1.0 Introduction

This copy of the South Sudan Series sets the scene by briefly analyzing the southern Sudan conflict since Sudan’s 1956 independence, critically examining the peace agreement that brought to an end the first north-south conflict fought from Sudan’s independence in 1956 to 1972 and how it fed into the second conflict which started in 1983 and ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005. The analysis explores some of the dominant theoretical explanations of the phenomenon of conflict and state-building to conceptualize the nature of interaction between historical, political, socio-economic and other dimensions of violence and violent conflict in relation to the post-independence conflict of Sudan and the build-up to the 2005 CPA. Although this section draws on two theoretical approaches – that is neo-classical economics verses psychological theories as its main foundation upon which its analysis is drawn, reference shall also be made to several other theoretical perspectives that may have some complementary but different linkages relevant for this analysis.

1.1 The Theoretical Perspective

Since the collapse of Sudan’s first peace pact and the return to violent conflict in 1983, there is a continued discourse attempting to explain the aetiology of violence and violent conflict in developing countries in order to inform humanitarian intervention (Hirshleifer 1994; Collier 2000; Cramer 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2011; World Bank 2003). This has warranted the development of several paradigms within both international relations and conflict studies with the most significant being the psychological based grievance argument verses the neo-classical economics greed based explanation of civil conflict. Most recently, especially from the later-half of 2000s the development within the conflict discourse witnessed the advent of a more sophisticated approach, the Political Economy approach.

1.1.1 Why the Political Economy Approach?

A political economy approach is an interdisciplinary study drawing upon several disciplines such as economics, sociology, and political science to analyse the interaction between political institutions, the political environment, and the economic system and how this form of interaction can be used to understand civil conflict such as southern Sudan’s (Wood 2003; Duffield 1994; Cramer 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2011; Richards 1996).

The political economy approach provides one of the most powerful lenses not only within conflict and security studies but also in international relations to assess the distribution of power and the legitimacy of the state and of powerful interest groups in civil society (Douglass North 1981: 21). It emerged in response to the dilemmas presented by the wide spectrum of views and schools of thought attempting to explain the aetiology and response to the phenomenon of civil war that were most dominant in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Amongst these were the neo-Malthusian, psychologist, and political scientist, anthropologist, and economics theses. With the differences in perspective amongst the various disciplines, came a cleavage in arguments, the most significant being the two distinctively competing paradigms of grievance and greed. The former presents that people’s dissatisfaction with deprivation and unjust treatment is the primary motivating factor for political action or violence (Gilligan 2000; Gur 1970), while the latter argues that criminal agendas are a primary driving factor for civil conflict (Collier 2000; Bardhan 1997; Hirshleifer 1994; Collier and Hoeffler 1998).

Although other paradigms, some of which shall be highlighted and used in this analysis, are primarily concerned with the explanation of the causes of conflict and possible responses, it is extremely difficult to generalize or analyze by either one discipline or attribute to few factors in isolation due to the multi-faceted nature of conflict. It is for these reasons that the political economy approach provides us with the opportunity to analyze and view conflict as a manifestation of an interaction between several dimensions of the state-building process (Di John 2010; Tilly 1990, 1985; Olson 1965). The view of conflict as a process of social-transformation in which violence is functional is the most fundamental strength of political economy thesis (Wennmann 2007).

North (1981:21) for instance defined the state as “an organization with a comparative advantage in violence, extending over a geographic area whose boundaries are determined by its power to tax constituents”. Charles Tilly (1985) and Brewer (1990) define state-building as a process and the capacity of rulers to effectively collect tax from its population. However, the collection of tax not only requires substantial coercive power, but most importantly legitimacy of the institution exercising the taxation (Levi 1988). Since legitimacy is crucial in the successful collection of taxes manifested in the high level of voluntary compliance, the high levels of coercion or even predation in tax collection are generally signs of illegitimacy of the state or rulers (Di John 2010, 2010a). This coercion and legitimacy shall be used to examine the source and form of legitimacy of the GoS and government of southern Sudan (GoSS) from independence to the build-up to the CPA.

