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.