Back to OneWorld US

Independence for Southern Sudan?

This OneWorld US Special Report is based on a study prepared by Dunstan M. Wai, an exiled Southern Sudanese scholar and development expert involved in peace initiatives among Southern Sudanese leaders. The paper combines scholarly research with critical advocacy in favor of self-determination for the Southern Sudan.

In September 2000 the U.S. Committee for Refugees testified before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on conditions in the Sudan, noting that:

Seventeen years of virtually non-stop civil war and harsh Sudanese government repression have produced in the Sudan one of the world’s worst human rights and humanitarian catastrophes. Yet the world has largely ignored the situation.

About ten times more people have died (directly or indirectly) as a result of the war in Sudan than, for example, in the devastating January earthquake in India’s Gujarat state. Reputable groups have documented state-perpetrated genocide and slavery. Starvation is used by the government as a Machiavellian political tool against the population in the south; close to a million people are at risk of famine, according to a February 2001 estimate by the UN World Food Program. Most of Southern Sudan’s 5 million people lack access to schools and health care. They are governed by the North without their consent. More Sudanese are exiled or internally displaced that any other population in the world.

Yet the world has largely ignored the situation.

The two main points argued here are that it is time for world leaders to focus on a solution for the Sudan, and the solution must involve self-determination for the Southern Sudanese people. Based on a detailed, multidisciplinary study the author concludes that the Northern Sudanese government has oppressed southerners since the moment of independence in 1956, has abrogated international agreements designed to protect the people of the south, and shows no signs of respecting their human and civil rights. Pres. Omar Hassan al-Bashir called January 30 for improved relations with the United States. It is the contention of this paper that U.S.--and all external--involvement should be aimed at brokering an end to the conflict and a referendum allowing southern Sudanese to choose between remaining part of the Sudan or becoming a separate nation.

The United States can play an important role in the effort to bring peace and democratic rule to the Sudan. The Clinton Administration maintained comprehensive economic sanctions against the Khartoum government and opposed its membership in the UN Security Council, and the U.S. has channeled over $1 billion to humanitarian aid groups working in the Sudan over the past ten years. These efforts, while laudable, do not address the roots of the conflict, nor have they resulted in improving the situation on the ground. Now, Southern Sudanese leaders suggest, the U.S. should concentrate its efforts on reviving the peace process, working with the Sudan’s neighbors to reach an end to the conflict and a democratic Southern Sudan.

The bitter fighting in the Sudan is rooted in sharp ethnic and religious differences that have, over the past 50 years, resulted in the political, economic, and social exclusion of the southern half of the country. Northern Sudan is predominantly Arab and Muslim; the South is predominantly African and follows Christian or traditional faiths. During a lengthy period of colonization by the British, the North received investment in education and infrastructure, while the South received protection from Arab slave raiders--but little else. At independence, over the objection of its own local administrators, Britain handed power for all of the Sudan over to its proteges in Khartoum, who have ruled since 1956 without ever allowing meaningful Southern involvement in the country’s political, economic, military, or administrative life. In essence, the South has been ruled as an internal colony by the North, which has progressively attempted to impose Arab culture and Islam on Africans in the South.

Southerners began rebelling even before the end of British colonialism, as they saw the handwriting on the wall. Failing to convince the British to protect them, southerners formed a resistance movement, the Anya-Nya, in 1963 to oppose government by the North. The Northern military government responded with a heavy hand, and from 1963-72 warfare raged between the two halves of the Sudan. During this time southern anger was fueled by a new constitution that declared Islam as the official state religion and Arabic as the official language of the land. Under increasingly dogmatic Islamic regimes, efforts to forcibly proselytize southerners have intensified. Today, youth captured by Northern Army troops, for example, are sent to "peace camps" where they are indoctrinated in Arab culture and Islamic religion and sent out to wage "Holy War" (jihad) against their own people.

Southerners had virtually no role in the pre-independence machinations that led to a newly formed government in Khartoum that was given power over the entire Sudan. Once independence was finalized, Northerners proceeded to prohibit meetings of Southern political forces, dismiss Southern government employees and replace them with Northerners, and employ ruthlessly repressive tactics against any and all signs of unrest. This repression extended from rebellious southern army troops to high-school students protesting a law changing the official "day of rest" from the Christian Sunday to the Islamic Friday. In short, southerners were progressively excluded from the political and administrative machinery--and thus from decisions affecting the South--and Northerners came to rule over every aspect of Sudanese life. No effort has been made to recognize--much less make accommodations for--the country’s ethnic and religious diversity.

