John Garang Research Articles

John Garang On Air: Radio Battles in Sudan's Second Civil War

AbstractThis article explores radio broadcasting and monitoring by and about Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) leader John Garang during Sudan's second civil war, focusing on the core period of Radio SPLA broadcasting (1984–91). Through oral history, memoirs, and international monitoring reports, the article analyzes radio conversations between Garang and his critics — northern Sudanese, southern Sudanese, and international — to argue that radio battles directly shaped the struggle for political authority between Garang and the Sudanese government, and within the SPLM/A elite. Radio allowed Garang to speak to a dispersed audience within and beyond Sudan, presenting an alternative history of Sudan, publicizing his vision of a New Sudan, and asserting his pseudo-sovereign control of SPLM/A-held territory. However, Radio SPLA did not exist in a vacuum; Garang's rivals responded on government and international radio to criticize his leadership in targeted, personal terms. Radio thus powerfully mediated between personal, national, and international politics during the SPLM/A's liberation struggle.

Evolution of South Sudan’s Culture

South Sudan’s struggle for independence from historic Sudan has profoundly shaped the culture and the values of its people. This struggle led to the development of a martial culture that values military service, but also normalizes extreme levels of violence against civilians. Fighting – beginning in 1983 with the first of the independence movements and continuing today with an ongoing civil war – has displaced more than four million Southerners, undermining, and in some cases destroying, traditional tribal systems of governance, social traditions, and economic livelihoods. It has also contributed to distrust of the north and feelings of victimization. The independence movement also played a key role in creating the unstable political system of South Sudan. Seeking international support, John Garang – the leader of movement – first adopted implemented Marxist ideas and then Western democratic principles as the international political climate changed, retaining key aspects of each and creating an uneasy combination. This – combined with economic forces - prevented the development of strong institutions. Corruption remains rampant, destroying public trust in the government. Tribal rivalries—although temporarily abated by Garang’s movement—haven torn the country apart in a new civil war, deepening existing cleavages. Nonetheless, there have been some positive developments. The spread of Christianity and the development of an indigenous church has been a powerful counterforce against government corruption and a violent, martial culture. In addition, the South Sudanese people have found ways of coping with chaos, mass atrocities and starvation, demonstrating their extraordinary resilience to adversity.

Political Ideology and Organisational Espousal: A Political-Historical Analysis of Dr. John Garang De Mabior’s “New Sudan Vision”

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Army (SPLM/A) has for decades presented a “New Sudan” as its “vision.” But SPLM/A’s official ideology was socialism and its vision a united secular and socialist Sudan. With time, this vision became “New Sudan” and its presumptive guiding ideology became “The New Sudan Vision” (NSV) without any official institutionalisation of this NSV. In fact, “NSV” does not appear in the Movement’s founding manifesto until the revision of the manifesto in 2008 when NSV was incoherently included. I argue, therefore, that the New Sudan Vision was not really an SPLM/A political ideology but John Garang’s ideology. Besides, its immediate disappearance in South Sudan after the death of John Garang and the overwhelming vote for independence was an unequivocal rejection of NSV by the South Sudanese.

