What Sustains ‘Internal Wars’? The dynamics of violent conflict and state weakness in Sudan

Abstract

This contribution emphasises the need for a contextual rather than causal analysis of internal wars. Using Sudan's intransigent north–south divide and the crisis in Darfur as case studies, the underlying argument is that, over the course of Sudanese history since independence in 1956, both rebels and regimes have mobilised conditions of conflict to advance their political and economic agendas. The contemporary international system, in which war is understood as both an aberration and a problem with a presupposed solution, compartmentalises the varied and complex interactions of nation-states within a framework that is far from universally applicable. This encourages, even facilitates, the politics of warlordism in internal wars, particularly in the so-called ‘developing’ nation-states. In Sudan conditions of conflict with self-reinforcing tendencies outweigh the power of existing peace agreements. Issues of resource allocation and political marginalisation provide a volatile context for sustaining the internal wars in Sudan indefinitely and make the success of current or future peace agreements unlikely if not impossible.

Notes

1 The term ‘secessionist insurgency’ is here considered distinct from other rebellious movements, particularly the conflict in Darfur. See CS Clapham (ed), African Guerrillas, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998.

2 T Dagne & Congressional Research Service (crs), ‘Sudan: the crisis in Darfur and the status of the north–south peace agreement’, crs Report for Congress RL33574, Washington, DC: crs, updated 27 March 2007.

3 US Agency for International Development (usaid), ‘Sudan—complex emergency: situation report #16, Fiscal Year (fy) 2007’, 27 July 2007, para 1, at http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/humanitarian_assistance/disaster_assistance/countries/sudan/template/fs_sr/sudan_ce_sr16_07-27-2007.pdf, accessed 4 May 2008.

4 Dagne & crs, ‘Sudan’, p 8. Multiple sources present a broad range of casualty estimates of civilians in Darfur, of which the quoted figure is on the high side and intentionally presented as such. Measures of displaced persons may be considered more easily quantified and can thus serve as a better indicator of the scope of domestic conflict.

5 United Nations, ‘Security Council authorizes deployment of United Nations–African Union “hybrid” peace operation in bid to resolve Darfur conflict’, Security Council SC/9089, 31 July 2007, at http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2007/sc9089. doc.htm, accessed 4 May 2008.

6 See also, PT Colloton, BR Maitre & TE Stoner, ‘An adaptive security construct: insurgency in Sudan’, Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, 2007.

7 The presentation of these terms as dichotomous is intended here as illustrative of a perceived ultimate expression of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. The problems inherent in a quantified or delineated definition of these terms are too numerous to be addressed here. Instead they provide a reminder that efforts of outside actors to influence the internal affairs of others may be guided by a mirror-image of what should be rather than of what is.

8 C Cramer, Violence in Developing Countries: War, Memory, Progress, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006, pp 7, 114–124. The author examines war as integral to a process of societal transition, as opposed to occurring as a result of that transition.

9 Ibid, pp 135–136. See also, BR Maitre, ‘Echoes and origins of an American way of war', Comparative Strategy, 27 (3), 2008, pp 248–266.

10 RH Shultz, Jr & AJ Dew, Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, p 6. The anthropological work on ‘traditional warfare’ referenced in this source is H Turney-High, Primitive Warfare, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1949.

11 Cramer, Violence in Developing Countries, p 75.

12 Shultz & Dew, Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias, p 33. Despite this engaging insight, the authors also assert: ‘Internal wars are the result of political conflicts over the distribution of resources by competing elites’ (emphasis in the original). Through this assertion, the authors end up applying the very explanatory oversimplification they so astutely critiqued in their earlier point.

13 LN Tolstoy, War and Peace, London: Penguin, 1982, Book Nine: 1812–ch 1.

14 Cramer, Violence in Developing Countries, p 2. The author references the Uppsala Conflict Database, available online at http://www.pcr.uu.se/database/, accessed 4 May 2008.

15 Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy Magazine, ‘Failed States Index 2007’, Foreign Policy, July–August 2007, at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3865, accessed 4 May 2008. The other sub-Saharan states in the top 10 were the Central African Republic, Chad, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The non-African states in the top 10 were Iraq and Afghanistan.

16 The ‘humanitarian crisis’ aspect of the conflict in Darfur has been subject to the particular attentions of international activism. See D Cheadle & J Prendergast, Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond, New York: Hyperion, 2007.

