Sudan

Blog Peace and Security Sudan Uncategorized 

Peace and the Security Sector in Sudan 2002 – 2011

Alex DeWaal 755 Views 0 Comment , ,

The most succinct document of Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) is Chapter VI,11. This paper is based on existing literature and the personal experience of the author, who was involved in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) negotiations as an informal advisor and an external advocate (through the organisation Justice Africa), and in the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) talks and the post-referendum talks as a member of the African Union (AU) mediation teams. For a compendium of the relevant documents, see World Peace Foundation, ‘Sudan Peace Archive’.‘Security Arrangements’. Republic of Sudan and SPLM/A, ‘Comprehensive Peace Agreement’. Signed in Naivasha, Kenya, on 25 September 2003, it runs to a little more than three pages – by far the shortest of the protocols and annexures that comprise the CPA. Nowhere is security sector reform (SSR) mentioned by name. For the Government of Sudan (GoS), the central issue is resolved in Paragraph 7(a), which states: ‘No armed group allied to either party shall be allowed to operate outside the two forces’. Ibid., Paragraph 7(a).

Read more
Blog South Sudan Sudan Uncategorized 

Peace and the security sector in Sudan, 2002–11

Alex DeWaal 696 Views 0 Comment ,

This paper examines how contests over military control were played out during peace negotiations and in the implementation of agreements (including the manipulation or violation of the terms of agreements) in Sudan between 2002 and 2011. The cases examined are the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005, the Darfur peace talks which took place from 2003 to 2011, and the post-referendum arrangements talks of 2011. The central arguments presented are as follows: the principal political players consistently sought control over the military as a main component of their political strategies; senior military officers posed a threat to the power of nominally civilian leaders; security arrangements were determined by a combination of the leaders’ calculations over their internal power base along with their expectations of ongoing or anticipated armed conflicts; and external programmes and policies for security sector reform were manipulated and instrumentalised in pursuit of these power goals

Read more
Peace and Security South Sudan Sudan Uncategorized 

Review of The Anyanya Movement in South Sudan

World Peace Foundation 569 Views 0 Comment , ,

The first theme is one that any scholar of the Anyanya Movement is aware of: that the Anyanya were a disparate group of peasant soldiers lacking a central command and a cohesive political ideology. In Western Equatoria, the picture that emerges from Magaya’s book is one of organised and dedicated guerillas, almost akin to the partisans in Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Read more
Peace and Security Sudan Uncategorized 

Sudan’s Hydrocrats – Book Review

Alex DeWaal 544 Views 1 Comment

But it’s no surprise that the massive spending on infrastructure began after 1999, simply because for the first time the government had the financial means. It should also come as no surprise that Bashir and others have continued to trumpet the same Islamist slogans, proudly showing off the dams as evidence for the regime’s triumphs. There is still an Islamist constituency to keep onside. But to conclude that ‘Mashru Al-Hadhari [the civilization project] is very much alive’ (p. 149) is to mistake rhetoric and manoevre for a genuine state project.

The view on the street, endorsed by the members of the political elite whom Verhoeven cites, is that the central purpose of the DIU was larceny and political finance, and that building an Islamic state was just hot air. Indeed, Verhoeven’s own verdict is that the hydro-transformational project has ended in a ‘mixture of incompetence, myopia and extraversion’ (p. 248).

Read more
Human Rights and Justice Sudan Uncategorized 

Moreno Ocampo: Ma’aliya are Janjaweed

Alex DeWaal 549 Views 1 Comment ,

I asked Moreno Ocampo for clarification as to whether the Ma’aliya were indeed Janjaweed. He didn’t duck the question or say that his memory on this detail might have failed him. Rather, he insisted that yes they were Janjawiid and he had the evidence. When I pointed out that no literature on Darfur had ever, anywhere, made this claim, he dug his heels in and insisted that the details were confidential.

Read more