Peacemaking and Peace Agreements in South Sudan: An Introduction

In 2011, South Sudan seceded from Sudan following a landmark referendum on self-determination. Yet fewer than three years after the historic vote for independence, the world’s newest country descended into a civil war that, since December 2013, has brought killing and bloodshed. In attempts to resolve the conflict and bring the civil war to an end, the warring factions have signed peace agreement after peace agreement. In September 2018, Salva Kiir, the president of South Sudan, and his major adversary, the former vice-president and rebel leader Riek Machar, signed yet another peace agreement in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. This is the 12th agreement between them. Most of these agreements have suffered from a fraught mediation context (at times, being very coercive), deficits in preparedness (with inadequate time to fully implement the agreements), consent, impartiality, inclusivity (given the proliferation of armed and unarmed oppositions), and lack of a broad political strategy to anchor the agreed-upon peace deal. How did this young country that attained her independence in 2011 amidst massive international fanfare degenerate into chaos so quickly? And why have the attempts to resolve the conflict faced such difficulties? The Zambakari Advisory is pleased to publish its First Special Issue on the subject: “Peace Making and Peace Agreements in South Sudan.” We asked scholars, activists, students, former government officials, and leading intellectuals to think about the theme for the issue and offer insights into it. We hope these analyses will provide new insights to both reflect on, and inform, the work of stakeholders engaged in brokering peace and/or the pending National Dialogue. This collection features 15 articles contributed by Douglas H. Johnson, Peter Adwok Nyaba, Rev. Elias Rinaldo Gamboriko, Joseph Madak Wuol, Nichola Mandil Ukeil, Asha Abdel Rahim, Mabior P. Mach, Abui John Garang, Samson S. Wassara, Mahmood Mamdani, Rita M. Lopidia, Luka Biong Deng Kuol, John Ashworth, Angelina Bazugba, and Malish John Peter on South Sudan’s experiences with peacemaking and peace agreements, providing both a social and historical context, as well as an analysis of the specific peace processes. These papers offer a critical evaluation of South Sudan’s political crises, its experience with peace deals, and offers innovative solutions for the bumpy road ahead as South Sudan seeks once more to implement an imperfect deal. The authors make it clear that the contemporary history of South Sudan has been that of conflict and civil wars (1955–1972, 1983–2005, 2013–Current) with the Republic of Sudan to the north and with itself after securing independence in 2011. This issue highlights lessons learned from The Wunlit Peace Process in 1999, the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), the 2015 Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS), and finally the 2018 Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS).

Language, politics and society in the Middle East: Essays in honour of Yasir Suleiman ed. by Yonatan Mendel and Abeer AlNajjar

Reviewed by: Language, politics and society in the Middle East: Essays in honour of Yasir Suleiman ed. by Yonatan Mendel and Abeer AlNajjar Camelia Suleiman Language, politics and society in the Middle East: Essays in honour of Yasir Suleiman. Ed. by Yonatan Mendel and Abeer AlNajjar. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2018. Pp. 241. ISBN 9781474421539. $29.95. This volume on Arabic linguistics edited by Yonatan Mendel and Abeer AlNajjar is a refreshing compendium consisting of eleven chapters of research, reaching from Morocco to the Sudan, to Israel and Palestine, with historic comparisons in some cases. The chapters celebrate the scholarship of Yasir Suleiman, a towering figure in Arabic linguistics with a career that spreads over more than three decades of research and mentoring. In his dedication to Arabic linguistics, Suleiman's scholarship demonstrates a remarkable breadth and depth of approaches and methods (see e.g. Suleiman 1999, 2003, 2013). The contributors to the chapters are scholars who know [End Page 572] Suleiman personally, either as former students or as peers. The foreword is written by Carole Hillenbrand, a former colleague of Suleiman at the University of Edinburgh. As Mendel and AlNajjar state in the introduction, even the choice of a street sign as the book's cover image is a tribute to Suleiman's scholarship. The street is from an Israeli town, and as is the case with all street signs in Israel, Hebrew has to be first, then Arabic, and then English. The Hebrew reads 'Batzra', in reference to 'Basra' in Iraq, where some Jews fought during WWII, and as a tribute to the city, as pronounced in Ashkenazi Hebrew, which is what these military men were. The Arabic is a transliteration of the Hebrew (as is generally the case in Israel), and the English is 'Bazra', even though English also has the name of this Iraqi city as 'Basra' or 'Al-Basra'. The editors intended to show the seen, but most of the time unnoticed, depth of the semiosis of the sign. This is done to remind the reader that Suleiman was one of the early Arabic linguists to analyze street signs, and that was long before investigating the linguistic landscape became common practice in linguistic analyses (see e.g. Gorter 2006). Further, the fact that the two editors are a Jewish Israeli (Mendel) and a dispossessed Palestinian (AlNajjar) is also a gesture to the career and life of Suleiman, a dispossessed Palestinian himself in constant pursuit of social justice regardless of color or creed (see e.g. Suleiman 2016). The book is in two parts. Part one covers some general themes in Arabic sociolinguistics. The authors made a good choice by opening with John Joseph, who applies Derrida's (1994) framework to the understanding of language and identity. Joseph highlights the centrality of Suleiman's scholarship in the debate on Arabic sociolinguistics. Derrida's term 'hauntology', loosely translated as the ghosts of history in the formation of identity, fits very well the framework in which Suleiman worked and through which he influenced Arabic debates. Karin Ryding's is a US-focused study of the pedagogy of Arabic, its shortcomings, and how to move forward. Chaoqun Lian examines the discourse of language policy in two of the oldest Arabic language academies, Damascus and Cairo. The metaphors used in the rationalization of the academy's work is indicative of the role of language in the collective imagination of the national identity of both academies. Eirlys Davies discusses language preferences on the internet in social media, emails, and text messages in Morocco. Users' preference for Moroccan Arabic is a bottom-up change happening in Arabic writing; thus Davies is moving the debate about code-switching in Arabic to the internet and social media realm. Lastly in part one, Ashraf Abdelhay and Sinfree Makoni discuss ideology toward Arabic in the Sudan by looking into the discourse of President Bashir, the journalist Hussein Khojali, and John Garang de Mabior (the late South Sudanese leader), and how Arabic acts as a proxy for national conflict. Abdelhay and Makoni's chapter is a refreshing reminder that the...

