Civil Wars in the Sudan

© 2007 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

History Compass 5/6 (2007): 1778–1805, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00473.x

Civil Wars in the Sudan

Robert Collins*University of California, Santa Barbara

AbstractThis article spans the fifty years of the independent Sudan (1956–2006) duringwhich the country was torn by five civil wars made manifest by the historicmarginalization of the Sudanese on the periphery by the powerful riverineSudanese living in the heartland along the Nile, the awlad al-bahr (people of theriver) and the deep cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and religious differences betweenthose of the center and the periphery that have produced four of the five civilwars. The longest, most violent, and destructive were the two civil wars betweenthe northern and southern Sudanese, the Anya-Nya civil war, 1963–1972 and thesecond southern civil war, 1983–2006. Moreover, the second southern civil warexperienced from 1991 to 1996 its own internal civil war between the Dinka andNuer that caused enormous casualties and suffering before the Sudan People’sLiberation Army could establish its supremacy. After the military coup d]état( June 30, 1989) and the subsequent Islamist revolution, insurgencies erupted bothin the East led by the Beja Congress in 1994 and in the West in Darfur by theSudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement in 2003.The Beja insurgency was settled in 2006 but the disaster in Darfur continues aftergreat loss of life. This article summarizes each of these insurgencies, interpretstheir ideology, and analyzes the deep tensions which produced them.

Introduction

The Sudan is the largest country in Africa, one million square miles,inhabited by some 450 different ethnic groups and as many languages. Thisconfusing composition of peoples is further accentuated by the Sudangeographically straddling two very different worlds, African and Arab, thathas produced a clash of cultures on the frontier of Islam between thedeeply rooted traditional African religions and Christianity of the southernSudanese and the various manifestations of Islam by the Muslimnorthern Sudanese. Moreover, within the African and Arab Sudan thereare historic environmental, political, and societal rivalries. In the Souththe farmers of Equatoria have traditionally clashed with their morepopulace neighbors, the Nilotic herdsmen who themselves have theirown celebrated hostility between Dink and Nuer. In the North ancestralantagonisms have existed for the past hundred years which have defined

© 2007 The Author History Compass 5/6 (2007): 1778–1805, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00473.xJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Civil Wars in the Sudan 1779

relationships between the more sophisticated sedentary riverine Sudaneseliving by the Nile (awlad al-bahr) and the more rustic illiterate farmers andherdsmen from the West (awlad al-ghirab) and the Beja and Hadendowa inthe East. Consequently, when Muhammad [Ali, the Turkish Viceroy ofEgypt, invaded, conquered, and forged the territory in 1820–21 thatconstitutes the modern Sudan, the task of governing this vast heterogeneousland as a unified colony of Egypt has been, then and now, a strugglebetween center and periphery. In the past two hundred years no centralgovernment in Khartoum – Turk, Brit, Sudanese – has been able toimpose its authority in the marginalized lands beyond Khartoum and thatauthority relentlessly diminishes in direct proportion to the distance fromthe capital.

During the nineteenth century the jurisdiction of the Turco-Egyptiangovernors-general beyond Khartoum (1821–85) was tenuous at best,ephemeral at worst, and during the Mahdiya (1885–98) the Khalifawas forced to expend his limited resources in the suppression of civilinsurgencies on his frontiers – East, West, and South. During the first halfof the twentieth century the British rulers of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudanwere content to control the center governing the marginalized people inthe periphery by punitive patrols and a handful of political officers practic-ing an administration of ‘Indirect Rule’ in the North and ‘care andmaintenance’ in the South, nothing more. After independence in 1956this historic pattern of center against periphery has intensified by Khar-toum’s policies of indifference and neglect made manifest by the dearthof human and material resources to dominate marginalized and rebellioussubjects whose hostility has precipitated Sudan’s civil wars. During thepast thirty years the visible decline of the professional army into a rabblein arms has simply confirmed the inability of the central government toimpose a military solution on its insurgencies forcing Khartoum to seekpolitical settlements on the periphery, in the South in January 2005,the East in October 2006, and the disaster in Darfur which has yet to beresolved by future negotiations which will be complex, hostile, andprolonged for many months if not years. The complex and convolutedstory of these civil wars during the independent Sudan has been disen-tangled in the article which follows.

The First Civil War: Anya-Nya, 1963–72

In 1959 the Southern Problem, as it came to be known, did not exist. Tobe sure, all the elements were in place – northern Sudanization of southernadministrative positions, mutiny of the southern Equatoria Corps, andbroken promise of federalism for the Sudan, and deep-rooted ethnic,cultural, and religious differences that found their expression in northerndiscrimination, disdain and disenchantment for southern Sudanese. Theharsh repression of the ‘Southern Sudan Disturbances’ after the 1955

1780 Civil Wars in the Sudan


mutiny had stunned the southerners into momentary passivity, a broodingbitter silence awaiting a spark to ignite the conflagration that becameknown as the Southern Problem, and the authoritarian General Ibrahim[Abbud, who had seized power from the incompetent politicians in 1959,struck that spark. His military regime launched a vigorous program inthe South of Arabicization and Islamization characterized by appallingignorance, racial insensitivity, and shamelessly provocative when noeffort was made to gild the bitter pill of Arabic and Islam by economicdevelopment.

The vigorous imposition of Arabic and Islam, harassment of Christianmissionaries many of whom had been the teachers of southern Sudanesestudents and the insensitivity of northern administrators wielding virtuallyunlimited powers convinced an increasing number of southern politiciansto flee the country. In 1963 they founded the Sudan African NationalUnion (SANU) in Kampala. A more dangerous manifestation of southernhostility than the impotent SANU was the gradual emergence of organ-ized armed resistance with the southern Sudan. In 1963 some 400 volun-teers, mostly Latuka, had formed the nucleus of a guerrilla force at AguCamp in eastern Equatoria. Several months later, on 19 August 1963,Joseph Oduho of SANU held a meeting at his house in Kampala wherea half-dozen southerners gathered to organize the muddled guerrillamovement in Equatoria which they named Anya-Nya, a combination ofthe Madi word Inyanya, a fatal poison extracted from a river snake andgreatly feared by the people of eastern Equatoria, and the Moru name,Manyanya, for the ferocious army ant. By 1964 the Anya-Nya probablynumbered some 5000 insurgents scattered in fragmented units under nosingle command. They studiously ignored the politicians of SANU.

Although the Anya-Nya was not a dangerous insurgency in 1964, itsactivities soon made the Southern Problem very visible to the urban northernSudanese. The inability of the military to crush the rebels, these abid(slaves), forced the [Abbud government to placate its critics and improveits image by announcing in mid-October that it would permit publicdiscussion of the Southern Problem by students at Khartoum University thatopened the floodgates of suppressed hostility against the regime that endedon October 26, 1964 when massive demonstrations by civilians in Khar-toum forced General [Abbud to announce the dissolution of his militarygovernment followed by the formation of a Transitional Government onOctober 30. The euphoria soon dissipated. On Sunday, December 6,1964 an incident at the airport, where a large number of southerners hadgathered, turned into a ‘race riot’ leaving over a hundred dead to whichthe Transitional Government responded by calling a Round Table Con-ference to seek a political solution for the Southern Problem. Southern andnorthern politicians subsequently convened in Khartoum on March 16,1965 only to adjourn nine days later after having revealed deep andirreconcilable differences between them that perhaps could only be



resolved by a newly elected coalition government led by MuhammadAhmad Mahjub in spring 1965.

