Understanding the lethargy of Sudan's periphery-originated insurgencies

Abstract

The assumption that an insurgency effort must culminate in the seizure of state power became the go-to cliché of the twentieth-century understandings of the Civil War. However, historical counterfactuals about Sudan's civil wars have cavilled at the accuracy of this postulate. This article argues that Sudan constitutes an outlier which does not perfectly fit this established convention. In essence, many factors have combined to be the sources of Sudan's intractable, periphery-originated civil wars. Since the Torit Mutiny in August 1955, virtually all these uprisings have exhibited deep failings in inducing a complete change in the centre; or separating any part of the country through military means. Succinctly put, they have, with no exception, ended in a negotiated settlement rather than through a decisive military victory by the rebels. Based on the findings of this study, state violence, ethnic politics, and power struggle among the rebels, as well as geography, geopolitics, and the permeability of the borders have emerged as key explanatory variables to this alternative hypothesis.

Keywords:

• General Aboud
• Anyanya
• Khalil Ibrahim
• Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)
• Muslim Brotherhood
• General Nimeiri
• Sadiq Al-Mahdi
• Sudan African National Union (SANU)
• Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA)

Notes

 1. De Waal, Sudan: What Kind of State?

 2. Young, ‘Armed Groups Along Sudan's Eastern Frontier’.

 3. De Waal, Sudan: What Kind of State?

 4. Misra, Politics of Civil War, 23.

 5. Azar, The Management of Protracted Social Conflict; Gurr, Minorities at Risk; Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity and Violence.

 6. Brown, ‘Development and Conflict’, 66–7.

 7. Collier and Hoeffler, Greed and Grievance in Civil War.

 8. Collier and Hoeffler, Greed and Grievance in Civil War, Berdal and Malone, Greed & Grievance.

 9. Misra, Politics of Civil War, 4.

10. Berdal, ‘Beyond Greed and Grievance’, Misra, Politics of Civil War.

11. Misra, Politics of Civil War, Lederach, Building Peace.

12. Doyle and Sambanis, ‘International Peacebuilding’, 779.

13. Anayanya – a term that gained universal acceptance among Southern insurgents attributes its origin to a local Madi language, meaning ‘deadly venom’.

14. Sudan was one of the few anomalies in the British colonial experience where partition was not an option as they so often did in the face of communal or ethnic divisions as was the case with Ireland, Palestine, and Bengal. This was largely due to the role of Egypt in the Condominium, the Suez Canal factor, the fall of the Sultanate in Istanbul and the pro-British trend that emerged in Arabia during both World Wars, and the Israeli–Arab tensions; all acted in concert to moderate British policy on the Sudan.

15. See the film, I am Slave; movie summary: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596352/.

16. The jalaba is a local Arabic term used in South Sudan to describe the Arab merchant class which has dominated commerce for centuries and is disdainfully viewed as ruthlessly profiteering and exploitative. Over time, the relationship between the powerful jalaba oligarchs and those managing state affairs became seamless, thereby creating what can be rightly called the ‘Jalaba State’.

17. Anstey, Managing Change: Negotiating Conflict, 17.

18. Miller, ‘The Crisis in Darfur’, 127.

19. Rolandsen, Civil War Society, 10.

20. In the post-1945 period this often led to local elites adopting a language of ‘national liberation’.

21. Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, 71.

22. At independence, Southern Sudan had one secondary school at Rumbek and a few university graduates. It had fewer political and military elites; those were, however, short-changed at the indigenization of posts. This grievance underpinned a civil action that broke out in the territory in a period leading up to the violent Torit disturbance of 18 August 1955.

23. Niblock, The Dynamics of Sudanese Politics, 223.

24. Rolandsen, Civil War Society, 16.

25. Favoured by Israelis and with more experience than his predecessor, Joseph Lagu, a former captain in the Sudanese Army, assumed the military leadership of the Anyanya.

26. Niblock, The Dynamics of Sudanese Politics, 275.

27. The abbreviation SPLM stands for the Sudan People's Liberation Movement. Its military wing was christened the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).

28. As per the SPLM Manifesto of 1983 (paragraph 23: C), the SPLA military doctrine should have been informed by the following: (a) that the primary strategy of the SPLA is the maintenance of contact with the enemy through guerrilla harassments and engagements in order to maintain momentum of war. Initially, the practice of engaging the enemy en masse must be avoided; (b) that the war will be protracted because of the present size of the enemy and that of the SPLA. The power of the SPLA will grow from small nucleus to a conventional force that will be able to destroy Sudan's reactionary army.

29. Niblock, The Dynamics of Sudanese Politics, 147.

30. Prunier, Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, 78.

31. De Waal, Who are the Darfurians?

32. These Arab nomads were generally known in the South as Murahilin (wanderers). In the latest form, particularly since 2003 in Darfur, they became known as the Janjawid militia.

33. De Waal, ‘Tragedy in Darfur’.

34. Prunier, ‘Darfur's Sudan Problem’.

35. Prunier, Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, 105.

36. Even though Maoism as a political ideology was not embraced by the SPLM, military cadres of the movement took deep interest in Mao's writings on guerrilla warfare – which to a certain degree – informed the outline of the military strategy spelled out in the 1983 SPLM Manifesto. The SPLA officer class also derived its inspiration from a plethora of military classics and philosophies such as Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Jomini, Machiavelli, etc. An admixture of Marxist and social democratic principles provided the context that guided the SPLM's initial political discourse.

