It has been clear for well over a year that the southern Sudan referenda (including Abyei) were deeply endangered by bad faith on the part of the Khartoum regime. The urgency of the situation was evident to all who would simply look at the evidence conspicuously at hand (http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article246.html ). But instead of full-scale engagement to forestall the looming crisis, the US and other international actors of consequence were content with muddling prevarication and a thoroughly confused sense of the ambitions of the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime. Belatedly, diplomatic attention has finally begun to focus on the immense challenges to the referenda, the foundation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) (http://www.tnr.com/blog/foreign-policy/77594/hillary-clinton-says-sudan-ticking-time-bomb-will-she-be-able-defuse-it ). Having waited so long, however, the US, the UN, the EU, the AU, and others have allowed Khartoum to “run out the clock” in complying with key terms of the CPA—and in the process allowed the electoral calendar to be compressed in ways that threaten both the integrity and timeliness of the referenda (http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/showRecord.php?RecordId=34120 ).
For a host of reasons, Khartoum will be able—if it wishes—to point to still unresolved north/south issues as well as problems in the conduct of the referenda (e.g., the Abyei Referendum Commission has yet to be established). On this basis, the regime may well refuse to accept the results, which will certainly be overwhelmingly for secession. Such refusal may immediately precipitate renewed war. At the very least, Abyei’s future will remain unsettled and continue to serve as a point of leverage for the NIF/NCP as it seeks to extract as much as possible from the Southern leadership under the exigent circumstances that now prevail because of international belatedness (http://www.enoughproject.org/blogs/abyei–sudan’s-other-referendum-part-iv ).
War may also be triggered if Khartoum calculates that it has the military strength to seize Abyei and other southern oil regions by force (approximately 80 percent of the known reserves lie in the South). Here again the problem is US belatedness, along with that of other militarily capable nations, particularly Great Britain. Although recently these two key guarantors of the CPA have begun to take seriously their responsibilities in helping South Sudan develop an adequate security sector, there simply is not enough time in which to make the progress necessary—either for internal security (a fully functional police force) or defense against northern aggression. Here the Bush administration bears heavy responsibility for not accepting the implications of the most basic military fact on the ground: no country was ever going to provide substantial strategic assistance to South Sudan in the event of renewed civil war; any deterrence would have to be provided by the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).
This was always well understood by the SPLM/A, which consequently pleaded for more training, more equipment, and more guidance in developing its military and security capacities. The US, as a guarantor of the CPA, should have shouldered the responsibility for providing such help; it did not. But if the Bush administration inaugurated this short-sighted and stinting policy, things have not changed nearly enough in the past two years.
Indeed, it is the Obama administration, and in particular special envoy Scott Gration, that bears greatest responsibility for inexcusable diplomatic lethargy, confusion, and misprision—failings that have allowed the CPA to reach the point of collapse. I presume to re-post this op/ed from the Christian Science Monitor (November 2009, http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1124/p09s01-coop.html ) on the occasion of its first anniversary, hoping that it might contribute something to an understanding of how consequential the failures of special envoy Gration have been ( http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article248.html ), and how comprehensively the Obama administration has misread and underestimated the threats to peace in Sudan. As great as the achievement of the CPA was, its collapse in the coming months would constitute an even greater diplomatic failure.
[Yet earlier warnings can be found at:
http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article246.html (June 28, 2009)
http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article248.html (August 26, 2009)]
“Africa’s New Threat: Sudan at the Flash Point,”
Only quick, concerted international action can avert a nationwide war
The Christian Science Monitor, November 24, 2009
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1124/p09s01-coop.html
By Eric Reeves
Northampton, Mass. — Sudan, the largest country in Africa, is on the verge of plunging into yet another north/south civil war. International failure to guarantee the key provisions of a linchpin peace agreement means that a renewed war could be the most widespread and destructive in the country’s half century of independence.
The 2005 “Comprehensive Peace Agreement” (CPA) between the present National Islamic Front/National Congress Party (NIF/NCP) regime in Khartoum and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) ended one of Africa’s longest civil wars, with nominal agreement on security, wealth sharing, and governance issues.