Mahjub’s handling of the Southern Problem dramatically demonstratedthat northern politicians had learned nothing from the failures of themilitary regime in the South. He accelerated [Abbud’s policy of Arabicand Islamization and in June 1965 ordered the army to harass and intimi-date the educated southerner elite that culminated on July 8, 1965 in theJuba massacre by northern troops rampaging through the streets leaving1400 southerners dead and most of the town in ruins. Four days later onJuly 12, seventy-six males of the southern elite were methodically slaugh-tered at a wedding in Wau, capital of the Bahr al-Ghazal. Southernersresponded to these atrocities with their feet, fleeing by the thousands intorefugee camps in Uganda and the Congo, but scores of armed police,prison warders, game keepers, and even southern defectors from the armydisappeared into the bush to join the nearest Anya-Nya unit. As the ranksof the Anya-Nya swelled in dozens of scattered and independent campsthese new recruits were ironically armed by defeated Congolese Simbasseeking food and sanctuary in 1965 in return for some 6000 automaticweapons and ammunition. The failure of Anya-Nya units to cooperatewas compounded by their failure to develop a political consciousnessamong the southern Sudanese whom they had frequently alienated byarbitrary plundering of cattle and crops. Many of the Anya-Nya militarycommanders developed a fierce disdain for the educated southern politi-cians who talked while they fought and died, and in some instancesAnya-Nya captains even forbad the use of English to demonstrate theircontempt for the intellectuals who would be the first to profit from anyautonomy or independence they had won by war. Unfortunately, thesouthern politicians had only themselves to blame for the distrust andsuspicion of the Anya-Nya commanders by their failure to forge viablepolitical organizations in the South. The rival southern politicians weremen of limited abilities, conceited personalities, and narrow vision unableto define, let alone articulate, a future that would unify the South againstthe North and bewitched by a kaleidoscope of internal rifts, ethnicloyalties, ideological confusion, and failed leadership.

On May 25, 1969 Colonel Ja[afar Numayri seized control of theparliamentary government and established the Sudan’s second militaryregime. In his address to the nation on May 25, 1969 Numayri had notmentioned the Southern Problem, but it could not be ignored. All but twomembers of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) had served as armyofficers in the South, and they argued that with new and better weapons thearmy could crush the insurgency they called a ‘Mutiny’. Meanwhile, in theSouth Lt Joseph Lagu, who had defected from the army, was appointedchief of staff of the Anya-Nya now grandiloquently entitled the Anya-NyaNational Armed Forces (ANAF) who arranged with the Israeli primeminister, Golda Meir, for a delegation to visit Tel Aviv in December 1967



during which it was agreed that Lagu would coordinate all Israeli armshipments to the southern Sudan. Lagu established his separate headquartersin eastern Equatoria at Owiny-ki-Bul, and consolidated his sole commandof the Anya-Nya. In January 1969 Israel began bi-monthly air drops of armsand ammunition into eastern Equatoria until they opened overland routesthrough Ethiopia and Uganda to Owiny-ki-Bul where teams of four orfive Israeli military advisors were rotated every six weeks. In January 1971the first of many batches of Anya-Nya officers arrived in Israel for shortcourses in weapons and explosives as well as radio transmission, militarymanagement, and primary medical care. Meanwhile in Equatoria Laguhad consolidated his undisputed political authority, and in a symbolicgesture he renamed the Anya-Nya National Armed Force the SouthernSudan Liberation Movement (SSLM). Thereafter, Anya-Nya commandersfrom all over the South made their way to Owiny-ki-Bul to swear loyaltyto their commander-in-chief in return for guns. Lagu also abandonedAggrey Jaden’s concept of an ethnically integrated national army andinstead reorganized the Anya-Nya into separate ethnic units. Henceforth,Bari Anya-Nya would remain in central Equatoria, Dinka Anya-Nyain the Bahr al-Ghazal, and Nuer Anya-Nya in the Upper Nile whereLagu’s authority remained more nominal than real until he createdan Annual Command Council and late in 1970 appointed BrigadierJoseph O. Akuon, a Nuer and Anya-Nya Regional Commander hisDeputy-Commander-in-Chief to organize the Israeli arms shipmentscoming through Ethiopia to the Upper Nile.

The symbolic unification of the Anya-Nya command structure com-bined with arms from Israel rapidly intensified the guerrilla war, and by1970 the civil war entered a new phase in which the Anya-Nya mountedan aggressive offensive, heavily mined all the major roads in Equatoria,shelled Juba with artillery, and prepared a set piece battle for the strategictown of Morta. The battle for Morta raged during September andOctober 1970 in which the town changed hands several times in fiercefighting and heavy losses before the Anya-Nya finally recaptured the townon October 20. The following year, 1971, Numayri ordered a majoroffensive throughout Equatoria with mixed success during which Lagu’sheadquarters at Owiny-ki-Bul was overrun by Sudanese troops supportedby two battalions of Egyptian commandoes. The Anya-Nya retaliateddestroying a major army base at Naupo in western Equatoria in May,where they effectively used Israeli anti-tank guns against Soviet armor. Bythe end of the year the Anya-Nya had fought the Sudanese army inEquatoria into a stalemate.

Thereafter, in the Upper Nile the ill-equipped Nuer Anya-Nya hadconfined their military operations until 1969 to the provincial capital,Malakal, ambushing river traffic, and the occasional firefight. Onceequipped with Israeli weapons the Nuer Anya-Nya launched a coordi-nated offensive in 1970 ambushing army convoys, sinking a steamer on



the Sobat River, and after a month of heavy fighting scored their greatestvictory in December 1970 and January 1971 capturing Pochalla and largequantity of arms, ammunition, and even 82 mm cannons. In the Bahral-Ghazal Anya-Nya systematically mined the major roads to Wau,ambushed an armored column at Tead-Adhol, and ripped up the rails ofthe strategic railway line to Wau. This startling resurgence by the Anya-Nya, now some 13,000 men, was not sufficient, however, to capture theheavily fortified towns in the South. They had, however, clearly demon-strated that the Sudanese army was incapable of conquering the southernSudan leaving President Numayri with no other option but to resolve theSouthern Problem by a political solution with greater resolution than thefutile Round Table Conference in 1965.

The historic negotiations opened on February 16, 1972 in the AddisAbaba Hilton Hotel with the blessing of Emperor Haile Selassie, and elevendays later, February 27, 1972, the Addis Ababa Agreement was signed byMansour Khalid and Joseph Lagu that created an autonomous regionalgovernment for the South, English the principal language, Juba its capital,and the Anya-Nya integrated into the Sudan People’s Armed Forces(SPAF) in proportion to the population. The Addis Ababa Agreement waswell received, and for a few fleeting years President Ja[afar Numayriappeared to be a truly national leader embracing all Sudanese irrespectiveof ethnicity, cultures, lineage loyalties, and religion. He basked in anoutpouring of international acclaim as a peacemaker in a war-torncountry when, in 1972, there were very few in Africa. He relished theadulation and the rumors of a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.Numayri rewarded Lagu with the very senior rank of Major-General inSPAF and a member of the Politburo of the SSU with the authority tointegrate the Anya-Nya into the army. The more onerous task of organ-izing the southern regional government fell to the architect of the AddisAbaba Agreement and Vice-President, Abel Alier, who Numayriappointed president of the Interim High Executive Council. After twelveyears of civil war peace appeared to have settled on the southern Sudan,but few perceived it was not a peace, only an armistice for ten years.

The Second Sudan Civil War and Civil War within the South

After Addis Ababa northern opposition to an autonomous southernSudan steadily coalesced from the hardcore in Khartoum who wereadamantly opposed to reward southern rebels by ‘special treatment’ fortheir insurgency. Muslim Arab ‘nationalists’ were silently bitter that theArabization and Islamization of the South had been effectively terminated.Most of the officer corps was opposed to the integration of the Anya-Nya, who they regarded as ill-disciplined and inferior guerrillas, intoSPAF, and Numayri himself became increasingly disenchanted by thesoutherner’s independence in running their own affairs. Suddenly and



without warning on June 5, 1983 President Ja[afar Numayri announcedover prime time national television Republican Order Number Onewhose sweeping provisions effectively abrogated the remains of the AddisAbaba Agreement of 1972. In a dramatic display, coldly calculated hecavalierly consigned the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement to the wastebasketof history, and in his quest for autocracy and Arab domination, effectivelydismantled the carefully crafted arrangement for security devised at AddisAbaba. Numayri did not have long to discover the folly of his decision.The master of calculation was now convinced the South was powerless tooppose him; how wrong he was. Instead of a committee of southernpoliticians attempting to defend southern autonomy, he suddenly wasshock to discover in May 1983 that he now faced a sophisticated militaryinsurrection, not just a rabble of Anya-Nya, led by young southern officerstrained in his own army and determined to rid the Sudan of Ja[afarNumayri. On May 16, 1983 when a company from the ArmouredDivision arrived at Bor to disarm the 105th Battalion led by MajorKuanyin Kerubino Bol, the garrison refused to submit and fierce fightingcontinued throughout the day until dark when the 105th slipped awayfrom their barracks and disappeared into the bush on their way toEthiopia and a rendezvous with the senior southern commanding officer,Colonel John Garang de Mabior. The second Sudanese civil war had begun.

