Death of charismatic leader sparks rioting

(Correction: Because of an editing error, a story on yesterday's World page about the death of Sudanese Vice President John Garang misidentified the group he led. It was the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army.)

NAIROBI -- Widespread riots erupted in Sudan's capital and several other cities yesterday following news of a helicopter crash that killed John Garang, the charismatic leader who survived 21 bloody years of Africa's longest-running civil war but died just three weeks after being sworn in as the country's first vice president. The government said 36 people died and about 300 were wounded in the violence.

The rioting underscored the fragility of Sudan's landmark north-south peace deal that Garang had so laboriously negotiated, and raised fears among his supporters that they now had no forceful voice on their side.

Garang, a towering 60-year-old from the Dinka tribe who some believed possessed the fortitude and vision to become Sudan's Nelson Mandela, was flying from northern Uganda to southern Sudan in a Ugandan Mi-72 presidential helicopter in inclement weather Saturday. His aircraft could not land at a southern Sudan site because of the bad weather, said Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, with whom Garang had been meeting.

The wreckage was found yesterday near the border of Kenya and Sudan, along with Garang's body and the bodies of six of his aides and seven Ugandan crew members. The government called for three days of national mourning.

There was that, and there was violence. In Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, gangs of youths, suspecting foul play in Garang's death, burned cars, smashed store windows, and fired guns as police erected roadblocks throughout the city. In the southern city of Juba, soldiers loyal to Garang ransacked Arab-owned businesses, according to Kenya's Nation TV. And in the southeastern community of Malakal, at least one person was killed in the riots, according to an aid worker who was evacuated from the area.

A spokesman for the longtime rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army, appealed for calm and characterized the crash as a tragic accident due to bad weather.

Garang's longtime deputy, Salva Kiir Mayardit, was quickly named by the group to succeed Garang as head of the movement and as president of south Sudan, a spokesman said.

''We in the SPLM/A leadership will continue the vision and the objectives of the movement that [Garang] articulated and hoped to implement," Kiir said from Garang's base, known as New Site.

Several analysts said last night that they expect the peace process between the mostly Arab north and the Christian and animist south to remain intact, if only because no viable options exist. More than 2 million people were killed in the civil war, which was separate from the more recent conflict in the western region of Darfur.

But less certain was the pace of the north-south peace process, as well as whether other regional peace initiatives would now founder without Garang's influence.

''Everyone is going to look to take advantage of his death," John Prendergast, special adviser to the president of the International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization, said in a telephone interview from Uganda. ''This guy was the glue for things not coming apart. His absense will reopen opportunity for spoilers that didn't exist before."

Prendergast and other analysts said the ripple effects of his death will be felt not just in the formation of a collaborative government in Sudan's north and south, as called for under the peace process, but also in Darfur and northern Uganda. In his final day, Garang had huddled with his friend Museveni to discuss ways of reining in leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group that operated out of southern Sudan and northern Uganda.

Garang, like many African leaders, held nearly absolute power in his organization. It was he who wrote much of the landmark peace deal. He also had the ability to reach out to groups that spanned ideological beliefs, becoming the darling of America's conservative Christian movement in their battle at ending the selling of slaves, while at the same time forming a close relationship with Cuba's Fidel Castro, who agreed to train some of Garang's troops.

And in recent months, say associates, Garang showed signs of softening, of becoming more of a statesman. At his inauguration, he clasped hands with his longtime enemy, President Omar al-Bashir, and said, ''It's not my peace or the peace of Omar al-Bashir, but it is a peace for all Sudanese people."

But suddenly, the guarded optimism felt just weeks ago was gone.

Peter Adwok, a former SPLM commissioner, said the situation might be unstable in the coming days.

''The death of Garang comes at a very critical time really in the whole of the peace process, and there is already a problem in that people might misread or read some foul play into this death," he said.

In Pretoria, Abdalla Hamdok, regional director for Africa at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, called Garang ''irreplaceable."

''He was a Mandela-type for southern Sudan. He was a solid rock in dealing with the government in Khartoum," said Hamdok, who fled Sudan in 1987 because of political persecution. ''He was someone who would not sell out. So he is a huge loss. It will take a while for the SPLM to readjust and move ahead."

Still, if the SPLM leadership continues to appeal for calm, he said, the peace process will not fall apart. ''I don't see any other choice," Hamdok said. ''Going back to war is not an option."

Globe reporter Farah Stockman contributed to this story from Nairobi. Donnelly reported from Pretoria, Thibodeaux from Nairobi. Material from the Associated Press was used. Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com