Riots after Sudan's vice-president dies

AT LEAST 24 people died yesterday when thousands of southern Sudanese clashed with police in the capital, Khartoum, as news spread of the death of former rebel leader John Garang, only three weeks after he assumed the office of first vice-president.

The head of southern Sudan's rebel movement during its two decades of war with the government in Khartoum and a key figure in January's peace deal, Mr Garang died at the weekend when the Ugandan presidential helicopter he was travelling in went down in bad weather.

In some of the worst rioting the country has seen in recent years, thousands of his supporters, many armed with knives and bars, took to the streets of Khartoum and the southern city of Juba. For several hours, they attacked northerners, looted shops and wrecked cars.

"They are beating anybody they see who looks like they are Arab," Swayd Abdullah, a student, said.

Some gunfire could be heard, but it was not clear if that was in mourning for Mr Garang or from fighting.

"There are groups of southern Sudanese on the streets attacking people and wrecking shops, but the areas with governmental buildings are quiet," Seif al-Deen Abdallah, a Khartoum taxi driver, said.

Another eyewitness said: "People have been running all over the streets. The policemen are taking people from the streets. There is fire and smoke."

Mr Garang's death puts at risk the reconciliation process in Sudan that has followed a peace agreement reached in January to end the conflict between Arab Muslims in the north and African Christians and animists in the south, which has cost more than two million lives and driven five million people into exile.

It was only 21 days ago that Mr Garang was sworn in as vice-president, a historic moment that drew more than a million people on to the streets of Khartoum.

He had headed a rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, which had fought since 1983 to topple the Arab government, which treated its Africans as second-class citizens. The civil war first began back in 1955 but was interrupted by a decade-long unstable ceasefire during which none of the vast country's bewilderingly complex ethnic and tribal differences were resolved.

Mr Garang played such a pivotal role in the peace deal - brokered by Britain and Norway and signed in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on 9 January - that his death inevitably represents a serious setback. He had been instrumental in keeping fractious southern rebels together and had survived many attempts on his life.

"Losing John Garang is very shocking news," said Lazaro Sumbeiywo, a retired Kenyan general who chaired the peace talks. "He was an extraordinary person. This whole process will not be the same."

Professor Robert Collins, an expert on Sudan at the University of California, said: "This is going to throw the peace process into utter chaos. Garang's presence as the link to the north was absolutely essential."

Prof Collins said Mr Garang had been a firm believer in keeping Sudan united, whereas many other rebel leaders and southerners preferred to form a separate country. "This will give enormous motivation to the separatists in the south," he said.

The terms of the Nairobi peace deal were that southerners were to head about a third of the ministries in a new joint government, with Mr Garang becoming vice-president.

The revenue from rich new oil fields in the borderlands between north and south were to be split evenly between the two sides, and the Africans of the south were to be given the right to decide in a referendum in 2011 whether to break away as a separate country.

Mr Garang had been expected to lobby hard for unity, but it is unknown what path his successor will favour.

There was no immediate announcement of who will replace Mr Garang as leader of the south. His deputy, Salva Keer, was in Nairobi when news of the crash emerged and was due to fly to Sudan yesterday.

But whoever fills Mr Garang's shoes will face the enormous task of transforming the rebel movement from a fractured, ragtag outfit into a democratic civilian government that will satisfy international aid donors.

Under the peace deal, the south stands to receive $2 billion (1.13 billion) in international aid and $1.5 billion in annual oil revenue.

But there is still only one bank in Rumbek, Mr Garang's proposed southern capital, and no investment laws or official currency.