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Sudan after Garang

From Julie Flint in London

September 2nd, 2005 -- Late in 2003, US officials pushing for a peace agreement between the government of Sudan and the Southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army were getting impatient. They wanted an agreement by the end of the year, but the SPLA was refusing to hurry things along by signing general framework agreements. John Garang’s team was insisting on agreement on every last detail.

Today Garang’s obstinacy in examining every line in the hundreds of pages of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) he finally signed with President Umar Bashir on 9 January is his greatest legacy to Sudan — a highly complex and meticulously detailed agreement which, if implemented, will free Sudan from the stranglehold of Islamist politics and give marginalized regions a greater share in national wealth and governance.

Garang’s emphasis on the small print means that those who might seek to reinterpret the agreement now, in the wake of his unexpected death, have less room for manoeuvre than they would otherwise have had. The key protocols — on state and religion, self-determination, power and wealth-sharing, security and the status of the border areas of Abyei, the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile — are beyond dispute. And the South has gained a great deal — not least, the right to self-determination, an independent army during a six-year interim period and 50% of oil revenue. The rebel movement takes over the administration of the entire South, including areas currently under government control, and Southerners will have strong representation in central government: no mean achievement.

Early fears that Garang’s death in a helicopter crash on 30 July would lead to an immediate and catastrophic collapse of security have proved unfounded. Rioting in government-controlled towns was contained relatively quickly and the SPLA united around the figure of Salva Kiir, Garang’s deputy in the government of South Sudan.

In the longer term, the CPA was always going to be difficult to implement, with or without Garang. Several senior members of Khartoum’s security elite are being investigated for war crimes in Darfur and may feel that they have little interest in promoting peace. The ruling National Congress Party (NCP) remains ambivalent about the agreement: Islamist hard-liners do not want it; pragmatists see it as a means for remaining in power for the foreseeable future. There are other problems, too: the lack of broad political support for the agreement outside the NCP and SPLA, the lack of administrative capacity in the South, the government-supported “OAGs” — “other armed groups” — in the South. But for the present, the CPA is safe.

As Garang himself said, peace was achieved “not necessarily because the parties wanted to, but because both parties were forced to”. Although Garang played a key role, the agreement was driven mainly by non-Sudanese players, primarily the United States. It is their commitment to “forcing” it to a successful conclusion that was, and still is, its best hope of success.

For the moment, the CPA is arguably safer than it would have been had Garang rather than Salva Kiir been sitting in Khartoum as first vice president of Sudan. For all Sudan’s marginalized non-Arab communities, Garang, with his unwavering vision of a “New Sudan”, stood as a symbol of dignity and hope of change. But despite his undoubted charisma and his (relatively recent) international acclaim, he was a controversial figure among Southerners, who used his authoritarian control to paper over deep divisions within the SPLA. Had he lived, he would have faced problems both within the SPLA and with the OAGs who were excluded from the peace process.

Inheriting Garang’s troubles

Since signing the CPA in January, Garang had failed to reconcile with the OAGs, chiefly the predominantly Nuer South Sudan Defence Force of Paulino Matip, the man who spearheaded Khartoum’s offensive to gain control of oil-rich areas of Western Upper Nile. In just a month, Salva Kiir has gone a long way towards mending fences with Matip, whose militia is the largest in the South after the SPLA.

Kiir’s first overture to Matip came within days of Garang’s death, with an invitation to his funeral in Juba. Five days later, the SSDF’s political leader, Riek Gai, announced that it would cooperate fully with Kiir “and will put the SSDF at his disposal”. Members of the SSDF have already left the Bentiu area, Matip’s launching-pad for his oil war. Kiir’s shrewd appointment of Riek Machar, a Nuer, as his deputy in South Sudan can only have strengthened the perception of Kiir as a man with whom the militias can do business. Many SSDF leaders served under Machar in the late 1990s, after he defected to the government side and before he returned to the SPLA.

What is less sure is how well Kiir will be able to navigate the murky waters of national politics.

Although he led the SPLA’s negotiating team at the start of the peace talks, he was absent from the latter stages and lacks Garang’s familiarity with the key players in Khartoum. His Arabic is less fluent than Garang’s and his arrival in Khartoum on 10 August, to be sworn in as first vice president, was his first visit to the capital in 22 years. Machar is, however, experienced in the ways of Khartoum and most observers believe that the Kiir-Machar partnership will, if it holds, serve the South well.

Although few are saying it openly, there is a widespread belief, both among Southerners and the army of foreign advisers in the South, that a South Sudan government under Kiir will be more inclusive, efficient, accountable and democratic than it would have been under his predecessor. Garang was accused of being authoritarian and secretive and charged by many of tribalism and nepotism, of running a “kitchen cabinet” and keeping the SPLA structurally weak.

“The movement is in the hands of a few and many are alienated,” one commander charged. Another said: “The chairman is placing his relatives in key positions… There might be a popular uprising one day and the army will join the public.” Kiir has attacked “rampant” corruption in the SPLA: “Corruption, as a result of the lack of structures, has created a lack of accountability that will be difficult to eradicate… Some members of the Movement have formed private companies, bought houses and have huge bank accounts in foreign countries. What kind of system we are going to establish in South Sudan?”

In addition to accepting Garang as vice president of Sudan and president of South Sudan, the US was counting on him to help sell peace to Darfur’s fragmented rebel movements. Many believe the Darfur conflict will be harder to resolve without him. But Garang’s support for the chairman of the Sudan Liberation Army, Abd al-Wahid Muhammad al-Nur, has been a cause of deep division within the SLA. It could be argued that his death may reduce the divisions in that group’s leadership, without which there can be no progress at the peace talks due to resume in Abuja later this month.


Julie Flint is the author, with Alex de Waal, of Darfur: A Short History of a Long War, Zed Books, London 2005.


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