A Small State's Multiple-level Approach to Peace-making: Norway's Role in Achieving Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement

Abstract

Tracing Norway's role in Sudan's parallel peace processes – the official negotiations between the parties and the grassroots People-to-People peace conferences – provides compelling evidence that small states can make a major contribution to peace-making in deeply divided states with protracted violent conflicts. Working behind the scenes with official and unofficial actors in Sudan's multiple-layered war, Norwegians in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the NGO community co-operated in their efforts supporting more prominent mediators – the United States and the Kenya-led IGAD process. Sudan's years-long peace-making illustrates how a co-ordinated effort among many mediators can facilitate a peace agreement with the promise of ending decades of devastating, brutal violence.

Notes

  1. Iver Neumann and Sieglinde Gstohl, Lilliputians in Gulliver's World? Small States in International Relations (Reykjavik: Institute of International Affairs/University of Iceland 2004), available at www.hi.is/ ∼ smallst/Publication.htm (accessed August 12 2005).

  2. John Paul Lederach, Building Peace – Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press 1997).

  3. While Lederach has developed more fully a multi-tiered framework, many other academic analysts of international conflict mediation have underscored the importance of interacting with multiple layers of official and unofficial actors who are inherently and intimately involved in contemporary wars. The following authors have noted the need to engage actors at various societal levels: Pamela Aall, ‘Nongovernmental Organizations and Peacemaking’ in Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall (eds.) Managing Global Chaos – Sources of and Responses to International Conflict (Washington, D.C.: US Institute of Peace Press 1996). Mary Anderson, ‘Extending the Humanitarian Mandate: Norwegian Church Aid's Decision to Institutionalize Its Commitment to Peace Work’, Reflecting on Peace Practice Project: Case Study (Cambridge, MA: Collaborative for Development Action October 2000). Chester A. Crocker, ‘The Varieties of Intervention: conditions for Success,’ in Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall (eds.) ibid. Ronald J. Fisher, ‘Interactive Conflict Resolution’ in I. William Zartman and J. Lewis Rasmussen (eds.) Peacemaking in International Conflict – Methods and Techniques (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press 1997). Hugh Miall, Oliver Ramsbotham and Tom Woodhouse, Contemporary Conflict Resolution – the prevention, management and transformation of deadly conflicts (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, Inc. 1999). Christopher Mitchell, ‘The Process and Stages of Mediation – Two Sudanese Cases’ in David R. Smock (ed.) Making War and Waging Peace – Foreign Intervention in Africa (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press 1993). Andrew S. Natsios, ‘An NGO Perspective’ in I. William Zartman and J. Lewis Rasmussen (eds.) ibid. J. Lewis Rasmussen, ‘Peacemaking in the Twenty-first Century: New Rules, New Roles, New Actors’ in I. William Zartman and J. Lewis Rasmussen (eds.) ibid. Harold H. Sanders, ‘Prenegotiation and Circum-negotiation – Arenas of the Peace Process’ in Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall (eds.) ibid.

  4. A prior peace effort almost secured an agreement in the 1980s, but it ended abruptly because of the 1989 coup that brought the current and more ardently Islamist government to power in Sudan.

  5. The first protocol affirmed a six-year interim period to be followed by a vote in the south on independence, retaining Sharia law in the north, democracy in Sudan and an international assessment commission to monitor compliance. The second protocol (September 2003) dealt with security arrangements during the interim period. The third (January 2004) covered wealth sharing and the fourth (May 2004) power sharing. The last two protocols set frameworks for resolving conflicts in specified regions, with the fifth (May 2004) addressing Southern Kordofan, Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile, and the last, Abyei (May 2004).

  6. Neumann and Gstohl (note 1) pp.12–13.

  7. Nicola Smith, Michelle Pace and Donna Lee, ‘Size Matters: Small States and International Studies’, International Studies Perspectives 6/3 (2005), p.395.

  8. Ann Kelleher and Larry Taulbee, ‘Building Peace Norwegian Style: Studies in Track 1 ½ Diplomacy’ in Henry F. Carey and Oliver P. Richmond (eds.) Subcontracting Peace – the Challenges of NGO Peacebuilding (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd 2005) p.70.