Immaginare una nuova nazione: strategie politiche e costruzione dell'identità etnica in Sud Sudan

The African context is an avant-garde geopolitical laboratory, where the inherited state forms of the colonial period are reworked and transformed through political imaginary. The case of South Sudan is particularly interesting: its birth and its development followed a projectuality elaborated during half a century of civil conflict, in which a complex social imaginary was formed. In this article, we want to highlight two closely related aspects. The first is linked to the charismatic figure of John Garang, leader of the SPLA/M. At his death Garang was consecrated as a popular hero and founding figure, becoming a primary reference in the imaginary of the new nation. The second aspect concerns the political strategy of President Salva Kiir, which breaks with the previous nationalist project. In recent years, the formation of an ethnic imaginary transformed local communities into territorial identities, interpreting the socio-political clash through an ethnic category created by colonialism and reproduced during the Sudanese civil wars.

Challenges of Regulating Non-International Armed Conflicts – an Examination of Ongoing Trends in South Sudan’s Civil War

The conflict in South Sudan became the only viable violent way of expressing underlying discontentment with the style of governance adopted by the incumbent government and unresolved issues from the 1991 split which occurred when Dr. Riak Machar, one of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (splm/a) leaders at the time, now turned rebel leader, fell out with Dr. John Garang, the chairman of the splm/a. The split, notably referred to as the “Nassir split”, led communities from both the Dinka and Nuer tribes to turn against each other. The referendum, a consequence of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (cpa) between the government in Khartoum, Sudan, and the splm/a, led to an overwhelming vote for secession, later paving way for the subsequent independence of South Sudan in 2011. The existing tension took on a violent expression. The article analyses occurrences the splm/a command pursued on a secessionist agenda in the 21 years of armed struggle and the attainment of independence on the 9 July 2011. It further denotes the insurgents’ pursuit of armed confrontation and the government’s response to the belligerents’ actions, while providing a genesis of the belligerence and laws governing non–international armed conflicts.

