A Newborn State: The Republic of South Sudan

Stefanie Herr

Juba, January the 9th: In the morning dust, more and more people queue in front of the polling station. It will take hours till they are able to cast their votes, but still, everyone, old and young, is eager to follow their right of self-determination. The ballot papers show both a picture of two clasped hands standing for unity, and one with a single raised hand representing independence – simplified, so the illiterate can vote more easily.

Now, more than one month later, it is official: Africa has a new country, its 54th, and the UN a new member state. The Southern Sudanese have voted overwhelmingly for independence, ending twenty-two years of conflict and bitterness between the Arab and Islamic dominated north and the mostly non-Arab and Christian South. The Sudanese civil war was one of the longest-running armed conflicts of the present times: The first civil war, waged from 1956 to 1972 between southern rebels known as Anyanya I and government troops, came to a provisional end in February 1972 as a result of the Addis Ababa Treaty. However, in the ensuing period there was no success in eliminating the inequalities between the economically and socially better developed north and the civil war-ravaged south. After the influence of radical Islamic circles on the Sudanese government had once again increased at the end of the 1970s, the government ended the self-administration of the south, introduced Islamic law and partitioned the south into several provinces. The failure of the government to keep the promise of autonomy made in 1972 and the renewed government policy of Arabization and Islamization incited civil war once again. The military conflicts, which were reinforced by ethnic and military divisions within the south, spread throughout the country and persisted throughout the following twelve years. They only came to an end with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 that ended one of the cruelest civil wars of our time. At least 2 million people had been killed and 4 million displaced as a result of war.

Hence, expectations are high now: Not only the Sudanese population, but the whole international community, is hoping that independence will finally bring the conflict to an enduring end. However, the newborn state faces many challenges in the post-referendum period. Officials from both sides have been negotiating for months, trying to facilitate a peaceful divorce. Many critical issues remain, however, unresolved, one of the most important being the dispute over the transitional area Abyei, a region that straddles the north-south border and is claimed by both. The issue of Abyei is especially delicate and combustible, not only because two rival ethnic groups claim to belong here – the Misseriya, who are Arab nomads, and the Ngok Dinka, sub-Saharan cattle herders  – but also because it is an oil-rich and fertile swath of land.[i] In addition to this complicated matter, further agreements have to be reached defining the relations between the two states: questions of citizenship, the relationship between the northern and southern population, national debt, the sharing of the oil revenues and currency arrangements have to be negotiated. After clashes in Malaka on March, 12th between southern military forces and militias, however, the South suspended negotiations with the North, accusing Khartoum's ‎government of funding militias to destabilise the South. These heightened tensions cast a cloud over the new state’s future and could jeopardise a peaceful division of Sudan into two independent states. A complete breakdown in negotiations between the two sides, leading to a unilateral declaration of Southern Sudanese independence endangers the whole CPA and seemed quite unlikely only a week ago, as significant progress on steps for separation was reported by the UN.[ii] The international community should now strongly urge the parties to come back to the negotiation table and to recommit themselves to the implementation of the CPA in order to enable a peaceful divorce.

However, the issues with Khartoum are not the only unresolved matter. The Southerners have numerous internal concerns to address. The region is, in itself, a tapestry of different ethnicities and a national identity has yet to be born. Even during the ongoing conflict with Khartoum, fighting between the different groups in the South sometimes claimed more victims than the conflict with the government. Now, after the separation, a common enemy ceases to exist and tribalism threatens the new born state. In particular the domination by the Dinka, an ethnic group to which not only late John Garang belonged, but also the current president, Salva Kiir, has the potential to create further unrest in the South. The pull-out of nine South Sudanese parties from the constitutional review with the SPLM in the Middle of March and recent reports on the growing influence of Southern militias in Jonglei and Upper Nile state seem to confirm worst fears and show the urgent need for democratization within the South.

But not only is the heterogeneous population in the South a huge challenge for the GOSS. Six years after the CPA, more and more people express their growing dissatisfaction with the lack of progress in implementing key provisions of the CPA in the South. Although a comprehensive assessment of the six-year interim period still stands out, yet, many claim that the government achievements within the South are limited. Dealing with crucial economic problems for example, such as land and water rights and oil sharing, was long delayed and caused a deceleration of revenue flows in the South.[iii] As a consequence, post-conflict reconstruction, that the people of southern Sudan so desperately need, is prolongated by the government. Most of the public services are still delivered by foreign aid. Confronted with the accumulation of personal wealth of government officials not only in Juba, dissatisfaction is growing within the Southern Sudanese population.

All these problems have to be addressed quickly in order to prevent another outbreak of violence within the South. Fighting the prospering corruption within the government of Southern Sudan is certainly part of it. Another big challenge for the ruling party is to transform itself in a democratic civilian authority that is accountable to its people and accepts democratic opposition. The SPLM has to show that it is still the legitimate representative of the people of whole Southern Sudan. A scholar once highlighted: “The war could be fought with Kalashnikovs, but a future peace has to be won in a different manner.”[iv]

Separation as a panacea to end civil war?