  9. Interview with Salah El Guneid, Minister in Sudan's Embassy to the USA, 9 June 2005.

 10. Ibid.

 11. Donald J. Johnston, ‘Canada's Role in Global governance’, Policy Options 26/02 (February 2005) pp.68–71, quoted on p.68.

 12. Neumann and Gstohl (note 1) p.17.

 13. Interview with a Norwegian diplomat, 3 November 2005.

 14. El Guneid (note 9).

 15. ‘God, Oil and Country – Changing the Logic of War in Sudan’, International Crisis Group, Africa Report 39 (28 January 2002) p.190.

 16. Mahmoud Abbas, Through Secret Channels (Reading, UK: Garret Publishing 1995) p.113. Jane Corbin, Gaza First – the Secret Norway Channel to Peace Between Israel and the PLO (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Limited 1994) p.39.

 17. Interview with a Norwegian diplomat, 1 July 2005.

 18. Jan Egeland, Impotent Superpower – Potent Small State – Potentials and Limitations of Human Rights Objectives in the Foreign Policies of the United States and Norway (Oslo: Norwegian University Press 1988) p.175.

 19. Ibid. p.5.

 20. Ibid. p.176.

 21. Ibid. p.180.

 22. As quoted in Neumann and Gstohl (note 1) p.12.

 23. Vidar Helgesen, ‘Peace, Mediation and Reconciliation: the Norwegian Experience’, State Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Norway's presentation in Brussels on 21 May 2003, available at www.Odin.dep.no (accessed 12 January 2004).

 24. Egeland (note 18) p.11.

 25. Prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik's coalition government of the Christian Democratic, Centre and Liberal Parties (1997–2000); prime minister Jens Stoltenberg's Labour Party government (2000–01); and Bondevik's second center-right coalition government of the Conservative, Christian Democratic and Liberal Parties (2001–05). Available at www.odin.dep.no/odinarkiv/English (accessed 2 August 2006).

 26. Interview with a mid-level official in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 30 June 2005.

 27. Interview with Petter Skauen, Norwegian Church Aid, 8 July 2005.

 28. A view confirmed by Norway's Ambassador to the United States Knut Vollebaek in an interview on 1 March 2003.

 29. Lederach (note 2) p.39.

 30. Ibid. p.151.

 31. Francis M. Deng, War of Visions – Conflict of Identities in the Sudan (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution 1995) p.21.

 32. John Prendergast, ‘Applying Concepts to Cases: Four African Case Studies’ in John Paul Lederach, Building Peace – Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute for Peace Press 2002) pp.157, 154, 158.

 33. Interview with Stein-Erik Horjen, Norwegian Church Aid, 30 June 2005.

 34. William J. Durch, ‘Building on Sand: U.N. peacekeeping in the western Sahara’, International Security 17/4 (1993) p.169. Eva Bertram, ‘Reinventing Governments: The Promise and Perils of United Nations Peace Building’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution 39/3 (September 1995) p.405.

 35. Interview with Roger Winter, Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, USAID, 7 June 2005.

 36. Norwegian diplomat (note 17).

 37. Interview with USAID's Ami Henson, 10 June 2005.

 38. Douglas H. Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 2004) p.102.

 39. Anderson (note 3) p.1.

 40. Kelleher and Taulbee (note 8) p.78.

 41. ‘Norway hopeful about peace for the Sudan’, The Norway Post, 21 July 2002, available at www.norwaypost.no/content.asp?cluster_id = 20181&folder_id = 1 (accessed 14 March 2004).

 42. Egeland (note 18) p.175.

 43. The parties accepted the January 2002 Ceasefire Agreement in Switzerland mediated by US Special Envoy John Danforth.

 44. Interview with Asbjorn Moe, Norwegian military officer retired, 13 July 2005.

 45. ‘God, Oil and Country …’ (note 15) p.155.

 46. Johnson (note 38) p.102.

 47. ‘A New Approach to Peace in Sudan – Report on a USIP Consultation’ (United States Institute of Peace, Special Report 45), available at http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr990225.html (accessed 17 February 2006).

