1.10.2005
Sudan's Changing Map
by Adam Wolfe
10 January 2005
«The Power and Interest News Report»
On December 31, 2004, Sudan's central government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/ Army (S.P.L.M./A.) signed a permanent cease-fire agreement to end the country's 21 year civil war, clearing the way for a comprehensive peace deal signed January 9 in Kenya. While the United Nations and Western governments are hoping that the north/south agreement will be used as a blueprint to end the conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region, it is unlikely that the successful negotiations will spread to the west -- or, for that matter, to a growing problem in Sudan's northeastern region. Khartoum has seen the north/south civil war spread into a center/periphery conflict that shows little sign of abating even after the initial catalyst for the fighting has been subdued.
Ending Africa's Longest Running Civil War
In 1953, the United Kingdom and Egypt concluded an agreement providing for Sudanese self-government and self-determination. Shortly thereafter, in 1955, the Arab government in Khartoum reneged on promises to create a federal system, which led to a mutiny by southern army officers and sparked a 17 year civil war. The Addis Ababa agreement of 1972 was the foundation for a ten-year cease-fire between the northern and southern forces, but in 1983 President Gaafer Muhammad Nimeiri began a process of incorporating Islamic law into the penal code. Emergency courts were created in the north to enforce the new laws and in the south it led to the resumption of the civil war that the December 31, 2004 agreements officially end.
Lieutenant Colonel John Garang, originally sent to quell the nascent insurgency in the south in 1983, has been the leader of the S.P.L.M./A. since its inception. The central government has been led by Colonel Omar Hassan al-Bashir since June 30, 1989, when he staged a coup and ended negotiations with the southern rebels. Both men have fended off challenges to their authority since assuming power, but have remained the negotiating partners through the current agreement. Under the peace agreement, Garang will become al-Bashir's top vice president and be in a position to influence the negotiating terms to end Sudan's other regional conflicts.
A 1993 plan put forth by Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Eritrea under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (I.G.A.D.) and a July 2000 Egyptian and Libyan joint initiative were the initial building blocks for the north/south peace agreement. But it was U.S. President George W. Bush's administration, under pressure from conservative Christian groups and oil industry interests, that galvanized support within the United Nations and pushed the warring parties to sign an agreement to end their hostilities. In September 2001, former Senator John Danforth was designated presidential envoy for peace in Sudan, and by July 2002, the Sudanese government and the S.P.L.M./A. reached a basic agreement on the role of religion in the state. It would take continued pressure on both parties and a special session of the U.N. Security Council to finally bring the agreement to a conclusion.
In November, the Security Council met for a special session in Nairobi dedicated to the situation in Sudan at the urging of the United States. John Danforth, who had moved from the envoy position to U.S. ambassador to the U.N., was the president of the Security Council for the month and lobbied for the meeting. It was only the eleventh time the Council had met outside of its headquarters in New York. Many thought that a comprehensive peace deal that covered the conflicts in Darfur and Sudan's northeastern region might emerge from the session, but only further pressure on the S.P.L.M./A. and Khartoum to iron out the final details of their peace deal and another toothless resolution on the Darfur conflict materialized.
This special session pressured both sides to agree on the terms of implementing the peace agreements intended to end the 21 year civil war that has killed an estimated two million people. Under the agreed terms, a coalition government will be formed between the two parties, both sides will share oil revenues and the South will be allowed to vote on succession in six years. The U.N. is likely to assign peacekeepers to southern Sudan once the agreement is ratified by Khartoum and the S.P.L.M./A., a move that will not be extended to Sudan's other conflict zones in the near term. While these details may prove effective at ending the conflict in the south (which, according to aid workers in the area, continues in isolated pockets at a low-grade level), Khartoum's major problem has yet to be addressed. Khartoum's power at the geographical peripheries of Sudan continues to wane as Darfur bleeds and the northeast moves toward direct conflict.
Darfur Equals Genocide, But Not Intervention
The conflict in the western region of Sudan, which began after black, Muslim rebel groups attacked a military airfield in April 2003, meets the legal definition of genocide under the U.N. Genocide Convention. Khartoum responded to the rebel attacks by mobilizing and arming irregular militias of Arab Muslims called Janjaweed, roughly translated as "armed men on horseback." The Janjaweed, with air support from Khartoum's military, have directly attacked and displaced the largely black population of sedentary farmers. While years of intermarriage have eliminated the clear racial differences between the two populations, recent conflicts over diminishing resources in the wake of an extended drought have caused both populations to label themselves as increasingly separate from the other. The Janjaweed attacks, which have been encouraged by the tactics of western rebels but not committed by them, have killed an estimated 70,000 people (this number does not include those killed in direct conflict, only "civilians") and displaced 1.6 million.
