Comparing Sudan and Colombia peace agreements: similarities and differences
The Juba Peace Agreement: the dilemma of the coup, implementation and popular rejection
by Yasir Arman*
• As long as the Sudanese state is not based on a national project that commands wide consensus, sufficient social justice and non-discriminatory citizenship, there will always be those who rebel against it.
• Our country is in dire need of fundamental reforms, including reforming and completing the Juba Peace Process.
• The armed struggle movements are not a cohesive bloc, reflecting social and political contradictions. It is time for them to evolve from protest movements into movements committed to far-reaching social programs, effective policies for change, and a firm stance on totalitarianism.
• Demanding the cancellation of the Juba Peace Agreement will only deepen ethnic and geographical grievances, whereas revising it with the consent of all parties would be in everyone’s interest.
1. In Juba, I had the opportunity to talk to one of the experts brought by the AU-UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID), a former officer in the Colombian army who participated in negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC or the Revolutionary Armed Forces – People’s Army, on the Colombian Peace Agreement that ended a war that lasted for almost 50 years. I had already met some of the leaders of the FARC in Berlin. I was planning to visit Colombia in October 2022, my 60th birthday, but coups bring winds that blow against our wishes.
I have visited many parts of the world except Latin America, which I have a yearning to visit. it is an enchanting land full of poverty, resistance, history, culture, drug cartels, and banana republics, as they used to be called, thereby underestimating their true importance. It is also a land of drugs and transnational companies, and a land of magical and miraculous realism. Colombia combines all these attributes and is an amalgam of Latin America’s whole DNA. Colombia was the birthplace of Gabriel García Márquez, the most famous novelist in Latin America, Pablo Escobar, the world’s most notorious drug lord and the FARC, the most famous revolutionary guerrilla organization that fought for five decades and reached a peace agreement after the departure or murder of its senior leaders, Manuel Marulanda, Jacobo Arenas and Alfonso Cano.
2. The 25 October coup d’état ended all the important achievements of the December Revolution and placed obstacles in the way of peace, the economy, foreign relations and democratic civilian governance. One of the extraordinary features of the coup is that most of the armed movements abandoned their declared programs and slogans about the reform of state structures and democratic transformation. Some of them participated in the coup and took part in a desperate defence of the centre of power, sometimes with more fanfare than those at the centre themselves – a paradox which is in complete contradiction to their discourse of marginalization and equal citizenship, ignoring the future and forgetting the struggles of the past. The peace agreement was treated as if it was a certificate of citizenship allowing integration into the old regime with a small share of power and wealth, whose drops do not reach the lips of the poor who are craving justice and equity. The agreement has gone from being a peaceful mechanism for change to be an obstacle to change. Some movements have even adopted an outspoken position against the glorious December Revolution. That Revolution made peace one of its central slogans, ending decades during which Bashir’s regime rejected a just peace, and it paved the way for the armed struggle movements to make an active contribution to establishing a new order and effecting fundamental changes in the power structure that had long eluded them. It was they who had waged a determined, courageous and costly struggle in Sudan’s peripheries and rural areas. Yet instead of allying with the Revolution to change the old centre, they allied with the old centre against the Revolution itself.
There is a fundamental difference between the Juba Peace Agreement and the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement as regards South Sudan and the movements that signed the Juba Agreement. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement gave the southern nationalists the right of self-determination as an alternative to the path of struggling to change the status quo, which was too costly in their view. The movements that signed the Juba Peace Agreement do not have the luxury of the alternative provided by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which made southern nationalists less interested in democratic transformation than in the right to self-determination. Another factor was the complicity of the National Congress Party, for whom maintaining their position of power in Khartoum was more important than preserving the unity of Sudan, even if it meant enabling southern nationalists to establish an independent state. But the armed struggle movements that signed the Juba Peace Agreement do not have this alternative and will therefore pay the price of accepting the coup because the peace agreement will be aborted and the old regime will remain. This led to war in the Two Areas previously because they did not have the right to self-determination and had to deal with the complexities of the old regime and the greed and totalitarianism of National Congress Party rule.
