by Jeremy Eckstein*
Introduction
In
December 2013, only two years after gaining independence, civil war broke out
in South Sudan. The war, caused by power struggles within the country’s ruling
party, caused tens of thousands of deaths and has displaced approximately one
and a half million civilians. After months and months of indecisive peace
negotiations, it took the threat of United Nations Security Council sanctions
for the two sides to finally sign a tenuous peace deal in August 2015.
These development stand in startling contrast to the
celebrations and euphoria that had surrounded the declaration of South Sudan as
an independent state only four years earlier. At that time it had seemed
unlikely that the country’s ruling SPLM party would splinter, that civil war
would break out within two years, and that one of South Sudan’s biggest
supporters would initiate a Security Council resolution against it. Yet the
roots of the conflict are much deeper than the post-independence period and the
six-year peace-plan that put an end to one of Africa’s most destructive
conflicts, resulting in the new state.
The establishment of South Sudan came at the end of a complex
and fraught six-year peace plan that had put an end to one of the most
destructive civil wars in African history. The implementation of the peace plan
also largely avoided renewed conflict between the Sudanese People’s Liberation
Movement (SPLM) in the South, and the National Congress Party (NCP) in the
North, a possibility that had loomed ominously throughout the entire “interim
period” of the peace agreement.
The outbreak of civil war within the South only two years after
its independence resulted from deep cleavages within the southern ruling class
that have existed for decades. Indeed elements of the Comprehensive Peace Plan,
strongly supported by the international community, set the stage for the
disaster that was to befall the country following its independence in 2011. Benefitting
from the luxury of hindsight this cases study seeks to clarify some of the key political
elements of the trajectory that led to the current war in South Sudan and makes
an attempt to identify some of the lessons that the international community
learned from this process.
The Comprehensive Peace Agreement
The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) brought an over 20 years
long North-South civil war in Sudan to an end in 2005. While characterizing
this war as purely a North-South conflict is an extreme over-simplification, it
is often defined as such. However, in reality it was multi-dimensional and
included an especially destructive South-South element in the 1990s. One of the
critical shortcomings of the CPA process was that there was no consensus within
the southern leadership on its eventual objectives. Some SPLM leaders viewed
the CPA as an opportunity to reform the way the entire Sudan was governed, ending
the marginalization of Sudan’s southern, eastern, and western communities
following a “democratic transformation” to a “New Sudan”, while other leaders
in the South insisted that the ultimate objective of the plan was always to
form an independent country in the South.
The CPA was ultimately structured to make “democratic
transformation” possible, in both North and South, while leaving the option for
an independent state in the South on the table, should Southerners decide that
a “New Sudan” had not been achieved in the interim period. The CPA thus
established the semi-autonomous region of Southern Sudan, and populated
Southern Sudanese, national, and state-level institutions with representatives
of different political movements from a negotiated quota until elections could
be held. The overall framework of the six-year peace plan was to hold a national
census within the first few years, hold elections shortly afterwards, allow the
elected officials to govern for the remainder of the CPA “interim period” in
order to allow them to make “unity attractive”, and to finally give Southerners
the option to form their own country or stay with Sudan.
This framework was challenged from the outset. Firstly, the
primary proponent of the “New Sudan” concept and leader of the SPLM, John
Garang, died in a helicopter crash shortly after signing the CPA. He was
replaced with a pro-independence SPLM leader, Salva Kiir, who remains the
leader of the SPLM and is the president of South Sudan. In addition many delays
in the implementation of the CPA milestones, political fighting among the CPA parties,
armed conflicts, and foot-dragging undermined the peace plan’s conceptual process.
Major delays included the implementation and finalization of the census, the
passage of the National Elections Act, and the holding of elections. In fact,
the only CPA milestone to happen on time was the Southern Sudan referendum on
independence in January 2011.
The 2010 Elections
The 2010 elections were flawed for many reasons. Firstly, being
held less than one year before the deadline for the independence referendum
there was no conceivable way that the elected government could deliver in a way
that would convince Southerners that the interim government structures could be
a viable permanent alternative to succession. Secondly, the electoral victories
were so overwhelming for the NCP in the North and the SPLM in the South that
the 2010 elections entrenched one-party rule for the post-referendum period in
the North and South respectively. Thirdly, the elections were rife with
manipulation and intimidation. The international community largely turned a
blind eye to the many documented electoral and human rights violations so as to
not upset the status quo, hardly setting a high expectation for best practices
of democracy in the post-referendum period.
