former military training ground in Juba to help prepare Garang’s burial site ahead of his funeral on Saturday that is expected to draw some 500,000 people.

Weeping women, stoic men and curious children converged on the site near the state Parliament where frantic construction was under way on a mausoleum to hold Garang’s remains. In accordance with Dinka tribal tradition, one of Garang’s sons, Chol, a 25-year-old fine arts student in Britain, dug up the first chunk of earth where his father will be laid to rest. “Sometimes I wake up and find people weeping,” Chol said. “I never thought I would be digging my father’s grave.”