The collapse of Comprehensive Peace Agreement

By Steve Paterno

June 10, 2008 — The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) has already collapsed since it has already been renegotiated, nonetheless in Khartoum under a murky condition. The CPA, signed between Sudan People Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) and National Congress Party (NCP) of Khartoum in the year 2005, was supposed to stop the South-North war—the war that has been waged for the last six decades. However, the recent outbreak of war between SPLA and Khartoum armed forces in Abyei area, which witnessed the SPLA getting routed out, the town getting burnt down into the ashes, and civilians getting exposed to the onslaught at the mercy of Khartoum armed forces killing machine, couple with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) intensifying attacks on SPLA targets, are clear indications that the CPA is already failed, therefore, renegotiated under a different name and different terms.

The relationship between the South Sudanese and that of the successive regimes in Khartoum has always been of mistrust and suspicion. The South Sudanese do not expect any regime from Khartoum to have any good intention toward the South Sudanese, because the people in those regimes are considered, “cunning, crafty, dishonest, untrustworthy, and racially as well as culturally arrogant.” Actually, too many agreements are signed between South Sudan and the successive regimes in Khartoum; however, none of them is honored. There was the infamous Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972, which in words of one observer, “was in a shred within the space of less than a year.”

One of the major reasons for the failure of that agreement was because it lacks basic safeguards. For example, per the terms of the agreement, the South Sudanese fighting forces were to be absorbed into the Khartoum armed forces, police, and prisons as well as in other civilian occupations. The agreement went as far as establishing a Southern Command within the Khartoum armed forces, which was composed of 12,000 soldiers of which 6,000 must come from the South. This is not to factor the fact that the entire South Sudanese fighting forces tripled the 6,000 marked, meaning that many of them could not be integrated within the Khartoum armed forces. This was all arranged under a poorly and vaguely worded provision, which states, “these arrangements shall remain in force for a period of five years.” As a result, the entire arrangement was left open for different interpretations. Accordingly, the politicians from Khartoum took great comfort in the language of the agreement as they took it to mean the dissolution of the Addis Ababa Agreement within 5 years from the time it was signed. Whereas, the Khartoum armed forces interpretation was that the whole integration process was a temporary arrangement that would end within 5 years time due to the fact that those South Sudanese integrated within Khartoum armed forces would disappear in dismal, through unnecessary transfers, early retirement and forceful resignation.

Since the Addis Ababa Agreement did eventually collapse, there were many series of agreements signed between various South Sudanese armed groups and the regime in Khartoum, especially in the 1990s. Infamous among those, is the Khartoum Peace Agreement of 1997, also known as April Fools Agreement of Riak Machar. All those agreements were not in anyway favorable to South Sudan but rather elevate some of the South Sudanese purported leaders to be Khartoum’s proxy warriors or better known as militia.

As for the CPA, there were high enthusiasm and expectations from the observers that it will be honored by the regime in Khartoum, given the safeguards the agreement contains. The strongest safeguard to the CPA is the maintenance of SPLA as an armed entity to operate independently in South Sudan as well as to fully participate in an equal number in Joint Integrated Units (JIUs) with Khartoum’s armed forces during the interim period. However, the recent unfolding activities of the show of force by Khartoum armed forces in South Sudan has clearly exposed lack of any safeguard to the CPA, and rendered it useless just like any of the agreements signed before it.

Now the lingering question is: when will Khartoum armed forces and its foreign allies such as the LRA will once again reoccupy the entire South Sudan? Thus far, they have already demonstrated their strengths and intentions. The routing out of SPLA forces from their previous positions along the South-North borders; the possible taking over of the Southern oil fields; and the killing with impunity of South Sudanese civilians by Khartoum forces are testaments to the fact that Khartoum is already succeeding in reoccupation of South Sudan. The threat is even exacerbated more with the LRA, Khartoum foreign allies, intensifying the killings and destructions of both South Sudanese civilians and SPLA forces.

SPLA seems to have been caught by surprise and unprepared with these threatening developments. In case of Abyei, after getting beaten there badly, they rushed to Khartoum and renegotiated the CPA, the agreement they signed 3 years ago, replacing it with another one known as Abyei Roadmap Agreement (ARA). Of course, this newly renegotiated agreement is worked out on the terms of Khartoum regime, since it is conducted under pressure and on a rush. The text of this new agreement is not out yet for the public to review. As with the LRA threat, the SPLA is equally oblivious. Sounding confused, the South Sudan’s Information Minister Gabriel Changson Chang is quoted as saying, “the LRA have started war,” and he added, “we do not yet have a definite position on” responding to LRA intensifying attacks. Another minister, Paul Mayom, who does not seem to have understood the threat posed by LRA, finally seems to have gotten it as he concluded, “the LRA have proved to be a danger.” In short, South Sudan is under threat and has proven to be a dangerous place.

Steve Paterno is the author of The Rev. Fr. Saturnino Lohure, A Romain Catholic Priest Turned Rebel. He can be reached at [email protected]