In the Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly, the body that would
become the legislature of the new state of South Sudan, the plurality of
political representation dropped dramatically following the 2010 elections from
the allocations negotiated in the CPA. Before the elections the SPLM held 70
percent of the seats in the assembly, and the NCP and other southern parties
held the remainder. After the elections the SPLM held 94 percent of the seats.
A similar pattern occurred in the North, where the NCP was similarly, although
less, entrenched.
The overwhelming victory of the SPLM would have been less
concerning if the party had institutionalized systems for candidate nomination,
collective decision-making, and leadership selection and rotation. While these
processes are somewhat present in theory, they are absent in practice. The
SPLM’s control of the security services, its dominance in the political
process, and strong name recognition almost guaranteed that its candidates
would win any seats that they contested. As candidates were in practice
selected at the SPLM leadership level without input at the grass-roots level,
some locally popular candidates were passed over. Several violent anti-SPLM
insurgencies occurred when these candidates lost the elections after contesting
them as independents. It took several years for the SPLM to bring some of these
insurgents back into the fold. This
lack of trust in the SPLM’s own decision-making and political accommodation processes
led in part to the outbreak of conflict in 2013.
The elections themselves were severely flawed and were described
as such by international and domestic election observer organizations alike. Despite
the monitors’ observations that the elections were subject to administrative
problems, voter registration issues, outright rigging, and state-organized
intimidation, the conclusion was largely that the implementation of the
elections CPA milestone, regardless how flawed, was an important step in
completing the peace process, and maintaining the relative North-South peace.
In regards to the elections, Human Rights Watch noted:
Political intolerance,
repression, and violence have eroded the legitimacy of the elections across
Sudan, and violated the right of the Sudanese people to elect their government
in genuinely free and fair elections. They have contributed to a worsening
human rights situation throughout the country by emboldening the NCP and
SPLM—neither of which have been forced to account for their actions—in their
clampdown against opponents. […] International observers and diplomatic
missions have failed to explicitly and resolutely criticize these documented
human rights and electoral abuses, or to call for accountability and reform.[1]
The implementation of the CPA was never a given and the specter
of a return to North-South violence loomed large should the 2011 referendum not
be held on time. It seemed that any action that would derail the CPA, including
pressuring either the SPLM or NCP leadership about the elections, could result
in the resurgence of hostilities between the two. Most actors saw the elections
as simply a box to check on the road to the much more important referendum.
The 2011 Referendum for Independence
In January 2011 Southern Sudanese voted by an overwhelming
margin of almost 99 percent to form their own state. Turnout was an impressive 98
percent. While observers commented on some issues around the conduct of the
referendum, the referendum was conducted peacefully and its outcome was seen to
accurately reflect the will of Southern Sudanese voters. It was judged a
legitimate process that would allow the international community to welcome a
new state into global affairs. Though there were border skirmishes between the
two peace partners, many saw the fact that the SPLM and NCP had navigated the
minefield of the six-year “interim period” without returning to total war as
the biggest success.
International Electoral Support
Neither the 2010 elections nor the 2011 referendum could have
been implemented without international assistance. Sudan is, in particular in
the South, one of the least developed countries on Earth. It lacks roads,
communications, and administrative infrastructure. In the South most of the
country is impassable during the rainy season, for approximately seven months.
In addition, literacy and other development indicators rank amongst the lowest
in the world. In response to these challenges the international community
assembled a robust set of resources to procure electoral materials, train
election workers and domestic observers, provide technical assistance to the
electoral institutions in the North and South, provide logistical and
transportation support, and provide additional ancillary support. Some
estimates suggest that the overall cost for only the referendum was over 112
million US dollars (not counting the cost of the United Nations Mission’s
operations).
The United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), the United Nations
Development Program (UNDP), and the International Foundation for Electoral
Systems (IFES) were the primary assistance providers that overcame severe
logistical obstacles, uncertainty, and time-constraints to help to deliver the
electoral two events. The agencies worked relatively well together. UNDP and
UNMIS were even operationally integrated for the referendum. Each agency had
relative advantages that were leveraged successfully. UNMIS took advantage of
its reach deep into the country to provide localized technical assistance. It
also utilized its fleet helicopters and airplanes to deliver critical electoral
materials. UNDP leveraged its capacity to manage collective donor “basket funds”
to distribute money for training and to print materials. IFES, financially
supported by the United States government, leveraged its operational
flexibility and was able to respond quickly to emerging needs. Other international NGOs provided considerable
assistance for civil society, political party, and media involvement in
preparing for and observing the elections.
The agencies worked together across Sudan for the elections, and
shifted their center of gravity to the South for the referendum. While the important
work remained in the North, the heart of the operation was in the South.