Article two of the Genocide Convention states, "genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group as such: (a) Killing members of the group… (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." The actions of the Janjaweed militias, with support from Khartoum, clearly fall within these parameters. However, there has been some legal wrangling over what amounts to "intent to destroy, in whole or in part" an ethnic group.
In April 2004, an appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal addressed this question in a ruling on Radislav Krstic's role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. The ruling found that genocide constitutes the destruction of a "substantial part" of a group. Under this more narrow definition, the killing and dislocation of black, Muslim sedentary farmers in Darfur still equates to genocide.
Although not officially labeled as such by the United Nations (as of today) and the European Union, genocide is occurring in Darfur. Many observers have argued that these parties are reluctant to label the conflict genocide because that would require immediate action to end the conflict, but there are geopolitical reasons that the E.U. and U.N. have avoided using the term. The Genocide Convention itself does not make ending the genocide compulsory for signatory states, only a legal option. Article eight of the convention allows any signatory state to take appropriate actions "for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide," but so far this has only led to the commitment of a few thousand African Union (A.U.) troops and monitors with narrow engagement rules that have proven ineffective in resolving the conflict. France has sent several hundred troops to protect refugee camps for the Sudanese in Chad, but there is little chance of further military commitments from the Western powers.
The West's main objective in Sudan is to force Khartoum to honor its agreements with the S.P.L.M./A.; leaning too hard on al-Bashir's government might expose it to threats from within its traditional power center -- Islamic political groups have grown in strength as al-Bashir has been forced to deal with the rebels. This is the main reason the E.U. has not pressed the U.N. to label the conflict a genocide. While Washington has pressured the Security Council to impose economic sanctions on Khartoum if it does not rein in the Janjaweed, it is unlikely that any sanctions will be imposed. The growth of China's and India's economies has made Sudan's southern oilfields a valuable asset, and China will likely block any attempt to impose U.N. sanctions in the Security Council. The West's reluctance to disrupt the southern peace process and China's reluctance to write off Sudan's oilfields make any settlement unlikely to emerge from a U.N. resolution.
In order to preserve al-Bashir's government, and save the north/south peace deal, the West will continue to press for a political agreement between the western rebels and Khartoum but the only stick available to force this conclusion will remain the ineffective A.U. monitors. Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general who led the U.N. peacekeeping mission during the 1994 Rwanda massacres, has argued that a force of upwards of 44,000 troops would be needed to secure a region the size and population density of Darfur, but the A.U. mission is limited to 3,000 troops. This is a number determined more by the events in the north/south peace negotiations than by the facts on the ground in Darfur. By trying to save the north/south peace deal, the West is ignoring that Sudan has collapsed into a center/periphery conflict that can only be resolved through a comprehensive agreement with Khartoum, the S.P.L.M./A., the western rebels, and the National Democratic Alliance (N.D.A.) and other northeastern rebels.
Sudan Moves Toward Collapse
The current strategy of the Western powers, and one likely to be pursued by the U.N., relies on using the north/south peace agreements as a template to resolve the conflicts in Darfur and the northeastern Sudanese region. The current strategy of Khartoum is to use the concessions made in the north/south peace agreements to block any calls for compromises in the Darfur and northeastern peace negotiations. The Darfur and northeastern rebels groups will attempt to hold out as long as possible in the negotiating sessions, hoping that Western pressure will deal them a better hand. John Garang, as Sudan's top vice president, is likely to move away from his tacit support of the regional rebel groups in order to preserve the S.P.L.M./A. agreement with Khartoum -- at least as long as it appears al-Bashir's government is able to hold on to power in the capital. It is increasingly likely that these competing interests will lead to the collapse of al-Bashir's government and the geographical integrity of Sudan.
