Could Egypt and Sudan's 55-year feud be over?

• Last Updated: July 27. 2010 1:55PM UAE / July 27. 2010 9:55AM GMT

Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt, with Omar al Bashir, Sudan's president, in Cairo last year. Asmaa Waguih / Reuters

CAIRO // Egypt and Sudan are weighing plans to create a co-operative economic zone in Egypt’s southern Halaib Triangle, an underdeveloped and impoverished region that both governments have quietly feuded over for years.

The long-simmering dispute over the triangle, a 20,580-sq-km region wedged between Sudan and the Red Sea, came to the fore again on June 30 when Sudan’s president, Omar al Bashir, told crowds at a political rally in the coastal Sudanese city of Port Sudan that “Halaib is Sudanese and will stay Sudanese”.

While Egyptian leaders rushed to counter that Halaib will remain part of Egypt, analysts dismissed Mr al Bashir’s comments as political bluster from an embattled president, who faces international war crimes charges and an independence referendum in southern Sudan next year.

“I think the Sudanese government raised this issue to cover up the interior issues that Sudan has,” said Iglal Raft, a professor of political science at Cairo University.

Ms Raft said Mr al Bashir’s comment was not the first time a Sudanese president has claimed control over the sensitive region, which has been the subject of mild diplomatic sabre-rattling since Sudan’s independence from Britain and Egypt in 1956.

“This issue has been raised six times since the independence of Sudan and there haven’t been any concrete results after all the times that this was raised.”

The continuing dispute is an exception to a diplomatic relationship that largely remains seamless, officials at Egypt’s ministry of foreign affairs said.

Over the past several years, Egypt has made strong statements against the partition of Sudan’s largely Christian and animist southern region and remained friendly with Mr al Bashir even after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him last year for crimes against humanity in the country’s western Darfur region. The court further accused Mr al Bashir of three additional counts of genocide two weeks ago.

“The southern borders of Egypt are on the 22nd parallel,” said Hossam Zaki, the spokesperson for Egypt’s foreign ministry, referring to the colonial-era border between Sudan and Egypt. “Both presidents, in any case, have agreed that this area will be an area of co-operation and development so as to make life easy for the inhabitants and those who are close to the borders.”

The political arrangements that led to the current conflict stem from decisions made more than 100 years ago when Britain exercised control over what is today Egypt and Sudan. In 1899, Britain divided its colonies in north-eastern Africa along the 22nd parallel before London decided in 1902 to give Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, “administrative control” over the Halaib region, whose sparse population identifies culturally with Sudan.

In the decades following both nations’ independence in the 1950s, there have been bouts of tense diplomacy in the region that have always fallen short of outright conflict. Sudan withdrew its military from the region in 2000 even as it continued to loudly claim Halaib as its own, going so far as to demand arbitration by the United Nations Security Council.

Such an arbitration, said Egyptian foreign ministry officials, would almost certainly favour Egypt. The economic co-operation deal is perhaps aimed at satisfying the people of Halaib, most of whom belong to the largely nomadic Beja ethnic group, whose population straddles – and often moves freely – between Egypt, Sudan and Eritrea.

Despite Egyptian government’s efforts to provide the area’s estimated 200,000 residents with electricity and other infrastructure improvements, the Beja’s perceived divided loyalties are a persistent concern for Egypt’s security forces.

Osman Bawnen, the head of the Bejawi Congress, a political organisation that represents the Beja people, said 72 Beja are currently held in Egyptian prisons. Egypt’s foreign ministry declined to comment on detained residents of the Halaib Triangle.

Nevertheless, the Beja tribe stands to benefit from any economic co-operation, which the foreign ministry said would also include Beja areas in north-eastern Sudan. The region is mired in poverty despite containing reserves of oil and manganese.

“The Beja people now are in very bad shape, there are very severe diseases,” said Mohammed Osman Omar, a Beja tribal leader who accused Egypt of “occupying” Halaib. “Tuberculosis is common there and pregnant women suffer when they are in labour.”

Even if Mr al Bashir’s comments raised a few hackles in Cairo, Mr Bawnen described such language as “painkillers” for the Beja and conceded that they were unlikely to lead to Halaib joining with Sudan.

Whether joining with Sudan, which has also had fraught relations with the Beja, will improve the quality of life in Halaib is another question entirely, Mr Omar and Mr Bawnen said.

For the Beja, the competing claims on Halaib are more an issue of ethnic identity than of economics. Improved living conditions will do little to make the Beja feel more Egyptian and less Sudanese.

“It’s a question of pride,” said Mr Omar. “It’s true that the Sudanese government is a dictatorship. But a human being likes to be in his homeland, whatever the government is.”

mbradley@thenational.ae