The Sudan Handbook

266 thE sudan handbook

to Kampala but were never kept in Kenya, even though Mombasa was

used as a trans-shipment facility.

Another reason is perhaps the fact that Nairobi was a kind of ‘Cairo

South’: a cultural and human conduit to the outside world for the black

African communities of Sudan, in the same way Cairo was for the Sudanese

Arabs. Throughout its stormy history, Sudan has been a place of limited

freedoms and its people have always needed a route to the outside world.

Ethiopia could not play that role, being as politically disturbed as Sudan,

especially after the fall of Haile Selassie. The countries to the west were

isolated and with poor communications, and both the Congo and Uganda

suffered long periods of violence and/or misadministration. This left

Kenya as the only stable and peaceful black African state neighbouring

Sudan, just as Egypt was the one natural cultural outlet for the Arab

community in the north. In Kenya, a Sudanese could open a foreign bank

account, buy a house or send their children to school while still, in a way,

feeling at home. Kenya was also seen as protected by the United Kingdom

and United States and therefore not to be tangled with by Khartoum.

This resulted in a tacit consensus that the place should be kept as neutral

ground and the various Kenyan regimes, whether of Kenyatta, Daniel

arap Moi or Mwai Kibaki, have all appeared to know that there was an

unspoken compact with Khartoum, which implied that ‘you can help our

enemies with everything but guns and we can always come there and

talk.’ Thus the long (2002–05) peace negotiations between the Islamist

regime and John Garang were conducted entirely in Kenya and the chief

African mediator, General Lazarus Sumbeiywo, was a Kenyan.

Today, without saying so openly, Nairobi is looking forward to the

birth of an independent South Sudan, which it sees as a natural sphere

of economic expansion for Kenyan goods and services. The south became

a market for Kenyan entrepreneurship during the war, and there are

many plans for the development of communications between the two

areas. These include an oil pipeline for southern Sudanese crude, which

would provide Juba with an alternative to the Port Sudan terminal, a

railway line, and an entirely new deep-water harbour on the northern

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors Kenyan coast, near Lamu. Before these grand designs even start to take

(www.riftvalley.net).