Although the mutiny at Bor appeared, certainly to Numayri, a sponta-neous isolated incident, it had been planned by Garang, Kerubino, and ahandful of other conspirators throughout spring 1983. Garang himself hadformally founded the Sudan People’s Liberation Movemen/Army (SPLM/A) on 6 April 1983 and in anticipation of the Bor mutiny six weeks laterdrafted the Manifesto, Sudan People’s Liberation Movement which wasreleased to the public on July 31, 1983. Over Radio SPLA he repeatedlyemphasized that the revolution was not for a separate South, which wouldresolve nothing, but a revolution for all the Sudanese to build a ‘NewSudan’, a federation with a central government committed to fight againstracism and tribalism.

Having survived several challenges to his leadership by more seniormembers within the SPLA high command, his first and most pressingproblem was to forge a new army from the defectors of the 104th and105th battalions, deserters from Anya-Nya II, the police, prison guards,and mutinies and massive defections from southern soldiers in SPAF. Withthe enthusiastic support from the Ethiopian government to arm andtrain the SPLA, Garang suppressed Anya-Nya II and their commanderscommitted to a separate southern Sudan, terminated the oil operations ofChevron and the French company excavating the Jonglei Canal, and by1985 had entrenched his headquarters on the Boma Plateau inside theSudan. A few months later President Numayri flew to Washington DCfor a medical examination and to negotiate more loans from the WorldBank and the United States that provided the opportunity for another



popular uprising that overthrew Numayri before he could return toKhartoum. On April 6, Major General [Abd al-Rahman Muhammad Siwaral-Dhahab, commander-in-chief of the army and minister of defence,announced a Transitional Military Government for one year after whichelections would return the Sudan to a civilian parliamentary government.

Siwar al-Dhahab was as good as his word. In April 1986 he dissolved theTransitional Military Council, called for elections, and on May 15, Sadiqal-Mahdi announced the formation of an Umma-DUP coalition government.Sadiq met with John Garang on July 31, 1986 at the Organization ofAfrican Unity (OAU) Summit meeting in Addis Ababa that dissolved inmutual acrimony, a futile and unproductive rhetorical duel, and significantSPLA success in 1987. After heavy fighting and losses on both sides, theSPLA had captured Pibor, Ayod, and Jokau, and inflicted heavy casualtieson government garrisons in Bentiu, Fashoda, Kapoeta, and Maridi. Thecritical fuel depot at the Malakal airport was destroyed. With the army indisarray and defeat Sadiq made the fateful decision to unleash the Baqqaramilitia, the murahiliin, in an attempt to contain the SPLA offensive in theBahr al-Ghazal and Upper Nile. During autumn 1986 and winter 1987 themurahiliin raiders from southern Kordofan destroyed hundreds of Dinkavillages, crops, and seized hundreds of thousands of cattle. Over 250,000Dinka fled south of the Lol River seeking sanctuary and protection by theSPLA who rushed to the rescue, drove the murahiliin back across the Bahral-Arab, and in January trapped and inflicted heavy casualties on them insouthern Kordofan. In retaliation for this defeat the Rizayqat Baqqara insouthern Darfur massacred hundreds of Dinka refugees in Ed Daien onMarch 28, 1987.

Despite the fact that some government officials admitted privately thatarming the militia had been a ‘defensive’ strategy that had gone badlywrong, Sadiq was determined to seek a military solution in 1988. TheSPAF spring offensive at first defeated several SPLA units, destroyed thelargest SPLA camp in the Upper Nile, and recaptured Torit on July 1,1988, a serious setback to SPLA operations in eastern Equatoria. Inthe Bahr al-Ghazal Sadiq unleashed the Missiriya murahiliin upon Dinkacivilians, much to the disgust of professional officers in the army, in whichthey would attack a Dinka village at dawn, kill all adult males who couldnot escape, rape the women, and enslave the children. The village wasburned, the wells stuffed with dead Dinka males, schools and clinicsdestroyed, and the huge herds of cattle rounded-up as loot. By theend of 1988 over 250,000 southerners, mostly Dinka had died from themurahiliin, disease, and starvation and nearly three million southernSudanese had fled to refugee camps or the urban centers in the North,mostly surrounding Khartoum, where some two million southernershastily erected suburban shanty towns.

While the Dinka were dying in 1988 the rains dramatically returnedto the Sudan to end the great drought, and in November Garang had



significantly improved his political position by a peace agreement withMuhammad [Uthman al-Mirghani that made it easier for him to launcha military offensive after the New Year. On January 28, 1989 the SPLAcaptured the strategic Upper Nile town of Nasir, a staggering blow to thegovernment that precipitated a succession of military victories to changethe course of the civil war by mid-summer 1989. Torit was recaptured onFebruary 27, 1989; Parajok, Nimule, Mongalla, and Gemmaiza wereoverrun in March. In April Akobo fell to the SPLA followed by Waat inMay. In the Nuba Mountains SPLA crushed a combined force of armyand murahiliin at Korongo Abdallah in January 1989 followed by the entryof the New Kush battalion led by Yusuf Kuwa in March. By spring 1989morale within the army had disintegrated as the SPLA displayed a disci-plined unity of purpose under the iron fist of John Garang de Mabiorwho parlayed his military victories into a successful visit to Washingtonand London leaving behind the impression that he, not the ditheringSadiq, was in control of affairs.

On the night of June 30, 1989 Brigadier ‘Umar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashirled a select group of officer to overthrow the civilian coalition govern-ment of Sadiq al-Mahdi in a bloodless coup d’état. Unlike the previoustwo military seizure of government this coup was not just another bunchof disgruntled junior officers seizing the government but a revolution toimpose a homogeneous Arab culture and a salafist Islamist theology on allSudanese, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. In order to consolidate inter-nal control at the center the RCC negotiated a ceasefire in 1990 thatenabled John Garang, however, to make successful tours of Europe, theUnited States, and Africa and win over suspicious Equatorian leaders tothe SPLM/A. During these early years of the movement the SPLM/Awould not have achieved its success without the generous support ofEthiopia, just as the Anya-Nya had earlier been dependent upon Israel,until the collapse of Mengistu’s government in May 1991 by the EthiopianPeople’s Revolutioanry Democatic Front (EPRDF) strongly supportedby the NIF government in Khartoum. The EPRDF quickly repaid itsdebt to Khartoum by severing all ties with the SPLM/A which severelydislocated the SPLM/A command structure, its operations, and forced250,000 southern Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia to relocate in the UpperNile during which several thousand perished from disease and malnutri-tion. The disintegration of Ethiopian support certainly contributed to thegrowing antagonism toward John Garang by his senior officers. Garangadamantly refused to tolerate any dissent; critics were ruthlessly removed,imprisoned, or executed. The Political-Military High Command(PMHC) had never formally met during eight years after the founding ofthe movement, and decisions were made solely by John Garang and a fewloyal aides and sycophants.

On August 28, 1991, three senior commanders of the SPLM/A, LamAkol Ajawin, Riek Machar Teny-Dhurgon, and Gordon Kong Chol,



publicly announced that John Garang had been dismissed as chairman ofthe movement and justified their decision in a pamphlet entitled Why JohnGarang Must Go Now because of his ‘dictatorial’ leadership. The initiativefor the coup d]état appears to have come from Lam Akol, a Shilluk(Chollo), who had an infinite capacity to alienate his subordinates andeven his most stalwart supporters, but it was Riek Machar who arrangedfor the Khartoum government to supply arms for the rebels in Nasir, whocalled themselves SPLA-Nasir. Despite this military assistance, however,the conspiracy soon began to unravel. Lam’s fellow Shilluk SPLA officersstrongly advised Lam to desist in this ill-advised adventure, and otherSPLA commanders sympathetic to Lam and Riek argued against anydramatic change of leadership until the SPLA had recovered and reorgan-ized from its losses in Ethiopia. Garang’s initial response was to ignore theNasir rebels until Riek launched an offensive ostensibly to seize controlof the SPLM/A, but which soon degenerated, however, into a tribal civilwar between Nuer and Dinka.