Although Khartoum and the N.D.A. remain engaged in continuing peace negotiations, two N.D.A. members have withdrawn from the process. The Beja Congress and the Free Lions withdrew from the negotiations, and from the cease-fire agreements that form the basis of the negotiations, in October as an apparent attempt to raise the profile of the northeastern rebels' grievances with Khartoum. This means that Kasala and the surrounding regions near the border with Eritrea could soon erupt with violence. If Khartoum responds to the escalation of rebel attacks in the same manner as it did in the south and Darfur, using irregular militias with support from the national military, the violence will only spread, putting more pressure on al-Bashir's government. Al-Bashir's control over Sudan's center remains only as strong as his negotiating position with the regional rebels; any further violence would open his government to challenges from the Popular National Congress party (P.N.C.), an Islamist party even less palatable to the West than al-Bashir's.
Conclusion
While the December 31, 2004 permanent cease-fire agreement between the S.P.L.M./A. and Khartoum will bring stability to southern Sudan, the rest of the country is likely to descend into fractional collapse as Darfur's genocide continues and the northeast violently dislodges from Khartoum's influence. If the Darfur and N.D.A. negotiations are not quickly brought to a resolution, Khartoum will likely lose control of Sudan's geographical peripheries. The Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement (J.E.M.) in Darfur and the Beja Congress and the Free Lions in the northeast are attempting to force this conclusion by stalling the negotiations and escalating the violence in their respective territories (there is some evidence that the J.E.M. is coordinating its actions with the northeastern rebels to this end).
John Garang will be in a unique position as the top vice president in Khartoum to help force the regional peace negotiations to a resolution. While he will pursue a strategy of protecting al-Bashir's government, in order to secure the terms of the north/south peace deal, this will likely take the form of leaning on the regional rebel groups to accept the terms on the table. The West and the U.N. will help give his lobbying weight, but that does not mean the rebels will cave. Sudan's territorial integrity may soon collapse as the regional rebels see their best opportunities in the fractional chaos that will follow.
Report Drafted By:
Adam Wolfe
The Power and Interest News Report (PINR) is an analysis-based publication that seeks to, as objectively as possible, provide insight into various conflicts, regions and points of interest around the globe. PINR approaches a subject based upon the powers and interests involved, leaving the moral judgments to the reader. This report may not be reproduced, reprinted or broadcast without the written permission of inquiries@pinr.com. All comments should be directed to content@pinr.com.
On December 31, 2004, Sudan's central government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/ Army (S.P.L.M./A.) signed a permanent cease-fire agreement to end the country's 21 year civil war, clearing the way for a comprehensive peace deal signed January 9 in Kenya. While the United Nations and Western governments are hoping that the north/south agreement will be used as a blueprint to end the conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region, it is unlikely that the successful negotiations will spread to the west -- or, for that matter, to a growing problem in Sudan's northeastern region. Khartoum has seen the north/south civil war spread into a center/periphery conflict that shows little sign of abating even after the initial catalyst for the fighting has been subdued.
Ending Africa's Longest Running Civil War
In 1953, the United Kingdom and Egypt concluded an agreement providing for Sudanese self-government and self-determination. Shortly thereafter, in 1955, the Arab government in Khartoum reneged on promises to create a federal system, which led to a mutiny by southern army officers and sparked a 17 year civil war. The Addis Ababa agreement of 1972 was the foundation for a ten-year cease-fire between the northern and southern forces, but in 1983 President Gaafer Muhammad Nimeiri began a process of incorporating Islamic law into the penal code. Emergency courts were created in the north to enforce the new laws and in the south it led to the resumption of the civil war that the December 31, 2004 agreements officially end.
Lieutenant Colonel John Garang, originally sent to quell the nascent insurgency in the south in 1983, has been the leader of the S.P.L.M./A. since its inception. The central government has been led by Colonel Omar Hassan al-Bashir since June 30, 1989, when he staged a coup and ended negotiations with the southern rebels. Both men have fended off challenges to their authority since assuming power, but have remained the negotiating partners through the current agreement. Under the peace agreement, Garang will become al-Bashir's top vice president and be in a position to influence the negotiating terms to end Sudan's other regional conflicts.
A 1993 plan put forth by Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Eritrea under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (I.G.A.D.) and a July 2000 Egyptian and Libyan joint initiative were the initial building blocks for the north/south peace agreement. But it was U.S. President George W. Bush's administration, under pressure from conservative Christian groups and oil industry interests, that galvanized support within the United Nations and pushed the warring parties to sign an agreement to end their hostilities. In September 2001, former Senator John Danforth was designated presidential envoy for peace in Sudan, and by July 2002, the Sudanese government and the S.P.L.M./A. reached a basic agreement on the role of religion in the state. It would take continued pressure on both parties and a special session of the U.N. Security Council to finally bring the agreement to a conclusion.