The Political Crisis in South Sudan

KeyWords: South Sudan; SPLM/A; civil warThe political crisis in South Sudan is now more than a year old, with no immediate end in sight to the fighting between armed factions. What began as a power struggle within the ruling party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), reignited factional fighting within the army, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), in December 2013. Both the political and military crises had their origins in unresolved tensions following the split in the SPLM/A in the 1990s and the incomplete integration of opposed factions into the army following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 (see Johnson 2014). Many South Sudanese expected that these tensions would eventually erupt in some form of conflict following independence in 2011, but the rapid escalation and intensity of fighting has still taken them by surprise.This commentary can give only the barest outline of a complex series of events motivated by a mixture of political disappointment, personal ambition, and ethnic rivalry. A more detailed reporting of various aspects of the crisis can be found in the updated reports of the Human Security Baseline Assessment (HSBA) for Sudan and South Sudan and human rights reports by Amnesty International, the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, and the South Sudan Human Rights Commission (2014).1The CPA was constructed around the assumption that John Garang would remain the leader of the SPLM/A, the head of the Government of South Sudan (GoSS), and the first vice president in the power-sharing Government of National Unity (GNU) with the National Congress Party (NCP) throughout the six-year interim period leading up to the South Sudanese independence referendum in 2011. His death in July 2005, three weeks after his inauguration as first vice president, catapulted two men into unexpected positions of power: Salva Kiir Mayardit, Garang's deputy, assumed the leadership of the party and his two constitutional positions, while Riek Machar, occupying the third highest position in the party, became vice president in the GoSS. Had Garang lived, it is unlikely that either man would have remained in their initial positions, as Garang was adept at moving potential rivals around, preventing them from entrenching themselves in positions of power within the party or the army.Salva Kiir, a veteran guerrilla of the first civil war, was, along with Garang, the last surviving founder of the SPLM/A, all others having been killed in the fratricidal warfare that engulfed the SPLM/A during the 1990s (see Johnson 201 l:ch.7). His survival was due, in part, to having kept aloof from the internal politics of the movement, seeing himself as a soldier rather than a politician. Tensions had arisen between him and Garang at the end of 2004, just before the signing of the CPA, and his future in a Garang-led government was uncertain.Riek Machar had joined the movement from a civilian, rather than a military, background and broke with Garang in 1991 over personal and ideological differences. His attempt to lead a reformed movement failed, and in the end he was forced to fall back on the support of sections of his own Nuer people, a significant proportion of them coming from Khartoumbacked militias. Machar soon lost control over both the formal and informal armed bodies under his command. His rebellion disintegrated into internecine fighting among Nuer, with civilians being the main targets, a pattern that was to reemerge in his current rebellion (see Johnson 2009, 2011:ch.8). He reconciled with Garang in 2002, just as internationally brokered peace negotiations with Khartoum began, and was elevated to the number three spot in the movement's hierarchy.Salva Kiir faced many challenges in forming a government to administer southern Sudan during the interim period prior to the independence referendum. As leader of the army, the party, and the government, he first appointed persons closer to himself than to Garang, some with strong ties to Khartoum, leaving many of the SPLM stalwarts-Garang's Orphans- marginalized within the party and government (see Nyaba 2011 ). …

Briefing: The crisis in South Sudan

ON 16 DECEMBER 2013 THE PRESIDENT of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, appeared on state television in military uniform to announce that he had successfully put down a coup attempt in the capital, Juba. The coup attempt was said to have been led by former Vice-President Riek Machar and several ex-cabinet ministers and officials of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), including Madame Rebecca Nyanding de Mabior, the widow of the SPLM’s first leader, John Garang. Eleven alleged coup plotters were arrested in their homes, but Riek Machar escaped from Juba, and, amid reports over the next few days of targeted killings of Nuer in Juba by men in uniform loyal to the President, the commanders of the 8th and 4th army divisions of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in Jonglei and Unity states announced their defection to Riek Machar and seized control of the state capitals of Bor and Bentiu. In telephone interviews from secure places Riek Machar denied that he had been involved in a coup but then urged the army to overthrow Salva Kiir and announced his plans to march on Juba. Despite the fact that the arrested ministers came from a variety of communities across South Sudan, Western media reports cast the political struggle exclusively in tribal terms, of Salva Kiir’s Dinka against Riek Machar’s Nuer. The targeted killings in Juba and revenge killings of Dinka by Nuer in Akobo and Bor in Jonglei state seemed to bear this out. The coup was said to have begun with a fight between Nuer and Dinka soldiers in the presidential guard following a meeting of the SPLM’s National Liberation Council (NLC), which Riek Machar and the alleged plotters had boycotted, and in which Salva Kiir had denounced Riek in strident terms. Yet while the government of South Sudan has kept to this version of events, they have presented little concrete evidence to support their claim

