Global Policy Forum

By Robert O. Collins *

On January 9, the government of Sudan and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) signed a peace agreement in Naivasha, Kenya, after 22 years of violent conflict that killed over two million southern Sudanese and displaced another six million. Make no mistake, this was a historic achievement concerning the inscrutable and imponderable differences between the sides, the result of long and tortuous negotiations that could have failed at any moment without intense international pressure from the troika of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the stalwart Norwegians.

It was the vindication of John Garang, leader of the SPLM, who envisaged a new Sudan of unity in diversity in 1983, a conviction from which he has never deviated during two decades of military victories and defeats, revolts against his authority, and interminable negotiations with disingenuous Islamist members of Sudan's powerful National Islamic Front (NIF). His consistency, determination, and patience have been rewarded. He is now, on paper, the most powerful man in Sudan as first vice-president, president of the Southern Autonomous Government, and commander in chief of his own army.

The new Sudan will no longer be an Islamist state but a democratic "one Sudan regardless of race, religion, or tribe" in which the new south will have autonomy, retain its own army, receive 50 percent of Sudan's oil revenues, and have the right to vote for secession after six years. Those who have worked so hard for so long to achieve this triumph deserve our heartfelt praise, but they have had neither the time nor the energy to realize what they have accomplished or how they achieved it. After the celebrations in the sober light of day the participants awoke to the fact that, in their focused determination to complete the Naivasha Agreement, they had little or no understanding of reality in the southern Sudan.

What are the realities? No amount of rhetoric can overcome the fact that today the overwhelming numbers of southern Sudanese are open or "closet" separatists, including some within Garang's SPLM National Leadership Council. This should come as no surprise after the 150 years of slavery, discrimination and racism that they have suffered at the hands of northern Sudanese - and, since independence, too many promises broken and millions dead or driven from their homes. Moreover, there is a large body of silent northerners who are quite prepared to let the south go its own way. For, indeed, southerners are different, often despised, and not about to become Arabs and Muslims. So it's time the two million unwanted southern refugees milling around Khartoum went home.

European governments and the United States share an accepted folklore that southern Sudan does not have the educated and experienced individuals to administer the new south. This is undoubtedly true, but it is a situation the international community has pledged to rectify by massive infusions of cash and personnel to help. And if the past is any prophet of the future, after winning a measure of autonomy at Addis Ababa in 1972, the southern Sudanese enjoyed themselves immensely managing or mismanaging their affairs, and see no reason not to try again on their own. During the 6 years before the promised referendum this enthusiasm for independence will be hard to contain despite the anticipated attempts by any northern government to subvert it.

The key to the success of the unified new Sudan, however, is not the evolution of a separatist movement in the new south, but the reception and acceptance of a large number of hitherto despised southerners by the northern Sudanese. Naivasha guaranteed that southerners would receive 30 percent of the executive and legislative seats in the government of northern Sudan, 12 percent more than in the elected central government of 1958.

In 1958, the southern representatives were ill-educated, inexperienced and naive. Some were fooled, most were bought. It is doubtful that the southern Sudanese veterans of war, political infighting within the SPLM, and years of negotiations with Islamists, supported by the educated and successful southern elite in the diaspora, will be bought or betray their constituents a second time around. The new southern politician, however, will soon perceive that his future lies in being a member of the independent government of the south and not a "minister of cows" in Khartoum.

Perhaps the greatest enigma of Naivasha is the seeming willingness by the leadership of the National Congress Party (formerly the NIF) to abandon an Islamist state and the ideology buttressing this, namely to convert all Sudanese into Arabs and Muslim fundamentalists. Many have long wondered at the incongruity of the policies of the Islamist government to transform multiethnic, multi-linguistic, multi-religious Sudan into an Arab nation run by Salafist militant Muslims, a policy whose current manifestation is the disaster in Darfur.

Are the Sudanese Islamists ready to abandon their ideology, their mission, and above all their power in return for a united, democratic Sudan? Or will we see more of the same tactics of give-and-take, stonewalling and prevarication that have characterized their governance during the past 16 years? That is the Naivasha enigma.

About the Author: Robert O. Collins is professor of history emeritus at the University of California Santa Barbara. He first went to the Sudan in 1956 and has since written extensively on the Sudan, the Southern Sudan, and the Nile. This commentary was first published in bitterlemons-international, an online newsletter.

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