Old Sudan and new Sudan

INTRODUCTION

It is close to seven months since the Republic of South Sudan became independent. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in 2005 brought an end to the brutal civil war (1955-1972; 1983-2005) that engulfed Sudan before its independence in 1956. An estimated two-and-half million people died and more than five million were uprooted. [1] The trend in the forceful displacement of people due to conflict, and mortality rate resulting from various clashes in the Border States [2] and within the South is on the rise. [3] This essay concerns itself with the political challenge. It attempts to understand the political crisis in the larger context of North-South politics. It begins by analyzing the rise in political violence in South Sudan, the high rate of people killed as a result of armed movements and ethnic clashes. The last section examines the disappointments of the CPA in the border States, Eastern and Western Sudan. The paper argues that North and South Sudan will not find durable peace so long as the marginalised population in the border states continues to die. The sustainability of peace in the North and the South Sudan hinges on the resolution in and stability of Abyei, Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile, Eastern Sudan and Darfur.

POLITICAL CHALLENGE IN SOUTH SUDAN

The period between 2009 and 2011 has seen a rise in violence throughout South Sudan and the border states. [3] Conflicts continue in Eastern and Western Sudan. Table 1 summarises incidents recorded over a three-year period in South Sudan and the number of people killed in those incidents. Ms. Lise Grande, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the UN and Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan, reported that ‘60,000 people have been affected by recent violence; more than 350,000 people have been displaced during 2011 by rebel militia and inter-communal fighting’. [4] The military invasion and occupation of South Kordofan and Blue Nile States by Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) has ‘forced 75,000 people to seek refuge in South Sudan's Unity and Upper Nile since June’. [5] As of December 2011, 4,636 people have been killed in South Sudan. [6] The following four states have the largest number of people killed: Jonglei, Unity, Lakes and Upper Nile. Jonglei accounts for 42.6 percent of the total killed, Unity 16 percent, Lakes 10 percent and Upper Nile 8 percent. This prompted the Government of South Sudan to declare Jonglei ‘a disaster zone’. [7] Together, these four states account for 77 percent of the overall total while the remaining six states account for 22.89%. [8] The year 2011 was particularly deadly in the sheer number of people killed and the number of those displaced.

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The immediate task for the Government of South Sudan (GOSS) is to address this escalation of ethnic violence and proliferation of armed groups. The increasing number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) [9] from the border states and within South Sudan, the relationship between peasant communities and pastoralists with shared livelihoods need to be effectively managed or else violence is the natural outcome of mismanagement. In the long term, the political challenge will be building a more equitable society that engages in peaceful nation-building that is democratic, law-abiding, transparent and inclusive of the diversity within the country. This challenge was noted by John Garang at the Koka Dam Conference in 1986. [10]

The solution to the national crisis in Sudan was summarised in the concept of the New Sudan. The New Sudan was a conceptual framework for a country that would be inclusive of all its multiple ethnic groups, pluralistic and embracing all nationalities, races, creeds, religions and genders. The socio-economic disparity and structural inequalities characteristic of North and South Sudan generate armed movements that seek and demand redress of historical wrongs. [11] So long as socio-economic disparity and structural inequalities persist, there will continue to be an incentive for armed movements throughout North and South Sudan. While the CPA resolved the armed confrontation between the SPLA and the NCP, it has come short in resolving the fundamental problem of the Sudan.

PROBLEM OF SUDAN: MARGINALIZATION OF PERIPHERIES

The root causes of the conflict in Sudan are a combination of the institutional legacy of colonialism, [12] and deliberate policies by each postcolonial government to marginalize socially, politically and economically peripheral regions in Sudan. [13] Socio-economic disparity and structural inequalities have been the product of this colonial and postcolonial policy. Discontentment with the growing inequality and marginalization of the mass has historically led to uprisings and rebellions as different groups in different regions demand redress of historical injustice. Garang noted this at the Koka Dam conference: ‘under these circumstances the marginal cost of rebellion in the South became very small, zero or negative; that is, in the South it pays to rebel’. [14] The national problem was ‘marginalisation in all its forms, discrimination, injustice and subordination, constituted the root causes of the conflict that could not be addressed in a piecemeal fashion by dishing out handouts and concessions to the disgruntled and rebellious groups whenever a conflict erupted in a particular region’. [15] Once the problem was formulated, Garang proposed a Conceptual Framework that he called the New Sudan. The New Sudan was in fact the raison d’être of the SPLM from its inception. [16] This vision has been adopted by the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) in Darfur and Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) in Blue Nile and South Kordofan.

