The Crisis of IGAD Peace Talks: Why has South Sudanese negotiating parties missed the 5th March 2015 Deadline?
10 min readBy Jacob Dut Chol, Juba, South Sudan
March 7, 2015 (SSB) — South Sudan dived into political and military chaos on the 15th December 2013 on what the Government’s account termed as a failed coup attempt and of which the opposition allies to Dr. Riek Machar argued as a triggered crisis meant to eliminate them.
The crisis then got a helping hand from the region and the international community that later put the peace mediations talks under the custody of IGAD.
This came from the background that the IGAD had once successful mediated Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). In the beginning of the mediation, IGAD and international community efforts’ led to the signing of many protocols between the SPLM in the Government and the SPLM in the Opposition, including the SPLM-Former Political Detainees (FPDs) known well as G10+.
These protocols include the Cessation of Hostilities (CoH), the Implementation Matrix of the CoH, the Road Map to the Transitional Government of National Unity and finally the famous Arusha SPLM Unification Agreement as reinforcement to the Addis Ababa peace process.
Given that many rounds of Addis Ababa peace talks could not yield any ripen fruit on the implementation stages, the purported last round that mediators duped as “last Chance” and practically began on 23rd February and to end on 5th March 2015 with a comprehensive peace agreement appeared as another standstill affairs without peace to the war ridden South Sudanese.
It seemed that the negotiators would just pack their briefcases from Addis Ababa luxurious hotels and return to Nairobi and Juba without peace. Then why is this case? Why is that a simple party squabbles could take one year and three months without headway? What are the hurdles in the South Sudan peace process?
This short analysis attempts to analyze three drivers that explain the standstill of South Sudan peace process. These drivers include misguided model, inconsistency in mediation procedures and zero-sum interests of regional and international community.
We begin our analysis at the misguided model of South Sudan peace process. The IGAD mediators for South Sudanese peace had just plagiarized a Sudanese peace process model forgetting that plagiarism is a deadly sin in academic milieu.
Thus, the copycat of Sudan NCP-SPLM peace model to resolve South Sudanese family quarrels complicated the peace process further. For instance, the elements of two armies, wealth sharing and contracted debts could have not been discussed in one party bickers. What is the essence then, Are the two standing armies going to protect and defend the constitutions of countries or party leaders? Are they going to be parties or countries armies?
In peace theory, underpinned by International Law, armies are meant for well-defined State not personal or political parties. Thus, the pronouncement of having two armies in the would-be South Sudanese peace accord is a misplaced ambition that had serious negative ramification in sealing peace on time. The NCP-SPLM model was crafted brilliantly to serve the secession of the then Southern Sudan in offing for South Sudan.
Unless the SPLM-IO is foreseeing secession tendencies to cave out certain region to qualify for a Republic. Wait; is this what Dr. Riek and SPLM-IO fanatics want to do in the feasible future? Is Dr. Riek and Co. Ltd going to secede from South Sudan and maybe declare Republic of Greater Upper or Ngundeng Republic to warrant a separate army? How about the ethnic composition of the army? Is it not going to be homogeneous coterie militias outfit of the tribal white armies (Jiech Mabor) who comes from Dr. Riek ethnic backyard?
These should be self-reflections questions for the coiner of the two armies model to evaluate the future state of South Sudan disintegration and over-Somalization. On wealth sharing, one wondered of what wealth does Dr. Riek SPLM-IO want to share with Kiir SPLM-IG? Is it the oil of the Greater Upper Nile region? I thought there were clauses covering this in Petroleum Act 2012, particularly the 2% share that goes to oil producing States. Subsequently, the argument of wealth sharing lacks any substance and it is inapt call.
If anything, then It would be better for the former and current Governors of the Greater Upper region, particularly the oil producing States of Upper Nile and Unity to be asked to explain where the annual 4% States shares have gone to, instead of asking for wealth sharing for a political party. Coming to the contracted debts, one may say yes, the Government should make its debts public to the citizens including the opposition group.
However, one interesting thing is that, the SPLM-IO may have as well borrowed some Hugh chunk of money as loans from their allies and of which they promised allies to pay back together with the Government loans when peace is attained, thus the famous dictum “contracted debts”. Consequently, the misguided model could not enhance the realization of South Sudan peace on set date due to the aphorism of “one size fits all approach” which does not augur well in attaining peace agreements.
Moreover, the second driver that could explain the shameful missing of peace deadline is inconsistency on mediation. In every mediation process there are always Declaration of Principles (DOPS) or Rules of Procedures (ROPs). These DOPs/ROPs were not strictly followed in South Sudanese peace process. At the beginning of talks, South Sudanese opposition parties led by SPLM-Democratic Change (DC), Former Political Detainees (FPDs) and other civil interested groups were allowed as part of negotiations.
I know, one may argue that multifaceted negotiations have never been successful given that the number of parties’ involved and endless consultations associated with them. But South Sudan case as I alluded to earlier, is a family dispute that exploded at the house of SPLM and therefore inclusivity was paramount. Given this oversight ting, the mediators accepted to bar out the opposition parties led by SPLM-DC and the FPDs.
Although the SPLM Arusha Unification Agreement revived the participation of FPDs in spirit of resolving the debacle using SPLM re-union therapy, the mediators re-invented the wheel and reduced the negotiation as a bilateral affair between the SPLM-IG and SPLM-IO. So lack of confidence in the mediation consistency is another daring driver that has kept parties at standstill in reaching peace agreement on time.
The third driver is the zero-sum interests of regional countries and divided attention of international community. Quick analysis of the interests of regional heavy weights gives sense on how peace was hostage by segmented interests. We start with Uganda, the Republic of Uganda interest in South Sudan is linked to trade benefits and possible petroleum interest. Since the independence of South Sudan, Uganda is reported to have acquired billions of dollars profits in trade with South Sudan.
