The Security Arena in South Sudan: a Political Marketplace Study

Conflict Research Programme at the LSE and World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School The Security Arena in South Sudan: A Political Marketplace Study Alan Boswell, Nanaho Yamanaka, Aditya Sarkar and Alex de Waal December 2019 Global Panorama, South Sudan Soldiers, July 9, 2011 Image Courtesy: Steve Evans, Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic | Wikimedia Commons 2 The Security Arena in South Sudan OVERVIEW regional sponsors of the IGAD peace process. This includes the so-called Troika (consisting This paper provides a succinct analysis of of the USA, UK and Norway), and from time to South Sudan as a political marketplace, time, Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan, Kenya and focusing on the last fifteen years, from the Egypt; they act bilaterally but also sometimes signing of the Comprehensive Peace collectively, through the UN, AU, IGAD or EU. Agreement (CPA) in January 2005 up until late As is the case elsewhere in the region, these 2019. The paper seeks to provide a framework external actors sponsor, support and arm that allows South Sudanese actors—especially various groups and factions in the conflict, those concerned with promoting peace, while also being involved in international democracy and justice—to analyze their efforts to end the conflict. Through their country’s predicament so as to understand the material and financial support, including their implications of different courses of action, or decisions to withdraw support, these external the likely outcome of allowing events to run actors (and especially the neighboring their course. countries) act as ‘financiers’ in the conflict. The paper focuses on applying the political They also try to ‘regulate’ the political market marketplace framework (PMF) to the ‘security through various peace-making initiatives. The arena’ which refers to the diverse array of paper finds that the political market in South political actors that have military capability, Sudan responds swiftly to the decisions and including those who formally qualify as state signals of these external actors in their joint security providers as well as insurgents and capacities as financiers and regulators. others, who collude and compete (including External actors are neither omnipotent nor through armed violence) for power, profit and infallible readers of the political market — their 1 position. In particular, the paper traces the (mis)calculations while engaging in peace effects of volatility and turbulence in the processes, have profoundly altered the political system on (a) the existence, dynamics of the political system in South proliferation, organization and nature of Sudan. This is analogous to the security actors, and (b) the nature of the miscalculations of a national monetary and relationships between smaller and more local anti-trust or competition regulator. security actors, and those that are larger and In South Sudan, the primary tool used by better able to access external support, the external actors to shape the political market is ‘dominant’ security actors/groups. not coercion but instead (a) material support The paper also focuses on the role played by for different domestic actors, and (b) the ways external actors, namely the international and in which they have created expectations about 1 See Hills 2014, for this concept. 3 The Security Arena in South Sudan future political dispensations and the unsettled political marketplace, and in this case associated opportunities for accessing reflects the habitual tactical calculations of the centralized rents. These expectations are given different South Sudanese actors about their shape through the formulae of their peace respective bargaining positions. In Sudan there processes, peace agreements and sanctions. is even a word for it, tagility, skill in making use In other words, not only have some external of the politics of delay. That said, the delays in actors supported different factions in the the formation of a government of national unity conflict, they have also created expectations may have inadvertently created a window of among South Sudanese political-military opportunity for policymakers to explore ways entrepreneurs about the future structure of a of furthering the agendas of peace, justice and rentier state. South Sudanese political actors democracy. The starting point for those have arranged themselves or tried to arrange explorations must be the recognition that the themselves accordingly. In a well-financed R-ARCSS is both an incomplete peace deal and market, such future rents may be relatively a successful ceasefire document. There are insignificant; however, in an underfunded2 more dangers in trying to make the R-ARCSS political marketplace like South Sudan their ‘complete’ according to a deadline than in value is tangible and real. When armed group utilizing the recurrent delays to address leaders anticipate that they will be able to essential agendas including inter alia the access future rents within a particular political resolution of the boundaries of states, national configuration, they strike more stable bargains; dialogue and mechanisms for transitional as future rents become more likely, there is justice. less short-term bargaining and less volatility. This paper is organized chronologically, around It bears repeating that the PMF does not claim ‘critical junctures’ in the evolution of the South to be a complete explanation of the politics of Sudanese political marketplace. It assumes a South Sudan, let alone the society and culture working knowledge of the various components of South Sudanese. Rather, it is a tool that of the political marketplace model and of helps explain the behaviour of South Sudanese South Sudanese political history; it is meant to political and military elites, and therefore be read in conjunction with the framing papers assists those who wish to see their country on the political marketplace.3 organized according to a different social and political logic. This paper was completed in November 2019, at the point at which the (delayed) deadline for the formation of the South Sudanese Government of National Unity was again postponed. Recurrent prevarication over making firm commitments to an ostensibly durable political settlement—maintaining the informal modus of power subject to continual informal bargaining—is characteristic of an 2 There have been periods when the South Sudanese 3 For the political marketplace generally, see de Waal political marketplace has been flush with political finance; 2015, and for the framing papers, see de Waal 2018; de these funds have not been well managed. Waal and Spatz 2018. 4 The Security Arena in South Sudan Figure 1: A timeline of critical junctures in the South Sudanese political market Table 1: South Sudan’s Political Economy and Political Marketplace 1970s-2019 Economic Period Political Finance Beneficiaries Regional Context Characteristics Aid and debt-led Politicians and crony 1972-83 State borrowing Junior within Sudan boom capitalists Pillage, military Military officers and their Cockpit for regional 1983-2004 War economy clientship business partners rivalry Challenge to (northern) 2005-11 Oil and aid boom Oil, contracting SPLM/A leaders Sudan (Dwindling) payouts 2012-13 Economic crisis None Return to junior status from reserves (Small) pillage and Cockpit for regional 2013-15 War economy None clientship rivalry War economy and Cockpit for regional 2015-18 Oil, pillage and clientship Military leaders oil rivalry War economy and Junior status, regional 2018-19 Oil, pillage and clientship Military leaders oil collusion 5 The Security Arena in South Sudan 1. The Evolution of South Sudan’s able to expand its military capacity and Political Economy neutralize the neighbouring countries through This section provides a brief history of the oil diplomacy. The Comprehensive Peace evolution of the political economy and political Agreement (CPA) was signed in January 2005. market in South Sudan after the signing of the The principal stated goal of the CPA was to CPA. ‘make unity attractive’ but it contained a provision for a referendum on self- A summary of the different phases and their determination after six years. key features is presented on the previous page. After the death of John Garang in July 2005, During the long civil war (1983-2004), southern Salva Kiir and the majority of the SPLM/A Sudan’s political economy was based on followed a strategy aimed at securing plunder and military clientship. The independence at the end of the interim period Government of Sudan (GoS), which was in scheduled for 2011. Although the formal deep economic crisis in the 1980s and ‘90s, determinant of whether South Sudan remained fought its counterinsurgency using militia, as part of Sudan or became independent was which repaid themselves through pillage, and the majority of votes in the referendum, both through military-commercial partnerships in parties worked on the assumption that the which army officers cut deals with merchants most powerful player would determine that whereby the latter would profit from army result. Both also assumed that the relevant operations, for example by trading in scarce power formula would be control over territory goods in besieged towns, selling stolen and populations by armed units, and the livestock, or felling timber. The Sudan People’s allegiance of members of southern Sudan’s Liberation Movement and Army (SPLM/A) political and military elite, and that such relied heavily on sponsorship from allegiance

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