Whether or not the results of the referendum were a foregone conclusion, the
international community was able to support Southern and Northern authorities
to deliver a referendum that was credible and legitimate, and did so against
significant operational and time constraints.
Developments Since the Referendum
The international community provided critical support that led
South Sudan’s establishment as the world’s youngest country. However the
jubilance of the July 2011 independence celebrations was quickly overshadowed
by political conflicts within the SPLM’s leadership, resulting in the outbreak
of civil war in December 2013. Ominous signs of the undemocratic nature of the
country’s leadership even became apparent shortly after the referendum. It is
widely perceived that the SPLM took advantage of the constitutional review and
development process after independence to extend the terms of elected positions
and to expand the powers of the Presidency. If the 2010 elections were not a
sufficient sign of the undemocratic nature of the SPLM, then developments
shortly post-referendum were clearly signs that power-sharing and
accountability were not concepts that the SPLM leadership was eager to pursue.
Clearly a “New Sudan” vision for South Sudan was not part of the program.
The outbreak of conflict in 2013, largely along the same lines
as earlier divisions in the 1990s, revealed the overall weakness of SPLM
systems to manage leadership challenges and power-sharing within its ranks, in
addition to the deeply fractured nature of South Sudanese society.
Additionally, the party’s fusion to the military (the Sudan People’s Liberation
Army), the power-structure and mobilization mechanisms within both the party
and the army, and a culture of defection and bargaining contributed to the
onset of conflict that has now displaced millions of South Sudanese, seen
egregious human rights violations being committed (including mass rapes and the
use of child soldiers), and has cost the lives of thousands of civilians.
Conclusions
The complex conflict in South Sudan has roots in poorly
institutionalized government and political party systems, lack of
accountability in any governing institutions, lack of a professional military
with a unified chain of command, and a culture and history of corruption and impunity
amongst the country’s elite. Given these circumstances it is somewhat
surprising that the current civil war came as a surprise, and that the international
community did not do more to address these issues between independence and the
start of the conflict.
With the international community having supported both the
elections and the referendum, we bear some responsibility for what has
eventually transpired. Two particular lessons stand out from this experience.
The first is that attention was so tightly focused on holding the referendum
that no signal was sent to the SPLM (or NCP, for that matter) that the well
documented electoral and human rights violations would not be tolerated.
Setting a higher political expectation for the significant amount of international
support that was extended to the peace effort may have set a higher bar for
future expectations, or given the international community more leverage to push
for reforms later on.
The second omission was clear planning for the post-referendum
reality, and in particular an understanding of how internal South Sudanese
political tensions might play out after independence. While some entities have
played lip service to the notion that the outcome of the referendum was not
known, the reality is that Southern independence was a foregone conclusion. Political
discussions with the ruling SPLM undertaken by the international community could
have been much more focused on cultivating a stable post-referendum transition
period. Any illusion that the Southern leadership was a genuine partner in
building a democratic and peaceful South Sudan should have at least been
shattered during the constitutional review and drafting processes.
Throughout and after the CPA the international community largely
reacted to the shifting timelines and political developments that characterized
this period. However, having had some foresight and planning into how to build
the state of South Sudan and encourage its leadership to do so would have been
practical.
Now that a peace deal has been signed an opportunity may exist
to build a stable state. In supporting these efforts the international donors
should remain cognizant of some of the lessons learned from supporting the CPA.
Holding elections, for example, in the absence of meaningful reforms of SPLM
processes are likely to again trigger conflicts around the country. There would
also need an opportunity for non-SPLM opportunities to offer alternative
options. While such options seem at present a distant reality, they would
require at a minimum the separation of the security forces from the SPLM, the
establishment of a truly independent election commission, the standing-up of
the political parties affairs council, and the guarantee of freedom of
expression, which has been greatly undone and compromised in recent years. The
international community might consider tying its development support to the
implementation genuine and credible reforms in this arena.
* Jeremy Eckstein first began working on CPA issues in 2005 in
central Sudan, shortly after the CPA was signed. Later he worked with political
parties in Southern Sudan, living in Juba in 2008 to 2009. He again returned to
work with a Untied Nations agency in Khartoum from 2010 to 2011. Since he has
drafted and co-drafted two major evaluations of electoral support in the CPA
for the United States government.
[1] “Democracy on Hold –
Rights Violations in the April 2010 Sudan Elections”, June 2010, Human Rights
Watch. Retrieved at:
https://www.hrw.org/report/2010/06/30/democracy-hold/rights-violations-april-2010-sudan-elections
