State-Building in Borderlands: Some “Equatorian” Responses to the SPLM/A Directed Order in Southern Sudan Aleksi Ylönen University of Bayreuth Draft Paper for Sudanese Borderlands Workshop Durham University 18-20 April 2011 1. Introduction In January 2005 the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) brought the conflict in southern Sudan to its formal conclusion. The ending of the rebellion marked a new era for the region that had long been marginalized by the central governments in Khartoum. According to the CPA, southern Sudan was granted a semi-autonomous position under the regional Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) along with a possibility to exercise the right of self-determination in the final year of a six-year interim period (2005-2011). However, although the CPA treats southern Sudan homogeneously as one region, its cultural, ethnic, and geographic diversity hardly adhere to such assumption. The southernmost part of southern Sudan, bordering Central and East African states, is historically the home of a number of ethnic groups generally referred to as “Equatorians”. These peoples not only share a long and complex relationship with each other but also with their counterparts from other areas of southern Sudan, which involves different views on political regionalism and self- determination. The GoSS was formed by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) which was the main rebel movement during the war in southern Sudan in 1983-2005. However it being an organization largely based on the Dinka and Nuer ethnic groups, created an uneasy situation among many “Equatorians”, many of whom had fought the SPLM/A, stayed in government held areas, or fled during the rebellion. Since the beginning of the CPA implementation, this has posed a challenge to the longevity of the SPLM/A orchestrated 1 political order as “Equatorians” have devised a variety of resistance and accommodation strategies to respond to its state-building project in southern Sudan. This paper highlights the SPLM/A oriented state-building project in Sudan’s southern borderlands since 2005 and some “Equatorian” responses and strategies to it. It argues that the type of state-building pursued in southern Sudan suffers from severe future shortcomings which can be highlighted through such “Equatorian” strategies. Drawing largely from field research conducted in 2010 in Central and Eastern Equatoria, the paper points out that the current political order promoted in the in the southern Sudanese borderlands unstable and requires significant changes if South Sudan is to emerge as a peaceful state after July 2011. The next section provides reflections based on current agendas and dynamics of state-building and how these relate to the experience in southern Sudan. After that the paper offers a brief background to the politics and ethnic relations in southern Sudan from “Equatorian” perspective. Fourth section analyzes state-building during the CPA implementation period, emphasizing a selection of Equatorian strategies in response to the SPLM/A-GoSS state order. Fifth section of the paper concludes. 2. State-building and Southern Sudan Development and Challenges in State-Building Due to a number of wars in the so called “failing” and “collapsing” states in the aftermath of the Cold War in the 1990s, the importance of the state in the process of peace-building in post-conflict societies became emphasized. This led to its merging with an approach that emphasizes state-building and (re)construction of state in post-conflict societies.1 After the Cold War, the United States (US) as the main remaining global superpower assumed the principal role in shaping the post-1990 state-building agenda. In this context the focus on state-building shifted from “ . building loyal and politically stable subordinate states” to “ . building legitimate states [based on] broad-based popular support for nascent states by creating democratic institutions and spearheading economic reforms” (Lake, 2010: 257). 1 Although Evans, Rueschemeyer and Skocpol (1985) and others had already emphasized the importance of the state for development and as the protagonist involved in, or dealing with, conflicts, this was not featured in the peace-building agenda until the 1990s. 2 From then on more focus was put on the importance of building state institutions and elevating state capacity to promote political order for sustainable peace. Through this re-focusing an attempt has been made towards more holistic approach to peace. This emphasizes concepts, such as “good governance” and “social contract” to promote political participation and the provision for essential needs, such as security and basic services, by offering a “populist” approach to security2 that has intertwined realms of security and development (Duffield, 2001). It also seeks to address origins of conflicts, including poverty and inequality, and promote the main pillars of liberal peace, such as human rights, good democratic governance, rule of law, sustainable development, equal access to resources, and environmental security (Barnett & Zürchner, 2009). The current focus on elevating the institutional capacity of the state to ensure long-term peace stems mainly from the Western approach to state-building. It assumes that sustainable peace, reconstruction, development, and security (both internal and external) are inseparable from the capacity of the state. This convergence of peace-building with state-building within the liberal peace paradigm has to an extent sought to reconcile with the society oriented bottom- up and formal-institutional top-down approaches to external involvement in post-conflict societies. However, the currently dominant liberal state-building’s emphasis in post-conflict states was built on a number of questionable assumptions drawing from the Western experience. For instance, it includes a premise that ensuring the conduct of democratic elections as soon as possible after a peace agreement, and shift towards free market economy, would bring long- lasting peace (Rocha Menocal, 2010). According to Paris (2004) and Paris and Sisk (2009), the expectation that these foundations of the liberal agenda would ensure sustainable long- term peace is illusionary.3 Moreover, the liberal state-building approach experiences contradictions because of its very focus on the state and the particular emphasis on the importance to elevate state’s capacity 2 Hyden (1997) defines the “populist” school as one that “ . accepts that the security concept needs to be expanded to include non-military aspects. Like the liberal school, it also recognizes that developmentalism today must be tempered with a definite dose of environmentalism. It differs from the former, however, in that it recognizes not only states and markets as important actors, but also people”. 3 Indeed, one of the main cases discrediting this approach has been Rwanda where peace-building through short- term political liberalization without clear institutional guidelines and checks was one of the major factors behind the escalation of violence to genocidal intensity (see i.e. Paris and Sisk, 2007, 2009). 3 and legitimacy to achieve peace. However, this ignores the question of what kind of state is promoted and the case specific contradictions between the society and the state, especially in the previous areas of conflict where the state tends to enjoy lower level of authority and legitimacy. This largely ignores the importance of local strategies to the centrally (and internationally) imposed political order and governance, particularly in the case of marginal areas, peripheries, and borderlands where state’s influence tends to be more limited. These local responses may often take forms that are not easily detected but are of high importance when analyzing the reach, influence, and legitimacy of the state’s imposed political organization. Thus, they are highly relevant for avoiding possible threats to political instability in post-conflict societies by helping to indicate shortcomings in state-building. Background to State-Building in Southern Sudan A state encompassing most of contemporary Sudan came first into being after the Turco- Egyptian invasion in the 19th century. It was then overtaken by the state order imposed by the Mahdists which succumbed to the Anglo-Egyptian conquest and the establishment of colonial Anglo-Egyptian condominium. As a borderland, Southern Sudan’s role in this continuous process state formation and state-building has been considered marginal. It was a periphery where the state’s reach, legitimacy, and authority were contested by various local groups at least until the 1930s, and it was subjected to local indirect rule through native chiefs’ administration answerable to the colonial government in Khartoum. During the process of de-colonization southern Sudan became structurally marginalized in the independent Sudanese state. The political power was concentrated on narrow sections of the northern elites which claimed to represent the nation that they defined as Arab and Muslim. In this context, sections of southern elites rejected such definition, at least its application to southern Sudan that adheres to neither of these markers portrayed as the source of national identity, and began calling for self-determination through implementation of a federal system. Promises of full consideration of a federal system were never respected, which was an important factor in the making of the first insurgency in southern Sudan during which armed