CPA AND THE DISAPPOINTMENT IN THE BORDER STATES

The realization that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was less comprehensive has been noted by many scholars of Sudan and policy makers alike. [17] This lesson was captured in a letter signed by 62 members of U.S. Congress, demanding a comprehensive U.S. policy on Sudan. The letter asked the President to move away from current strategy of engaging in ‘individual mediation processes-effectively stove-piping each conflict,’ [18] instead of the root causes, treating only the symptoms of the problem.

A look at the letter shows that members of Congress failed to problematise the CPA and situate it in the larger context of Sudanese politics. They noted correctly that the three core principles that held the agreement were ‘fairer distribution of power and wealth between the centre and the peripheries, democratic transformation, and the right of southern Sudanese to determine their own future.’ [19] All three pillars applied to the situation in the South but cannot be said to have applied to the rest of Sudan. The CPA gave 52 and 28 per cent of state power to the NCP and SPLM, respectively. It distributed the remaining 20 per cent among northern (14 percent) and southern (6 percent) political parties. [20] The fact that Eastern, Western and the border states in Sudan have all resorted to armed struggle is the clearest testimony that the CPA did not resolve their historical grievances.

Another startling fact is that the period shortly after the CPA shows that the CPA delivered on its promise to allow South Sudan to decide its fate. The most important provision in the CPA, the Machakos Protocol, [21] which mandated that a referendum on self-determination was to be held to decide the fate of South Sudan in 2011, [22] was preoccupied with settling the conflict between the NCP and the SPLM/A. This was reflected when the agreement itself was being signed and, in 2003, ‘a rebellion led by an alliance of three ethnic groups — the Fur, the Masalit, and the Zaghawa — broke out in Darfur’. [23] Fearing a similar pattern of attack from other peripheral regions, Khartoum responded with a vicious counter-insurgency, followed by an ethnic-cleansing campaign throughout the region in rebel villages. [24] Two months before South Sudan’s declaration of independence, Khartoum attacked Abyei, then followed that with occupation of Southern Kordofan and then finished up by waging a brutal war in Blue Nile State. The demands in each of the cases are indirectly reflected in the lack of clarification in the CPA about the fate of the border states.

In regard to Abyei, the CPA contained a provision to conduct a public referendum to determine its status and fate in the Sudan. In regard to Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile, the CPA was vague and instead included a stipulation about popular consultation for both states. This vagueness and SPLA’s reluctance to retaliate as it prepared to declare independence in the South gave the NCP the needed room to dismantle the local administration in Abyei and then to militarily occupy South Kordofan and Blue Nile States. In the East and West of Sudan, the problem was even more pronounced because there were separate agreements that individually lacked the muscle and comprehensiveness [25] of the CPA. The Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) was signed in May 2005; the Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement (ESPA) was signed in October 2006. Only one faction of the divided SLA (SLA-Minni) signed the Darfur Peace Agreement in Abuja, Nigeria in May 2006. [26] The DPA [27] was subsequently rejected by the main faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). [28">

CONCLUSION

From the Addis Ababa agreement to the ESPA, power-sharing arrangements in Sudan have systematically excluded the majority, making their acceptance difficult amongst those who have no stake in safeguarding or seeing a successful implementation of the agreement. South cannot find peace if the North is unstable; and the opposite is true for the North. The greatest threat to peace in the South, however, comes from within. North and South Sudan will not find durable peace so long as violence continues in the marginalised areas. The sustainability of peace in the North and the South Sudan hinges on the resolution in and stability of Abyei, Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile, Eastern Sudan and Darfur. These areas constitute the majority of the marginalised population. [29"> Without resolving the multiplicity of crises and finding a comprehensive political arrangement for the conflict in the Border States, North and South Sudan will remain in a perpetual state of war.