Moreover, the menace of LRA seemed to have smothered Uganda to South Sudan and bonded them as twin best allies. Kampala has often accused Khartoum of harboring and supporting dangerous LRA terrorist, a threat Khartoum stomached but again accused Kampala of supporting the SPLM-N rebels fighting to dislodge President Al-Bashir. These interests have kept Kampala historically closed to Juba.
On the other hand, Kenya is till beating its chests for having midwifed the then Sudan Peace process that later led to the Independence of South Sudan and thus in this South Sudan conflicts, Nairobi has always remained ambivalent in the treatment of Government, Rebels and FPDs. This should not be a surprise revelation; Kenya foreign policy is embedded on non-antagonism and the principle of good neighborhood-ness and thus truth to that her ambivalent in regional conflicts is a guided decision.
Besides, United Republic of Tanzania, a cool socialist State has based her interests on snatching away South Sudan peace from Addis Ababa to her historical peace town of Arusha. Dodoma boasted for her recent well-concluded SPLM Arusha Unification Agreement though it has been thrown into the garbage dustbin.
Thus, she belittles Addis Ababa for lack of experience in mediating internal political conflicts. Tanzania mediation credence goes back to the successes of mediating Kenya post-electoral political fiasco that has led to rebirth in Kenya institutions and leadership and thinks that she is the best to resolve South Sudan political ignominy. What is more, Ethiopia interest is dual diplomacy, however, her interest is tilted towards SPLM-IO support given the large presence of Nuer nationalities in Ethiopia.
Connected to the thread is hydro politics interest, South Sudan recently has strengthened its ties with Egypt, which Ethiopia strongly detests. Addis Ababa would withdrawal its diplomatic support from any country that comes closer to Cairo due the supremacy control over the Grand Renaissance Dam which has billions storage volume of cubic water. Given that South Sudan is still chairing the Nile Basin Countries body, Ethiopia is closely monitoring her moves particularly her associations with Egypt.
In addition, Khartoum interests in the peace talks are quite obvious. Given that South Sudan is a special ally to Uganda, Sudan would treat South Sudan as a political foe especially the SPLM-IG and in-lieu gives her support to the SPLM-IO. Moreover, the issue of each side alleged support to marauding rebels has deteriorated the relations of the two countries.
Pertinent to regional interests analysis is the Djibouti. Djibouti interests are all in oil pipelines. Djibouti wishes that South Sudan oil pipelines could pass via Ethiopia and thus to Djibouti. She has been waiting for the Government of Republic of South Sudan to formalize the LAPSET project so that her hope in ferrying South Sudan crude to Djibouti is made real.
Given the delayed of the Government to actualize the pipeline project to Djibouti and being a very poor country, Djibouti got hoodwinked by the SPLM-IO and informed that the pipelines would be extended to her territory once SPLM-IO get to the realm of power. The veracity of this affair is that, the representative of Djiboutian Government was embedded in Addis Ababa talks, serving as a consultant to the SPLM-IO on petroleum issues.
On the last analysis on the divided attention of the International Community, one could argue that the USA, UK and Norway (Troika) are not reading from the same script. When the USA proposed individual target sanctions and approved by the UNSC, there were no notch-higher campaigns from UK and Norway, particular from their parliaments on the necessity of propelling individual target sanctions on South Sudanese leaders.
Hence, it is possible to elucidate that the Troika has divided its support across the SPLM belligerents groups, namely, the SPLM-IG, SPLM-IO and FPDs. You could argue that Troika would take breakfast with the SPLM-IG, lunch with SPLM-IO and dinner with the SPLM-FPDs. This divided attention could not coalesced in rallying around one interest, speaking in one voice and agreeing that enough was enough for South Sudan peace deal.
Regional and international examples had that a united international community can have a strong push toward successful signing of peace accords. For instance, the Northern Ireland Good Friday Peace Agreement was reached at the last minute when the international community chorused in one voice and introduced carrot phrase “departing train strategy” to refer to that reality the train was completely leaving and that it would never return again and hence anyone not joining the train would be left behind forever.
This also applied to the Bosnia-Herzegovina peace mediation that attracted the unity of the international community leading to the inking of Dayton Peace Agreement at the last hour. Although one can argue that the Dayton Peace Accord cannot be a good model given the challenges in its implementations, it tested the muscles of international community in supporting the Consociational Agreement.
Finally, it is plausible to conclude that the whole procrastination of realizing peace in Addis Ababa is causally linked to the misguided model that failed to diagnose the problem of South Sudanese, the inconsistency in the procedures of negotiations and the vested interests of regional and international community. Deadlines have been set and missed. However, the missing of the 5th March 2015 is a big blow to South Sudanese leaders.
The last word of IGAD Chairperson, Hailemriam Dessalegn that the IGAD South Sudan peace talks have been adjourned indefinitely given a need to reinvigorate and reform the peace process showcased the reality of IGAD mistakes being rightly hereby admitted.
Thus, in the next Submit of IGAD Heads of States and Governments that will perhaps determine the reinvigoration of South Sudanese peace talks, one can advise that the Stick of peace talks mediation be handed over to United Republic of Tanzania for the very reason that its regional interests are only tied towards snatching peace and mediate it.
Tanzania has a special experience of having successful mediated Kenya post-electoral Accord and the recent Arusha SPLM Unification Agreement. Until a Peace Accord is reached soon or later, keep crying my neglected baby beloved country!
Mr. Chol is a Reader and Head, Department of Political Science, University of Juba. He can be reached at dutsenior@yahoo.com
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