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Chatham House (London)

Sudan: 'Comprehensive' Peace Deal Was Not Comprehensive

9 January 2009

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In Chatham House's new report evaluating Sudan's prospects under the 2005 Comprehensive Peace agreement (CPA), which brought to an end two decades of war between northern and southern Sudan, Edward Thomas examines the way in which the accord has marginalized other conflicts of interest in the country, such as those between the central government in Khartoum, controlled by the National Congress Party, and other groups in the north. Excerpts:

The creation of two polities in one country would not prolong the unity of North and South Sudan. Creating a single, Islamically-oriented polity in Northern Sudan prolonged the rule and legitimacy of the National Congress Party, a party with Islamist origins. The international sponsors of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) accepted NCP claims to represent the whole of Northern Sudan, a claim based on the fact that Northern Sudan is almost entirely Muslim. This acceptance entrenched the NCP's version of Sudan as a country with a static Muslim identity expressed through an Islamist ideology.

This version runs counter to historical experience – the main lesson of Northern Sudan's recent history is that diverse but mismanaged religious and ethnic identities are fragmenting under the pressures of a dominating centre. Northern Sudanese who do not fit into the NCP's version of Sudan have no referendum on staying or going [Southern Sudan can vote in 2011 whether it wants to remain in one country with the North]: they can only use the political opportunities of the moment to try to restructure the state. The fact that Southern Sudanese can opt out of Sudan makes the task of these Northerners harder: under the CPA, state restructuring is less likely than it might have been if the terms of the DoP [the 1994 Declaration of Principles produced by Horn of Africa states] had been kept to.

The Blue Nile, Abyei and the Nuba Mountains in Southern Kordofan are areas of the North with large populations culturally that are contiguous with the South and that were drawn into some of the bitterest fronts of the war between the South and the central government in the 1980s… The populations in these areas mostly supported the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/ Army (SPLM/A) because their lands faced encroachment from allies of the NCP, and because their indigenous religions and folk- Islam were directly targeted in a war that the NCP's leaders described as a jihad. They were receptive to the SPLM/A's policies on secularism, democracy and the recognition of the commons, a cornerstone of African customary land law. Armed groups on the eastern border with Eritrea sought alliances with the SPLA in 1993. Separate but related examples of Sudan's fragmentation emerged in the conflicts in Eastern Sudan in the 1990s and in Darfur, which turned into war in early 2003 as the negotiations got under way.

In a rare interview, IGAD's Kenyan chief negotiator commented: "But of course the CPA itself is not comprehensive. Comprehensive in my understanding would be the whole of Sudan. That was never on the table: the government would not allow it. Every time I tried to raise it they said, 'Oh, you want to come and resolve all our conflicts? Come to Darfur, come to Eastern Sudan, we have enough problems. Come to the north; we have a lot of problems!"

Rather than address regional problems in Sudan comprehensively, IGAD created a precedent for hard-fought bilateral deals. In the end, the SPLM insisted Abyei (an area formerly part of Southern Sudan that was incorporated into the North in 1905) got a referendum. It was prepared to forgo an opt-out clause for Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan, not historically part of Southern Sudan. Instead, members of local legislative assemblies will have the right to reopen negotiations with the government on the terms of the peace agreement in a process called "popular consultation". The perfunctory treatment of the problems of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile was seen as an acceptable compromise for the sake of a bilateral deal.

The negotiations were conducted between the SPLM, the largest military-political group in the South, and a government dominated by the NCP's security-commercial elite. Southern politics had been militarized by many years of war. Civil institutions that still existed – such as churches and traditional authorities – had little influence in the negotiations. Other armed groups in Southern Sudan were excluded, and depicted to the international community as potential spoilers of the agreement.

The SPLM's erstwhile allies in the Northern opposition parties and allies in Darfur were also excluded: policies adopted after the NCP-led coup had greatly weakened them in any case. The sponsors of the agreement, chief among them the United States, pressed ahead with a bilateral agreement, because the costs of the war in the South were so heavy, and they believed that the flaws of the agreement would be addressed in the implementation….

John Garang [of the SPLM, and First Vice- President of Sudan in the post-CPA era]… was seen as a possible contender for the presidential elections which the CPA stipulates must take place before mid-2009. His name on the ballot would have made those elections more competitive. Although Garang was not an instinctive democrat, a Garang–Bashir contest would be a vivid demonstration of the enormous political space in Sudan, revealing the distance between its extremes. Democratic elections are supposed to turn the "bilateral conspiracy" into a national project. They are intended to create a parliament which can amend the 2005 Interim National Constitution, a legalized version of the CPA, possibly even extending its provisions to other conflicts that were overlooked in its drafting.

Garang's death altered expectations of the elections. Without him, unity is less attractive and Southerners are more likely to vote for independence. His successor, First Vice-President Salva Kiir, has been tactically ambiguous about his candidacy for the national Presidency. But it is unlikely that Kiir will run – he has to give up his position as President of the Government of South Sudan [established after the CPA] to do so. So the CPA's provisions for a referendum [on whether the South should split away from the North] are trumping its complex and thoughtful proposals for state restructuring.

Northern opponents of the NCP express understanding for the SPLM's preoccupation with a Southern opt-out: they also express dismay. They fear that if elections are contested without vigour and are quickly followed by Southern secession, emerging and active conflicts in Northern Sudan will be aggravated.

The drafters of the CPA correctly diagnosed the problem of conflict in Sudan as a problem of an over-dominant centre and therefore proposed a restructuring of the centre. But they applied the diagnosis to one group of conflicts, on the country's North–South axis, and ignored political fragmentation and emerging conflicts within the North and South. They made secession less costly than the hard political work of democratic transformation. The drafters created many institutions; indeed the agreement has been criticized for over-institutionalizing the peace process. But in the end, the CPA relied heavily on one personality: Garang. His death set unexpected limits on the implementation of the agreement.

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