However, the international community including the African Union, the US, the European Union, and China has not taken implementation of the peace agreement seriously enough for oil-rich Sudan. This has enabled Khartoum to renege on key elements of the agreement with little consequence and to manipulate ethnic, political, and military tensions throughout the region.
Without meaningful pressure, the NIF/NCP regime has also delayed the legislation that will guide a referendum in which South Sudan votes on whether to secede or remain part of a unified Sudanese state. The vote is scheduled for January 2011, but referendum legislation is already two years behind schedule. The self-determination vote is critical for all of Sudan, and if compromised, southern Sudanese are likely to consider this the final straw and resort to renewed war to gain the independence the majority seeks. In anticipation, Khartoum may launch a preemptive military campaign.
This is particularly bad news.
Potential war could quickly escalate to include other marginalized regions within Sudan, including the Darfur region of western Sudan. Conflict there over the past seven years has already led to the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians and displaced some 3 million people.
Increased tensions throughout Sudan make it probable that if the 2005 north/south peace agreement collapses, Darfur’s massive conflict will be but one component of the first nationwide war in Sudan, The potential of such conflict to destabilize the country and the region can hardly be overstated.
Who else would participate in a war in Sudan?
Tensions are high in the Nuba Mountains and southern Blue Nile regions, as well as in eastern Sudan. Although lying geographically in northern Sudan, all were allied with the SPLM during the civil war that raged from 1983 through the peace agreement of 2005. More than 2 million people died, and as many as 5 million were displaced and much of the worst fighting occurred in these areas.
That’s why Khartoum’s refusal to demarcate the north/south border, one of its most fundamental obligations under the terms of the 2005 agreement, is of urgent concern. This refusal has led to dangerous military escalation on both sides of a region lying in the midst of Sudan’s very large oil reserves. The regime’s military strategy in the event of war would probably be to control as much of the southern reserves as possible and create a vast defensive perimeter. Southern resistance would almost certainly be fierce and civilian casualties heavy.
Complicating the political situation, national elections for all government offices are also fast approaching. Though scheduled for April 2010, deliberate delays by Khartoum have made them logistically impossible. Signs already indicate that these elections will not be free and fair but rather an occasion for the regime to use its control of the electoral machinery and its vast patronage system in an effort to retain power and to regain international legitimacy.
Indeed, electoral interference has already begun in earnest. The Carter Center, for example, reports that its election monitors have not been accredited to observe the huge voter registration drive now under way.
Although the leadership in South Sudan has made its share of mistakes, it is not guilty of the massive bad faith that we see from Khartoum. Still, the reason Sudan is poised to explode lies in international failure to hold the regime to benchmarks and commitments that are clearly spelled out in the 2005 agreement, and others.
What should the international community do?
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a Sudan policy last month [October 2009] that aims for “a definitive end to conflict, gross human rights abuses, and genocide in Darfur” and “implementation of the CPA that results in a peaceful post-2011 Sudan or an orderly transition to two separate and viable states.” Confidential punitive and encouraging measures targeting Khartoum supposedly provide the leverage for these goals. But while this policy might be fine in the abstract, the notion that the US can fine-tune selective unilateral pressures and incentives in a way that will change the regime’s behavior in time to create a conducive electoral environment and avert war seems dangerously naive.
US pressures and incentives must be accompanied by corresponding diplomatic investment in moving key international actors to demand that Khartoum fulfill its obligations under the peace agreement. An arms embargo on all of Sudan is a key first source of leverage, especially since China is the primary supplier of weapons that clearly violate the current UN arms embargo on Darfur.
The European Union should do more to squeeze commercial and capital investments benefiting only the northern economy, and to end violations of its own arms embargo on Sudan. Britain and Norway were both instrumental in negotiating the 2005 peace agreement, and should be pushed to serve as guarantors for its implementation. Kenya was also a key CPA negotiating partner and has a clear interest in preventing resumption of war to its north. Unfortunately, the African Union Peace and Security Commission has been ineffective in confronting Khartoum over its failures to honor the CPA; it must be made to see how disastrous resumed conflict in Sudan would be for the credibility of the organization.
Only concerted, energetic international action in the near term ideally coordinated through the United Nations Security Council can improve the likelihood that the peace agreement will survive and avert a further slide toward war.
[Eric Reeves is author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide]