SUDAN’S CHANGING RELATIONS WITH ITS NEIGHBOURS AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR WAR AND PEACE By John Young∗ ‘For a majority of weak African states, regions are sources of authoritative foreign policies, places where power is displayed and exerted. They are also the closest and generally most salient threat to regime survival, thereby warranting particular attention.’ (Khadiagala and Lyons, 2001) Introduction: Critical to understanding the course, dynamics, and nature of Sudan’s civil war and assessing the prospects of peace is an appreciation of regional relations in the Horn of Africa. Indeed, support by neighbouring countries for one another’s armed dissidents dates almost from Sudan’s independence and is a critical element in regional relations. In the more recent period Khartoum’s facilitation of Tigrayan and Eritrean revolutionaries from Sudanese territory proved crucial in the overthrow of the military Derg in Addis Ababa, the coming to power of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), and the establishment of an independent state in Eritrea under the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF). Likewise the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) was actually established in Ethiopia and given state support as a counterweight to the Government of Sudan’s acceptance of Ethiopian and Eritrean rebels operating from its territory (Young, 1997). Subsequently the post-Derg regimes in Ethiopia and Eritrea provided support for the SPLA and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in response to assistance by the National Islamic Front (NIF) to a host of Islamist groups attempting to overthrow the EPRDF and EPLF. A similar pattern was at work in Ugandan-Sudanese relations where Kampala’s support for the SPLA led to, or was due to, Khartoum’s support for the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Countries of the region have likewise played a critical role in Sudan’s peace processes. Churches from the region, combined with the mediation efforts of Emperor Haile Selassie, produced the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972, which ended the first civil war. And the premier peace process during the second civil war is being pursued by the Inter- Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and another initiative led by neighbouring countries, Egypt and Libya has also attempted to bring peace to the war- weary country. Against this background, the following article will simply provide a perspective on changing relations by briefly reviewing Khartoum’s relations with its major neighbours in 1997 and then again five years later in 2002. These dates are not arbitrary: in 1997 there was region-wide political and military opposition to the NIF, while in 2002 this opposition had almost completely dissipated. Clearly the changing fortunes of the regime and its opposition have major implications for war and peace in Sudan and this is the essential point I want to make in this overview. ∗ Research Associate, Institute of Governance Studies, Simon Fraser University Historical Primer: The coming to power of the military under Omar Beshir in 1989 was cautiously accepted by most countries in the Horn and even warmly welcomed by Egypt which saw the in-coming regime as similar in character to its own (Abdel Salem, 1996). And this was the case even when the Islamist orientation of the regime and the critical role played by Hassan El Turabi became apparent. For its part the regime, seeing the inevitable collapse of the Derg, gave assistance to the Eritrean and Ethiopian dissidents who subsequently came to power in 1991. This clearly favoured positive relations with these two countries. To the south where suspicion of the Arabs and identity with the southern Sudanese was more developed, there was greater distrust of the NIF. But initially while the regime consolidated its hold on power and undermined or eliminated its opponents, relations between countries in the region and Khartoum were restrained. This early phase did not, however, last long and by the early 1990s the NIF was pursuing an aggressive Islamist-based foreign policy parallel to its domestic policies. Indeed, while virtually all Sudanese regimes have had Islamic orientations, particularly in their efforts to Arabise and Islamise the southern Sudanese, the NIF stood out by its efforts to export its vision of political Islam to the countries of the region, and in particular Eritrea and Ethiopia with their large Moslem populations. Relations with Asmara and Addis Ababa thus rapidly deteriorated. The incursion from Sudanese territory of a multinational group of Islamist guerrillas into the Sahel region of Eritrea in December 1994 proved pivotal in the decline in relations between Khartoum and Asmara (Cliffe, 1997). And the counterpart with respect to both Ethiopia and Egypt was the attempted assassination of President Hosni Mubarak on the streets of Addis Ababa in June 1995, which both countries concluded involved support from elements of the Government of Sudan (Middle East Times, 10-09-95). While Kenyan-Sudanese