17 The ‘Closed District Act’ imposed in 1935 barred movement between northern and southern Sudan and predated independence by over two decades. The separation of peoples and tribes was encouraged by the divide-and-conquer policies of Anglo-Egyptian colonial rule. See T Niblock, Class and Power in Sudan: The Dynamics of Sudanese Politics, 1898–1985, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987.

18 AM Lesch, The Sudan: Contested National Identities, Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998, p 3.

19 E O'Ballance, The Secret War in the Sudan: 1955–1972, Hamden, CT: Archon, 1977, pp 48–53. The term ‘civil war’ is here used in deference to the cited literature. This contribution defaults to the term ‘internal war’.

20 DH Johnson, African Issues: The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003, p 222.

21 E O'Ballance, Sudan: Civil War and Terrorism, 1956–99, New York: St Martin's Press, 2000, p 156.

22 Dagne & crs, ‘Sudan’, p 15. Additional sources indicate a prevailing preference for independence within southern Sudanese public opinion that is ironically coincidental with a pervasive distrust of the interim Government of South Sudan (goss). See ‘The leading website for South Sudan secession and national independence’, at http://www.southsudannation.com, accessed 4 May 2008.

23 J Prendergast, ‘Resolving the three headed war from hell in southern Sudan, northern Uganda, and Darfur’, Africa Program Occasional Paper Series, 3, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2005, p 1.

24 A De Waal, ‘Who are the Darfurians? Arab and African identities, violence and external engagement’, African Affairs, 105 (415), 2005, pp 181–205.

25 Autochthony refers to a process of nativism in constructed opposition to outsiders. For other examples of autochthony in civil strife, particularly as institutionalised in the government policies of Cote D'Ivoire, see M B⊘ås & K Dunn (eds), African Guerrillas: Raging Against the Machine, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007.

26 jem, ‘Proposal for peace in Sudan in general and Darfur in particular’, nd, at http://www.sudanjem.com, accessed 4 May 2008; and Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (slm/a), ‘Political declaration’, 14 March 2005, at http://www.sudan.net/news/press/postedr/214.shtml, accessed 4 May 2008.

27 PD Williams & A Bellamy, ‘The responsibility to protect and the crisis in Darfur’, Security Dialogue, 36 (1), 2005, p 30. Additional sources present conflicting estimates as to the number of government soldiers killed, ranging from several dozen to over 100.

28 PD Williams, ‘Military responses to mass killing: the African Union mission in Sudan’, International Peacekeeping, 13 (12), 2006, pp 175–177.

29 M Suliman, ‘Civil war in the Sudan: from ethnic to ecological conflict’, The Ecologist, 23 (3), 1993, p 104. A conceptualisation of ‘how environmental scarcity is linked to domestic political unrest’ can also be found in JJ Morrissette & DA Borer, ‘Where oil and water do mix: environmental scarcity and future conflict in the Middle East and North Africa’, Parameters, 34 (4), p 87.

30 L Cederman & L Girardin, ‘Beyond fractionalization: mapping ethnicity onto nationalist insurgencies’, American Political Science Review, 101 (1), 2007, p 173, present findings that ‘cast doubt on the tendency to ignore ethnic politics as an explanation of civil wars’. See also JD Fearon, K Kasara & DD Laitin, ‘Ethnic minority rule and civil war onset’, American Political Science Review, 101 (1), 2007, p 187. ‘We find that although there has been a tendency for states with ethnic minority leaders to have had a higher risk of civil war, the tendency is weak. It is neither statistically significant nor substantively strong.’

31 RD Putnam, ‘Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games’, International Organization, 42 (3), 1988, pp 427–460. See also G Tsebelis, Nested Games: Rational Choice in Comparative Politics, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990. Both authors demonstrate how domestic constraints lead to the apparent sub-optimal choices of political actors in international affairs.

32 S Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006, p 42.

33 Ibid, p 419.

34 P Woodward, ‘Is the Sudan governable? Some thoughts on the experience of liberal democracy and military rule’, Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies), 13 (2), 1986, p 144.

35 J Migdal, State in Society: Studying how States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p 71.

36 C Tilly, ‘War making and state making as organized crime’, in P Evans, D Rueschemeyer & T Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, p 171.

37 DM Wai, ‘Revolution, rhetoric, and reality in the Sudan’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 17 (1), 1979, p 89.

38 DM Wai, ‘The Sudan: domestic politics and foreign relations under Nimiery’, African Affairs, 78 (312), 1979, p 308.

39 W Reno, Warlord Politics and African States, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999, p 7.

40 Ibid, p 2. The original source can be found in Jean-François Bayart, L'État en Afrique, Paris: Fayard, 1989.

41 EA Shultz & RH Lavenda, Cultural Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human Condition, Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1998, p 235.

