On this page
Sudan
Sudan has suffered a number of armed conflicts since achieving independence in 1956, including the two wars between the North and the South and the ongoing conflict in Darfur. Conflict between the north and south of the country is driven by perceived imbalances in power and access to resources. Full implementation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) will provide for unification or secession, and it remains to be seen which of these options will bring lasting peace to Sudan.
Introduction
Sudan has been embroiled in many armed conflicts. The latest began in earnest in February 2003 in the western region of Darfur. Two prior civil wars had roots in the south of the country, specifically the area called Southern Sudan which consists of the three provinces of Bahr al Ghazal, Upper Nile and Equatoria.
The conflicts in Sudan can broadly be understood as an outcome of unequal economic and power relations between the centre and the peripheries. Other factors such as land access and ownership, perceived ethnic divisions and the involvement of neighbouring countries are also significant.
The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed in Naivasha, Kenya, officially ended the war between the North and the South. It provides either for unification or for the secession of the South from the rest of country. It remains to be seen whether either of these options can bring a lasting peace; the implementation of the CPA has been delayed and there are a number of outstanding issues unresolved by the agreement.
The 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement, forced through under heavy international pressure, has not brought a resolution to the crisis or an end to the fighting. It was signed in Abuja, Nigeria in May 2006 by the Government of Sudan and one of the three rebel factions. Following the signing there were widespread demonstrations against the agreement in the displaced persons’ camps, the rebel factions fragmented, and the fighting continued. The UN and the African Union are currently coordinating a joint mediation strategy.
Sudan's colonial past
The first civil war began in 1955 just before the state gained independence in 1956. Conflict began during the process leading up to independence from the Anglo-British Condominium, which had ruled Sudan as a colony since 1898. The road to independence was rocky. The southern part of the country had historically been separate from the north prior to the 1860s. Attempts to pacify the south and set up an overall administration during the later part of the Turco-Egyptian period (1821 – 1885) and the early part of the Mahdiyya (1885 – 1898) met with little success. A southern administration was successfully established during the Anglo-Egyptian period (1898 – 1955), but this was separate from the government in the north.
Beginning in 1948 the two administrative governments were joined together but numerous demands from southern politicians were not met. As the situation deteriorated these demands escalated: from calls for education and development in the south, to federal status for the south, to self-determination and separation.
First civil war
The decision to unify the armies in the north and south into one unit eventually led to the first civil war when a battalion of soldiers from the Equatoria Defence Force in Torit resisted orders to transfer to the north. This mutiny by a group of soldiers over a very local reason, namely the objection of one barrack to transfer, did not begin the war but rather resulted in the emergence of various armed bands living in the ‘bush’ and launching attacks on the new state’s armed forces. These bands were neither cohesive nor coordinated and lacked not only a common agenda but also a political goal.
The articulation of the political grievances of the southern peoples came later in 1963 when the southern political parties formulated their demands. It took even longer for the various armed bands to be united under one leadership. In 1970, Joseph Lagu managed to unite the various groups under the Southern Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM).
Inter-war grievances
In 1972, the Addis Ababa Agreement (AAA) was signed between the SSLM and the government-of-the-day. The AAA unified the three southern provinces into one region and granted the South regional autonomy with its own High Executive Council (HEC) and Regional Assembly. The AAA gave the President of the Republic extensive powers including veto power over bills emerging from the Regional Assembly and influence in impeaching the President of the Southern Region or members of the HEC. It also made the HEC responsible to the President. These presidential powers eventually resulted in significant personal interference by Nimeri into the affairs of the southern regional government.
A number of other issues also plagued relations between the southern regional government and the central government. These included the central government hindering development projects in the south, whereby money for development was not forthcoming; an attempt to redraw the boundaries of the south and transfer southern areas with rich resources to the north; an attempt to build an oil refinery in the north when oil was extracted from the south; and the construction of the Jonglei Canal in the south without simultaneous progress in development projects to raise the socio-economic standard of the southern people in that region.
These issues led to a breakdown in the mutual trust between southern and northern Sudanese that the AAA had fostered. Southerners began to suspect the intentions of the government and northerners began to suspect the intentions of the south to use the regional autonomy as a prelude to secession. This growing mistrust and the weaknesses in the AAA eventually led to its abrogation by President Nimeri, even though he had originally been one of its principal signatories and proponents.
Second civil war
Another order to transfer southern battalions to the north came in the middle of this environment, which was characterised by suspicion and disaffection from interference in southern regional politics. Thus, in May 1983, in a situation similar to that in 1955, the 105th battalion in Bor rejected transfer orders and mutinied. Other battalions in Pibor and Pochalla joined the mutiny along with many southerners who fled to Ethiopia to join the new rebellion. The situation was made worse by the re-division of the south in June into three regions in contravention of the AAA and the imposition of Islamic Sharia law in September.
