In Tense Sudan, Divisions Resurface

Arabs Flee Violence In Southern City

JUBA, Sudan, Aug. 4 -- The mood of this rattled country, after the sudden death Sunday of the former rebel leader John Garang, is etched on the fearful faces of northern Arab merchants, surrounded by suitcases and nylon sacks, as they wait in the airport to flee further attacks by southerners.

The once-lively central market of this southern city is a deserted maze of smoldering fires and burned metal roofs after three days of rioting. Goats and children pick through the rubble of charred soda bottles, detergent boxes and plastic roses.

The hastily dug earth in a cemetery marks the sites where Arab families quickly buried their dead, as required by Muslim law, leaving unmarked graves and retreating to the shelter of military bases.

Officials said at least 13 people were killed in Juba, 720 miles south of the capital, Khartoum, during three days of mob violence, looting and ethnic tensions that erupted after Garang's death in a helicopter crash. In the Khartoum area, officials said 111 people had died and several hundred were injured. Another 1,500 were arrested.

The clashes in north and south have been mirror images, taking on the very themes of the civil war that ended in January with a peace deal negotiated by the government and Garang -- mostly African southerners feeling marginalized by the Arab-led north, mostly Muslim northerners feeling their religion and political position under threat from the south, which is mainly animist and Christian.

Garang, 60, was rewarded for helping to bring peace by becoming Sudan's senior vice president after leading rebels during the 21-year civil war.

Now, in the city where he is to be buried Saturday, the country's raw anger, and its deep ethnic and religious divides, are very much out in the open.

Juba, a city of about 350,000 on the Nile River that is tenuously under the control of 60,000 government troops, feels more like a frontline camp readying for war than a future regional capital preparing for a state funeral.

"All of the people here want to kill us," said Abdullah Ali Tabeb, an Arab merchant who said his family's cigarette and flour shops were set on fire. He said he had spent the last four days at the airport, with only water and biscuits to nourish him, in hopes of getting out. "They told the Arabs to go to Khartoum. They don't like us. We need peace."

Less than a mile away, Samuel Fadil, 37, an African southerner, surveyed the charred remains of three storefronts his father had rented to Arab traders. Despite his loss, he said, he sympathized with the looters and could understand their anger.

"People suspect that the Arabs killed our father Garang," he said, pointing at a still-burning shop. "We have no other source of income. But I am still much more angry over the death of Garang." There has been no report of foul play in the crash; both Garang's movement and the government have called it an accident.

Throughout Wednesday night and into Thursday morning, gunshots rang out across the city. Half-burned public minibuses were abandoned on the roads. Children in ragged clothes grabbed sodas from shop debris. Soldiers guarded a soccer park called Freedom Square, now a temporary jail for looters.