THE Chairman tucked his cane under one arm, straightened the pens in his shirt pocket and calmly walked down the aircraft steps.

He climbed over the long-horned bull, whose freshly-slit throat turned a patch of dust on the airstrip to crimson, and waved to the noisy throng gathered alongside the runway, in the trees and inside the carcass of a wingless cargo-plane.

Two weeks ago John Garang, leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), signed one of the more remarkable peace agreements in recent history. It not only ended more than two decades of civil war between the Muslim-dominated Government in northern Sudan and mainly Christian and animist southerners, but also laid the groundwork for the birth of a new independent country in six years.

Now the economist-turned-guerrilla-leader — known to his followers simply as The Chairman — had come to war-weary Rumbek, the headquarters of the SPLA, to sell the deal to his people.

“The first republic of Sudan which existed from 1956 to 2004, the old Sudan, is finished,” he proclaimed to a rally in the town square that he had reached by stepping over several more newly-slaughtered bulls — the traditional welcome accorded by the Dinka people to honoured guests.

This was not empty rhetoric. Under the final peace agreement signed in Nairobi on January 9, southern Sudan — an area far bigger than France — will become a largely autonomous region.

It will have its own government, banking system, national anthem and flag. Sharia — one of the factors that ignited the original conflict in 1983 — will no longer apply. Half the south’s revenues, including its significant oil wealth, will flow to the new SPLA-led Government for the next six years, and in 2011 the people of south Sudan will vote in a referendum on whether to secede from the rest of the country.

While the deal is undoubtedly good for the people of southern Sudan, it has come at a huge cost. During the conflict two million people died while fighting, or from war-induced famine or disease. Another four million southern Sudanese were forced to leave the region.

It is hard to find anyone in Rumbek who has not lost family members in the war.

Gideon Deng, 23, whose brother and father were killed in the war, waited in the sun all day to hear Commander Garang speak. “I have never experienced peace-time, so today I am so happy,” he said.

His one hope is that he will now be able to finish his schooling; but he will have to be patient. The infrastructure in southern Sudan is virtually non-existent and it will take time and hundreds of millions of petrodollars to restore even the most basic education and health services.

In many parts of the region development will begin from scratch. A quick glance around Rumbek, which changed hands several times during the fighting and bears the angry scars of war, shows the size of the task.

There is not a single paved road. One doctor, a Kenyan, serves a population of more than 50,000. Landmines litter the surrounding country. All this in a town designated as the provisional capital of south Sudan.

Jan Pronk, the UN special envoy to Sudan who attended the rally, promised help with de-mining, the repatriation of millions of displaced people and disarmament, but he added that it would be up to the Sudanese themselves to ensure that the rewards from peace were realised.

Despite the optimism at the rally many still doubted that the Sudanese Government would keep its part of the deal. Commander Garang tried to assure the crowd that the strength of his army was a guarantee that the accord would hold. In one of the deal’s many quirks the Government and the SPLA will both keep their separate armed forces, while a third integrated army will be used in sensitive areas.

The ceasefire agreement does not include the Darfur region, where government-sponsored militia have wrought havoc, but there are now hopes that this deal could serve as a blueprint for a similar compromise between Khartoum and the separate rebel groups in Darfur.

“We cannot talk about peace in Sudan while some regions are still bloody,” Commander Garang said. “We will work hard to bring a fair and just settlement to Darfur.”

COST OF WAR

Civil war broke out in 1983 when the mainly-Arab Government based in the northern city of Khartoum incorporated traditional Islamic punishments in the country’s penal code.

The Sudan People’s Liberation Army, the main rebel group, set up the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement to lead the battle against the north. The movement was headed by John Garang, a Christian from the Dinka tribe.

More than 1.5 million people were killed in the 22-year civil war and millions lost their homes.

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