Most of the armed struggle movements have dropped democracy from their calculations without being able to resolve the issues of their people on the ground who are still strongly supportive of the glorious December Revolution, and who recently came out in Darfur and the Two Areas on 30 June with great gusto. Consequently, these movements now face a dilemma as they did not achieve a transformation in the old power structure, and many of their supporters will hesitate to accompany them if they want to return to square one prior to Juba. They have also ignored the struggle to expand the space for democratic political action as a means of change. A few movements have done well to maintain their relations with the forces of the Revolution and their alliances. Some of the armed struggle movements seem to have reached a deadlock in the choices they could make.
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3. The dilemma of implementation. The Juba Peace Agreement consists of ten chapters, starting with the preamble, which speaks – paradoxically as things have turned out – of ending totalitarian and dictatorial regimes and establishing a democratic and developmental state. It pays tribute to the martyrs of the armed struggle forces who sacrificed their souls for the nation, the wounded and the missing who paved the way for freedom, justice, peace and development. The preamble emphasizes meeting the aspirations of the Revolution! What is happening now has nothing to do with this preamble, which its signatories do not remember.
If we turn to the first chapter of the Juba Peace Agreement, it talks about national issues, numbering 29 altogether, the most important of which are the transitional period, the Constitutional Document, the National Governance Conference, reform of the justice system, the census, elections, and specific issues such as those of the Kanabi communities, the environment, a conference for the states of Khartoum and North Kordofan, the issues of Christians, nomads, pastoralists and farmers, combating racism, Commissions, the National Commission of resources and financial revenue sharing and allocation, the role of the Sudanese private sector, education, pensioners and personnel who were dismissed arbitrarily and other issues. None of the national issues in this chapter have been successfully implemented. No one mentions or remembers these issues today. There is complete silence from those who negotiated with them and from those who even chanted during the Palace in preparation for the 25 October coup “We won’t leave tonight unless there is a statement (from the military)!”
The Agreement covers issues related to security arrangements, security sector reform at the national level and the integration of the forces of the armed movements within the process of building a single national professional army. It also covers land issues, the return of internally displaced persons and refugees, and the provision of 40% of the revenue generated from the natural resources of the states in conflict-affected areas – something that has not been implemented over the past two years, even though the Ministry of Finance has been assigned to the armed movements. None of these provisions or those in other chapters of the Agreement, including federalism and autonomy, have been implemented apart from power-sharing which has been reduced to merely giving jobs to individuals and financial benefits to some of the movements. Violence has increased in the former conflict-affected states. It is puzzling that issues of implementation have dropped off the agenda, that the guarantors of the agreement are no longer effective and that there are no mechanisms for implementation or involvement of the Sudanese people. This leaves the armed struggle movements at odds with their history, their slogans, their sacrifices and their people on the ground at a time when there are growing calls from different platforms to cancel the Juba Peace Agreement. However, this is a mistaken call that would not provide solutions and would only increase ethnic and geographical grievances and tensions.
4. What happened in Colombia and the revision of the Colombian Peace Agreement
The war in Colombia began in 1964 and ended in 2016, with the participation of multiple movements, the most famous of which was the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC). Colombia’s National Liberation Army continues the war and is negotiating with the government to this day. The situation in Colombia is therefore similar to that of Sudan in many respects but also differs from it. The Peace Agreement in Colombia was signed on 24 August 2016 in the Cuban capital, Havana, and was put to a referendum for ratification with the strong support of President Juan Manuel Santos. The Agreement narrowly failed to pass the referendum with 50.2% voting against it and 49.8% voting in favour but President Santos and the FARC leadership agreed to revise the Agreement rather than cancelling it. Revisions were made and it was agreed that the revised version should be submitted to Congress for ratification rather than be put to another referendum. The revised Agreement was ratified on 29-30 November 2016. The wisdom of the FARC movement was reflected in two things. Firstly, it agreed to revise the Agreement to gain greater popular support, while preserving the core issues covered by the Agreement, which address the root causes of the war, namely agrarian reform, social justice, citizenship issues, reform of the state organs, protection and integration of ex-combatants, implementation of security arrangements, passage of agreed constitutional amendments, freedom to participate in politics, strengthening democratic civilian governance, combating cartel Interests, building a broad front for the forces of change etc. This front ultimately supported one candidate from the revolutionary movements that signed an agreement before the Havana Agreement in 1990 and belong to the M19 movement – Gustavo Petro, the current President of Colombia, who won at the head of a left-wing alliance on 19 June 2022, for the first time in Colombia’s history.
