Sudan Divided: Continuing Conflict in a Contested State ed. by Gunnar M. Sørbø, Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed (review)

Since July 2011, when Sudan split into two states, most diplomatic efforts, international aid, and media coverage has focused on the newborn state of South Sudan. The northern regions of the once-largest African country, however, have been passing through an equally traumatic palingenesis. This collective volume edited by Gunnar M. Sørbø and Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed tries to keep the South—as far as possible—outside the main framework of analysis, keeping it centered instead on macro- and micro-political developments in the “rump state” of Sudan. The book confirms that the center-periphery paradigm is still the key to understanding political dynamics in Sudan and reveals the illusionary nature of state partition as a solution to the long-standing problems of marginalization affecting the country.

If, as M. A. Mohamed Salih contends in chapter ten, war has proven to be counterproductive as a tool of state-building, post-2011 events in Sudan and South Sudan show that neither partition is a more constructive path to viable statehood. One could say that dividing a state is like dividing a magnet: you will always end up having a plus and a minus in each smaller unit you obtain. In political terms, this means a majority and one—or more—minorities. One of the threads that runs through the twelve chapters of the book considers the secession of South Sudan as a failed attempt at coercive state-building carried out by successive governments in Khartoum. The same combination of brutal force and cooptation is being applied now to the new peripheries of Sudan—in reality, old peripheries whose marginalization was overshadowed by the southern issue—raising the specter of further state fragmentation. From Darfur to the Red Sea, Sudan’s borderlands are the theater of insurgencies calling for administrative autonomy, a fairer sharing of resources and a more balanced political representation in the center. It is one of the first times that a comprehensive case-by-case analysis of the North’s marginalized regions—Darfur, the Nuba mountains, Blue Nile, and Eastern Sudan—has been presented in an organic way. The only regret in this regard is the lack of a chapter examining the situation in the Nubian region, where popular protests coalesced against the construction of the Merowe Dam. Since the completion of the hydropower facility in 2009, little has been written about the political situation in an area where more than 50,000 people have been displaced.

The authors agree that none of these regions, considered singularly, can count on a critical mass—in demographic, military, and economic terms—comparable to that of southern Sudan. They argue that the lack of leadership and cohesion within rebel movements has further impaired their bargaining power vis-à-vis Khartoum. For the same reason, the efforts to forge a coalition of marginalized peoples against the center—sealed in principle by the birth of the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) in November 2011—has given few concrete results. This represents a success for the Khartoum regime that has actively sought to prevent the rise of a “front of the marginalized” through the manipulation of local disputes and an unscrupulous exploitation of the ethnic card. The analysis of the interplay between local conflicts and high politics is one of the most interesting aspects of the volume, highlighting how “Sudan and South Sudan suffer from the combined effects of a governance crisis and a livelihood crisis that are closely interlinked and will not be resolved unless they are addressed together” (p. 134). In particular, most authors underline the salience of land issues to Sudan’s conflicts, often overlooked by outside observers and deliberately sidelined by the government in the implementation of peace agreements.

Moreover, the emergence of a “third Sudan” capable of challenging the regime after the secession...