42 R Lobban, Conference presentation during, ‘Socio-Cultural Modeling and Strategic Multilayer Assessment’, Arlington, VA, 21 March 2007.

43 International Crisis Group (icg), ‘Sudan's comprehensive peace agreement: the long road ahead’, icg Africa Report, 106, March 2006, at http://www.reliefweb.int/library/documents/2006/icg-sdn-31mar.pdf, accessed 4 May 2008. The cpa marked the first time the splm (Movement) and spla (Army) were formally separated into distinct branches. Both terms are used here respectively to refer to the political and military arms of the organisation.

44 Admittedly biased views on the corruption of southern Sudanese leadership can be found in corroborating points on both sides. See JK Lupai, ‘South Sudan needs strong leadership’, Sudan Tribune, 22 April 2007; and UT Kir, ‘Zigzagging paths to the precipitating demise of cpa and the post 2011 era of armed struggles in South Sudan’, SouthSudanNation.com, 28 May 2007, at http://www.southsudannation.com/zigzaging%20paths%20to%20demise%20cpa3.htm, accessed 8 August 2007.

45 ØH Rolandsen, ‘Sudan: the Janjawiid and government militias’, in B⊘ås & Dunn, African Guerrillas, pp 155, 157.

46 Ibid, pp 158–159, 161; and Human Rights Watch, ‘Darfur documents confirm government policy of militia support’, 20 July 2004, at http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/07/19/darfur9096.htm, accessed 4 May 2008. The term Janjaweed has nearly as many spellings as possible definitions. The usage elected by quoted references is maintained here, while I default to ‘Janjaweed’.

47 icg, ‘Sudan's comprehensive peace agreement’.

48 Anonymous, ‘Sudan’, Oxford Economic Country Briefings, 28 February 2007. In 2005 China received 65.2% of Sudan's export goods, primarily oil. Oil reserves are concentrated largely within the contested north–south divide. Several countries, including China, Malaysia and Switzerland have purchased oil concessions in disputed areas. See also usaid, ‘Sudan oil and gas concessions holders’, Map 8.1.2001, text at http://www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan_africa/sudan/map_oil_text.html, accessed 12 September 2007.

49 CJ Coyne, ‘Reconstructing weak and failed states: foreign intervention and the nirvana fallacy’, Foreign Policy Analysis, 2, 2006, p 344. Coyne uses a case study of Somalia to illustrate his hypothesis.

50 M Van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p 403. The author presents a historical account of the rise and projected decline of the state-centric system.

51 Coyne, ‘Reconstructing weak and failed states’, p 356. Coyne uses the concept of embedded political contests as developed and outlined by Tsebelis in Nested Games.

52 W Reno, ‘Congo: from state collapse to “absolutism”, to state failure’, Third World Quarterly, 27 (1), 2006, p 52. The article discusses the initial ‘success’ and subsequent decline of a nationalised state industry in the former Zaire under Mobutu Sese Seko, in which limited economic prosperity was retained within the hands of the regime elite. Of particular relevance is the extent to which Mobutu manipulated ethnic affiliations, as ‘ethnicity provided a sensible means to take direct control over commercial opportunities’, p 51.

53 J Migdal, ‘The state in society: an approach to struggles for domination’, in J Migdal, A Kohli & V Shue (eds), State Power and Social Forces, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp 7–34.

54 G Prunier, Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005, p 140. See also Rolandsen, ‘Sudan’, p 159. The UN has found no genocidal intent on the part of the Sudanese government and therefore terms government policies in Darfur ‘ethnic cleansing’.

55 icg, ‘Sudan's comprehensive peace agreement’, p 25.

56 J Hulsman & A Debat, ‘In praise of warlords’, The National Interest, 84, 2006, p 52.

57 LA Kuznar & R Sedlmeyer, ‘Collective violence in Darfur: an agent-based model of pastoral nomad/sedentary peasant interaction’, Mathematical Anthropology and Cultural Theory: An International Journal, 1 (4), 2005, pp 1–22.

58 Reno, Warlord Politics and African States, p 29.

59 GH McCormick & G Owen, ‘Factionalism, violence, and bargaining in civil wars’, Homo Oeconomicus, XX (4), Munich: accedo, 2004, p 362. As referenced by the authors, see also IW Zartman, Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989; and A Simons, ‘Making sense of ethnic cleansing’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 22 (1), 1999, pp 1–20.