In Colombia, armed struggle movements have stood in favour of renewal, reform, equal citizenship, social justice, democratic civilian governance, constitutional reforms, and the peaceful transfer of power. This position is to be recommended to the armed struggle movements in Sudan to consider and review their experience, especially those who participated in the coup.
5. Position on the Juba Peace Agreement
Calling for the rejection and cancellation of the Juba Peace Agreement because of growing public anger at the behaviour of some of the armed movement leaders is wrong, in my view, but ignoring public opinion would also serve to make the agreement isolated. We need to think outside the box to preserve the Juba Peace Agreement and complete the process with the non-signatories.
We must treat peace as a strategic issue for building the Sudanese state and as one of the pillars of the new national project. We must leave behind the painful experiences of the past, and former President Jaafar Nimeiri’s remark about the Addis Ababa agreement not being the Koran or the Bible, which helped to pave the way for a long war from 1983 to 2005. Revoking agreements and covenants is something that we must avoid and remember the book of that remarkable judge and noble patriot Maulana Abel Alier (Southern Sudan: Too Many Agreements Dishonored)
The Juba Peace Agreement is not without its shortcomings, foremost of which is the issue of regional tracks, which we opposed in Juba. However, its shortcomings are not a valid argument for cancelling the Agreement, but rather a reason to complete it, abide by it and revise it with the consent of its signatories, especially since the glorious December Revolution treated peace as a strategic issue and as one of its main slogans. The mistakes of the leaders of the armed movements do not negate the valiant struggle of those movements against the Bashir regime. The Juba Peace Agreement has potentially brought real benefits to people in the conflict zones. We should therefore abide by it and develop it to address the root causes of conflict and work to complete the process.
If we are in the process of drafting a new Constitutional Document, not returning to the situation on 24 October and overthrowing the 25 October coup d’état, this means that we are in the process of a full and positive review that could include the Juba Peace Agreement with the participation of its signatory parties, as happened in Colombia, to address the mistakes, to give the agreement new public momentum and support, to link it to democratic civilian governance and to complete the process with the signature of the two leaders, Abdelaziz Al Hilu and Abdel Wahid al-Nour. This would help to give peace a new public depth and a popular dimension given the growing campaigns against the Juba Peace Agreement, the scarcity of resources needed to implement it, the difficulty of mobilizing available resources properly in the context of the off-putting coup environment, hostile campaigns against the agreement and misinformation intended to distort it coming from within the organs of the regime, and the need to give the implementation of security arrangements the priority it deserves.
We should refrain from demanding the cancellation of the Juba Peace Agreement, especially as the forces of the revolution struggled so hard to conclude it. We must support all the gains obtained by the conflict zones that address the root causes of war and ensure that we do not increase ethnic tensions and geographical divisions, as this would be contrary to the interests of Sudan and the forces of the Revolution.
Removing the causes of war will strengthen the unity of Sudan. The quest to build a new, democratic Sudan based on non-discriminatory citizenship is the only way out of our country’s complex crisis.
- Arman is the head of the SPLM-N Revolutionary Democratic Current. He was the SPLM-N chief negotiator during the Juba process for peace in Sudan.