The argument of this paper is that although the 2005 CPA managed to end the conflict between the north and south in Sudan, it failed to view the conflict as a product of a multifaceted center-periphery relationship consequently ignoring the active engagement of Sudanese population and other parties within Sudan which eventually affected post-conflict state-building. The use of the two theoretical perspectives to examine aspects of state-building in southern Sudan should help to demonstrate the suitability of this argument. The theories will later be applied to examine the CPA’s engagement with the population.

If Schumpeter’s persuasive arguments in 1954 that not only did taxation help create state but also formed it (Schumpeter 1954) is of relevance in Sudan’s case, then it confirms Tilly’s argument of the inherently dual political and economic nature of taxation (Tilly 1990). The collection of tax therefore reflects the basic core capacities of states to formulate essential policies and deal with the challenges of collective action inherent in the provision and financing of public services (Olson 1965, Di John 2010, 2010a). This process requires establishment of technical and political administrative apparatus for the collection, monitoring and development of a tax base. The provision of collective goods can generate divisiveness and violent conflict in society as a result of the fact that the coercive provision of collective public goods does not necessarily align with the mostly diverse individual preferences (Di John 2010).

1.1.2 Problem with the Political Economy Approach

The political economy approach just like other economics based paradigms is still inherently centered on neo-classical economics. Although it tends to focus more on the understanding of how the economics factor interacts with other dimensions such as political, historical, environmental and socio-cultural, rational economics still forms the basis of its analysis. As Cramer (2006) explains, neo-classical economics is founded on the axiomatic belief that everything is best explained from the point of view of the individual and that individual behaviour is a function of choices rationally modelled to maximize utility. This choice-theoretic methodological individualism operates within what Cramer refers to as ‘the paradigm of scarcity’ – that is, scarcity dominates all individuals’ calculation of self-interest, which in turn dominates social behaviour and outcomes.

1.2 Southern Sudan’s Experience with Political Violence

It is not the intention of Permanent Condemnation, nor is it possible, to provide a comprehensive account of southern Sudan’s experience with violence and violent conflict since 1955. This analysis will only provide a cursory glance at the main factors that are relevant for the arguments of this work. For all but 11 of the 59 years since its independence in 1956, Sudan’s experience of history has been marred by more years of violent and brutal civil conflict than any country in Africa (Ahmed 2010). The protracted conflict fought between the Government and paramilitary groups from different parts of the country has seen thousands of people lose their lives; millions displaced inflicting grave levels of suffering on the population in several parts of the country. Welfare and social services, such as education, healthcare, transport, livelihood and other development opportunities, were either disrupted destroyed or squandered as a result of the conflict that erupted in 1955, a year before Sudan gained its independence (Lako 1993, ICG 2006).

The GoS and southern Sudan paramilitary groups were at war between two periods (1955 – 1972 and 1983 – 2005) with the former ending with the signing of the Addis Ababa peace agreement in 1972 (Lako 1993, Ahmed 2010; Yongo-Bure 1988) and the latter ending with the signing of the CPA in 2005 (ICG 2006; Johnson 2011). This paper though concentrating its analysis on the southern Sudan’s conflicts acknowledges that the conflicts that have been fought in Sudan since independence of 1956 has got some shared forms of similarities especially their causal factors. However, the south Sudan conflict also exhibits a range of distinctive characteristics. The phenomenon of conflict discussed herein in the context of the south is not only a southern phenomenon rather relatively shared across the regions.

1.2.1 Putting Southern Sudan’s Experience into Theoretical Context

The conflict that started on the eve of independence in 1956 was onset by “the Sudanisation of the civil service” (Ahmed 2010). This in real terms meant “northernisation” of the country as the southerners were to be excluded due to the lack of educated people in the south (Ahmed 2010). This process forced a group of southerners (“Anya-nya”) into armed rebellion. Their 16 years of fighting culminated in the signing of the Addis Ababa peace agreement on 27 February 1972 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Although the grievance based explanation of conflict seems to concur with the notion that northernisation onset the conflict, it would be too reductive and naïve to implicitly cogitate that northernisation or Sudanisation per se triggered the conflict.