The Nuer invasion of Dinkaland was composed of units from SPLA-Nasir and hundreds of Nuer civilians armed by the steady flow ofweapons from Khartoum, known as Jiech Mabor (White Army), who sweptsouthward through Kongor to Bor slaughtering thousands of Dinkaincluding women, children, and the elderly. No Dinka was spared, manywere mutilated in a spate of atrocities, and Bor methodically destroyed, itscitizens massacred. When reports of what became known in southernfolklore as the ‘Bor Massacre’ reached Garang, he mobilized a large SPLAforce from Torit, recaptured Bor and dispersed the Nuer rabble JiechMabor to Ayod with heavy losses. Instead of winning wavering sympa-thetic SPLA commanders to SPLA-Nasir, the indiscriminate slaughter ofthousands of Dinka civilians precipitated outrage from SPLA commanders,southern Sudanese, and the international community. Garang solidifiedhis control of the movement, and in desperation SPLA-Nasir hastilymade an official alliance with Khartoum for weapons, supplies, and largeamounts of money sealed in an agreement between Lam Akol andAl-Hajj Muhammad in Frankfort Germany in January 1992. Seeking toexploit the divisions within the SPLA and the Dinka-Nuer civil war,heavy fighting between the SPLA and SPLA-Nasir, now renamedSPLA-United, raged throughout 1992–93 that by 1994 had sunk into anarmed stalemate.

During winter 1994–95 the SPLM/A was able to recover from itsserious losses in 1992–93. The Dinka commanders closed-ranks to remainloyal to Garang, and SPLA-United could not reconcile its contradictorydemands for southern independence and its dependence on a NationalIslamic Front (NIF) Islamist regime in Khartoum determined to prevent itthat destroyed the credibility of its leaders and ultimately dismantled SPLA-United. The international community, which hitherto had remained alooffrom the civil war, now became active mediators at Abuja in 1992 and 1993



hoping to forge a peace between the government and the SPLA withoutsuccess. The failure at Abuja resolved the heads of state from Ethiopia,Eritrea, Uganda, and Kenya, acting as the Intergovernmental Authority onDrought and Development (IGADD subsequently IGAD), to convenethe rival factions in January, May, July, and a final round of talks onSeptember 19, 1994 in which the government again peremptorily rejectedself-determination and a secular state for the southern Sudan. During theIGAD negotiations in Nairobi deep divisions within the Nuer nationbrought about the disintegration of SPLA-United despite attempts atreconciliation at Akobo in September–October 1994, that reconstitutedthe SPLA-United into a South Sudan Independence Movement/Army(SSIM/A) firmly committed to the independence of the southern Sudanand a rump SSIM/A led by Riek Machar who continued to work withthe Khartoum government.

By the end of 1995 virtually all southern commanders had distancedthemselves from Riek, more a desperate freebooter than a guerrilla leaderwho, in return for arms and cash, capitulated to Bashir on April 4, 1996,signed the Peace Charter by which he agreed that his SSIM/A wouldcontinue to fight the SPLA more to preserve his dwindling authorityamong the Nuer as a political force against the SPLA than to struggle forsome opaque independence from those who had no intention to deliverit. While Riek Machar was becoming another failed Sudanese leader,John Garang had made a concerted effort to recover from the criticism ofhis leadership and the great split of 1991 to regain control of the SPLM/Ahe had nearly lost. By holding a ‘National Convention’ of southernSudanese he sought to introduce more democratic dialogue within theSPLM/A and demonstrate that the SPLA was not defeated, ‘the elephantwas not yet dead’. Of the 825 southerners invited to the Conventionan astonishing 516 arrived at Chukudum mostly appointed directly orindirectly by John Garang. The subsequent discussions ranged widely notonly on the floor of the convention but in a variety of committees andin critical separate meetings with John Garang that had an enormoussymbolic meaning, for hitherto the SPLM/A leadership had hardly evercondescended to discuss or decide policy with local SPLA commandersor ordinary southerners. At the time, the SPLM/A National Conventionwas widely regarded as a great success, the founding symbol for somesoutherners of a ‘New Sudan’; for others a demonstration of an independentsouthern Sudan by the convention’s overwhelming endorsement ofself-determination. It represented a long overdue political renewal of theSPLM/A and conferred legitimacy on its leadership.

The optimism, renewal, and restoration of the SPLM/A soon reversedits declining military fortunes. The SPLA won a succession of victories inEquatoria in July and October 1994, Bahr al-Ghazal in February 1995,and the Nuba Mountains in May. In October 1995 SPLA recapturedParajok, Owiny-ki-Bul, and in November retook Obbo, Panyikwara,



Ame, Moli, Pageri, Loa, and Kit. The Mundari militia, which had longbeen hostile to the SPLA, now committed themselves to the movement.At the end of the year a futile government counter-offensive along theKit River collapsed in mid-December. By the New Year 1996 the SPLAoffensive appeared unstoppable. Aswa was recaptured on January 8, 1996followed by Khor Yabus and Chali in southern Blue Nile, Pochalla inMarch, and the surrender of a whole Sudanese battalion at Yirol southeastof Rumbek. These successive victories were continued in 1997 when theSPLA 13th Division launched Operation Black Fox capturing Kurmuk,Qaissan, and other posts in southern Blue Nile, while Operation Thun-derbolt swept through central Equatoria in May inflicting very heavycasualties, reportedly killing some 8000 government troops and takinganother 1700 prisoner. The offensive steam of the SPLA, however, couldnot last when an overconfident SPLA launched an ill-advised assault onWau, the heavily fortified capital of the Bahr al-Ghazal.

On January 29, 1998 the SPLA under Major General Kerubino, whohad recently defected to the SPLA, seized and held Wau for ten days andfierce fighting until forced to retreat after which hundreds of Dinkaresidents were butchered and another 80,000 fled to safety in thecountryside. Although the assault on Wau was an audacious gamble byhighly motivated and well-armed SPLA, its failure demonstrated thevulnerability of the SPLA against an entrenched garrison with artilleryand air support and was not repeated. Thereafter, the Bahr al-Ghazalsettled into a sterile stalemate that was simply resolved by declaring athree-month mutual ceasefire while western Upper Nile dissolved intobloody fighting between Riek Machar’s rump SSIM, renamed the SouthSudan Defence Force (SSDF), and Paulino Matip’s South Sudan UnityMovement/Army (SSUM/A). The rivalry between Paulino and Riekbecame increasingly hostile and personal during which Riek had alienatedthe remaining militia leaders loyal to him in the Upper Nile and Bahral-Ghazal. Isolated and with only a dwindling cadre of loyal followersRiek Machar was no longer a threat, and in an humiliating effort toregain his honor among southerners he signed the ‘Nairobi Declaration’of unity on January 6, 2002 by which he acknowledged the supremeauthority of John Garang who graciously installed Riek vice president ofthe SPLM/A, for he had little to fear from Riek Machar.

