Rift Valley Institute ﻤﻌﻬﺪ اﻷﺨدود اﻟﻌﻇﻴم Taasisi ya Bonde Kuu ySMU vlˆ yU¬T tí Machadka Dooxada Rift 东非大裂谷研究院 Institut de la Vallée du Rift Local Peace Processes in Sudan A BASELINE STUDY Mark Bradbury John Ryle Michael Medley Kwesi Sansculotte-Greenidge Commissioned by the UK Government Department for International Development “Our sons are deceiving us... … Our soldiers are confusing us” Chief Gaga Riak Machar at Wunlit Dinka-Nuer Reconciliation Conference 1999 “You, translators, take my words... It seems we are deviating from our agenda. What I expected was that the Chiefs of our land, Dinka and Nuer, would sit on one side and address our grievances against the soldiers. I differ from previous speakers… I believe this is not like a traditional war using spears. In my view, our discussion should not concentrate on the chiefs of Dinka and Nuer, but on the soldiers, who are the ones who are responsible for beginning this conflict. “When John Garang and Riek Machar [leaders of rival SPLA factions] began fighting did we understand the reasons for their fighting? When people went to Bilpam [in Ethiopia] to get arms, we thought they would fight against the Government. We were not expecting to fight against ourselves. I would like to ask Commanders Salva Mathok & Salva Kiir & Commander Parjak [Senior SPLA Commanders] if they have concluded the fight against each other. I would ask if they have ended their conflict. Only then would we begin discussions between the chiefs of Dinka and Nuer. “The soldiers are like snakes. When a snake comes to your house day after day, one day he will bite you. Since God has given us this meeting together, we must ask the soldiers if they have concluded their conflicts… We Dinka and Nuer, did it ever happen, when we used to fight with spears and shields, that foreigners were called in to assist us? The cattle that were raided from both sides, and the children that were abducted [in the present conflict] - I think ordinary citizens were not involved in these actions. Basically we are not very powerful. But if we are indeed powerful then we must raise a case against the soldiers. If we decide to recover the cattle from Dinka and Nuer, you will not obtain them from ordinary citizens, but from the soldiers who hold them now. “In the peace meetings we concluded with those of Twic County [in N. Bahr el Ghazal], I was a participant. I have always been called to attend these meetings, but I do not honestly understand the genesis of these problems. We have been called to reconciliation… Even if we sacrifice a hundred head of cattle to confirm our agreements…in the end will we be able to restrain the actions of the soldiers when they determine to raid? "Our soldiers are confusing us…. What are they really doing? [Dinka begin to sing]. What is happening is, our sons are deceiving us. Take Matip [leader of pro- Government Nuer armed group], when he split from Riek, he raided us. Traditionally, when we have a lion that attacks and eats our cattle, we kill it. I tell you, let us grasp hands, and ask Matip where he stands. If he says he is a man of Omer [Beshir, President of Sudan] let us prohibit him form taking our oil and get rid of him [applause]. I tell you Southerners, if John Garang and Riek Machar are deceiving us by allowing us to have this meeting, and later refuse to honour our agreement, then we must rebel against them… We must overthrow them so that we can be united and move forward. I will stop here, since I was taken by a fever last night.” Page 2 Local Peace Processes in Sudan: A baseline study Contents 2 Epigraph 3 Contents 5 Introduction 9 Summary of Findings 17 Observations on the Political Economy of Local Peacemaking in Sudan 22 Table: Typology of conflict (from Pact and UNICEF reports) 27 Table: International organizations and their selection of peace-building activities Case Studies 31 I Wunlit and the “people-to-people” movement 45 Table: Counties and districts represented at Wunlit 62 II Ceasefire and local dialogue in the Nuba Mountains 73 III Abyei and the North-South peace process 75 Table: Peace markets in Northern Bahr-al-Ghazal and Abyei 76 Table: Sections and subsections of Misseriya Humr 81 Table: Abyei peace process: participants and their interests 85 IV The crisis of the judiyya system in Darfur 87 Table: Ethnolinguistic groups in Darfur 105 Bibliography 139 Acronyms 143 Glossary of indigenous terms 145 Acknowledgments 147 List of peace meetings by region and date 176 Chronological and geographical table of peace meetings 181 Map of peace meetings and ethnic groups in Sudan 183 Annexe: Comments by Pact on the present study Published 2006 by the Rift Valley Institute under Creative Commons licence 2.5 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ Page 4 Local Peace Processes in Sudan: A baseline