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| Author: | Stephanie Hanson |
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Updated: October 21, 2009
For the past four years, significant U.S. attention has been devoted to the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region, in which roughly two hundred thousand have died and more than two million have been displaced. A hybrid African Union/United Nations peacekeeping force remains only partially deployed, and peace negotiations have stalled. Meanwhile, clashes in South Sudan have raising fears that the fragile peace brought by the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement will collapse and the country's civil strife will expand to disastrous levels. The Bush administration treated Darfur and South Sudan as separate issues. But experts say both situations can be traced back to Khartoum's central government, which has historically maintained control of the country's periphery through divide-and-rule policies. There is wide disagreement about the best policy course for the United States to pursue in Sudan, but analysts agree that any effective policy will have to consider Sudan's internal politics and the center's relationship with its periphery.
Sudan is the largest country in Africa, approximately the size of Western Europe. Since its independence in 1956, it has been roiled by civil war almost continuously. This war was initially between northern Sudan and the south, which objected to its isolation and lack of development in comparison to the north. Following the military coup that brought President Omar al-Bashir to power in 1989, Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP) spurred an Islamist revolution that empowered the center's security and business interests at the expense of rural areas. 
In response, groups from each peripheral area of Sudan entered conflict with the central government. According to a 2003 briefing paper from the International Crisis Group, these groups feel marginalized as a result of a government that has "exploited local resources, imposed its religious and cultural beliefs on historically diverse populations and consistently pitted local tribes and ethnic groups against each other for short term tactical gain." The government maintains that peripheral areas in the south were underdeveloped because of the long civil war. In a 2009 article for International Affairs, Sudan expert Alex de Waal says insight into these conflicts requires an understanding of Sudan's "political marketplace" (PDF), in which provincial leaders bargain with Khartoum for the price of their loyalty. Each time they start a new round of negotiations with the government, they launch "a targeted assault on the economic and human assets of the metropolitan elites," he writes. For example, a group might attack a merchant or army outpost as a way of drawing attention and demanding that the government bargain with it. The government usually retaliates with another act of violence, de Waal writes, and then the two sides will settle, or the violence escalates. The regions with ongoing conflicts are as follows:
Resolving conflict in [Sudan's] periphery will require resolving land problems, particularly in areas like Darfur, where massive displacement has complicated ownership issues.
Experts agree that Sudan will not be a stable state until inequalities between the center and the periphery are addressed. Experts differ, however, on whether the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement facilitates or hinders that process. Some frame the agreement as a bilateral deal between the north's National Congress Party (NCP), the ruling party, and the south's SPLM that excludes other conflict-ridden parts of the country, such as Darfur. As a Kenyan negotiator told Sudan historian Edward Thomas: "Comprehensive in my understanding would be the whole of Sudan. That was never on the table: the government would not allow it. Every time I tried to raise it they said, 'Oh, you want to come and resolve all our conflicts? Come to Darfur, come to Eastern Sudan, we have enough problems.'" In fact, Sudanese in Darfur see the CPA as a bilateral deal that was achieved at their expense. But the negotiators from the south believe the CPA is "a panacea for other problems in Sudan," according to Omer Ismail, a Sudanese policy fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The International Crisis Group asserts that "the CPA is the linchpin for peace throughout Sudan-[and] Darfur must be resolved within this context." By giving the south autonomy for six years before allowing a referendum on independence, the CPA offers a chance for Sudan to develop a democratic system, including elections and constitutional reform.