John Garang had many other concerns than Riek Machar, for the SudanPeople’s Armed Forces (SPAF) had mounted successive campaigns in 1999and 2000 in the Nuba Mountains that would have virtually eliminated thepresence of the SPLA the following year if not for the timely interventionin November 2001 of President Bush’s Special Envoy, Jack Danforth, whonegotiated a successful ceasefire. As an uneasy peace settled over the NubaMountains Sudan’s struggling economy received a dramatic infusion ofnew revenue after the first barrel of oil pumped from Chinese NationalPetroleum Corporation (CNPC) wells in the Unity Field of Kordofan and



Upper Nile had been exported from Marsa Bashayir on the Red Sea inMay 1999. China has had a long, agreeable, but ambiguous relationship withthe Sudanese since the 1970s that by the end of the century had becomemutually advantageous. China desperately needed oil; the Sudan desperatelyneeded revenue. Within a few years China had established an imposingpresence in the Sudan. Over 100,000 Chinese arrived to accelerate oil develop-ment, construct the Merowe Dam at the fourth cataract of the Nile, buildschools, hospitals, bridges, and supply modern weapons for the Sudanarmy. The Chinese had scrupulously refrained from interfering in Suda-nese internal affairs, but in order to secure the steady flow of petroleumChina became the Sudan’s patron and protector in international affairsthat has compromised its relations with the other members of theUnited Nations Security Council.

Oil, of course, was as much a curse as a boon, for the major reservesof Sudanese oil lay under the sudd and toich of the southern Sudan andnot the Sahelian plains of the North, the control of which suddenlybecame one of the greatest obstacles to end Sudan’s second civil war. Thesoutherners were adamantly opposed to the exploitation of southern oilby foreigners for the benefit of the northern Sudanese Arabs, and whenthe Sudan army, assisted by armed Chinese workers, systematically depopu-lated parts of West Nile Province for drilling oil wells, they provokedintense firefights with the SPLA that dramatically escalated the ferocity ofcombat. Thereafter, the contentious issues of who owns, develops, and derivesthe substantial revenues from oil became one of the major stumbling blocksduring the negotiations that led to the signing of the ComprehensivePeace Agreement (CPA) in 2005. Meanwhile, the greatest percentage of oilrevenues was used to modernize the army, and by 2002 the defense budgethad increased to $665 million, half the annual Sudan government budget and5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but a substantial infusing ofrevenue could not instantly resolve deep-seated problems in SPAF.

The officer corps had long ago ceased to be a professional, secular eliteunit and under the Islamists had been purged of those theologically incorrectthat rendered it incapable to plan and execute successful campaigns in theSouth, for the regular army, 20,000 of whom were conscripts, and thePeople’ Defence Force (PDF) was equally incapable of fighting an insur-gency. There was little training in guerrilla warfare and less incentive toengage in it. SPAF was essentially a garrison army content to remain behindfortifications in the main towns protected by extensive minefields wherethe boredom and frustrations of garrison duty undermined discipline,eroded morale, and in the seclusion of their forts, fear of the dark anddense bush beyond spread like a cancer that sapped their will to fight.

With the army immobilized the SPLA launched an abortive offensiveinto the western Bahr al-Ghazal in 2001–02 which could not be sustainedover the long and hazardous ‘Raga Road’. The SPLA units were with-drawn, for there was little to be gained in the wastelands of the western



Bahr al-Ghazal from its hostile inhabitants. In August 2001 there wasintense fighting between the SPLA and Paulino Matip’s Bul Nuer whoguarded the oil fields along the new all-weather Bentiu-Ler road built byLundin Petroleum Company. The fighting raged until February 2002,when the government rushed reinforcements from the Nuba Mountainsto contain the SPLA counter-offensive. In October 2002 the SPLA recap-tured the strategic town of Torit in eastern Equatoria as a prelude to thefirst meeting of President Bashir and John Garang at Kampala in July 2003to pledge their commitment to the peace process, a significant shift fromwar to peace after twenty years of implacable conflict, and agreed to directnegotiations for a settlement. Another eighteen months of interminablenegotiations were finally brought to a successful conclusion but only afterthe intimate and personal intervention, discussions, and agreementsbetween John Garang and First Vice President [Ali [Uthman MuhammadTaha who signed a Comprehensive Peace Agreement on January 9, 2005to bring an end to the second southern civil war.

Southern Sudanese civilians had paid a very heavy price to preventtheir domination by the northern Arab Muslim Sudanese. More than twomillion had perished; another four to six million had been driven from theirhomes either as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) or refugees in thesprawling camps across the border. Warfare in the South had been char-acterized by weeks, if not months, of ominous quiet suddenly punctuatedby fierce firefights before each side paused to regroup and fight again.Although the government had the advantage of more men, more armor,and more firepower, SPAF and the PDF were at a distinct disadvantagehaving to conduct their campaigns in swamps, grasslands, bush, and deepforests, terrain alien and unknown to them. To them the southern Sudanwas a fearful foreign place for the ill-trained regular officers and men,conscripts, and northern Arabs of the PDF fighting an unwinnable warfor which they had little enthusiasm or reasons to prevail. Like so manyconscripted by an unpopular draft into a conflict they neither understoodnor were convinced of the cause for which they had been sent to fight.Northern Sudanese conscripts were not the only ones confused as to whythey were fighting, for most of the insurgents in the SPLA had littleinterest in Garang’s new united Sudan. They were men and boys determinedto defend an independent homeland free from the historic depredationsby the Arabs, not to build a new Sudan in an unholy union with theirhistoric and hated enemy.

The Beja Civil War

Although civil war in the eastern Sudan shared some of the same charac-teristics of the southern insurgency – marginalization, deficient develop-ment, and domination by the awlad al-bahr, the Beja Congress had longsought to seek redress for their grievances by political action until driven



by the Islamist government in Khartoum to take up arms in the 1990s.Unlike the southerners, however, the armed struggle by the BejaCongress was badly flawed by a dearth of a clear political program, aneffective organization, and competent leadership. While the southernersand later the Darfuri in the West could rely on active support from theinternational community, the lesser known Beja of the eastern Sudanreceived little more than tea and sympathy. The first political stirrings ofthe Beja in an independent Sudan were precipitated by the elections inlate April and early May 1965 following the collapse of the [Abbudmilitary regime the previous October. An internal split within thePeople’s Democratic Party (DUP), which had hitherto relied on thesupport of the Khatmiyya brotherhood that dominated political and sociallife in the eastern Sudan, enabled ten members of the Beja Congress towin seats in the National Assembly. As independents, their electionmarked the first public expression of disenchantment by the distinctivepeoples of the marginalized periphery with the old politics of indifferenceby the politicians at the center in Khartoum. At the time this incipientregionalism was either ignored or dismissed.

Upon the overthrow of the second parliamentary government byColonel Ja[afar Numayri in May 1969, the Beja Congress had remainedquiescent until the disasters of the great drought of the 1980s. The Bejapeople of the Red Sea, Gash Delta, and Kassala consist of the Hadan-duwa, Amarar, Bishariyin, and Bani Amir who are non-Arab Muslimswith a long nomadic tradition as breeders of fine camels and livestockuntil the drought destroyed 80 percent of their livestock that reducedthem to impoverished agricultural workers and stevedores at Port Sudan.Although long a marginalized people on the eastern periphery disdainedand ignored by the riverine Arabs, the destruction of their way of lifedeeply embittered them against the awlad al-bahr. Another entrepreneurialgroup that prospered from Beja impoverishment were the Rashaida Arabpastoralists who straddled the border between the Sudan and Eritrea tooccupy Beja lands. Other large parcels of Beja lands, including a millionacres granted to Usama bin Ladin, were leased at minimal rates to the newclass of ‘gentlemen farmers’ – wealthy merchants, well-connected civilservants, and military officers who transformed the fragile top soil of grassinto large profitable mechanized farms for cotton, sorghum, and sesame.