 48. ‘God, Oil and Country …’ (note 15) p.163.

 49. Ibid. p.168.

 50. ‘Dialogue or Destruction? Organising for Peace as the War in Sudan Escalates’, International Crisis Group, Africa Report 48 (27 June 2002) footnote 76, p.16.

 51. ‘God, Oil and Country …’ (note 15) p.168.

 52. Ibid. p.169.

 53. Ibid. A grouping of Sudan's parties and organizations formed the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 1989 in opposition to the fact that an Islamist group, the National Islamic Front, had taken over the government. All NDA members were in the north, with the important exception of SPLM.

 54. ‘Capturing the Moment: Sudan's Peace Process in the Balance’, International Crisis Group, Africa Report 42 (3 April 2002) p.2.

 55. Ibid. p.4.

 56. ‘Dialogue or Destruction? …’ (note 50) p.9.

 57. By early 2002 IGAD's Chairman, Kenyan President Moi, had appointed his military chief and close advisor General Sumbeiywo as his full-time Special Envoy on the Sudan. (‘Capturing the Moment …’ (note 54) footnote 97, p.16.) As full-time mediator, Lieutenant-General Lazarus Sumbeiywo was to engage GOS and SPLA directly in sustained rather than sporadic talks.

 58. ‘Dialogue or Destruction? …’ (note 50) p.13. This ICG report also included a diagram, Appendix C (p.20), that showed five circles of participants. In addition to the first circle (the parties) and the second (the three observer states), the third – called the ‘External leverage circle’ – included Egypt, other key states and the UN and OAU; the fourth – ‘Sudanese consultation circle’ – noted political parties in the north and Sudanese civil society organizations; the fifth – ‘Track II consultation circle’ – cited participation from the Max Planck Institute, World Bank and two US initiatives, the Nile Basin Initiative and the African Renaissance Institute.

 59. J. Stephen Morrison and Alex de Waal, ‘Can Sudan Escape Its Intractability?’ in Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall (eds.) Grasping the Nettle – Analyzing Cases of Intractable Conflict (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute for Peace Press 2005) p.179.

 60. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall, Taming Intractable Conflicts (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute for Peace Press 2004) pp.89–90.

 61. Ibid. p.89; Rasmussen (note 3) p.43; Natsios (note 3) pp.338–41; Mitchell (note 3) p.140.

 62. Johnson (note 38) p.179.

 63. ‘Dialogue or Destruction? …’ (note 50) pp.ii, 2, 9, 11.

 64. Morrison and de Waal (note 59) p.179.

 65. ‘Norway hopeful about peace for the Sudan’ (note 41).

 66. ‘Sudan Ecumenical Forum appeals on Sudan peace negotiations’, World Council of Churches Press Release (8 July 1999) p.1, available at http://www.sudan.net/news/press/postedr/103.shtml (accessed 17 February 2006).

 67. Norwegian diplomat (note 13).

 68. Ibid.

 69. Stein Villumstad, ‘Africa's Longest-Lasting War: Is Peace on the Horizon for Sudan?’, 2002 Annual Report, Norwegian Church Aid, p.10.

 70. ‘God, Oil and Country …’ (note 15) p.69.

 71. Winter (note 35).

 72. Interview with PRIO's (Peace Research Institute of Oslo) Oystein Rolandsen, formerly with NPA, 1 July 2005.

 73. Kelleher and Taulbee (note 8) p.72.

 74. The new Bush administration had designated peace in Sudan as a priority and appointed John Danforth as Special Envoy before the attacks on 11 September 2001. This commitment received more immediacy after 9/11 and pressure from the USA provided substantial momentum. In January 2002, the Danforth-negotiated ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains was agreed to by GOS and SPLA.

 75. Interview with USAID's Brian d'Silva, 13 June 2005.

 76. ‘Facts and figures JMM/JMC’, The Joint Monitoring Mission JMM/Joint Military Commission JMC, available at http://jmc.datenmagie.de/files/1106113438_32094487_doc_4392357865.doc (accessed 11 February 2006).