“The [Comprehensive Peace Agreement] is the linchpin for peace throughout Sudan—[and] Darfur must be resolved within this context." – International Crisis Group report
Though the CPA excludes actors in large peripheral areas such as Darfur and eastern Sudan, it does call for state restructuring that has the potential to address what is viewed by many provinces as the central government's excessive power. Thomas, writing in a January 2009 report for UK-based think tank Chatham House, calls it "the most important political framework in Sudan." Its provisions on power-sharing, wealth-sharing, land, and elections "still offer Sudan an alternative to permanent crisis, fragmentation, or breakdown," he adds. Ismail cautions, however, that clauses applying to the entire country are much vaguer than those that apply specifically to the south. The elements of the CPA that affect the whole of Sudan include:
Among those who believe the CPA is a tool for stabilizing Sudan there are varying degrees of pessimism about the prospects for fully implementing the agreement. For the CPA to bring peace, critical provisions on the withdrawal of armed forces on both sides, border demarcation, elections, and wealth-sharing must be implemented. Delays and neglect of the CPA raise serious questions about how much of the agreement can be executed before 2011, when Southern Sudan can hold a referendum on its independence. Experts stress that Western donors that supported the negotiation of the CPA have become distracted by the crisis in Darfur, and need to devote more attention and financial resources to the CPA's implementation. Though $1.4 billion in international aid was pledged to reconstruction projects in the south for 2005-2007, less than $300 million was received (PDF), according to Lam Akol of the SPLM.
The United States was instrumental in the negotiation of the CPA, but since then has focused on the crisis in Darfur. In 2008, some analysts began to call for an "all Sudan" policy that examined both the problems of CPA implementation and the crisis in Darfur. The details of what such a policy might look like are widely divergent. Some, including Andrew Natsios, former U.S. special envoy to Sudan, call for a strategy of engagement that offers a road map for normalizing U.S.-Sudan relations while pressing for CPA implementation. Natsios argues that the ruling NCP, though weakened, is still "massive" and "ruthless." In a 2008 Foreign Affairs article, he writes that they "are prepared to kill anyone, suffer massive civilian casualties, and violate every international norm of human rights to stay in power, no matter the international pressure, because they worry (correctly) that if they are removed from power, they will face both retaliation at home and war crimes trials abroad." Unless the NCP retains a role in the Sudanese government, it is likely to provoke conflict and contribute to continued instability, Natsios believes.
Others argue that only punitive measures will coerce the NCP to change its actions. In a January 2009 open letter to President Barack Obama, the Enough Project and the Save Darfur Coalition recommend that the United States impose a no-fly zone over Darfur, enact targeted sanctions against Sudanese officials, and expand the arms embargo against Sudan. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke in her confirmation hearing of the need to "sound the alarm on Darfur," saying no-fly zones and sanctions were being considered as policy options. But many experts say Khartoum does not respond well to threats and punishments, particularly when it continues to enjoy the UN Security Council support of Russia and China. They add that the International Criminal Court's investigation of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, which resulted in an indictment in March 2009, has put the NCP on the defensive. Many government officials now spend much of their time trying to figure out how to handle the International Criminal Court, to the detriment of work on the CPA. "The Sudan Government sees the ICC as the gravest threat to its survival it has ever faced and a matter of life and death," writes de Waal.
On October 19, 2009, the U.S. State Department announced a new U.S. policy on Sudan that seeks engagement with the Sudanese government to end atrocities in Darfur, implement the CPA, and prevent Sudan from becoming a haven for terrorism. The new strategy also will pursue the elimination of regional tension through UN development, disarmament, and reintegration (DDR) programs, the restoration of NGOs, and the provision of technical support to local administrations. Reviews of the new policy have been mixed. Ray Walser, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, wrote that a "soft U.S. approach that curries favor with the present regime in Khartoum will permit those wedded to absolute power and unafraid of committing genocide to continue perpetuating tyranny and terror over the people of Sudan indefinitely." But CFR Senior Fellow John Campbell called the new policy "a positive development" and said engagement is a necessary part of diplomacy.
A few experts suggest that there is little the United States can do to affect the political situation in Sudan. They argue that Sudan's internal political upheaval--the weakening and fragmenting NCP, the changing aims of Southern Sudan, the ongoing conflict in Darfur--can only be resolved by a domestic political deal that has buy-in from all relevant parties. The Kennedy School's Ismail, who grew up in Darfur, suggest that the "CPA needs to be revisited and other regions need to be included." Sudan historian Thomas suggests that the United States focus on specific, discrete tasks: monitoring CPA outcomes for Sudanese civilians, funding studies to understand the politics of land in Sudan, and planning for the possibility of an independent Southern Sudan.
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