After the collapse of the Mengistu regime in 1991 Islamist groupsinfiltrated Eritrea and additional Beja lands were confiscated for terroristtraining camps for the Afghan-Arab mujahidiin, Eritrean Islamic Jihad,Hisbullah, Hamas, and the Oromo Islamic Jihad. Moreover, the Beja wereharassed by Islamists determined to impose an Arab, Islamist culture onnon-Arab Beja, but the last straw was conscription into the PDF. On June17, 1995 the Beja Congress, along with all the other members of theNDA, signed the Asmara Accords committing the Beja to continuethe war until the NIF Islamist government in Khartoum was overthrown. The



National Democratic Alliance (NDA) officially established the Sudanese AlliedForces (SAF), a multi-ethnic unit operating into the Sudan from Eritrea underthe command of Brigadier [Abd al-Aziz Khalid. SAF was not a formidablefoe, but its mobility made it an intrusive strike force that included 500 menfrom the Beja Congress who carried out raids against military installationsalong the Eritrean frontier at Qallabat and Kassala, guerrilla strikes on thestrategic Khartoum-Port Sudan Road, and destroyed buildings, plows, andtractors on the mechanized farming schemes in the fight for recognitionof their long-standing grievances. Subsequently, SAF fought more as anadjunct to the NDA Umma Liberation Army and the SPLA New SudanBrigade which bore the brunt of the fighting on the Eastern Front untilEritrea and the Sudan restored diplomatic negotiations in January 2000that deprived the NDA of its headquarters in the Sudanese embassy inAsmara and enabled Khartoum to launch an offensive throughout theeastern Sudan in March that displaced another 160,000 Sudanese and thecollapse of the Beja Congress as an effective military force.

Although the Beja Congress later joined the Rashaida Free Lions toform the Eastern Front in 2005, incompetent military leadership, inad-equate organization, and dependence on Eritrea doomed any militaryvictory. In fact, the Beja Congress was fundamentally a political party inwhich the military wing was of little importance. Its leadership, and evenmore important its members, were convinced their best interests wouldbe served by a political solution like the SPLA particularly when Khar-toum was now anxious to make peace in the East in order to concentrateits limited resources on the new insurgency in the West. Using the CPAas a model the government and the Beja congress signed the EasternSudan Peace Agreement (ESPA) on October 14, 2006 by which thearmed forces of the Eastern Front would be incorporated into SPAF inreturn for political posts in the national government, national assembly,and in the three eastern states. Although the Beja Congress believed thatthe ESPA, with all its inadequacies, would now enable them to pursuetheir political objectives, the agreement was little more than a pawn inthe larger reconciliation between the governments of Eritrea and theSudan which conferred upon the ESPA an illusion that another conflictin the Sudan has been resolved. In fact, little more had been settled otherthan a feeble insurgency, hardly sufficient evidence to demonstrate an endto the fundamental marginalization of the eastern region and the socialinjustices that produced the insurrection in the first place.

Disaster in Darfur

Although the crisis in Darfur has generated more commentary, reports,and media coverage in four years than the violent twenty years during thesecond Sudan civil war in the South, few have understood that the disasterwas not some spontaneous eruption against neglect, misgovernment, and



racism, but the historic rivalry over land and the latest episode in theforty-year tragic conflict for political control of the great basin of LakeChad. Historically, there has always been competition for scarce resources– water, fertile soil, but particularly arable land – in Darfur aggravated bythe irreconcilable needs of sedentary farmers for secure plots of land tocultivate and herdsmen for open pastures. This incompatible use of theland has precipitated, throughout the ages, endless disputes usually settledby traditional institutions like the muatamarat al-suhl, a gathering of tribalelders whose judgments were indisputable. These revered institutions,however, proved less effective during times of natural disasters such asoccurred during the great drought of the 1980s or when Arabs fromKhartoum sought to replace indigenous institutions by new laws enforcedby alien officials from the Nile valley. Unlike the past, the Darfuri haveyet to recover from the Great Drought in which hundreds of thousandshead of livestock perished and those that survived did so at the expenseof the farmers’ parched cultivations. By the beginning of the twenty-firstcentury the land had yet to recover spawning disputes no longer settledby institutions that had fallen into disuse and the impoverishment ofsubsistence farmers and herdsmen who sowed the seeds of insurrection onbarren ground.

If drought, contested lands, and the disintegration of traditionalinstitutions produced massive discontent and despair in the willingness,concern, and obligation by the central government to assist impoverishedDarfuri, geography also contributed to the dislocation of Khartoumcenter from the Darfur periphery. Geographically, Darfur is not in theSudan, as many have assumed, but the eastern region of the Chad Basintoward which its inhabitants were oriented until the sultanate of Darfurwas reluctantly incorporated into the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1916.When the British departed from the Sudan in 1956, they left behind inDarfur a record of conspicuous disinterest and appalling neglect that wasrelentlessly continued by the parliamentary and military governmentsof the independent Sudan. On September 1, 1969 Colonel MuammarQadhafi deposed King Idris of Libya and for the next twenty-five yearssought to include Darfur into his obsession to create a Greater ArabLibyan Islamic Sudanic State in which the acquisition of Darfur was anessential ingredient. Thereafter, Qadhafi had virtually controlled Darfur inwhich administration from Khartoum was mostly symbolic until he signeda peace agreement with Chad in 1993 by which he abandoned his dreamof a Libyan Islamic Sudanic State that enabled the Islamist governmentin Khartoum to impose its alien authority, Arab ideology, and Islamisttheology upon the rustic awlad al-gharib (people of the West, westerners)by their historic enemies, the awlad al-bahr (people of the river), theriverine Arabs from the center.

Since the time of the Mahdiya the hostility between the awlad al-bahrand the awlad al-ghirab had been sealed in blood confirmed by the contempt



of sophisticated sedentary riverine Arabs for the rustic nomadic ArabRizayqat and the Black African (zurug, pl. zurga) Fur and Masalit farmersof Darfur and made manifest by their discrimination, marginalization, andcalculated exclusion from government. Consequently, when the Islamistgovernment of ‘Umar Hasan al-Bashir first sought to reassert its controlin Darfur in order to impose Arabization and salafist Islam, his riverineadministrators were met with ill-disguised hostility. In 1991 he appointedgovernor of Darfur Colonel al-Tayib Ibrahim Muhammad Khair, chief ofIslamic security and known as al-sjikka (the iron bar) which he used toquell anti-Islamist street riots in Khartoum, who methodically beganthe suppression of the African Fur and Zaghawa. In February 1994 theMinister for Federal Affairs and dedicated NIF Islamist, ‘Ali al-Hajj,arbitrarily redrew the administrative district boundaries of Darfur intoseparate states deliberately designed to promote the Arabization of Darfurby riverine NIF Islamists officials from Khartoum with little knowledgeof local customs and traditional institutions.

Having effectively immobilized any concerted Fur opposition, theIslamists next turned to the compact hierarchical Masalit in 1997. All thetraditional Masalit chiefs, who wielded great influence in Dar Masalit,were stripped of their authority; many were imprisoned, others tortured.The fiercely independent Masalit retaliated, by guerrilla war in which theywere brutally crushed in 1999; the Masalit sulked in the ruins of their darswearing vengeance. Throughout Darfur an ominous silence settled overthe land as General [Abdallah al-Safi al-Nur, an Abbala Arab, influentialin the Arab Gathering (failaka al-Islamiya), which was an amorphous andsecretive collection of Arab supremacists in Darfur, was appointed gover-nor of North Darfur State in 2000. He disarmed the non-Arab police,the zuruq (black African), who historically composed nearly 80 percent ofthe police force in Darfur and handed over their weapons to Musa Hilalof the Um Jalul Abbala, the [Shaykh of the Swift and Fearsome Forces’actively recruiting 2,000 Chadian Arab and Baqqara for the nucleus of thejanjawiid or peshmerga, as they were known in western Darfur. In that sameyear, the Black Book (kitab al-aswad) was published clandestinely inKhartoum that dared to expose that 80 percent of all government jobsfrom ministers to ministerial drivers during the fifty years of theindependent Sudan had been occupied by members of the awlad al-bahr,the Danaqla, Shayqiyya, and Ja[aliyyin, in which the westerners fromKordofan and Darfur, awlad al-gharib, had been systematically excluded bya long history of discrimination and marginalization by those Sudanesewho sought to pretend they were pure ‘Arabs’. To be sure the awlad al-gharib were Muslims, but they were Muslims whose religious practiceshad been deeply influenced by Sufi and African traditional rituals andmost certainly not of the same religious purity as the salafist Islamistsin Khartoum. Their heresy was further complicated by the fact that some40 percent of the troops in the Sudan army were Afro-Arab westerners



whose riverine officers persuaded them that as good Muslims they shouldwage war against the southern Sudanese kafirin (infidels) ‘in the name of“progressive” Arabism versus “reactionary” Africanism’.