To understand the events that unfolded on the eve of Sudan’s 1956 independence and the subsequent rebellion, a combination of historical and political factors dating back to mid-19th century interacted with the socio-economic factors captured in the northernisation idea pointed by Ahmed (2010) to buildup grievances that triggered the fighting. Yongo-Bure (1988) for instance in his analysis of the north-south relationship as a result of the failure of the Addis Ababa Agreement and the continued fighting between the SPLA and GoS, argues that during the Turco-Egyptian occupation in the 19th century, several elements from northern Sudan during the handover to independence were associated with ivory trade and slave trade that disrupted and depopulated southern Sudan. The Anglo-Egyptian government prior to the 1956 independence did not make things any easier for the north-south relationship as the socio-economic development at the time concentrated in the privileged north and neglected such development in the south (Yongo-Bure 1993).
Although it can be argued that the above factors per se cannot provide a convincing argument for the incidence of the first post-independence conflict, a mutiny of southern troops at Torit, on 18 August 1955 is cited by several as having been fueled by the southerners being referred to as “abeed” (slave) by northerners (Yongo-Bure 1988; Wenyin 1988; Lako 1993). The proponents of the grievance theory argue that shame and frustration caused by some of the things others may perceive as trivial such as the “abeed” in this case leads to an aggressive act (Gilligan 2000).

The psychological argument seems to persuasively suggest that reference to the south by the northern Sudanese elites as slaves played a crucial role in the onset of the civil conflict. The reference to “abeed” made it extremely difficult for the southerners to trust and believe that those, to whom the power would be handed, would consider their interests in the exercise of governance. Alternatively, it may be inferred that perhaps what should be looked at is the contestation of legitimacy of those to be or in possession of state power and implications of such contestation. The importance of political and historical perspectives in understanding the complexities and dynamics of conflict especially how they interacted to fuel sets of grievances is crucial in the understanding of such conflicts. Since independence, the relationship between north and south Sudan and among those in south Sudan has depended explicitly on how elites handled the affairs of the state to earn legitimacy from their population (Wenyin 1988).

1.2.2 Addis Ababa Agreement

The Addis Ababa Agreement, signed in February 1972, was perceived by both the international community and local actors as a move towards putting the bloody past that aggravated suffering behind and forging a new form of relationship in Sudan (Hamid 1988; Yongo-Bure 1988). The agreement signed between GoS and the southern paramilitary group (Anya-nya) was to promote political reforms (regional autonomy), peace and unity, and socio-economic development in the country especially in the southern part to reduce inequalities (Yongo-Bure 1988; Wenyin 1988; Hamid 1988). The 1972 pact survived until 1983 when a new paramilitary resistance movement emerged in the south, soon to be the SPLA (Lako 1993).

The account and the acceptance of the success of the 10 years of implementation of the 1972 pact vary among different actors and scholars. It is however generally accepted that the implementation of the peace pact from the first Sudan conflict saw substantial socio-economic development at private and public sectors as well as self-government in the south (Lako 1993; Yongo-Bure 1988). However, Yongo-Bure (1988), Hamid (1988) and Othwonh Dak (1988) all argue that development during the implementation concentrated in and around the traditionally favoured North and none in the South. Although their argument can be countered by evidence of development in the south including the establishment of a regional university in Juba, modernization and expansion of Juba Airport and construction of a southern administrative unit (Othwonh Dak 1988; Yongo-Bure 1988), these efforts were not enough to convince the population of the south. Lako (1993) points out that despite the investment in the south, the region still grossly lagged behind. For instance while University of Juba opened in 1977 as the first higher education institution in the south, 6 new universities were also opened in the north in addition to the 26 higher education institutions that already existed (Lako 1993).

