SOUTHERN SUDANESE POLITICS SINCE THE ADDIS ABABA AGREEMENT*

Abstract

PERHAPS THE MOST surprising though certainly gratifying consequence of the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972 has been the successful maintenance of peace in the new Southern Region of the Sudan. A steadily growing civil war, showing increasing indications of international involvement, was suddenly stopped in March 1972 following negotiations between representatives of the Sudan Government and delegates selected by the Southern Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM). Four years later members of both the national and regional governments remain committed to making the settlement succeed. The agreement has established the rules for postwar politics in the South and appears to be gaining a permanent and functional role in the political system of the Sudan. However, that judgment must remain in doubt for some time. Many difficulties make its continuation precarious. And both pervasive suspicion and a few scattered violent incidents serve as reminders that civil wars, like Gordian knots, cannot be entirely resolved by a single dramatic gesture. The present political difficulties of the South are a product not only of the civil war, but also of the manner in which that war was settled. The agreement has unavoidably created new issues while halting the infinitely more serious problem of violent aggression. How well the political rules resulting from the agreement can handle these new disputes will determine whether the new political system will be institutionalized and how rapidly. Institutionalization is the process through which most active participants in a polity come to value highly a set of basic procedures for solving disputes1. The agreement provided novel but untested procedures for the Southern Region, but the development of the new relationship between