The following year on July 21, 2001 a group of Fur and Zaghawaactivists met at Abu Gamra and swore an oath on the Qur]an to co-operate in their opposition to the Arabization of Darfur. They were allinexperienced in insurgency and politically naïve, but [Abd al-WahidMuhammad Ahmad al-Nur had organized Fur armed units in Jabal Marraas early as 1998. They set out to forge an alliance of the non-Arab peoplesof Darfur, and to bring a more collective leadership to this collection ofembittered Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa, they convened a meeting in October2002 during which a triumvirate was elected with [Abd al-Wahid al-Nurchairman. These new leaders, however, were young and inexperienced andunable to overcome deep ethnic animosities by the older leaders many ofwhom regarded these younger men a cabal that spent much of their timeabroad as ‘hotel guerillas’. Nevertheless, in February 2003, insurgents ofthe Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) led by ‘Abd al-Wahidal-Nur carried out successful raids on army and police posts, andSecretary-General of the SLM, the political arm of the movement, MinniArku Minnawi, released its Political Declaration to the press whereby theSLM/A opposed the policies of Arabization, political and economic mar-ginalization, and ‘the brutal oppression, ethnic cleansing, and genocidesponsored by the Khartoum Government’.

The second insurgency organization in Darfur, the Justice and EqualityMovement ( JEM), was very different from the secular SLM/A and moreof a rival than an ally in the struggle against the Sudan government.Unlike the indigenous African Fur origins of the SLM/A, the JEMbeginnings were among ‘riverized’ Darfuri in Khartoum who hadbecome increasingly embittered by their marginalized treatment anddiscrimination despite their partial integration into the urban life of thecapital. Led by Dr Khalil Ibrahim Muhammad, a physician and a ferventIslamist, members of the JEM, were not about to abandon their ArabIslamist beliefs unlike the secular SLM. The JEM sought a utopiansolution in the Sudan whereby all Sudanese, not just Darfuri, would haveequal rights, basic services, and economic development in which socialinjustice and political tyranny would be extirpated. During the earlyheady days of the insurrection on Friday, April 25, 2003, a combinedSLA/JEM force, sometimes speciously called the ‘Oppositon Forces’,staged a hit-and-run attack at the airport outside El Fasher during whichthey destroyed helicopters and Antonov bombers, occupied army head-quarters, and captured air force Major General Ibrahim Bushra to befollowed by a score of other victories.

Since the army could not suppress the insurgency, Khartoum hastilyrearmed and unleashed the Darfuri Arab militias, the janjawiid, to rescuethe army just as Sadiq al-Mahdi and Burma Nasr had unleashed the



murahiliin Baqqara on the Bahr al-Ghazal Dinka in 1986 to halt the SPLAoffensive with similar devastating results. The janjawiid had begun theirethnic cleansing against the Fur, whom Salah [Ali Alghali, the governorof southern Darfur, had openly vowed to exterminate, by sweeping downupon a Fur village just before dawn. The men were killed, often muti-lated, the women raped, the children sometimes abducted or killed, thevillage and all infrastructure destroyed, livestock seized, and the fieldstorched. Supported by helicopter gun-ships and Antonov bombers, thejanjawiid’s killing and displacement of Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa escalatedthroughout the summer and autumn of 2003, and by February 2004 thearmy had lost all hope of suppressing the insurgency leaving the janjawiidfree to pursue their ethnic cleansing and displacement of African zurugwhich conservatively claimed 30,000 lives, forced a million people fromtheir lands as IDPs, and sent another 200,000 refugees to camps in Chad.Another 350,000 Darfuri were expected to die within the next ninemonths from famine and disease when the rains arrived in late spring.

When the international humanitarian agencies became fully aware ofthe magnitude of the destruction and displacement in Darfur, they weremet with manipulative obstruction in Khartoum so that by the 2004 NewYear ‘humanitarian operations have practically come to a standstill’. Despitethe international public outcry, declarations from the European Union(EU), and unanimous Congressional resolutions demanding ‘uncondi-tional and immediate access to Darfur to humanitarian aid organizations’,the Sudan government continued to frustrate the western humanitarianefforts in Darfur by its wall of Byzantine bureaucratic procedures.Throughout a long, hot summer of terror, flight, and survival the westernmedia – newspapers, magazines, journals, television, and the Internet –relentlessly featured the plight of the beleaguered civilians of Darfuraccompanied by demonstrations in Europe and the United States,countless public meetings, and speeches, both provocative and practical,exhorting their governments to do something to protect the Africans ofDarfur. Despite its humanitarian rhetoric, the political response from theWest was ambiguous, and both the US and the EU sought to resolve thisdilemma by urging the African Union (AU) and UN to intervene. ByAugust 2004, the African Union Mission to Sudan (AMIS) had arrivedto protect UN monitors and provide security so that IDPs could availthemselves of the humanitarian assistance that could reach them.

On September 9, 2004, however, U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell,in testimony before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, concluded that‘genocide has been committed in Darfur, and that the government ofSudan and the Janjawiid bear responsibility – and genocide may still beoccurring’. The declaration by Colin Powell in September 2004 thatthe Sudan government and the janjawiid had committed genocide rein-vigorated the campaign for Darfur in the US and Europe, characterizedby public demonstrations, extensive media coverage, and the formation of



the influential and well-financed Save Darfur Coalition. The public outcrycould not be ignored by the European Parliament, which cast an extra-ordinary vote of 566 to 6 that the conflict in Darfur was ‘tantamount togenocide’ as fruitless negotiations recessed and resumed at Abuja and thesituation in western Darfur continued to deteriorate as internal rivalriesand disagreements between the SLM/A and JEM over leadership,negotiation strategies, and policy were continually exploited by therepresentatives of the Sudan government to the frustration and exasperationof the AU mediators and international observers at Abuja.

By February 2006 more than 300,000 inhabitants of Darfur had diedin this unnecessary conflict; another 2.5 million had become IDPs orrefugees in Chad. Those affected by the violence were estimated at almost4 million, 700,000 of whom were now beyond the reach of humanitarianassistance. These were staggering numbers, and the only hope to disruptthis spiral of violence was an agreement between the Sudan governmentand the fractious insurgent groups at Abuja where the talks had beenregularly disrupted until the AU and the international community per-suaded the Sudan government, the SLM/A, and the JEM the time hadcome to fix a final date, April 30, 2006, by which to reach a peaceagreement. As the end of April drew near, a final draft had been com-pleted, but as midnight Sunday, April 30, approached, the insurgentsrefused to sign the draft agreement. The reaction to this abrupt rejectionwas outrage by the envoys of the AU, the US, Britain, EU, and even theArab League, and high-level delegations descended upon Abuja to extractmore concessions from the government while applying diplomatic pres-sure on the rebels to accept compromise, peace, and sign the agreement.On Thursday, May 5, the negotiators worked through the night and aftera new round of talks on Friday morning, May 6, Minni Arku Minnawi,leader of the largest faction in the SPM/A agreed to sign the latestamended version, known as the May 5 Agreement, despite his concernsfor power sharing and security, as did Majub al-Khalifa for the govern-ment. Dr Khalil Ibrahim of the JEM refused to sign, as did [Abd al-Wahidal-Nur, leader of the larger, rival faction in the SLM/A. The JEMregarded the agreement as ‘only a partial, not a national, solution’. Therefusal of [Abd al-Wahid al-Nur to sign was more complicated. Althoughhe had fewer fighters than the Minnawi faction of the SLM/A, hecontrolled more territory and represented the Fur who, more than anyother ethnic group, had borne the brunt of the devastation from thegovernment forces and the janjawiid. [Abd al-Wahid al-Nur, however, didnot have control over his own delegation, a number of whom thoughthe had made a serious mistake not to sign and emotionally embracedMinnawi after he affixed his signature to the agreement.