This time it only took a couple of months for the mutineers to articulate their political grievances and unite as the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). The SPLM was established in July 1983 with the stated aim of creating a New Sudan of equality and economic and social justice. The movement’s agenda was not just to fight for the south but also for national restructuring of the political, economic and social basis of the state. Hence, it called for distribution of resources and power among all the varied groups in Sudan to redress the traditional ‘marginalisation’ of ‘peripheral regions’. This second civil war continued until January of 2005 when the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed between the government and the SPLM.
The Comprehensive Peace Agreement
The process leading to the signing of the CPA lasted for two and a half years of continuous negotiations over a number of issues. The first successes came with the signing of the Machakos Protocol in July 2002. This agreement granted the right of self-determination to the south with the options of unity with the north or secession. The protocol also established a decentralised system of government for the whole country with a national government made up of both southern and northern groups. This success was followed over the course of the next two years by the Security Arrangement Agreement, the Wealth-Sharing Agreement, the Power-Sharing Protocol, the Abyei Protocol, the Two Areas Protocol, and finally the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2005.
Implementation and shortcomings of the CPA
The CPA has been criticised for creating an exclusive ‘diarchy’ between the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the SPLM, at the expense of other political parties and movements in the country. Implementation of the CPA has been slow. In 2006 the SPLM accused the NCP of violating, ignoring and undermining its commitments under the agreement. In April 2007 the NCP offered to renew its efforts to implement some elements of the CPA under the condition that the SPLM would join it in an electoral partnership.
Numerous shortcomings remain apparent to this day. The provisions of the CPA on the national reform of the civil service and fiscal transparency have yet to be effectively implemented. The border between the north and the south has yet to be finally demarcated. The 9th July deadline for the redeployment of all Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) troops from the South has not been met in full. Meanwhile, the SPLM Government of Southern Sudan faces instability due to financial constraints and delays in security sector reform.
Other ongoing and potential conflicts have not been resolved by the CPA. There have been delays in the implementation of the October 2006 Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement, and there is rising disaffection in Northern Sudan relating to government dam-building projects. The war in Darfur continues.
Darfur Crisis
A combination of economic underdevelopment, political marginalization, environmental degradation, local conflicts over land access and ownership, ethnic identities, and the militarisation of the region by the Sudanese government and neighbouring countries have all fed into the conflict in Darfur.
Famine struck Darfur in 1984-5. This, along with a lack of investment in the region and its increasing militarisation, contributed to the escalation of land-related conflict between predominantly ‘Arab’ herders and predominantly ‘African’ farmers. The region was used as a military ‘launching pad’ by Colonel Gaddafi of Libya in his war against Chad throughout the 1980s. Gaddafi also armed Murahleen ‘Arab’ militia in the region in the late 1980s, first with the purpose of attacking Dinka civilians in the South, and second with the intention of terrorizing the local ‘black’ population into accepting the proposed annexation of Darfur into Libya. (Both Eritrea and Chad have helped to arm Rebel movements in Darfur since 2005.) The Chad/Libyan war crossed the border into Darfur in the late 1980s.
In March 2003 the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) began fighting the Sudanese Government. They attacked the Al Fashir airport in northern Darfur in April 2003.
The government’s response to the insurgency was to support proxy militias known as the Janjaweed (who had derived from the Murahleen), who attacked and plundered villages, killing and forcibly displacing the population. Estimates of the number of people displaced as a result of the violence regularly exceed 2 million, estimates of the number killed vary significantly but are in the hundreds of thousands.
Darfur Peace Agreement
Following a series of negotiations hosted by the African Union in Abuja, Nigeria, the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) was signed in May 2006 by the Government of Sudan and Minni Minnawi, leader of one of the two factions of the SLA. The agreement did not bring an end to the conflict.
The process which led to the DPA was characterised by a lack of negotiation between the parties, who were unrepresentative of all the Darfurian constituencies, in particular the Arab groups. Incoherence and divisions between the rebel movements, and asymmetries of power between the rebels and the government helped to stall the negotiations.
Unsubstantiated threats to cut funding for the process and impose sanctions on the participants were made by the international community along with the regular imposition of deadlines which were never met. This served to dent the credibility of the process. The imposition of regularly changing deadlines also prevented the planning of a coherent negotiating strategy and the mediators ended up drafting the agreement themselves. International pressure swayed Minni Minnawi to sign the DPA but the JEM and the other SLA faction refused to sign.
News of the signing of the DPA was met by demonstrations in the displaced camps, splits between the rebel groups and renewed fighting. The government used ‘implementation’ of the DPA as justification for further counter insurgency offensives. Accordingly, the DPA and the African Union are viewed with suspicion and hostility by much of the population and members of the non-signatory movements in Darfur.
