Sudan Conflict: A Tale of Ethnicity, Resources & Boundaries - Essay Sample

Introduction

Similar to all other regions of the world, there were several conflicts in the area that became Sudan after the Berlin Congress. The hostility between the north and South Sudan dates back to the Arab slave trade where the Arabs contracted the northern tribes to raid the south for slaves. Nonetheless, before the nineteenth century, the Sudanese war was barely purely ethnic, amid the African south and the Arab north, but clashes over resources and boundaries. Similar conflicts happened throughout the African continent and the globe all through history.

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Since 1899, the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ruled the whole of Sudan. Egypt had less influence than the British in reality, making the rule to be referred to as a rubber-stamp half. Attempting to rule the majority of the globe, the British lacked a force to occupy the Sudan region, and they needed to establish a divide and rule plan. The British desired a Sudan where the people were full of fear and distrust, which made them fight amongst themselves, instead of fighting the colonizers. Furthermore, the policy split southern regions from the rest of the state and eventually delayed their social and economic development. The British powers maintained that the south was not prepared to be incorporated into the contemporary world. During the same period, the British spent more in the Arab North, improving the health, educational, economic institutions and liberalizing political institutions.

The British Condominium administration did not have any opposition against Islam in northern Sudan. Actually, the British promoted Islamism in the north through fiscal aids for the pilgrimage arrangements of the Muslims and building temples. However, in the southern region, they needed to avert the spread of Islam and maintain the African manner of life of the southerners through the help of Christian missionaries. The plan was to connect the south to the British colonial East Africa. Such events began creating gradual divisions between the south and north Sudan.

The indirect rule policy was used by the British to delay the development of southern Sudan. To avert religious leaders and the educated personnel from becoming influencers in the political and social life of the south, the British offered the supremacy to the tribal heads and ruled the region through them. In essence, when the divide and rule strategy divided the south and north, the indirect rule split the south into several numbers of casual chiefdoms. The British crafted indirect rule strategies based on the southern policy manuscript. The Southern Policy affirmed that the strategy of the administration in South Sudan is to establish a cycle of self-reliant ethnic entities founded on native cultures and traditions. These southern tribal entities were to be fully divided from the rest of the region. Through the strategy, northern representatives were relocated from the south, the trading authorizations for northerners were revoked and Arabic culture was discouraged. The British decided to invalidate its Southern Policy in 1946. The rationale was that the individuals from the southern part were intricately connected to the Arab north both economically and geographically as far as future growth was concerned.

The British split the north and South Sudan culturally without dividing them politically. Such practices made it predictable that when the British handed-over power, the northerners would attempt to absorb the southerners by force. The southerners had to establish a resistance movement to defend themselves. Moreover, the mistrust and tensions between the southern and northern Sudan that accumulated over the decades ended in significant armed clashes in the mid-1950s. Afraid of marginalization, the army officers from the south revolted in 1955. This marked the initial long civil war in Sudan. Most scholars trust that the British policies in the state were the primary causes of conflict and the long civil war which only calmed after an agreement to offer the south more autonomy. Peace was momentary as the civil war between the administration in the north and radicals from the south erupted in 1983. In the period between the two wars, the economic prospects on the south shifted drastically with the discovery of oil in 1978. The second civil war culminated in 2005 after the approval of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005. The CPA formally ended one of the lengthiest and extremely violent armed civil conflicts in the history of Africa.

The research on conflict decree began recognizing that the determinant of the success of a treaty is commonly temporary and centres on procedural executions of requirements instead of internal social dynamics. In essence, the de-politicization of conflict and peace within liberal presumptions enhances the reproduction of general and technical remedies, disproving the local power relations, history and politics, and eventually causing an administrative state in a vacuum, missing the objective of sustainable democracy and peace. Heathershaw reveals that the peace desired in moderate peacebuilding is no longer a social occasion, but rather an outcome of the clash practices and is unsustainable. The proof from Africa confirms such findings as the sum of conflicts in the region rose from the 1990s and the clashes mainly occurred from failed resolutions of the previous ones. Peace contracts often freeze local mechanisms to compel social conflict in the patterns easily comprehended through moderate codes. Most African states, such as Sudan are stuck in underdevelopment, which sparks societal clashes and the modest agenda tackles the enormous disputes to its sufficient comprehension. External efforts to sell abroad models of Western liberal independent states can suppress accessible responsibility and state authenticity, which significantly undermines peace sustainability and democracy.