No sooner was the ink dry on the Abuja Agreement than it began tounravel. On June 30, 2006 the three Darfur insurgent groups who hadrefused to sign the May 5 Agreement – JEM of Dr Khalil Ibrahim, SLM/A



faction opposed to Minni Minnawi now led by Khamis [AbdallahAbakr, and the new Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance (SFDA) ofAhmad Ibrahim Diraig – founded the National Redemption Front (NRF)in Asmara. The rapid escalation in the scale of violence by the army andjanjawiid, particularly those under Musa Hilal, on the one hand, and theNRF on the other, made all the more complicated and extreme by clashesbetween the supporters of SLA/Minni Minnawi and those of [AbdallahBakr of the old SLM/A, now called SLA/Group 19, in addition to theever-increasing numbers of independent roving bandit gangs of formerChadian and Darfuri insurgents. Finally, as the last vestiges of securitydisintegrated in Darfur, the humanitarian agencies upon which hundredsof thousands Darfuri depended for survival began to withdraw theiremployees from the war zone and all humanitarian assistance began to‘meltdown’.

Throughout autumn 2006 President Bashir remained unmoved byintense international pressure from Kofi Annan, the Security Council, anddelegations from the United States that followed the failure of the May 5Agreement to allow a 20,000-man UN peacekeeping force into Darfur.Bashir was not without some reluctant allies for his intransigent oppo-sition to a UN peacekeeping force which he called an excuse for neoco-lonialism. The Arab League chose to remain aloof from any commitmentin the Sudan in a conflict in which its members had no immediateself-interest. After intense negotiations at Addis Ababa by the AU, UN,and the Sudan an agreement was ultimately reached on 30 November2006 and confirmed by President Bashir in a letter to Kofi Annan of 23December 2006, seven days before the UN deadline of January 1, 2007to impose more severe sanctions, that he would support a joint ‘hybrid’AU-UN force for Darfur by which the UN would provide advisers,communications, transport, and logistical support. The size of the AUforce, however, would be determined by negotiations between the AU,UN, and the Sudan in which the stonewalling diplomacy long used bythe Sudan in the past left ample room for prevarication.

While the diplomats dithered throughout the autumn the fightingescalated in which the armed forces, including janjawiid, suffered twosevere defeats in November 2006 from the forces of the NRF. Banditrywas rife throughout much of Darfur, and in early December janjawiid hadlooted El Fasher for three days before surrounding the city in a stand-offat the end of December 2006 between the combined forces of the NRFand SLA Group 19. By the New Year virtually all humanitarian oper-ations in Darfur and eastern Chad were on the verge of complete collapse.Few have any illusions about the future for Darfur in which little can beexpected to change for the better as the international community remainsimpotent to intervene and the Sudan government incapable of assertingits authority. Darfur is the latest and most tragic episode of the forty-yearconflict for control of the Chad basin in which neither Chad, Libya, or



the Sudan possessed the human and material resources to dominate Darfurso that the subsequent violence precipitated an agrarian revolution bywhich subsistence farmers and herdsmen have been transformed into asociety of urban poor living in permanent IDP settlements as the impov-erished displaced wards of the international humanitarian community.Their camps have become shanty towns in which farmers and herdsmenare now poverty-stricken townsmen eking out a living from humanitarianhandouts and petty trade. Here they will remain, for even if peacedescended upon Darfur there is little incentive for them to return homefor nothing remains but a desolate and devastated land. The Darfuri willbecome African Palestinians.

Conclusion

Unable to end its civil wars by a military solution the Sudan’s warringparties have negotiated successful political settlements in the South by theCPA on January 9, 2005 and in the East by the ESPA on October 14,2006. No agreement, however, is credible unless implemented in goodfaith. Unfortunately, two years after the conclusion of the CPA and a yearfollowing the ESPA, implementation of these two treaties has beensluggish characterized by little faith on the part of the ruling NationalCongress Party (NCP). Only those elements of the CPA have beenacceptable to the NCP that have not weakened its power or forced anyfundamental change in the governance of the country envisaged by JohnGarang’s democratic, secular, united Sudan. In the South the SPLM hasstruggled to transform an effective military force into a viable politicalparty with only limited success so that the Government of South Sudan(GOSS) has been unable to successfully and consistently challenge thereluctance of a disingenuous NCP to implement those terms of the CPApertaining to the integration of southerners into the national governmentthat would have produced structural changes in the civil service and othernational institutions. Unwilling to share power in Khartoum the NCPwill continue to alienate the southerners as they prepare to vote forseparation in the referendum scheduled for 2011, if that vote is freeand fair. The combination of hardline operators in the NCP and theformidable security cabal in Khartoum, however, is sufficiently powerfulto frustrate any threat to their core interests that will force a choicebetween independence for the oil-rich South or the renewal of civil warto secure the oil fields which leaders on bother sides understand wouldbe a catastrophe.

Implementation, or lack thereof, has also characterized the ESPA ofOctober 14, 2006, but the Beja Congress has been unable to challengethe NCP for its disinterest in honoring its terms. The Beja Congresspolitical program remains unclear, for unlike the southerners it does nothave the option to secede, its ideology, organization, and leadership are



weak, and the support of the international community perfunctory. To besure, the ESPA resolved the violence of a low-level insurgency, but thefundamental issues of marginalization that led to civil war in the East arestill in place. The NCP, backed by the security forces, has and willcontinue to ignore the implementation of the ESPA and regard the Bejawith studied indifference.

Unlike the South and East the prospects for a peaceful political settle-ment in the West, Darfur, remains remote, and the situation in Darfur willbe the same, or perhaps worse, two to three years hence. The insurgentscontinue to fracture, gravitating to local strongmen turned petty warlordspracticing banditry. Darfur is awash in weaponry, its youth unrestrained,and every day necessities for subsistence have been largely destroyed. Theefforts to mount a robust, hybrid force appear more a wish than a realityand its mandate a mystery. Many look to the Sudan’s prominent patron,China, to force the NCP and Bashir to change course in Darfur withoutthreatening China’s oil interests or the viability of the government, butthe Chinese remain inscrutable. The United States has virtually exhaustedwhat little leverage it possessed in Khartoum. Although some regarded theCPA as a model for a political settlement, GOSS will only give its sympathyand verbal support to the Darfuri, for the SPLM is more concerned tobuild its own viable government before the 2011 referendum and will donothing to jeopardize the integrity of the CPA by unilateral interventionin Darfur.

Short Biography

Robert O. Collins is Professor of History, Emeritus, at the University ofCalifornia Santa Barbara (UCSB). Educated at Dartmouth College, BalliolCollege, Oxford, and Yale University he has taught at Williams College,Columbia University, and UCSB for forty-two years where he served asDean of the Graduate School (1970–80) and Director of the UCSBCenter in Washington DC (1992–94). He has lectured in numerousAmerican, European, Middle Eastern, and African universities and beena consultant to the Sudan Government, the High Executive Council ofthe Southern Sudan Regional Government, 1975–83, and ChevronOverseas Petroleum Inc., 1976–91. He first went to the Sudan in 1956,a month after independence, and has returned regularly to live, travelwidely in every part of the Sudan, and carry out his historical researchboth in the archives and in the field, particularly the southern Sudan.Between 1962 and 2006 he has published eight histories concerned withthe Sudan, southern Sudan, Darfur, and the Nile. His most recent books(with Millard Burr) are Requiem for the Sudan: War, Drought, and DisasterRelief, 1983–1993 (1994), Africa’s Thirty Years War: Chad, Libya, and theSudan, 1963–1993 (1999); The Nile (2002), and Revolutionary Sudan:Hasan al-Turabi and the Islamist State, 1989–2000 (2003). His latest books



are: Civil Wars and Revolution in the Sudan: Essays on the Sudan, SouthernSudan, and Darfur, 1962–2004 (Tsehai Publishers, 2005), Africa: A ShortHistory (Markus Wiener, 2005), Alms for Jihad: Charities and Terrorism inthe Islamic World (Cambridge, 2006), Darfur: The Long Road to Disaster(Markus Wiener, 2006), A History of Sub-Saharan Africa (Cambridge,2007), and A History of the Modern Sudan (Cambridge, 2007).

Note

* Correspondence address: Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara,HSSB 4226, Santa Barbara, CA93106-9410, USA. Email: [email protected].

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