37. Mosely Lesch, ‘Confrontation in the Southern Sudan’, 410.

38. Machiavelli, Art of War.

39. Despite John Garang's shaky democratic credentials, unlike most of his colleagues, history has proven that he was resilient and used to take the long view of the situation and was not overly flustered by ups and downs of the moment.

40. Akuot Atem de Mayen – a police officer and public administrator – was a veteran Anyanya I commander who led Anyanya expansion into Upper Nile Province in the early 1960s as rebel Minister of Defence. He served as a minister in Joseph Lagu's regional government (1978–1980). William Abdalla Chuol, however, served as an officer in Anyanya I and the Sudanese Armed Forces, and subsequently as a civil servant after resigning from the military service in protest over Samuel Gai's unfair dismissal. Both men enjoyed a special relationship with Samuel Gai Tut – albeit in different contexts.

41. In the 1990s, the wind of change was blowing across the globe. The demise of the USSR and in the neighbourhood the birth of the State of Eritrea caused an abrupt paradigm shift within the Southern political elites that secession was no longer a taboo. The SPLM dissidents believed that this demand was simply achievable through non-violent methods. This, however, turned out to be a miscalculation that ultimately landed them on Khartoum's side.

42. In the interests of brevity, this article only provides the bare bones on the proclaimed objectives of the split. However, the leaders of the split have contradictory track records on the issue of separation and unity. For example, prior to joining SPLM, Riek Machar had participated with London exiles in setting up the Sudan Revolutionary Congress in 1983, while Lam Akol had formed the Sudan African Congress in 1985, both of which were unionist outfits. Furthermore, after joining Khartoum, Machar set up the United Salvation Democratic Front, which was national in character and fashioned along the NIF Salvation Revolution. Akol first joined the ruling NCP, left it and then formed the Justice and Equality Party with his Northerner allies. Finally, both returned to the SPLM after they were disillusioned with Khartoum.

43. Such misrepresentations, diatribes, and apologetics are rampant in post-split accounts of South Sudanese cognoscenti; for example, Peter Adwok Nyaba, Lam Akol Ajawin, Arop Madut, and Elijah Malok Aleng, among others, have written conflicting and highly infalmmatory accounts on the subject.

44. Hutchinson, ‘A Curse from God?’, 321.

45. International Crisis Group, God, Oil and Country, 134.

46. Gurr and Goldstone, ‘Comparisons and Policy Implications’, 337.

47. At the onset, the SPLA doctrine of combat operations preferred actions that decimate the enemy, reduce its war-making capacity, ensure self-preservation of SPLA combatants, and acquire territory as a consequence of enemy destruction and shrinkage. These templates were mimicked by new insurgencies in Darfur prior to their splits and subsequent SPLA loss of influence over them.

48. As in the South, splits were along tribal and clan lines. For example, the SLA-Abdel-Wahid became a Fur outfit, while the Minawi faction of the SLA was predominantly Zaghawa Wogi. On the other hand, the JEM is predominantly Zaghawa Kobe.

49. After Garang's death, a huge vacuum remained unfilled vis-à-vis strategic matters such as the war in Darfur. Overwhelmed by issues of transition and the aftershocks of his passing, the SPLM remained aloof from the events in Darfur.

50. Hanlon, External Roots of Internal War, 113.

51. Sambanis, ‘Do Ethnic and Nonethnic Civil Wars Have the Same Causes’; Gleditsch, Transnational Dimensions of Civil War.

52. Gleditsch, Transnational Dimensions of Civil War.

53. Collier and Hoeffler, Greed and Grievance in Civil War; Hegre and Sambanis, ‘Sensitivity Analysis of Empirical Results on Civil War Onset’; Fearon and Laitin, ‘Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War’.

54. Gurr, Why Men Rebel; Herbst, States and Power in Africa.

55. Carey, ‘Rebellion in Africa’, 55.

56. Tubiana, ‘The Chad-Sudan Proxy War’, 21.

57. Young, ‘Armed Groups Along Sudan's Eastern Frontier’, 9.

58. This establishes an inextricable link between the interest of an external backer and a rebellion in their neighbour's backyard. For example, the Ugandan LRA has completely strayed from its initial objectives in Uganda owing to Sudanese pressures to pursue a ubiquitous agenda in the region. Some rebel factions in Darfur have become part of the regime protection shield in Chad, while Sudan links its support of the Chadian rebel factions to defeating insurgencies in Darfur.

59. The collaborative arrangements that were developed won the SPLA bonuses from the Derg, dispersed Khartoum's efforts and attention from concentrating on its military campaign in the South, and insulated Ethiopia from its own rebels.

60. Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, 109.

61. In this area, a plethora of non-state actors are active, such as the Darfur movements, Chad rebels, CAR rebels, LRA, FDLR genociders, and a host of Congolese rebels.

62. Tubiana, ‘The Chad-Sudan Proxy War’, 14.

63. Clausewitz, On War.

64. Fall, Last Reflections on a War, 74.

65. See Clapham, African Guerrillas.

66. Misra, Politics of Civil War, 25.