 77. ‘Norway's Minister of International Development to have talks with parties to the peace negotiations on Sudan’, Government of Norway press release, available at http://odin.dep.no/odin/engelsk/index-b-n-a.html (accessed 14 March 2004).

 78. Winter (note 35); d'Silva (note 75); El Guneid (note 9).

 79. Mid-level official (note 26).

 80. Norwegian diplomat (note 17).

 81. El Guneid (note 9).

 82. Jacob Bercovitch, ‘International Mediation and Intractable Conflict’, available at http://www.beyondintractability.org/m/med_intractable_conflict.jsp (accessed 3 June 2005).

 83. Corbin (note 16). Susanne Jonas, Of Centaurs and Doves – Guatemala's Peace Process (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press 2000) p.43.

 84. Vollebaek (note 28).

 85. Jan Egeland, ‘The Oslo Accord – Multiparty Facilitation through the Norwegian Channel’ in Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall (eds.) Herding Cats – Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of peace Press 2003) p.538.

 86. Anderson (note 3). Kelleher and Taulbee (note 8).

 87. Lederach (note 2) pp.94–5.

 88. In the south, no one group has a majority. At one count, the south has from five to six hundred self-identified groups and more than 100 languages (Building Hope for Peace Inside Sudan (Nairobi, Kenya: New Sudan Council of Churches 2004) p.28). The Dinka and the Nuer comprise the two major cultural groups in the south. In 1990 the Dinka constituted about 40 per cent of the south's population, amounting to a bit more than 10 per cent in the whole of the Sudan. The Dinka traditionally lived in decentralized clan groups that were widely distributed over the northern part of the southern region. The Nuer, the next largest southern group, numbered about one-fourth to one-third the size of the Dinka, and the Shilluk, as the third largest ethnic group in the south, had about one-fourth as many people as the Nuer. The many remaining Nilotic groups were much smaller than these three (‘Sudan, Non-Muslim Peoples’, Library of Congress Country Studies, available at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID + sd0054) p.1 (accessed 22 April 2005)). The lack of centralization in the south contrasts with the north's cultural and political reality. Northerners in the Khartoum region have a shared Islamic–Arab identity and a common history reaching back hundreds of years, much of it as either rulers over varying territories centered around Khartoum, or in co-operation with external rulers. Such a cohesive core does not exist in the south, nor for that matter in the marginalized areas of the north populated with Muslim African groups such as the Fur. Historically, Islam's unifying influence legitimized Khartoum's ruling elite, particularly when its members held a mainstream understanding of Islamic governance that includes respect for differing ethnicities and mediation as a governing process.

 89. ‘God, Oil and Country …’ (note 15) p.133.

 90. Past Islamization integrated with Arabization policies became intensified when the fundamentalist National Islamic Front seized power in 1989 with General Bashir as President. This coup culminated and intensified the process begun in 1983 when then President Numeiry, in a bid to hold on to power, adopted the Sharia as the basis for law throughout Sudan including the south. Several accompanying policies included requiring a national Islamic education system and Arabic as the language of instruction (‘God, Oil and Country …’ (note 15) p.13). Therefore, the ensuing second civil war in the Sudan became overtly religious.

 91. Ann Mosely Lesch, The Sudan – Contested National Identities (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 1998) p.157.

 92. For an alternative interpretation, some commentary blames John Garang and the SPLA-affiliated local commanders for the south's own civil war. ‘Under Garang's leadership, the SPLA directed the war through a cadre in tight control of power’ and used the legitimizing ideas of a secular, equalitarian, ‘New Sudan’ identity that would unite all of the Sudan. A SPLA ‘reign of terror led to extensive, endless destruction of peoples and property’ (Julia Aker Duany, ‘South Sudan – People-to-People Peacemaking: A Local Solution to Local Problems’ in Mary Ann Cejka and Thomas Bamat (eds.) Artisans of Peace – Grassroots Peacemaking among Christian Communities (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books 2003) pp.202, 204).

 93. ‘God, Oil and Country …’ (note 15) pp.133–4.