relations never reached such a low ebb, they became increasingly tense as Khartoum objected (in one instance violently with an aerial bombing of northern Kenya) to Nairobi’s logistical assistance of SPLA political and humanitarian operations. On the Ugandan border tension also led to tit for tat support for one another’s dissidents. The fate of the peace process largely mirrored these political developments. In the wake of the collapse of Nigerian mediation efforts as represented by Abuja I and Abuja II, President Beshir approached the countries of IGAD in the early 1990s and proposed its intervention (Abdelwahab El-Affendi, 2001). And with relations between Khartoum on balance generally positive with its neighbours (particularly Eritrea and Ethiopia) he and his government assumed that were IGAD to take up the challenge that Khartoum would get a sympathetic hearing. And indeed the SPLA’s initial reluctance to participate in the IGAD Initiative made clear that the movement shared this perspective. However, the Khartoum government misread the regional dynamics and contrary to the assumption of unquestioning support, the governments of Eritrea and Ethiopia were not at all well- disposed to a neighbouring regime based on political Islam and they gave strong support to secularism and to the demand of the SPLA for self-determination. Thus under the influence of Prime Minister Meles of Ethiopia and to some extent President Issias of Eritrea, and with the support of the governments of Kenya, Uganda and Djibouti, an IGAD Peace Initiative was formulated that gave high value to secularism and self- determination in its Declaration of Principles (DOP). The government of Sudan’s 2 forceful rejection of these proposals in 1994 was another formative step in the deterioration of relations with its neighbours. Thus the NIF’s aggressive attempts to export political Islam in the region, the resistance of the region, and the stymied peace process, together galvanised the countries of the Horn, and in particular Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Uganda, to launch a military campaign against Khartoum. And while the initiative clearly came from the region, the United States provided military assistance to these three countries and hoped that it would produce, together with the actions of the SPLA and the NDA which it strongly endorsed, sufficient momentum to overthrow the regime in Khartoum. The ultimate objective of this military campaign by the countries of the region, however, was more mixed. In Eritrea it was anticipated that the campaign would lead to the overthrow of the Sudanese regime, while in Ethiopia the military actions carried out seemed to have the lesser objectives of punishing the NIF and strengthening the SPLA. There is no doubt that President Museveni would have liked to see the NIF regime overthrown, but given his other commitments in Rwanda and the Congo during this period it is not clear whether his army even had the capability of entertaining such far-reaching objectives. But at the least Museveni hoped to end LRA terrorism and create a cordon sanitaire between Uganda and the Arab Islamists of the north. 1997: the Region versus the NIF: Thus early 1997 saw a high degree of unity and commitment by the countries of IGAD, and even Egypt, to seriously confront the NIF. Indeed, Egypt had joined with Ethiopia to co-sponsor a Security Council resolution with strong US support for an embargo against Sudan. Egypt had thus moved from initially urging the international community to accept the NIF to making clear at the highest levels its revulsion of the regime. This was not only based on the attempted assassination of Mubarak, which Cairo was convinced had NIF support, but also its conviction that the regime was assisting the Egyptian Moslem Brothers. Cairo was also aggrieved at the confiscation of state properties in Khartoum and alarmed at Turabi’s assumption of a leading role in the internationalist Islamist movement, Sudan’s growing relations with Iran, which Cairo saw as its major challenger for dominance in the Middle East, and of its endorsement of Iraq in the Gulf War. With all of these grievances in mind Egypt deliberately intensified the conflict over the long contentious Halib area along Sudan and Egypt’s joint border near the Red Sea and endeavoured in both the Arab world and in international forums to isolate the NIF. Although Cairo could not follow IGAD in accepting self-determination for southern Sudan, its hatred of the Khartoum regime and desire to see it replaced was not very different from that of the IGAD countries. Indeed, largely to counter southern demands for self-determination, Egypt and Libya proposed a peace initiative that involved the various parties to the conflict coming together and establishing a transitional government. The emphasis was on achieving consensus of the country’s major political forces, but it was widely seen as an attempt to reach agreement among the northern political parties since it pointedly did not include the right of self-determination for the southern Sudanese, the key principle of the IGAD Initiative.