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* Christopher Zambakari is a candidate for a Law and Policy Doctorate (LPD) at the College of Professional Studies, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts. He can be reached at: . He would like to thank Rose Jaji, University of Zimbabwe, Anschaire Aveved, Columbia University, Tijana Gligorevic, Roseman University of Health Sciences, for their insightful comments and constructive feedback on the earlier draft of this article.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

REFERENCES

1. Capuano, Michael E, Michael T McCaul , Frank Wolf, and Donald Payne. "Letter to His Honorable President Barack Obama (Dated November 21, 2011 and Signed by 62 Members of Congress)." Washington, DC: Congress of the United States of America.
2. CPA. "The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (Cpa) between the Government of the Republic of the Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Sudan People's Liberation Army." Machakos, Kenya: The Government of The Republic of The Sudan and The Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Sudan People's Liberation Army, 2005.
de Waal, Alex. "The Wars of Sudan." Nation 284, no. 11 (2007): 16-20.
3. Deng, Francis Mading, ed. New Sudan in the Making? : Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2010.
4. Deng, Francis Mading. "Sudan at the Crossroads." In New Sudan in the Making? : Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself. , edited by Francis Mading. Deng. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2010.
5. Deng, Luka Biong. "The Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement: Will It Be Sustained?" Civil Wars 7, no. 3 (2005): 244-57.
6. Garang, John. The Call for Democracy in Sudan. Edited by Mansour Khalid. New York Kegan Paul International, 1992.
7. IDMC. "Estimates for the Total Number of Idps for All of Sudan (as of January 2011)." .Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.
8. Kameir, Elwathig. "Operationalizing the New Sudan Concept." In New Sudan in the Making? : Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself. , edited by Francis Mading Deng. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press., 2010.
9. Mamdani, Mahmood. Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror. New York: Pantheon Books, 2009.
10. Natsios, Andrew S. "Beyond Darfur." Foreign Affairs 87, no. 3 (2008): 77-93.
Nyaba, Peter Adwok. "Splm-Ncp Asymmetrical Power Relations Jeopardise the Implementation of the Cpa and the Future of the Sudan." International Journal of African Renaissance Studies 5, no. 1 (2010): 138-47.
11. Tanner, Victor , and Jérôme Tubiana. "Divided They Fall:The Fragmentation of Darfur’s Rebel Groups." Geneva, Switzerland: Small Arms Survey, 2007.
12. UNMIS. "The Background to Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement." United Nations: Information and Communications Technology Division/DFS.
13. UNOCHA. "Statement Attributable to the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan, Ms. Lise Grande." Juba, South Sudan: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in South Sudan. Accessible from Reliefweb, 2012.
14. Yoh, John G. "The Cpa as an Embodiment of the New Sudan." In New Sudan in the Making? : Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself, edited by Francis Deng, 415-38. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2010.
15. Zambakari, Christopher. "In Search for Durable Peace: The Comprehensive Peace Agreement and Power Sharing in Sudan " International Journal of Human Rights (Fall 2012 Forthcoming). no. Special Issue on Law, Power Sharing and Human Rights (2012).
16. Zambakari, Christopher. "South Sudan and the Nation-Building Project: Lessons and Challenges." International Journal of African Renaissance Studies 6, no. 2 (2011): 32–56.
17. Zambakari, Christopher. "South Sudan and the Nation-Building Project: Lessons and Challenges." In Two Decades of Democracy and Governance in Africa: Discourses and Country Experiences (Forthcoming). edited by Said Adejumobi. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

