Sudan at the Brink: Self-Determination and National Unity

Introduction

INTRODUCTION After years of protracted negotiations, with regional and international mediation, the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Army (SPLM/A) concluded the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The settlement met with varying responses at home and abroad. Southerners responded with jubilation primarily because the agreement granted them the right of self-determination to be exercised after a six-year interim period through a referendum that would offer a choice between unity and secession. Northerners generally felt that the CPA had given the South too much by granting them full autonomy and significant participation in the Government of National Unity as well as an independence option after six years. The international community was relieved that the war that had raged intermittently for half a century had, at long last, come to an end. While the potential partition of the country remained a matter of concern , the stipulation that efforts would be exerted to make unity an attractive option for the South provided ground for optimism that Sudan would survive as a united nation. Perhaps because of the ambivalences over the agreement, viewed by both sides as more the result of external pressures than a free expression of the national will, the implementation of the CPA has been fraught with difficulties and controversies. The opposition parties in the North that had been excluded in the negotiations have been antagonistic to the agreement. Even members of the ruling National 兩 1 兩 2 兩 Introduction Congress Party (NCP) that had negotiated the agreement have not been unified in their acceptance of the CPA. The three border areas of Abyei, Blue Nile, and Southern Kordofan, which had been the subjects of special protocols, pose their own challenges, poised as they are between the North and the South. The protocol on Abyei gave the people the right to decide in a referendum, to be exercised simultaneously with the Southern referendum , whether to remain part of the North or join the South. But differences persisted over the borders of the area, initially determined by the Abyei Border Commission (ABC) whose findings the NCP-dominated government rejected on the grounds that the ABC had exceeded its mandate. The dispute was later adjudicated by a special arbitration tribunal at The Hague, whose decision has not been implemented. Often referred to ironically as the oil-rich area of Abyei, the area shows no evidence of oil wealth and the 2 percent of the revenue from the oil produced in the area, which the Abyei Protocol allocates to the area, has not been made available to the people of Abyei, and the amount required to be transferred to the Abyei Administration under the regular national budget remains in question. The protocol on the other two areas calls for popular consultation to decide whether the special arrangements under the CPA are acceptable to the people. Vague as it is, this provision raised its own controversies and conflicting interpretations, ranging from degrees of self-administration within the North to a choice between remaining part of the North and joining the South. An aspect of the problems of the CPA implementation was the complicating Darfur crisis. While the negotiations of the CPA were underway and had reached critical points, the international community feared that Darfur might be a distraction and therefore tended to give it a lower priority. With the CPA concluded and the crisis in Darfur escalating into a tragedy of grave magnitude, attention shifted to Darfur and the CPA became relegated to a lower priority. Even the Oslo pledges of support that would take peace dividends to the South were never honored. Introduction 兩 3 All in all, while peace was precariously maintained under the CPA, the implementation of its various provisions relating to power sharing , wealth sharing, security arrangements, census, border demarcation , and the conduct of mid-term elections proved to be very contentious, reflecting deep mistrust between the parties in the agreement . For the South, the challenge became how to protect the CPA from collapsing and depriving the people of the South of their most precious achievement under the agreement—the exercise of the right of self-determination. The North appeared ambivalently poised between resisting and eroding those elements of the agreement that favored the South and avoiding a return to war. Most observers seemed convinced that the NCP would not honor the right of self-determination for the South, despite...