Sudan: Survival Depends on Getting to Inclusive Government

ABSTRACT Politics in Sudan have cycled brief democratic interludes and lengthy periods of military rule ended by popular uprising. The failures and current paralysis of the Bashir regime suggest that the end is approaching. Governance failure stems from riverine Arab efforts to impose a Muslim-Arab narrative on a highly diverse country, working through “divide-and-rule” tactics. The demise of that narrative is apparent because the inclusive vision of the late southern leader John Garang has infused the entire periphery. The south has become the independent nation of South Sudan. Divide-and-rule is breaking down in Darfur where Arab-on-Arab violence prevails. The United States worked through regional and UN bodies to achieve the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the referendum in South Sudan, and the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur. These achievements have brought neither peace nor inclusive governance. The new international consensus calls for a single peace process for Sudan, rather than piecemeal ap...

The scramble for African oil: oppression, corruption and war for control of Africa's natural resources

Introduction PART ONE: POWER FROM ABOVE 1. Foreign States and Trade Relations - Colonialism, Neo-Colonialism and Globalization - Reserves, Production, Peak Oil and War - Case Study: Neo-Colonialism in Gabon - French Domination by Elf-Gabon 2. Multinational Corporations and Nationalization - The Legacy of Geography? - The Legacy of Slavery? - Case Study: Yankee Landlords of Cabinda - Portuguese Colonialism, American Imperialism - Angolan Nationalism and the MPLA 3. International Organization and Governance - Improving Governance in Africa's Oil Sector - International Organizations: TI, Global Witness, PWYP, EITI - Case Study: Chad and the World Bank Model 4. Rentier States and Kleptocracy - Oil Rent and the Rentier - Rentier Mentality, Allocation State - Spanish Guinea (1778-1968) - Dictatorial Guinea 5. Praetorian Regimes and Terror - Soldiers and Oil - Typology of Military States - The Military in Congo-Brazzaville - From Praetorian Rule to Personal Dictatorship PART TWO: POWER FROM BELOW 6. Journalists and Intellectuals - The Treason of the Clerks - Cameroon: the Agathon of Mongo Beti - The Return to Cameroon 7. Political Parties and Elections - Electoral Democracy in Africa - Multiparty Democracy in Sao Tome E Principe - Oil and Corruption in Multiparty Democracy 8. Armed Struggle for Independence - Oil and War - Regional Identity and Violence - Southern Identity and Violence in Sudan - John Garang and the 'New Sudan' 9. Popular Resistance and People Power - Things Don't Fall Apart - Oil and Violence in the Niger Delta - Collapsing the Failed State 10. Unscrambling the Scramble for African Oil - Solution 1: Controlling Corruption - Solution 2: Direct Distribution of Oil Revenues - Solution 3: Invest in Social Development - Solution 4: Boycott African Oil - Solution 5: Stop Consuming Oil Bibliography Index

Polycystic kidney disease gene in the Lewis polycystic kidney rat is mapped to chromosome 10q21–q26

