Prospects and challenges of peace in Sudan Africa Today Seminar

Mohamed A. Salih is Professor of Politics of Development at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague and the Department of Political Science, University of Leiden. His recent books include Environmental Politics and Liberation in Contemporary Africa (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999) and African Democracies and African Politics (Pluto, 2001). Among the books he has recently edited is African Political Parties: Evolution, Institutionalisation and Governance (Pluto, 2003).

There are signs that the Sudanese government and the SPLA/SPLM, the major liberation movement, are about to sign a peace agreement to end the current civil war, the country’s second civil war since 1983. Peace negotiations are being treated as if they are about outstanding South-North conflicts over identity, power and wealth sharing, and the future of contested regions (the Nuba Mountains, Ingesina and Abyie). However, the South-North conflict is only one of the many regional conflicts that has devastated Sudan. Furthermore, political parties within and outside the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) contest the SPLA/SPLM and the Sudan government’s monopoly of peace negotiations, dubbing them as non-democratic in their handling of issues pertinent to the future of Sudan as a whole. This seminar is about the complex issues that peace negotiators and the sponsors of the Sudan peace process wish to forget in an attempt to make them disappear. The question is what the long-term prospects and challenges are for the peace process, which is far from inclusive and which would reward the sections of the political elite that have until recently been considered a threat to peace not only in Sudan but also in the whole region and beyond. A more generous comment is a speculative one on whether the Sudan peace process will contribute to peace in the conflict-torn countries bordering Sudan, namely Uganda, Eritrea and the DRC.