Both Ahmed (2010) and Johnson (2011) point out that reversion to conflict in the south in 1983 resulted from the failure of the Addis Ababa peace agreement to involve the population and other interest groups in its development process. It seems a common argument amongst scores of scholars that the Addis Ababa agreement not only failed to include representation of relevant constituencies in the negotiation process but also failed to develop robust mitigating strategies towards the negative impact of the changes they were promoting which required concerted actions such as development and democratic governance (Ahmed 2010; Johnson 2011; Natsios 2012). Although this paper concurs with this argument, it points out that development and democracy as discussed below are highly contested concepts for post-war state-building. To therefore view the 1983 return to war in south Sudan from a development and democracy perspective might be a misrepresentation of Sudan’s phenomenon.

The viewing of conflict from a negative perspective which irrationalizes as well as writes off the positive aspect of such conflict combined with the misrepresentation could prove counterproductive. If conflicts within states are to be viewed as a form of social-transformation (Tilly 1990; North 1999;) and development and democracy as a state apparatus of governance essential for mitigating conflict (Duffield 2007; Olson 1993), then the return to war by southern Sudan in 1983 should not be viewed as an absolute failure of the Addis Ababa pact. As Olson (1993) and Tilly (1990) persuasively assert, the process that leads to democracy and development as a technology for governance is prone to conflict. They argue that democracy as a form of government is forged through a violently painful and bloody process that is realized through several years of transition. By transition, the paper refers to a period in which conflict is processed into the production of new institutions (Cramer 2006).

While presenting the Europeans’ experience with democracy through his analysis of the history of Europe and its process of democratization and how it precipitated violence, Tilly (1985, 1999) argues that current European democratic states emerged from the need to raise armies to finance warfare. States made bargains with powerful economic groups, introduced taxation in exchange for protection leading to a mutual obligation and rights between the state and interest groups (Tilly 1985). At the heart of this process is inherent cohesion. To that end, it is therefore very challenging to determine the success of the 1972 peace pact of Sudan in establishing a democratic form of governance after less than a decade of implementation. The political economy approach seems to persuasively present that coercion many not necessarily be a bad thing, especially if it is a process that will lead to the centralization of authority, monopoly of violence and taxation, provision of public goods and re-orientation of social and political norms for the good of members of society (Cramer 2002; Di John 2010, 2010a).

Another apparatus viewed as a measure of governance on the 1972 pact was development. This was a concept viewed by several actors in the Sudan peace implementation process between 1972 and 1983 as fundamental to addressing the north-south conflict of Sudan (Yongo-Bure 1988). Disappointingly to the uneducated majority population of the south, the exploitative and dispossessory nature of both economic and political aspects of development, which are both inherently violent, was ignored or hidden from them when presented as a mechanism for redressing their grievances. However, if northerners referring to southerners as slaves fueled grievances, then perhaps the use of development as a mechanism for addressing such grievances may be inappropriate. Otherwise by ‘violence inherent in development’ this essay refers to structural violence, which is a form of injustice and exploitation built into a social system that generates wealth and/or better living conditions for the few and poverty or deprivation for the majority, hence inhibits an individual’s/group’s ability to develop their full humanity (Galtung 1969; Wise 2013). This is when social structures systematically privilege some classes, ethnicities, genders, and nationalities over others by institutionalising unequal access to resources and public services (coercion). This is what Cramer (2006) refers to as “continuation of war by other means”.

The violence inherent in development has been successfully perpetuated and reinforced through the romanticisation of development demonstrated at conceptual, policy and implementation levels (Bakewell 2007). Because the Addis Ababa agreement overlooked the relevance of southerners’ preparedness to embrace development, it was only a matter of time before resistance to structural violence turned bloody as the population resisted development efforts. To illustrate this, this paper briefly deconstructs the concept of capitalist development/primitive accumulation to scrutinise the nature of violence inherent in development and its relationship with the post-Addis Ababa peace agreement.