END NOTES

[1] UNMIS, "The Background to Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement," United Nations: Information and Communications Technology Division/DFS,, http://unmis.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?tabid=515; IDMC, "Estimates for the Total Number of Idps for All of Sudan (as of January 2011)", Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.
[2] The Border States mentioned in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement for special status include Abyei, Southern Kordofan, and Blue Nile.
[3] See Table 1
[4] Christopher Zambakari, "South Sudan and the Nation-Building Project: Lessons and Challenges," International Journal of African Renaissance Studies 6, no. 2 (2011): 43-45.
[5] UNOCHA, "Statement Attributable to the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan, Ms. Lise Grande," (Juba, South Sudan: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in South Sudan. Accessible from , 2012).
[6] Ibid.
[7] The three leading factors accounting for the killing are inter-tribal conflicts, various armed incidences, and intra-tribal clashes. Jonglei, Warrap, Unity, Lake and Upper Nile states are the most affected areas.
[8] UNOCHA, "Statement Attributable to the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan, Ms. Lise Grande."
[9]Christopher Zambakari, "South Sudan and the Nation-Building Project: Lessons and Challenges," in Two Decades of Democracy and Governance in Africa: Discourses and Country Experiences (Forthcoming). ed. Said Adejumobi (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
[10] Together North and South Sudan have the largest number of IDPs in the world estimated to be over five million.
[11] John Garang, The Call for Democracy in Sudan, ed. Mansour Khalid (New York Kegan Paul International, 1992).
[12] Christopher Zambakari, "In Search for Durable Peace: The Comprehensive Peace Agreement and Power Sharing in Sudan " International Journal of Human Rights (Fall 2012 Forthcoming). no. Special Issue on Law, Power Sharing and Human Rights (2012); ibid.
[13] Mahmood Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror (New York: Pantheon Books, 2009).
[14] Luka Biong Deng, "The Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement: Will It Be Sustained?," Civil Wars 7, no. 3 (2005).
[15] Garang, The Call for Democracy in Sudan
[16] Francis Mading Deng, ed. New Sudan in the Making? : Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press,2010), 18-19.
[17] Peter Adwok Nyaba, "Splm-Ncp Asymmetrical Power Relations Jeopardise the Implementation of the Cpa and the Future of the Sudan," International Journal of African Renaissance Studies 5, no. 1 (2010): 142.
[18] Francis Mading Deng, "Sudan at the Crossroads," in New Sudan in the Making? : Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself. , ed. Francis Mading. Deng (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2010), 36-38; John G Yoh, "The Cpa as an Embodiment of the New Sudan.," in New Sudan in the Making? : Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself, ed. Francis Deng (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2010), 415-38; Elwathig Kameir, "Operationalizing the New Sudan Concept," in New Sudan in the Making? : Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself. , ed. Francis Mading Deng. (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press., 2010), 447-51; Alex de Waal, "The Wars of Sudan," Nation 284, no. 11 (2007): 16.
[19] Michael E Capuano et al., "Letter to His Honorable President Barack Obama (Dated November 21, 2011 and Signed by 62 Members of Congress)," (Washington, DC: Congress of the United States of America: Retrieved from , 2011).
[20] Ibid.
[21] CPA, "The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (Cpa) between the Government of the Republic of the Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Sudan People's Liberation Army," (Machakos, Kenya: The Government of The Republic of The Sudan and The Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Sudan People's Liberation Army, 2005), 16. : Part II, Sec. [2.2.5.">
[22] Ibid., 1-8; Chapter I.
[23] Ibid., 3. : Part A, Sec.[1.3">
[24] Andrew S. Natsios, "Beyond Darfur," Foreign Affairs 87, no. 3 (2008): 79..
[25] Ibid., 79.
[26] Though the CPA included all four different types of power sharing arrangements: political, economic, territorial and military, it was a prerogative of two parties to a conflict. It thus omitted the majority from the process which led to the signing of the agreement. Later with the signing of the DPA in Darfur and ESPA in Eastern Sudan, both agreement departed from key stipulations of the CPA and were weakened by the undemocratic aspects, similar to the one that plagued the CPA throughout the interim period in Sudan.
[27] Victor Tanner and Jérôme Tubiana, "Divided They Fall:The Fragmentation of Darfur’s Rebel Groups," (Geneva, Switzerland: Small Arms Survey, 2007), 11.
[28"> DPA was signed between the GOS and the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM)-Mini Minawi faction.
[29"> Deng, "Sudan at the Crossroads," 36-37; de Waal, "The Wars of Sudan," 18.
[30"> Deng, "The Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement: Will It Be Sustained?," 249.