study Introduction Civil war and local conflict in Sudan Sudan has been at war for more than two decades. The war in the South (and in the transitional zone between South and North) came to an uneasy end in 2005 with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). At the time of writing the war in the West, in Darfur, remains unresolved. In the East the threat of conflict is ever present. The CPA offers a partial solution to the endemic violence that afflicts many parts of the country, but it is widely recognised that local conflicts, among other factors, have the potential to undermine any existing agreement, disrupting the process of political normalization envisaged during the six-year interim period. Parallel to the internationally-sponsored peace negotiations that brought an end to the war in the South — and the current talks that aim to do the same in the case of Darfur — there has been an array of local peace meetings and conferences between representatives of ethnic and other groups involved in smaller-scale conflicts in various regions of Sudan. Some of these local disputes precede the wider civil war; some have contributed to it; some have been caused or exacerbated by it. The meetings held to try and resolve them have their roots in established indigenous processes of conflict resolution, such as the judiyya1 practised in Darfur and elsewhere in the North. These processes were developed and supported by earlier administrations in Sudan from the Condominium era onwards, sometimes being incorporated into the structures of local government. In recent years they have been revived and modified, often under the aegis of international non-governmental organizations. In the north of the country today, some mediation under the auspices of the Government of Sudan (GoS) still continues, but this has been increasingly compromised by the same government’s use of tribal militias for purposes of counter-insurgency. In the South the SPLM, in its earlier role as a military administration and its new role as the majority party in the new government of South Sudan (GoSS), has endorsed or participated in numerous local peace meetings. The GoSS has as yet no publicly defined policy on their relation to administration under the CPA, though it was reported that early drafts of the new constitution of South Sudan proposed a representative assembly of traditional leaders. So far, the impetus behind the expansion of local peace meetings in Southern Sudan has come, principally, from churches, civil society activists and international agencies. Global politics and local peace The war in Sudan, like the other civil wars that have proliferated in the past two decades, has presented novel challenges to international diplomacy. The doctrines and instruments designed to deal with international peace and security during the Cold War proved inadequate when confronted with a new era of internal wars. These wars, such as those in Sudan, have less to do with the power struggles between states or power blocs and more with structural inequalities in the local and global economy, poor governance and disputes over resources and ways of life. And they often manifest themselves along ethnic or religious divides. In such wars, which are characterised by fragmented political authority 1 Refer to glossary for a translation and definition of local terms. and predatory economic activity, it has been non-combatants who have borne the brunt of the violence, sometimes to the point where entire social groups have been threatened with extinction. During the Cold War period a separation was established between the domestic needs of states and the maintenance of international security. On the one hand there was the issue of the promotion of social and economic development and fulfillment of basic human needs; on the other the perceived need to maintain a balance in relations between individual states and, more broadly, the western and communist blocs. In the post-Cold War period this distinction has evaporated: development and international peace and security have become intimately linked. Responding to the new international environment, the United Nation’s An Agenda for Peace (Boutros-Ghali 1992) offered new policy instruments to address the twin challenges of violent conflict and underdevelopment. Introducing the concept of “peace building”, it marked a shift from classic peacekeeping to multiple and multi-level forms of intervention designed to establish enduring peace in specific conflicts. It is now commonly — and plausibly — asserted that peace agreements which neglect public consultation and participation and which are not complemented by local-level peace processes are unlikely to last. As such, peace building can also be seen as part of the current restructuring of global governance.