A new mediation process is currently being led jointly by the UN and the African Union, who appear to be attempting to monopolise control of peace-building in the area. It is recognised that the new process must be more inclusive than that at Abuja. A central stated task is to unify the plethora of rebel movements in Darfur into one block so that negotiations can proceed with the Government. This is an area of contestation between the movements as it will essentially define who is given a mandate to represent Darfur.
Darfurian civil society movements are slowly gaining access to training and financial resources to enhance their capacity for, and involvement in, local peace-building initiatives. The Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Consultation, established under the DPA, is beginning to be used as a platform for consultations between civil society groups of different affiliations in the region.
by Peace Direct's Sudan Conflict ExpertLatest Update from CrisisWatch (January 2008)
SPLM returned to government of national unity (GNU) 27 December avoiding collapse of CPA, but clashes started along north-south border and fighting continued in Darfur. Combined Popular Defence Forces militia, government troops and Misseriya tribesmen reportedly clashed with SPLA 23-24 and 28 December in Southern Kordofan and Northern Bahr el-Ghazal. SPLM rejoined GNU after progress on some issues that triggered October 2007 withdrawal, though not Abyei. New list gives greater representation of SPLM in Khartoum: including minister of cabinet affairs and foreign minister. Regional dynamics shifted in Darfur as ex-Janjaweed leader, Ali Hamiti, defected from Khartoum, reportedly in alliance with SLA/Abdel Wahid and Khalil Ibrahim’s Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). In month JEM claimed victories against government troops in Kordofan and Suleia town, downing of government airplane, capture of SAF garrison outside el-Geneina, and claimed control of Chinese oil facility 11 December. Khartoum accused Chad of bombing in Darfur in cooperation with JEM attacks – denied by N’Djamena. Aid groups/NGOs said UN/AU peacekeeping force for Darfur (UNAMID) which took over from AU 1 January 2008, hampered by Khartoum and lack of logistical support; urged UNSC to impose targeted sanctions if situation continues. UNAMID continues to lack force capabilities, including 24 helicopters. U.S. diplomat John Granville murdered in Khartoum, 1 January.
Published at the beginning of each calendar month, CrisisWatch is produced by the International Crisis Group.
Resources and Links
Online Resources
- Accord Sudan Project
- Publication on peacebuilding in Sudan.
- Africa Action
- Reports and analysis of the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region.
- Afrol News Sudan
- News, analysis, and reports on a variety of Sudanese issues.
- AllAfrica.com Sudan
- Indexes news articles from a range of sources, available in English and French.
- Amnesty International - Sudan
- Reports and documents on humanitarian issues in Sudan.
- CARE
- Country profile and projects run by CARE in Sudan.
- Columbia University Libraries - African Studies
- Extensive list of websites and documents relating to politics, human rights, and military and foreign policy in Sudan.
- Concern
- Country profile, news, and stories from Sudan.
- Conciliation Resources
- Essays on conflict in Sudan and other areas.
- Crimes of War Project
- An overview and insight into the wider implications of the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region.
- Crisis States Research Centre
- A series of working papers on Darfur and other conflict areas.
- Darfur Consortium
- An African and international civil society action for Darfur, offering news articles on and background to the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region.
- DarfurInformation.com
- A comprehensive overview and history of the crisis in Sudan's Darfur Region.
- Ethnologue
- A guide to the languages and ethicities of Sudan.
- European Sudanese Public Affairs Council (ESPAC)
- Links to publications on a variety of issues relating to the Sudanese conflict.
- Eyes on Darfur
- Amnesty USA's multimedia mashup on Darfur.
- Human Rights Watch
- Articles and publications relating to human rights in Sudan.
- Internal Displacement Monitoring Center
- Comprehensive overview of the Sudanese conflict, including the latest figures on IDP's.
- International Crisis Group
- A comprehensive resource for information on Sudanese conflict.
- Justice Africa
- Contains articles relating to the Sudanese conflict, plus details of Justice Africa's human rights projects in Sudan.
- Medicines sans Frontieres
- Articles, photographs, and videos relating to health and humanitarian issues in Sudan.
- ReliefWeb
- A leading on-line gateway to information on humanitarian emergencies and disasters.
- Sudan Human Rights Organisation
- Reports and articles on the conflict in Sudan.
- Sudan Open Archive
- Provides free digital access to contemporary and historical knowledge about Sudan
- Sudan Tribune
- News site about Sudan: wires, featured articles, analysis, comment, press releases, and reports.
- Sudan Vision
- Independent daily news service, with articles on a variety of Sudanese issues.
- Sudan.net
- Latest news and commentary on Sudan in English and Arabic.
- UNIFEM
- Overview and documents relating to the Sudanese conflict, with particular emphasis on the impact of the conflict on women.
- University of Uppsala Department of Peace and Conflict Research
- Detailed overview and commentary on Sudanese conflict.
- USAID
- Country profile, updates, and projects relating to Sudanese development.