1.2.3 Capital Accumulation by Dispossession during the 1972 Pact Implementation

Marxist theory of ‘Accumulation by Dispossession’ sometimes referred to as “Primitive Accumulation” is a theory presented to account for the European experience of capitalism development during the 18th and 19th centuries (Cowen and Shenton 1995). It is a Marxist economic concept that revolves around centralisation of wealth and power in the hands of the elite by forcefully or otherwise dispossessing the public from their wealth, land or means of subsistence (Wise 2013; Foster, McCheseney & Jonna 2011; Sanyal 2007).

In Europe and in European actions in America, it involved the driving of the peasantry from agriculture; the clearing of land; the consolidation of private property in the hands of capitalists; the creation of national debts; colonial loots amongst others (Cramer 2006, D John 2012). All these processes required a concerted action that involved not only violence but also laws through legislation such as the Enclosure Act in the case of Britain (Rosenman 2008), theological and moral justification and the creation of a new form of political philosophy and political economy to justify the brutality involved in the transition to capitalism (North 1990; Sanyal 2007). Once capitalism became established, its pre-history became forgotten and it was presented as an outcome of “natural laws” governing the transformation of society and economy.

Capital Accumulation by Dispossession is a concept fundamental to the neoliberal capitalist policies advanced in many countries of the Global South expanding from the 1970s to the present day (Cohen 2006). Harvey (2005) exerts that these neoliberal policies are guided mainly by four practices: privatization, financialisation, management and manipulation of crises such as war and natural disasters, and state redistributions of assets such as land. Because of their violent nature, these neoliberal polices, despite their anticipated development benefits, have been greatly resisted especially in developing countries. Movements such as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Mexico, the Homeless Workers’ Movement in Brazil or the Landless Peoples Movement in South Africa (Vergara-Camus, 2014) are examples of such movements against the negative impact of the neoliberal accumulation policies adopted in these countries. From the political economy perspective which places taxation at the core of state making is the capitalist accumulation concept of the need to centralize access to and exercise of coercion (Cramer 2006, 2010).

Placing southern Sudan’s experience in the theoretical perspective of Capital Accumulation by Dispossession in the implementation of the Addis Ababa Agreement, in the 1970s, the GoS inserted its mechanized farming cooperation into the Nuba Mountain by forcefully taking huge blocks of land from peasant farmers totaling 200 mechanized farming scheme units of which 196 were distributed to outsiders (Ahmed 2010). This is very typical of “primitive accumulation” that instantly translated into disputes over ownership and access to such resources.

Meanwhile in the Blue Nile state, both the construction of the Roseires dam project and Unregistered Land Act of 1970 dispossessed locals in the Blue Nile state in the south from their land and consequently their means of subsistence putting it in the hands of few capitalists both foreign and privileged nationals from the North (Ahmed 2010). Conflict between the local populations and the capitalists was therefore inevitable. While these are all actions that are perceived as developmental projects whose outcomes provide political and socio-economic benefits to the entire population of Sudan, the implementers i.e. GoS and the GoSS did not have the capacity to mitigate the negative impact nor did the 1972 agreement acknowledge such setbacks. Neither did it prepare nor engage the population to understand such development programmes.
The European experience of capital accumulation was accompanied by not only concerted actions of a strong state that monopolised taxation, access to means and exercise of force but also strong institutions that provided laws through legislation, theology and moral justification to legitimize and neutralize the brutality involved transitioning to modernity (North 1990; Tilly 1990).

On the other hand, GoS had a weak state that had no monopoly over means and exercise of violence (security), very weak or close to non-existent institutional structures to support the implementation of the post-conflict state-building strategy of the 1972 pact. In 1974, Abel Alier, a prominent government minister was quoted as saying “…. If we are to drag our people to paradise with sticks screaming, we shall do so ….,” quoted in Kwawang (1988:254). This statement was made in regards to the government’s experience of resistance by the Blue Nile state on the displacement caused by Roseires dam project. This statement however reflects the unwillingness of the government to engage with the population in development projects. One can also say that the statement is an indication of the lack of knowledge on the receiving population about the benefits of such development projects beyond the immediate consequences. All this could be pointed to the absence of effective governance institutions that could effectively manage socio-economic and political challenges and engage fully the population in the implementation of such development project as the Roseires dam construction.