Considering the challenges the new born state faces, many may wonder if it is all worth it: Is it wise for Southern Sudan to become a country at all, if so many issues are still outstanding and peace in this war-torn country is fragile? The debate over separation as a solution to civil war is highly political relevant, not only in Africa. Many policy makers all over the world assume that separation would promise a clean and easy solution to civil war if it is impossible for different communities to live together in an ethnically heterogeneous state.[v] Physically separating ethnic groups in conflict would reduce the rise of a new outbreak of violence, they assume. But as we have seen, separation comes with costs: It changes political boundaries, forcibly relocates populations and puts an additional burden on the newborn’s economy. Thus, while it may resolve some existing problems, it also creates new ones. Different scholars have, therefore, emphasized that separation does not work as a panacea to end civil war. Some even point out, that partition is the most problematic form of conflict-regulation, both in acceptance and in feasibility.[vi] It only works under specific conditions, as the agreement of both sides or the complete partition of the warring parties. Furthermore, if managing diversity nowadays means separation, it is not a good sign for policy makers worldwide. There are other ways to deal with deeply divided societies that come with less costs. Thus, many scholars argue that the creation of a new state should be limited to countries with a history of intense conflict and incompatible nationalism, where no other way out seems possible.[vii]

Southern Sudan is certainly such a case where staying united appears to be the least desirable. Since independence, the Sudanese tried to deal with their deeply divided society with different modes of conflict regulation, ranging from domination over accommodation to autonomy. The vision of John Garang of a united, democratic New Sudan, a socio-political entity that respects the diversity of race, tribe, religion, or gender, which was also proclaimed in the SPLA manifesto of 1983 as its ultimate goal, died, when Garang perished in a helicopter crash in 2005. The SPLA, thus historically an advocate of unity, came to be in demand for self-determination, thereby following the will of the Southern Sudanese people. At the same time, the SPLA was paradoxically still bound by the CPA, in which it publicly committed itself “to make the unity of the Sudan an attractive option especially to the people of South Sudan.”[viii] But in the end, there seemed to be no other way out: Even after six years of a Government of National Unity, tensions between the North and the South were not relieved. For making unity work, both sides would have had to show flexibility and generosity in the last years, but neither the government in Khartoum nor the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM) seemed to be able to make further compromise. Instead, the SPLM run the South de facto as an independent state. With the stunning outcome of the referendum, Southern Sudan is not breaking away so much as it is making its separation formal.  

Will the entire African jigsaw now break up?

Aside from the price the country at stake has to pay, such a divorce can also have regional consequences. Certainly, many African countries feared that Southern Sudan would open a Pandora’s Box of increased tensions amongst different groups in other countries, boosting their claim for independence. The African Union has therefore long tried to oppress secessionist tendencies on the continent, out of the fear that, the whole entity of African states - state borders that were drawn haphazardly on colonial maps in the 19th century - could break apart. Voicing this line of fear, one African leader even described the likely break up of Southern Sudan as a disease that would spread throughout the region.[ix]

These anxieties are similar to those following the events in Eritrea in the early 1990s. After a civil war with the government in Addis Ababa, that lasted for decades and ended in 1991, the Eritrean people voted overwhelmingly for independence and gained international recognition as a new state in 1993. The State of Eritrea was the first country in Africa born through secession since decolonization. Back then, many feared that Eritrea’s split off would fractionize the whole continent. At that time, The Economist wrote: “Africa should relax. Eritrea’s claim to independence is unusually strong. And even where others have a good case that need not spell disaster for the continent.”[x] And it turned out to be right: eighteen years went by without another newborn state. Certainly, Eritrea was a special case and so is Southern Sudan.

In the last decade, the international community slowly realized that the creation of a new state in Southern Sudan is irresistible – at the latest after John Garang’s death. Even Arab governments, who have long been querulous about the prospect of South Sudan’s secession, have now come to accept the inevitability of its separation.[xi] It is indeed possible that in other parts of Africa secessionists will press their claims for independence now more forcefully. But while the right of self-determination should not be disregarded, every case has to be considered individually. Only a few will have as strong claims as the people in Sudan’s south had. Africa should therefore not be threatened by the Sudanese divorce, but welcome the newborn state warmly.

But, as it seems, time to establish sustainable peace has only come now. The international community should, therefore, not turn their heads away, but strongly urges both sides to ensure the implementation of the CPA. It will take more than cookies and gold stars[xii] to get the Sudan’s peace process back on track.

Stefanie Herr is a research associate at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, Germany where she conducts research on non-state armed groups and their responsibility under International Humanitarian Law. One of her case studies is the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement/Army and the civil war in Southern Sudan. At the moment she is a research affiliate at the Heinrich Böll Foundation's Regional Office for East Africa and the Horn of Africa. The author can be reached at herr@hsfk.de.

[i] Johnson, Douglas J. 2007: Why Abyei Matters. The Breaking Point of Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement, in: African Affairs 107: 426, 1-19.