In November, the Security Council met for a special session in Nairobi dedicated to the situation in Sudan at the urging of the United States. John Danforth, who had moved from the envoy position to U.S. ambassador to the U.N., was the president of the Security Council for the month and lobbied for the meeting. It was only the eleventh time the Council had met outside of its headquarters in New York. Many thought that a comprehensive peace deal that covered the conflicts in Darfur and Sudan's northeastern region might emerge from the session, but only further pressure on the S.P.L.M./A. and Khartoum to iron out the final details of their peace deal and another toothless resolution on the Darfur conflict materialized.
This special session pressured both sides to agree on the terms of implementing the peace agreements intended to end the 21 year civil war that has killed an estimated two million people. Under the agreed terms, a coalition government will be formed between the two parties, both sides will share oil revenues and the South will be allowed to vote on succession in six years. The U.N. is likely to assign peacekeepers to southern Sudan once the agreement is ratified by Khartoum and the S.P.L.M./A., a move that will not be extended to Sudan's other conflict zones in the near term. While these details may prove effective at ending the conflict in the south (which, according to aid workers in the area, continues in isolated pockets at a low-grade level), Khartoum's major problem has yet to be addressed. Khartoum's power at the geographical peripheries of Sudan continues to wane as Darfur bleeds and the northeast moves toward direct conflict.
Darfur Equals Genocide, But Not Intervention
The conflict in the western region of Sudan, which began after black, Muslim rebel groups attacked a military airfield in April 2003, meets the legal definition of genocide under the U.N. Genocide Convention. Khartoum responded to the rebel attacks by mobilizing and arming irregular militias of Arab Muslims called Janjaweed, roughly translated as "armed men on horseback." The Janjaweed, with air support from Khartoum's military, have directly attacked and displaced the largely black population of sedentary farmers. While years of intermarriage have eliminated the clear racial differences between the two populations, recent conflicts over diminishing resources in the wake of an extended drought have caused both populations to label themselves as increasingly separate from the other. The Janjaweed attacks, which have been encouraged by the tactics of western rebels but not committed by them, have killed an estimated 70,000 people (this number does not include those killed in direct conflict, only "civilians") and displaced 1.6 million.
Article two of the Genocide Convention states, "genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group as such: (a) Killing members of the group… (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." The actions of the Janjaweed militias, with support from Khartoum, clearly fall within these parameters. However, there has been some legal wrangling over what amounts to "intent to destroy, in whole or in part" an ethnic group.
In April 2004, an appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal addressed this question in a ruling on Radislav Krstic's role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. The ruling found that genocide constitutes the destruction of a "substantial part" of a group. Under this more narrow definition, the killing and dislocation of black, Muslim sedentary farmers in Darfur still equates to genocide.
Although not officially labeled as such by the United Nations (as of today) and the European Union, genocide is occurring in Darfur. Many observers have argued that these parties are reluctant to label the conflict genocide because that would require immediate action to end the conflict, but there are geopolitical reasons that the E.U. and U.N. have avoided using the term. The Genocide Convention itself does not make ending the genocide compulsory for signatory states, only a legal option. Article eight of the convention allows any signatory state to take appropriate actions "for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide," but so far this has only led to the commitment of a few thousand African Union (A.U.) troops and monitors with narrow engagement rules that have proven ineffective in resolving the conflict. France has sent several hundred troops to protect refugee camps for the Sudanese in Chad, but there is little chance of further military commitments from the Western powers.
The West's main objective in Sudan is to force Khartoum to honor its agreements with the S.P.L.M./A.; leaning too hard on al-Bashir's government might expose it to threats from within its traditional power center -- Islamic political groups have grown in strength as al-Bashir has been forced to deal with the rebels. This is the main reason the E.U. has not pressed the U.N. to label the conflict a genocide. While Washington has pressured the Security Council to impose economic sanctions on Khartoum if it does not rein in the Janjaweed, it is unlikely that any sanctions will be imposed. The growth of China's and India's economies has made Sudan's southern oilfields a valuable asset, and China will likely block any attempt to impose U.N. sanctions in the Security Council. The West's reluctance to disrupt the southern peace process and China's reluctance to write off Sudan's oilfields make any settlement unlikely to emerge from a U.N. resolution.
