Sudan and South Sudan Violence Trajectories After Peace Agreements Julia Bello-Schünemann
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Sudan and South Sudan Violence trajectories after peace agreements Julia Bello-Schünemann Peace agreements can be turning points in complex transitions from war to peace. But they don’t necessarily lead to greater stability, let alone peace. This report explores trajectories of violence in Sudan and South Sudan after the signature of peace agreements. It traces violence trajectories and explores whether these peace agreements resolved, reshaped or perpetuated existing patterns of violence. EAST AFRICA REPORT 22 | MARCH 2019 Key findings Despite ambitious peace interventions, Sudan The 2015 Agreement on the Resolution of and South Sudan are among the countries in the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan Africa to have experienced the highest number (ARCSS) provision of a unity government to of fatalities between 2011 and 2017. be followed by elections in a ‘winner-takes- all’ context compounded incentives for The lead-up to, and the signing of the political violence. Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 in Sudan, saw a dramatic decline in armed It reinforced a political order based on conflict activity and fatalities which stresses the violent competition for power and resources. conflict transforming impact of the peace process. After the ARCSS collapse, political About six years of ‘negative peace’ followed the violence spread across South Sudan. CPA, before armed conflict was revived in the Violence against civilians increased in the lead-up to South Sudan’s independence on aftermath of the ARCSS in South Sudan. 9 July 2011. Overall, both the Armed Conflict Exclusion from the peace process perpetuated Location and Event Data (ACLED) and existing grievances in Darfur and fueled the Uppsala Conflict Data Program political violence. Georeferenced Event Dataset (UCDP The CPA didn’t incentivise fundamental changes GED) affirm each other’s findings with to Sudan’s political order. Instead, it reinforced regard to the trends in political violence a pattern of political violence in which Khartoum in Sudan after the CPA and in South crushes all political opposition with force. Sudan after the ARCSS. Recommendations Peace and dialogue processes need to carefully The risks of introducing elections for consider the trade-offs of who is included and states that emerge from war and that who is excluded from the talks. In Sudan and lack a secure monopoly of violence need South Sudan, exclusion perpetuated existing to be better assessed. grievances and led to violence. The structural drivers of violence and Understanding how to engage in multi-level instability cannot be ignored. If left peace and dialogue processes is vital in multi- unaddressed or traded off against layered conflict environments such as Sudan geopolitics and/or short term and South Sudan. This includes addressing stability, they are likely to spoil efforts intra-rebel group disputes, intra-group and to build peace in the medium and local conflict, and the strategic use of violence longer terms. against civilians. Geographically disaggregated conflict Peace agreements and subsequent event data can improve policymaker’s implementation efforts must ensure the understanding of complex conflict protection of civilians, including from environments and inform the design of state forces. peace and dialogue processes. 2 SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN: VIOLENCE TRAJECTORIES AFTER PEACE AGREEMENTS Introduction Madhav Joshi and Jason Quinn provide quantitative evidence that ‘the strongest predictor of whether the In sub-Saharan Africa, negotiated peace processes signatories of a CPA will return to civil war (or not) are common practice to resolve violent conflicts, is the overall extent that the provisions that were in particular civil wars. Peace agreements are an important component of such processes. negotiated were subsequently implemented’. The United Nations and World Bank report Pathways They also find that the benefits of implementation go for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing beyond signatories and include factions outside of Violent Conflict defines peace agreements as the peace process. That is, ‘viable implementation political settlements that seek to ‘manage the risk of processes pull outside actors in, while failing violence and reach some form of stability’.1 A political implementation processes push inside actors out, settlement is understood as ‘an explicit or an implicit generating greater overall levels of future civil war’.9 bargain among elites over the distribution of rights This report points to some of these complexities by 2 and entitlements’. exploring trends in organised political violence after Peace agreements can be turning points in inherently the signing of the CPA10 between the Government of complex transitions from war to peace. However, the Republic of the Sudan and the Sudan People’s they are essentially ‘words on paper that need to be Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) on 9 January implemented’ or ‘aspirational road maps for the path 2005, and the Agreement on the Resolution of the the peace process will continue along’.3 This is why Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (ARCSS) they do not necessarily lead to greater stability or on 17 August 2015 between the Government of security let alone ‘positive peace’4 in the longer term. South Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation In fact, many post-war societies resemble ‘neither Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO). war nor peace’ situations5 that are characterised by ‘recurrence of violence, absence of security, and political stalemate’.6 Peace agreements can be turning Reorganising power among conflict actors can resolve points in complex transitions from war grievances, but it can also create new ones ‘as the to peace perpetrators of atrocities gain positions of power and influence over government affairs’ or ‘create incentives for new actors to take up arms’.7 It asks whether these peace agreements resolved, reshaped or perpetuated existing patterns Sudan’s 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement of violence. (CPA) formally ended one of Africa’s longest and most violent wars. But it left several other conflict systems For this purpose, the analysis uses conflict data unaddressed, most prominently in Darfur, and by laying from two leading conflict event datasets, the Armed 11 the foundations for an independent South Sudan it Conflict Location and Event Dataset (ACLED) and arguably created new fault lines. the Uppsala Conflict Data Program Georeferenced Event Dataset (UCDP GED).12 In South Sudan the externally brokered peace agreement from 2015 collapsed in less than Scope and methodology a year and civil war recurred. The parties had only Open-source conflict data is increasingly used to reluctantly committed to the deal, which compromised analyse trends and patterns in political instability implementation of the provisions included in across and within countries over time.13 The African the agreement.8 Futures and Innovation Programme at the Institute Implementation plays an important role in the for Security Studies (ISS) has incorporated conflict ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of peace agreements, both in data into its research on conflict and violence the short and longer terms. trends in Africa for several years.14 EAST AFRICA REPORT 22 | MARCH 2019 3 This report builds on that body of work. It focuses on countries have been laboratories for ambitious and Sudan and South Sudan, which are priority countries complex peace interventions. for the Political Settlements Research Programme This report uses conflict event data20 from ACLED and (PSRP) funded by the UK Department for International UCDP GED to explore temporally and geographically 15 Development (DFID). Despite a track record of ambitious disaggregated trends in organised political violence after and complex peace interventions, Sudan and South the signing of peace agreements in Sudan and South Sudan are among the countries in Africa that experienced Sudan. It considers the conflict intensity measured in the highest number of fatalities between 2011 and 2017 number of events and fatalities, the type of conflict, (Figure 1). conflict actors and locations until December 2017. Sudan has a history of protracted violence which is largely The analysis in this report presents the data for the a legacy of how it was (mis)ruled during colonialism. Darfur conflict separately because the CPA was Its conflict systems can sometimes be concentrated in exclusively focused on resolving the war between the typically resource-rich areas (southern Sudan in 2010), north and the south. Nevertheless, the CPA affected the and at other times be characterised by a diffusion of evolution of the conflict in Darfur. violence to more of its territory (e.g. Darfur in 2003 and Both ACLED and UCDP GED are large-scale data- South Sudan in 2013).16 collection projects that produce georeferenced, Both Sudan and South Sudan experienced negotiated disaggregated event conflict data. Overall, they have peace processes that at some stage led to the signing contributed to a more nuanced understanding of of peace agreements.17 In both cases, external actors organised political violence, but they also played and continue to play a crucial role.18 Both have limitations.21 Figure 1: Countries in Africa with the highest fatality rates from armed conflict versus rest of Africa, 2011 to 2017 25 000 20 000 15 000 10 000 Number of fatalities 5 000 0 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Sudan Nigeria DRC Somalia CAR South Sudan Libya Rest of Africa Source: UCDP GED Global Edition version