 94. ‘People-to-People Peacemaking, History in progress’, available at http://southsudanfriends.org/history/ (accessed 25 June 2005). An explanation for the need for peace between the Jikany and the Lou clans should include the fact that the south's largest groups, the Dinka and Nuer peoples, never had cohesive kingdoms or experienced unity under one leader. They lived with a localized sense of identity and group decision-making. As explained by Douglas Johnson:

In neither case are tribes permanent fixtures, even though they were given some rigidity as recognized parts of the administrative structure during the later colonial period (as were the tribes of the northern Sudan). Among the Nuer, for instance, the primary sections of the Eastern Jikany and the Lou have increasingly acted as autonomous political groups. One cannot, therefore, speak of the Dinka tribe or the Nuer tribe: rather of the Dinka people and the Nuer people, each of whom are organized into a number of different tribes at any one time, some of which may be socially and politically closer to tribes of neighbouring peoples than to more distant tribes of the same people' (Johnson (note 37) p.xv).

 95. Lesch (note 91) pp.163–4.

 96. ‘God, Oil and Country …’ (note 15) p.135.

 97. Ibid. p.100.

 98. Khalid Medani, ‘Sudan's Human and Political Crisis’, Current History 92/574 (May 1993) p.203.

 99. E.E. Evans-Pritchard, in The Nuer – A description of the modes of livelihood and political institutions of a Nilotic people (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1940), provided a classic explanation of mediation as a settlement process, particularly on pp.163–4 and 172–5. Feuds were generally settled by payments in livestock. Evans-Pritchard cited a common Nuer saying, ‘The feud has been cut behind, we have returned to kinship’. Also he noted that long-standing relationships help; ‘if there has been much intermarriage between two groups a feud is unlikely to develop’.

100. Inside Sudan – The Story of People-to-People Peacemaking in Southern Sudan (Nairobi, Kenya: New Sudan Council of Churches 2002) p.29.

101. Lederach (note 2) p.15.

102. Ibid. p.13.

103. Herbert C. Kelman, ‘Social-Psychological Dimensions of International Conflict’ in I. William Zartman and J. Lewis Rasmussen (eds.) (note 3) p.199.

104. ‘Sudan Ecumenical Forum Appeals on Sudan Peace Negotiations’ (note 66) p.1.

105. Horjen (note 33).

106. ‘Sudan Ecumenical Forum Communiqué’, posted 14 March 2002, available at http://www.sudan.net/news/press/postdr/103.shtml )accessed 17 February 2006).

107. As reflected in ‘A New Approach to Peace in Sudan – Report on a USIP Consultation’, United States Institute of Peace Special Report 45, available at http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr990225.html (accessed 17 February 2006).

108. Horjen (note 33).

109. John Ashworth, Five Years of Sudan Focal Point Briefings (Pretoria, South Africa: Sudan Focal Point-Africa 2004).

110. Horjen (note 33).

111. ‘Sudan, Oil Crimes Against Humanity … and Canada’, Urgent action Updates and Bulletin 1999 #3 (20 September 1999), a publication by Canada's Inter-Church Coalition on Africa, available at http://www.web.net/ ∼ iccaf/humanrights/sudaninfo/urgact3sudan.htm (accessed 19 February 2006).

112. ‘Pension plan reinvests in profitable Talisman Energy’, Anglican Journal, available at http://www.anglicanjournal.com/132/02/canada07.html (accessed 19 February 2006).

113. Horjen (note 33).

114. ‘Together We Remain United in Action For Peace – The position of the Sudanese Churches on the Conflict in the Sudan’, 7 July 1999.

115. Building Hope for Peace Inside Sudan …(note 88).

116. ‘People-to-People Peacemaking …’ (note 94).

117. Duany (note 92) p.218.

118. Prendergast (note 32) p.158.

119. ‘God, Oil and Country …’ (note 15) pp.137–9.

120. I. William Zartman and Saadia Touval, ‘International Mediation in the Post-cold War Era’ in Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall (eds.) Managing Global Chaos … (note 3) p.449.

121. ‘God, Oil and Country …’ (note 15) p.179.