Correspondence: Jada Pasquale Yengkopiong Dr John Garang Memorial University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Bor, Jonglei State, Republic of South Sudan Tel +211 955 621 320 Email jadalojuka@yahoo.com.au Background: Polycystic kidney disease (PKD) is a life-threatening disorder that affects the kidneys of millions of people across the world. The disease is normally inherited, but it can also be acquired, and leads to development of many cysts in the renal nephrons. In this study, the aim was to characterize PKD in the Lewis polycystic kidney (LPK) rat, the newest model for human PKD. Methods: Mating experiments were performed between male LPK rats with PKD and female Brown Norway and Wistar Kyoto rats without PKD to raise second filial (F2) and backcross 1 (BC1) progeny, respectively. Rats that developed PKD were identified. Histological examination of the kidneys and liver was performed. Liver tissue samples were collected from each rat and used to extract DNA. The extracted DNA was amplified, and mapping and linkage analyses were performed to identify the quantitative trait locus that controlled the disease phenotypes. Results: It was established that the disease was controlled by a recessive mutation in a single gene (F2: PKD = 42, non-PKD = 110, χ = 0.53; BC1: PKD = 67, non-PKD = 72, χ = 0.18, P . 0.05) and that the disease was inherited as autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease (ARPKD). The rats with PKD developed larger fluid-filled cystic kidneys, higher systolic blood pressure, and anemia. However, there were no extrarenal cysts and no pup deaths. Mapping studies and linkage analyses associated the disease phenotypes in both the F2 and BC1 rats to chromosome 10q21–q26, giving a maximum LOD score of 7.9 (P = 0.00001) between peak markers D10Rat180 and D10Rat26. Conclusion: The quantitative trait locus on chromosome 10q21–q26 does not contain the Pkhd-1 gene, and it is different from quantitative trait loci that control ARPKD in other murine models. The candidate genes located in the quantitative trait locus are important in signal transduction, cell growth, cell proliferation, and cell differentiation. Although expression of PKD in the LPK rat shares common phenotypic traits with ARPKD caused by mutation in Pkhd-1, the gene responsible for ARPKD in the LPK rat is different and unknown, or a mechanism yet to be identified is responsible for development of the disease.

The Referendum in South Sudan: Is it Peace or Conflict Ahead? An Interview with Ambassador Daniel Rachuonyo Mboya

Over the years, Sudan, especially the south, caught the eye of the world with images of war, including children suffering from malnutrition, child soldiers, rape victims, amputees and images of slavery. The situation in Darfur is no better now than it was before. It is grim. The eruption of violence in the Abyei region during the referendum in the south leaves a lot of question marks over the future of the region. Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese are abroad as refugees thanks to the conflicts that have dogged the region for decades. Now, an overwhelming majority -almost 99%- have voted for an independent South Sudan. Companies are lobbying for contracts, governments are sending emissaries and the world is watching. Is peace finally being realised in Sudan? Is this what Dr John Garang envisioned for the south? Veteran diplomat, Daniel Rachuonyo Mboya was Kenya's first Ambassador to Sudan and also the first Special Envoy to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Secretariat for the Peace Initiative in Sudan. In this interview he expresses his opinion about the referendum in South Sudan and the future of the volatile region.

SPLM–NCP asymmetrical power relations jeopardise the implementation of the CPA and the future of the Sudan

ABSTRACT The political instability that has characterised Sudanese politics since independence is attributable to political exclusion, economic neglect and marginalisation. Discrimination based on religion, language and culture has constituted the main contradictions between the masses of the Sudanese people (periphery) and the politically dominant Arabised Nubians (centre) in all the different politico-ideological hues experienced by the nation. Attempts to resolve this contradiction have left the structural imbalances inherited from the colonial administration of the Sudan intact. This explains the resurgence of war, particularly in Southern Sudan. The recent peace agreements between the National Congress Party (NCP), namely the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A); the Darfur Peace Agreement with the Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM) (Minawi); the Cairo Agreement with the National Democratic Alliance and the Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement with the Eastern Sudan Front, have left the NCP still in firm control of the oppressive state machinery. The CPA power-sharing protocol awarded the NCP a majority which institutionalises a power asymmetry that the NCP utilises to obstruct implementation of the CPA and delay the process of democratic transformation. This article analyses the asymmetry in the NCP–SPLM partnership and power relationship. It assumes that the tragic death of Dr. John Garang de Mabior is a major cause of the political weakness demonstrated by the SPLM since 2005. This power imbalance jeopardises the CPA implementation and the future of the Sudan as a state.