In order to preserve al-Bashir's government, and save the north/south peace deal, the West will continue to press for a political agreement between the western rebels and Khartoum but the only stick available to force this conclusion will remain the ineffective A.U. monitors. Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general who led the U.N. peacekeeping mission during the 1994 Rwanda massacres, has argued that a force of upwards of 44,000 troops would be needed to secure a region the size and population density of Darfur, but the A.U. mission is limited to 3,000 troops. This is a number determined more by the events in the north/south peace negotiations than by the facts on the ground in Darfur. By trying to save the north/south peace deal, the West is ignoring that Sudan has collapsed into a center/periphery conflict that can only be resolved through a comprehensive agreement with Khartoum, the S.P.L.M./A., the western rebels, and the National Democratic Alliance (N.D.A.) and other northeastern rebels.
Sudan Moves Toward Collapse
The current strategy of the Western powers, and one likely to be pursued by the U.N., relies on using the north/south peace agreements as a template to resolve the conflicts in Darfur and the northeastern Sudanese region. The current strategy of Khartoum is to use the concessions made in the north/south peace agreements to block any calls for compromises in the Darfur and northeastern peace negotiations. The Darfur and northeastern rebels groups will attempt to hold out as long as possible in the negotiating sessions, hoping that Western pressure will deal them a better hand. John Garang, as Sudan's top vice president, is likely to move away from his tacit support of the regional rebel groups in order to preserve the S.P.L.M./A. agreement with Khartoum -- at least as long as it appears al-Bashir's government is able to hold on to power in the capital. It is increasingly likely that these competing interests will lead to the collapse of al-Bashir's government and the geographical integrity of Sudan.
Although Khartoum and the N.D.A. remain engaged in continuing peace negotiations, two N.D.A. members have withdrawn from the process. The Beja Congress and the Free Lions withdrew from the negotiations, and from the cease-fire agreements that form the basis of the negotiations, in October as an apparent attempt to raise the profile of the northeastern rebels' grievances with Khartoum. This means that Kasala and the surrounding regions near the border with Eritrea could soon erupt with violence. If Khartoum responds to the escalation of rebel attacks in the same manner as it did in the south and Darfur, using irregular militias with support from the national military, the violence will only spread, putting more pressure on al-Bashir's government. Al-Bashir's control over Sudan's center remains only as strong as his negotiating position with the regional rebels; any further violence would open his government to challenges from the Popular National Congress party (P.N.C.), an Islamist party even less palatable to the West than al-Bashir's.
Conclusion
While the December 31, 2004 permanent cease-fire agreement between the S.P.L.M./A. and Khartoum will bring stability to southern Sudan, the rest of the country is likely to descend into fractional collapse as Darfur's genocide continues and the northeast violently dislodges from Khartoum's influence. If the Darfur and N.D.A. negotiations are not quickly brought to a resolution, Khartoum will likely lose control of Sudan's geographical peripheries. The Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement (J.E.M.) in Darfur and the Beja Congress and the Free Lions in the northeast are attempting to force this conclusion by stalling the negotiations and escalating the violence in their respective territories (there is some evidence that the J.E.M. is coordinating its actions with the northeastern rebels to this end).
John Garang will be in a unique position as the top vice president in Khartoum to help force the regional peace negotiations to a resolution. While he will pursue a strategy of protecting al-Bashir's government, in order to secure the terms of the north/south peace deal, this will likely take the form of leaning on the regional rebel groups to accept the terms on the table. The West and the U.N. will help give his lobbying weight, but that does not mean the rebels will cave. Sudan's territorial integrity may soon collapse as the regional rebels see their best opportunities in the fractional chaos that will follow.
Report Drafted By:
Adam Wolfe
The Power and Interest News Report (PINR) is an analysis-based publication that seeks to, as objectively as possible, provide insight into various conflicts, regions and points of interest around the globe. PINR approaches a subject based upon the powers and interests involved, leaving the moral judgments to the reader. This report may not be reproduced, reprinted or broadcast without the written permission of inquiries@pinr.com. All comments should be directed to content@pinr.com.