It can be argued that the failure of the post-conflict government to exert a new form of political philosophy and political economy frustrated progress in other fronts such as confidence/legitimacy building and socio-economic reforms in the south. If the political economy approach’s arguments that it provides the most accurate lens to assess the distribution of power and legitimacy of the state and of other powerful groups in civil society is to be applied to Sudan’s case, then we could conclude that the failure of GoS to consolidate comparative advantage in exercising violence over other faction groups; capacity to effectively tax; and most importantly gain legitimacy over and command voluntary compliance from its population; were the most fundamental failures of the 1972 pact. Consequently, the SPLA elite took the population’s grievances to their advantage, mobilizing resistance along this line to participate in the second north-south warfare that lasted from 1983 until the signing of the CPA in 2005.

1.2.4 The Second North-South Conflict (1983 to 2004)

The failure of the 1972 agreement to produce a government that would address grievances in the south such as boundary disputes, those arising from resource allocation and utilization, mistrust and a lack of security for the southern population led to a return to war in southern Sudan in 1983 (Wenyin 1988; Lako 1993). The conflict fought between 1983 and 2004 witnessed several peace-making attempts such as the 1986 “Koka Dam” and the “November” agreement negotiated between GoS and SPLA but neither of these truces succeeded in bringing an end to the fighting (Ahmed 2010).

Although we shall examine more in the subsequent series, it is worth noting that according to this analysis, the post CPA government would have the opportunity to draw its legitimacy upon the relationship established between the SPLA and people of Nuba and Blue Nile states. The analysis reveals that as a result of the failure of the post-1972 government to effectively neutralise the unpredictable and sometimes coercive and very unfair outcomes of development, unmanageable level of grievances among the Nuba and Blue Nile population was generated (Ahmed 2010, Lako 1993:19-22). The SPLA, a then paramilitary organization, took advantage of the resulting dissatisfaction to mobilize support from this group in order to launch a military resistance against the government in pursuit of its military objectives. The Nuba and Blue Nile people supported the SPLA (Ahmed 2010) with the hope that upon a successful military campaign, the SPLA would not only provide protection for their remaining land that had survived accumulation by dispossession but also retrieve back their land, a means of subsistence already lost to capitalism.

1.2.5 The Relationship between SPLA and the People of Blue Nile State and Nuba Mountain: A Leviathan or Nothing?

Whether the SPLA knew their relationship with the people of Blue Nile and Nuba Mountain would later form the basis of their legitimacy will be examined further in the subsequent chapter. What seems clear is that a kind of socio-political contract was entered into by the SPLA and the population of the south, knowingly or otherwise. The Leviathan is a concept that was coined by Thomas Hobbes in his explanation of social contract in 1651. This concept has been at the heart of today’s formulation of the political dimension of security studies. Through a process of bargaining, people surrender some of their fundamental freedom in return for some form of protection hence the creation of the body that would provide this protection (Hobbes 1651). In the political economy argument of the state-making, taxation and the monopoly of access to the means and exercise of force is central to this process (Di John 2010; North 1990; Tilly 1985, 1990)

Government according to Hobbes was the only fundamental mechanism for striking a balance between human interests and rights/freedom (Hobbes 1651). At the heart of the Leviathan contract is the presumption that if at any point the sovereign state/government broke the contract – that is, threatened the subject with death or could not fulfil its side of the bargain, the contract was negated (Duffield 2007). Whether a contract of this nature existed between the state of Sudan and the population or whether the one entered into between the SPLA and the population in the south, particularly the Nuba and Blue Nile State is what we will examine in the coming series.

However going back to the second north-south conflict, the 2004 formulation of the Machakos protocol offset the previous deadlocks while subsequently leading to five other negotiations culminating in the 2005 signing of the CPA. Unlike the 1986 Koka Dam and the November agreements which failed to provide a pivotal platform for resolving the conflict, the CPA brought an end to the protracted and violent conflict between the GoS and SPLA/M opening up a new chapter for a possible peace and stability in Sudan.