<i>War in Darfur and the Search for Peace</i> (review)

Reviewed by: War in Darfur and the Search for Peace John H. Weiss Alex de Waal, ed., War in Darfur and the Search for Peace. Cambridge, MA: Global Equity Initiative, Harvard University Press, 2007. Pp. 431, paper. $24.95 US. War in Darfur and the Search for Peace, edited by Alex de Waal, offers an enlightening tour of the contested intellectual terrain encountered by those who have concerned themselves with the fate of Sudan’s westernmost region since the escalation of the conflict there at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The fact that one is contributing to a journal dedicated to preventing the radical diminishing of peoples and cultures, aka genocide, guides the selection of parts of the volume under review that will receive special attention here. That it is an attempt to understand the failure of negotiations between the Sudanese government and the opposing “movements” rather than the entire course of the genocidal conflict makes this work command attention. When a general history of Sudan is written in years to come, this failure may come to be viewed as an especially tragic defining episode in a period of time when the destruction of the Darfuri people and their culture might have been stopped. The first item presented in the attempt to explain the failure of peace is de Waal’s analysis of the nature of the Sudanese regime in Khartoum. In an essay introducing the volume, “Sudan: The Turbulent State,” he describes a crucially important technique whereby the current National Congress Party regime headed by General Omar al-Bashir maintains its power. Although many other empires have used the principle of “divide and rule” to maintain the dominance of the central authority, few have ever come close to the skill with which the regime that came to power in 1989 has combined the use of land and air units against armed opponents, land and air units against civilians, and the enlistment of tribally based militias (the core of the Janjaweed formations) to create a state of continuing chaos and uncertainty on its periphery in Darfur, just as it did in the southern provinces and the Nuba Mountains in its first decade in power. It is this set of armed actions that de Waal offers as the principal element of the turbulence-creation that serves to perpetuate the power of what he labels the “hyperdominant,” predatory regime in Khartoum. Such is the nature of the government in the Sudanese capital, with its offices and the subordinate institutions and ideologically and organizationally connected individuals occupying them. This set of offices was also the structure that John Garang wished to use as the base for a unified, secular, democratic, and decentralized country. As the al-Bashir regime’s triumph over Garang’s vision of a new Sudan suggests, Sudan is probably best characterized not as a nation-state in the manner of Italy, Argentina, or Malawi, but as an empire-state, ruling over its internal colonies (in the south, the east, the Nuba Mountains, and Darfur), with an especially effective combination of violence, manipulation, and the cooptation of possible opponents. As presented in the volume’s opening essay, de Waal’s list of devices used to stir the periphery’s political brew into a chaotic, deadly pottage appears incomplete. Elsewhere [End Page 379] in the work, however, and in other writings about Sudan, one may find ample additional evidence revealing the government of Sudan’s (GoS) catalogue of the weapons of disorder: selective neglect in delivering to the region vital services and equipment; comprehensive administrative warfare entailing such techniques as limitation of access to the region by journalists and officials, permit proliferation, and the routine imposition of deliberately extended delay; use of terror and torture in the “ghost houses” of the Khartoum area; manipulation of aid organizations into neartotal dependence on Khartoum’s transportation facilities as well as collusion in the limitation of investigators’ access to camp residents; encapsulation and cat-and-mouse censorship of the opposition press; energetic, opportunity-sensitive international media and diplomatic operations; and superbly calibrated, scruple-free, and impressively deceptive international and intranational negotiations. Rather than cataloguing such tactics, however, de Waal’s opening essay continues...

