Hoping for a Sudanese golden age

By Jonathan Fryer
BBC News, Khartoum, Sudan

The government in Khartoum has come under increasing international pressure to curb ethnic cleansing and other human rights abuses in the western province of Darfur.

Yet, in Khartoum, many locals are surprisingly upbeat about the country's prospects.

Sudanese celebrated after the peace deal signing in Nairobi

Every Spring, Ahmed and his friend Hamad come down from the Nuba mountains to the banks of the Blue Nile in Khartoum, to make bricks.

The winter floods have dumped a thick layer of rich, chocolate-coloured silt over low-lying land, which dozens of young men, stripped to the waist, are digging out with spades.

The earth is then mixed with water and straw on ramshackle tables, flattened out, and sliced up with wooden trays shaped into rectangular moulds.

As Ahmed keeps busy at the table, Hamad carries the trays carefully to a flat piece of ground, and tips out the contents, which dry in the strong sun to become bricks.

The finished bricks are red, with streaks of yellow and white. The colour is a gauge of their quality, as is the noise they make when they are struck with a stick.

Making bricks is good business, Ahmed says, and though the methods do not seem to have changed for thousands of years, he has a new transistor radio blaring away on his mixing-table, to prove his point.

Growth

Indeed, large areas of Khartoum have been turned into building sites.

With an estimated population of around five million, the city now spreads out for 40 kilometres or more in every direction.

FINAL PEACE DEAL Army Both sides will unify into 39,000-strong force if the south does not secede after six years Autonomy The south will have autonomy for six years followed by referendum for secession Oil wealth To be shared 50:50 Jobs To be split 70:30 in favour of the government in the central administration To be split 55:45 in favour of the government in Abyei, Blue Nile State and the Nuba mountains Islamic law To remain in the north Sharia in Khartoum to be decided by elected assembly End of war? Will you return to Sudan?

Hundreds of thousands of traditional red-brick compounds, in which extended families live, have been built.

But so too have growing numbers of private mansions.

Even if a substantial proportion of Sudan's population lives well below the poverty line, some people are making a great deal of money, not just from trading, but from oil.

Though Sudan's proven reserves are way below those of Arab states, oil is being seen as the country's saviour.

And foreign experts, notably from China and Malaysia, are here in force.

In fact, the Chinese and Malaysians have both built smart residential hotels for their nationals on the banks of the Nile.

A son of Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi is constructing a huge five-star establishment alongside, ready for the day when Khartoum becomes the new boom-town.

The Nile Corniche is being transformed at a giddying rate.

Next to the sleepy old Sailing Club, where Lord Kitchener's rusting gunboat is preserved as a surreal reminder of the 1898 Battle of Omdurman, the Chinese have built a social club called Oil House.

It is an elegant glass affair drawing its inspiration from the pharaonic pyramids at Meroe, three hours drive to the north.

As I was visiting this building the other day, a smartly-dressed young Sudanese, who introduced himself as Ali, took me to see the large extension to Oil House that is being built at the water's edge.

It will be an entertainment hall, entirely glass-walled, where Chinese oil executives will be able to practise their karaoke skills, while watching local fishing craft drift past.

Golden age?

Ali explained that he normally lives in Dhahran in Saudi Arabia, headquarters of the giant Aramco oil company, but he had come home to see what opportunities now exist in Sudan.

About two million people have been forced to flee their homes in Darfur

He suspects that when his country celebrates the 50th anniversary of its independence on January 1 next year, it will be ushering in a new golden age.

The reason for this confidence is not just the existence of the oil, which has been known about for years.

Rather, it is the successful conclusion this January of the peace agreement between the government in Khartoum and rebels in the south, who have been fighting a protracted civil war.

Given the outside world's preoccupation with the suffering in the western province of Darfur, the peace agreement with the south has received scant media attention.

But every Sudanese I have spoken to, has argued that it is far more significant.

More than two million people are believed to have died in the civil war.

'Oil bonanza'

Not only should that carnage now end, with the rebel leader, John Garang, even becoming a vice-president of the whole country, but peace should enable the safe exploitation of the oil, most of which is in the south.

Like many Sudanese, Ali is happy that the United States is likely to miss out on at least the first wave of the anticipated oil bonanza, as Washington operates an economic boycott of Sudan.

George Bush is something of a hate figure among young people in Sudan, and his predecessor, Bill Clinton, still has not been forgiven for ordering the bombing of a Khartoum pharmaceuticals factory in 1998.

The shell of that building still stands, as a silent reproach.

But just down the road from it, a swish new Volkswagen showroom has opened up and the formerly vacant plots nearby are starting to sprout new villas.

As I was pondering the implications of these developments, I was shaken from my reverie by Ali, declaring emphatically, "Yes! I think I will stay!".

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 12 March, 2005, at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.