Prolonged warfare weakened governance in the North, and became a source of instability in the Horn of Africa. Following a 1969 military coup that brought Colonel Jaafar Nimeiry to power in Khartoum, the Sudan’s neighbors (Kenya, Ethiopia, and Uganda) joined together to broker an agreement between Nimeiry and the political wing of the Anya-Nya. The result was the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement, which:

• Established self-government in the South
• Affirmed the Sudan’s dual cultural, religious, and racial identity
• Guaranteed physical security for southerners by ensuring that troops in the region would include equal numbers of northerners and southerners and be under the control of a Southern political leader.

A number of other guarantees in the Addis Ababa Accord were designed to ensure the rights, freedoms, and financial stability of the South.

However, the Accord was never implemented, and war broke out again in earnest in 1981 when it was formally abrogated by Nimeiry’s government, under pressure from hardline Muslims who opposed Southern autonomy. Another key factor triggering Nimeiry’s move was the discovery of oil in southern Sudan.

Under the Addis Ababa accord, the South was to have control over its natural resources to fund its own development. The land in Southern Sudan is fertile and abundant; the region has copper reserves and forestland. With some external assistance, these resources would have aided the South to develop a sustainable economy. However when oil was discovered in the Southern Kordofan region in 1979, the North decided to use its political and military power to change boundary lines and take Southern resources for themselves. With the stroke of a pen, southern oilfields were suddenly within northern boundaries. Instead of building a refinery in the south, where it could have created jobs and supported the development of infrastructure, the facility was constructed in the North. These moves were followed by other boundary changes transferring thousands of acres of agricultural land and gum Arabic forests and southern copper reserves to northern provinces.

Inevitably Southerners rebelled. Many were forced into exile, while others formed a resistance movement based on the earlier Anya-Nya, led by the Southern People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). War has been raging since 1983, taking at least 2 million lives and displacing some 4 million people. The North regularly drops bombs on southern civilian sites and blocks efforts by humanitarian groups to deliver food and medical aid in the South. It supports paramilitary groups that burn southern towns, killing the men and capturing women and children to serve as slaves for Northern Arabs.

The government policy of depriving the South of natural resources and development aid has resulted in some of the appalling social indictors in the region today. Life expectancy at birth is just 36 years, primary school enrollment hovers around 6 percent, and there is fewer than one doctor per 100,000 inhabitants in southern Sudanese provinces.

More recently, in January 2001, the New York Times pointed out in an editorial that the Northern government receives arms to use against the South from China, Iran, Iraq, Russia and Bulgaria in exchange for oil income. Canada’s Talisman Oil company owns 25 percent of a $1.2 billion pipeline project, and the resulting income has allowed Khartoum to double its military expenditures. Not only was the South deprived of an important resource, but oil income is being used to fuel the North’s military campaign against the people of the South.

In a 1999 editorial the Washington Post declared:

Few governments are bloodier than Sudan’s. The Islamist dictatorship in Khartoum routinely abuses human rights, it condones slavery, it has sought to impost Shari’ah law on the non-Islamic South, deepening a civil war that has claimed two million lives since fighting broke out in 1983.

"Western governments," the Post said, "should present a united front in condemning Khartoum."

Nothing has changed since November 1999, except for ever-greater militarization in the North and a corresponding increase in lives lost in the South. During 2000 a group of Sudanese political and intellectual leaders, based at home and living in exile, came together to develop a scenario for peace and independence for the Southern Sudan. The group met several times to formulate a realistic plan for a cease-fire and a referendum to decide the future of the country that would offer Southern Sudanese the option of severing their ties with the North. These goals are being discussed with leaders of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, the political wing of the SPLA.

Assuming agreement can be reached among southerners--at least regarding the need for these two basic steps--such efforts deserve the support of the United States, the UN, and others. In particular, the group of countries known as the IGAD Group, which has been trying to foster peace since 1994, should step up efforts to bring the North to the table, with support from its Western "IGAD Partners." Surely, after 17 years of conflict, and in light of the gross violations of every conceivable human right being perpetrated by North upon South and the total absence of democratic processes, it is time for the world to stop ignoring the crisis in the Sudan. The U.S. should not merely maintain its commitment to aiding Southern Sudan, but should take the initiative to begin and see through a diplomatic offensive designed to end the suffering of the people of Southern Sudan. It should do so based upon all the values that Americans and all democrats embrace. Peace is the top priority, and a lasting peace will only be achieved when Southern Sudanese have the opportunity to choose their own government.