John Garang's legacy to the peace process, the SPLM/A & the south

The death of Dr. John Garang, First Vice President of Sudan, President of Southern Sudan, and Chairman of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/ Army (SPLM/A) in a helicopter crash on 30 July, and the riots that followed, produced doubts about the viability of the 9 January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and the prospects of peace processes underway elsewhere in the country. On the surface, this is not surprising because Garang had been the leader of the SPLM/A since its founding in 1983 and for many in Sudan and abroad he virtually personified the struggle of the south. Garang was also the unchallenged focal point during the various peace processes, in particular during the final phase of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) negotiations which were largely reduced to then First Vice President Ali Osman Taha and himself. And more than anyone else on either side of the table, Garang was the biggest beneficiary of the peace process which granted him a virtual hegemonic position in the south and the holding of a strong vice presidency nationally.

The Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement: Will It Be Sustained?

The Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) is one of the rare achievements not only in the Sudan but indeed in Africa as it offers a unique resolution of one of the most complicated and protracted civil wars in Africa. It offers a unique mechanism for resolving issues of religious diversity and setting a new basis for national unity based on the free will of the people. The organic and external guarantees provided for its implementation clearly show that it would extremely be difficult for any party to the CPA to dishonour or abrogate it and if it happens it will be tantamount to constitutional disorder with dire repercussions for the unity of the Sudan. Muslims, Arab extremists and terrorist elements in the Sudan and the impact of the untimely death of Dr John Garang are likely to work against the full implementation of the CPA.

Sudan's Perfect War

WAR HAS raged in Sudan for all but 1i of the 45 years since its inde pendence. The most recent round of fighting began in 1983, after then President Ja' far Muhammad Numayri revoked the autonomy that had been granted to the country's south 11 years before and imposed Islamic law (the shari a) throughout the land. These steps were the final insult to the predominantly non-Muslim, non-Arab population of southern Sudan, which had long been cut off from the distribution of national resources and otherwise marginalized. At first, it was John Garang's Sudanese People's Liberation Move ment (SPLM) that took up the south's fight against government forces. But in the 19 years of bloodshed since, Sudan's civil war has been carried on by four different northern regimes and countless southern alliances. With two million fatalities so far, this war has produced more casualties than those in Angola, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Liberia, the Persian Gulf, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Rwanda put together. An astounding four million Sudanese-out of a population of around 29 million-have been made homeless. Yet militarily, the fighting has accomplished little. Today the government controls only key garrison towns in the south; the rest of the region is ruled by the SPLM or one of the many other factions that have evolved over the years. Meanwhile, rather than moving the conflict closer to resolution, political and economic developments in Sudan over the last few years have made achieving a negotiated and just peace even more unlikely.

Sudan's Prolonged Second Civil War and the Militarization of Nuer and Dinka Ethnic Identities

Ever since power struggles within the Sudan People's Liberation Army split the movement into two warring factions in August 1991, rural Nuer and Dinka communities of the South have been grappling with a deepening regional subculture of ethnicized violence. This article describes political factors that have prolonged this bitter conflict into the present and have contributed to the post-1991 polarization and militarization of Dinka and Nuer ethnic identities. Drawing on parallel field research conducted in Dinka and Nuer regions of South Sudan during 1998 and 1999, the authors show how ordinary civilians have been struggling to understand and cope with this new “war of the [southern] educated [elite].” Among the major themes addressed are: (1) the rapid unraveling of regional codes of warfare ethics since 1991; (2) the transformation of previous patterns of interethnic competition over scarce economic resources into politicized programs of ethnicized violence; (3) mounting public despair over the seeming unwillingness of John Garang and Riek Machar to compromise their personal ambitions for the greater unity of the South; and (4) recent peace initiatives made by Dinka and Nuer chiefs, which have succeeded in reducing interethnic violence, despite the continuing intransigence of some military leaders.

Bibliography

Bibliography