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From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <h-rev...@lists.h-net.org>
Date: Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:53 PM
Subject: H-Net Review [H-Africa]: Spears on Copnall, 'A Poisonous Thorn In
Our Hearts: Sudan and South Sudan's Bitter and Incomplete Divorce'
To: <h-rev...@lists.h-net.org>
Cc: H-Net Staff <revh...@mail.h-net.org>
James Copnall. A Poisonous Thorn In Our Hearts: Sudan and South
Sudan's Bitter and Incomplete Divorce. Updated edition. London
Hurst, 2017. Maps. xxix + 317 pp. $27.50 (paper), ISBN
978-1-84904-830-9.
Reviewed by Ian Spears (University of Guelph)
Published on H-Africa (June, 2020)
Commissioned by David D. Hurlbut
If I were a diplomat about to be posted in Khartoum or Juba, it would
be difficult to imagine a more useful book than James Copnall's _A
Poisonous Thorn in Our Hearts: Sudan and South Sudan's Bitter and
Incomplete Divorce_. Copnall has a broad understanding of Africa,
having served as the BBC Africa editor and the BBC Sudan
correspondent from 2009 to 2012. In this book, he presents the views
of politicians, scholars, artists, journalists, and other experts. He
also offers creative ways to inform his reader of all aspects of
Sudanese life and politics. In the second chapter, "People and
Identity," for instance, he introduces short vignettes from ordinary
Sudanese. For anyone who wants a more "serious" understanding of the
country, these vignettes allow Sudanese to tell their own stories
only lightly mediated by an outsider.
As a united state, Sudan was a large and complicated country. Experts
lamented the tendency to reduce its central narrative to that of a
conflict between an Arab north and Christian south. Given the
country's bewildering complexity such a short-hand was
understandable. Copnall's book, however, provides a welcome and
accessible introduction to these complexities. In this comprehensive
examination of Sudan and South Sudan, both countries are given equal
treatment in chapters titled "People and Identity," "Politics,"
"Economy," "Development," and "Insecurity." Two additional chapters
consider the countries' relationship with the outside world ("The
Sudans and the World") and the challenges of their now-separate
existence ("The Sudans"). In the most recent edition of Copnall's
book (first edition was published in 2004), a new preface and
afterword have been added to the text.
Sudan _was_ once Africa's largest country in terms of territory, but
the country was fractured along many ethnic, political, and religious
lines. Prior to its independence from Great Britain in 1956, Sudan
experienced long periods of violence and war. The 2005 signing of the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Sudanese People's
Liberation Movement (SPLM) in the South and the military (and
sometimes Islamist) regime in Khartoum promised an end to the
conflict. Following a referendum and a declaration of independence in
July 2011, South Sudan seceded from the North in one of the
continent's rare instances of border change. But as Copnall says,
"splitting Sudan in two did not resolve its many problems" (p. 245).
Copnall observes that the war in South Sudan "mutated into a dizzying
array" of local conflicts and power struggles (p. xxvi). Meanwhile,
the rump state of Sudan looked ever more vulnerable, denuded as it
was of substantial oil revenues and having presided over the
country's dismantling. Even this "updated edition" does not include
the events that led to the coup that deposed President Omar al-Bashir
in April 2019. But the author correctly anticipates Bashir's imminent
demise. Copnall successfully and convincingly navigates Sudan's many
challenges, from identity (specifically both countries' ethnic and
religious diversity) to economic matters (and most specifically the
conundrum of resource exploitation). Sudan demonstrates that oil is a
curse, a frustratingly irresistible source of patronage, and perhaps
a route to development--if only the countries' leaders would make the
right choices.
Indeed, it is difficult not to wish for better leadership in both
Sudans. On two separate occasions at both ends of the book, Copnall
observes that there was not a single day of peace while President
Bashir was in office in Khartoum. He also documents the irony of how,
having participated in South Sudan's liberation from Khartoum,
members of South Sudan's opposition now "fear for [their] life" from
the regime in Juba and seek refuge in Khartoum (p. 62).
On the other hand, it seems unlikely that any single individual--no
matter how virtuous--can be counted on to bring peace to such
complicated countries. It is easier to point to individuals (and
their respective regimes) as the source of violence and instability
rather than an abstraction such as the state. But the region appears
to be especially relevant in this question insofar as, as Copnall
demonstrates, the secession of South Sudan has merely _reproduced_
the violence rather than resolved it. South Sudanese may be grateful
for their separation from Khartoum's reach but they must now contend
with their own internal conflicts as well as the arrogance of their
leaders. As one of my graduate students, Patrick Wight, has pointed
out, the minority Nuer now regard the majority Dinka as "the new
northerners."
Copnall describes the many tensions and contradictions that together
comprise the realpolitik of governance in Sudan--and all the actors
that a visiting diplomat or graduate student might want to be
informed about: the Islamists, the hardliners, the pragmatists, the
rivals within Bashir's own party, and the fractured and unstable
coalitions that, consequently, will make up any regime now or in the
future. On top of this, there is the geographic expanse of the
country; the diversity in religious, ethnic, and cultural terms; and
the wars and opportunistic rebels that pop up and multiply with every
concession made or sign of weakness. Copnall observes the chauvinists
in both the North and the South who regarded the British amalgamation
of North and South as a historic error, as well as the nationalists
who insisted that all available means should be employed to keep the
country together. He regrets the tendency to centralize power as much
as he worries about the centrifugal forces that still threaten to
pull each country apart. The chapter titled "Development: Where Does
the Money Go?" has plenty of anecdotal insights on the contradictions
of corruption: the way it diverts resources from development, on the
one hand, and the manner in which it remains central to the
functioning and coherence of state and society, on the other. And yet
Copnall concludes that peace in Sudan is a matter of choices.
Sudan's politicians at once are survivors who have successfully
prevailed in ruthlessly unforgiving environments and yet make
decisions that appear counterproductive to the interests of their
state and their own citizens. In Sudan, the government of Bashir was
said to be "more popular" than was assumed in the West (p. 42). Yet
it also squandered any international goodwill it garnered with
ham-fisted counterinsurgency efforts. In South Sudan, liberation
heroes now feel profoundly entitled to rule and yet are portrayed as
clueless novices who "do not know how to run a state" (p. 59). When
Juba chose to shut down the oil production to make a point to the
regime in Khartoum, one World Bank official became convinced that the
government of South Sudan "hadn't understood the economic
implications of the shutdown" (p. 98).
_A Poisonous Thorn in Our Hearts_ claims that the two Sudans will
remain reliant on each other in the future. "Half a decade after
independence," Copnall writes, "the two Sudans remain intertwined"
(p. xxix). He says that this is his argument, but the book is more of
a survey of Copnall's impressive knowledge of the Sudans and the many
complications and absurdities that undermine their futures as viable,
peaceful, and prosperous states.
Citation: Ian Spears. Review of Copnall, James, _A Poisonous Thorn In
Our Hearts: Sudan and South Sudan's Bitter and Incomplete Divorce_.
H-Africa, H-Net Reviews. June, 2020.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54798
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.
--
Best regards,
Andrew Stewart
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