Peacemaking, the SPLM/A’s Political Transition During the Comprehensive Peace Agreement Era and Conflict in the Sudans

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the flawed transformation of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLM/A) from a rebel movement into a political organisation during the years of implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Sudan and how that contributed to delivering an unsustainable peace in Sudan and South Sudan. The chapter examines in particular how approaches to peacemaking ignited and then failed to support the war-to-peace transition, and the extent to which the drivers and factors within and outside the movement contributed to that failure. It argues that while the CPA mediators and the SPLM/A negotiators considered the SPLM to be the engine of Sudan’s democratic transition - after two decades of civil war - they did not adequately consider the movement’s structural weaknesses, namely a divisive ideology, a fractured and hierarchal military leadership and weak political institutionalisation that would affect the movement’s transformation into a national party and its ability to bring about the transformation of Sudan.