The events of Sudan's CPA prove the outcomes of current research on the sound liberal peacebuilding used in the African context. The CPA was an intricate deal founded on the troubles of liberal egalitarianism that were de-contextualized from the circumstances in Sudan following two decades of conflicts. Moreover, the CPA did not handle the issues of unbalanced power and prosperity allocation in the country while recommending the parties to bring egalitarianism through general elections in the provisional period. The entire CPA completion, for the autonomous evolution of Sudan, was founded in the obligation of the SLPM and CPA that at the period of signing the deal were not official independent political affiliations. Participants of the CPA used the deal for their gains as they strived to guarantee peace between the South and North Sudan and the progress of the regions depending on the oil economy. It eventually reached a state when the parties experienced a hurting standoff, and none could conquer the adversary military. Peace and democracy turned out to be dichotomist standards breaching the liberal peacebuilding theory.

One apparent trait of civil wars in Africa is that they are commonly multi-layered, with minor clashes occurring in more massive conflicts. In almost every African nation that has experienced a long civil war since independence, the experience has turned out to be that most groups opposed to the administration disintegrate into factions. Similarly, within some of the profoundly undemocratic administrations, clashes have often created divisions between the regime faithful who gain from the prevailing system and the opponents striving for reforms. Some of these conflicts, whether in national or opposition groups take on regional, ethnical, racial, and religious splits, which escalate ethnic conflicts and losing track of widespread concerns that drew them to war in the first place. Such is the case in Sudan, and the breakage has created severe results for the conflict resolution.

The loose implementation of the CPA in an attempt to realize democracy in the country relied on the obligation of the parties. The demise of John Garang, the creator of CPA in 2005 and the progression of the separatist SPLM, a leader-led by Salvar Kiir that incited the minority of Garang's assistants who envisioned the new Sudan was essential to the disaster of the revolutionary scheme preserved in the deal. The grief of Garang destabilized the obligation towards a New Sudan of both the NCP (National Congress Party) and SPLM (Sudan People's Liberation Movement) in the intervening period. It further exposed the diminutive devotion to the plan of a unified Sudan among the parties. Furthermore, SLPM's transition into a state political party was delayed as the reliable spot of the NCP remained uncontested, due to lack of opponents in parliament. SLPM's headship centred on the restoration of South Sudan and the development of new self-directed military and executive establishments in the areas most affected by the war. The attention shifted to the ceasefire with Khartoum, in an attempt to attain the sovereignty of South Sudan.

The accomplishment of the CPA, conducted by participants from GoS, SLPM, and CPA turned out to be an intricate and selective subject as the room for a political deliberation remained incomplete. The parties were upholding their collaboration at the lowest level and, on some events, the deal seemed to fail. For instance, CPA foundations were deteriorated by the stressed interaction between the parties and commonly made unsuccessful. It is the situation of the North/South boundary commission that operated under immense stress and never made it label a line because of the occurrence of oilfields and mineral assets along the boundary, which were disputed by the parties. The CPA initiated a delicate no-war-no-peace condition that the parties needed to maintain carefully. Such events occurred after attempts to transform the country through a general election and population census to attain the end of the intervening period and a diplomatic referendum.

The execution of the procedure of the two areas was impacted by the general ill realization of the CPA and the stressed dealings between Khartoum and Juba. The flaws of the general scheme of a transformed and unified Sudan preserved in the CPA became apparent. Rather than a framework for the creation of the new self-governing Sudan, the execution of the procedure of the two areas showed the faults of the New Sudan idea in the CPA and its parties. The sagacity of inequitable handling felt in Naivasha was toughened in the provisional period and the execution of the peace agreement that was lining towards the actualization of the referendum in opposition to the democratization of the entire nation. Furthermore, a non-functional NRDF (National Research and Development Foundation), together with finances described by the deal impacted the likelihood of the socio-economic progress of the war-affected regions. For instance, the lack of upgrading people's lives in the southern Blue Nile State that had been adversely impacted by the clash was primarily outstanding in the intervening period. The high intensity of distrust among the parties and armies led to the deployment and maintenance of their troops outside the JIUs (Joint Integrated Units), exposing the tactical significance of the two areas in the interactions between North and South throughout the changeover.

The disagreement in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states became the heritage of the subsequent civil war. The conflict in these states aggravated massive displacements and permanent socio-economic disturbance of the local inhabitants. While Khartoum undermines the impact of the clashes, over a million individuals are impacted by the disputes and survive as internally displaced persons w...