The South Sudan peace process: prospects for 2015
Posted on January 6, 2015 by AfricanArgumentsEditor
IGADSouthSudan
South Sudan Parties Sign Implementation Matrix of Cessation of
Hostilities Agreement (Photo: IGAD).
Predicting conflict in South Sudan is easy. Those who warn that the
coming of the dry season means further bloodshed are not being
especially astute; they are stating the obvious. What to do about this
likelihood is a much harder question.
Almost as obvious is to observe that the peace process is weakened by
continued fighting. Is the sequence of a comprehensive cessation of
hostilities first, then productive peace talks second, necessary?
Desirable, yes, but necessary?
Almost paradoxically, limited, ongoing violence has not so far been
the main obstacle to progress in the peace process: more of a problem
is the inability of the parties to demonstrate goodwill and genuinely
commit to finding a solution. Since the Bahir Dar talks in September
2014, violence certainly hasn’t prevented both warring parties from
continuing to talk – in the earlier months of 2014 this was not always
the case.
Today, more consequential to the environment for talks are the
rhetoric and antagonism of preparations for escalating the conflict,
rather than any individual episode of conflict itself; the increasing
authoritarianism and paranoia of the government in Juba; provocative
declarations that national elections will be held on schedule (all too
similar to the strategy of the NCP in Sudan, unfortunately); and on
both sides, prevaricating leaders who care more about their own
interests than that of their so-called constituencies.
Which returns South Sudan to external intervention: the formal, IGAD
peace process. For all its flaws, without the peace process, the war
would be completely unconstrained.
Neighbouring states would have privileged their narrow, bilateral
interests even more than they have done already. A full-fledged proxy
war between Sudan and Uganda could have developed months ago – there
is still a real risk that it might.
These are not achievements of which IGAD can be too proud. The peace
process is at a particularly perilous juncture. The last round of
talks in December 2014 went nowhere.
The consultations of the government in Juba, and the SPLM/A (In
Opposition) in Pagak, have widened rather than narrowed the gaps
between the parties. The participation of political parties other than
the SPLM remains contested, with other political parties having had no
effective presence since Bahir Dar.
The Tanzania hosted intra-SPLM dialogue in Arusha has opened a
parallel process that further detracts from the IGAD effort. Arusha,
only in its second round of talks, is still in a honeymoon phase,
compared to the relative bitterness now felt in almost a year of talks
in Ethiopia.
(An aside: Finland and Switzerland, the donors supporting the Arusha
process, should have been far more cognizant of the risks of
encouraging forum shopping; this failure of understanding,
particularly in the case of Switzerland, so long-engaged in South
Sudan, is inexcusable.)
Having effectively exhausted the classical mode of negotiations, the
mediation has turned again to that unwieldy but potentially
transformative option: a summit of IGAD heads of state and government,
to be held sometime later this month in Addis Ababa. This will be the
seventh IGAD summit on South Sudan since December 2013, and it is
unclear whether the lesson of past meetings – particularly that of the
August summit – have been fully learned.
This is probably IGAD’s last chance – another summit failure and the
organization’s credibility and political capital will be almost spent.
The need to demonstrate ‘success’ may be counterproductive: IGAD may
be tempted to spin any summit outcome positively, or threaten the
parties to sign up to an agreement they are not ready to believe in.
In the limited time IGAD has left to achieve meaningful progress in
resolving the South Sudan crisis, it is vital that the mistakes made
in the past year are not repeated. Avoiding these errors will not be
sufficient for resolution – that depends on the South Sudanese (and of
course, there are plenty of other pitfalls); it will, however, make
the prospect of success more likely.
Here are four tasks the IGAD mediators should urgently undertake:
Adequately prepare for the next summit.
Most events involving heads of state are so tightly choreographed and
well planned they might as well be ballet performances. Recent IGAD
summits have suffered from a total lack of choreography.
There needs to be a clear game plan for the summit, and strategies in
place to ensure traps and detours do not ensnare the meeting. Summit
meetings are not wellsuited to details and can’t get bogged down on
minutiae.
It is critical that heads of state are adequately prepped and briefed
before they arrive in Addis. Otherwise the summit will, at best, make
little tangible progress, and at worst, go backward
Make real efforts to reach out to more South Sudanese.
At this stage, the occasional press release or press conference is not
enough. The mediation needs to marshal the full force of South
Sudanese society towards an irreversible peace.
Most South Sudanese – even those nominally aligned to one side or the
other – have little idea what their representatives are doing in their
name. The parties to the talks have proven to be intransigent and
stubborn; most people don’t know enough about these machinations to
express their own outrage and demand change.
Individual church leaders have demonstrated a willingness to stand up
and state the uncompromised truth: IGAD should more actively
compliment these efforts, and itself campaign for peace in towns and
communities across South Sudan. Building a constituency for peace and
pressure from below may help change the behavior of those too arrogant
to otherwise work for peace
Resolve the representation of political parties, and challenge
civil society delegates to be useful.
No peace process outcome will be fully legitimate if it excludes the
diversity of political actors in South Sudan. Feeble though most
political parties are, the exclusion of the official opposition is an
open sore in the process. An exclusive, SPLM stitch-up serves the
narrowest of elites, and must be avoided.
Much has been said about civil society’s participation in the IGAD
peace process. Regrettably, the most useful contributions from civil
society have come from those outside of the peace process: the work of
David Deng and the South Sudan Law Society, the Development Policy
Forum and the Sudd Institute.
Unfortunately, the cogent work of such individuals and institutions
has not been espoused by their civil society colleagues present in
Addis Ababa. Civil society needs to raise its game.
The mediation needs to be blunt with civil society delegates: merely
showing up to eat lunch and silently attend meetings is not good
enough. Civil society delegates can still advance ideas, offer
innovation and identify political hypocrisy; but they cannot do so if
they are mostly silent.
Abandon the CPA model as the template for the mediation.
The CPA should not be understood outside of its context of time and
place. It still offers useful elements for South Sudan in 2015.
But, far too often, the IGAD mediation, and most prominently the CPA’s
chief mediator and his staff, have let the CPA model imprison their
thinking and their tactics.
I do not wish to critique the CPA at length here: it is only necessary
to point out that in so many ways, and not necessarily as the fault of
the mediation of the time, the CPA failed or was inadequate.
Consequently, it should be a cautionary guide for the current process,
but not the only guide.
Similar advice would be well heeded by the parties, who themselves all
too often refer to what happened in Machakos or Naivasha. Considering
alternatives, being creative, and acknowledging past failure – rather
than romanticizing the history of the CPA mediation effort in South
Sudan as one of unmitigated success – would be far more illuminating.
As I wrote earlier, none of these actions are guarantees for success.
But the mediators must understand where they have gone wrong, and
quickly take corrective action.
Ultimately, should this incarnation of the IGAD mediation fail, the
primary blame and responsibility must fall on those negotiating, no
matter the deficiencies of the mediators. But the mediators can
improve the odds.
Not every mediation can succeed. Witness the innumerable attempts (and
innumerable mediators) who have tried to resolve the conflict in
Palestine; more recently, the failure of both Kofi Annan and Lakhdar
Brahimi to resolve the Syrian crisis.
There is no shame in accepting that this process, too, has its
limitations. To fail to do so would be to a further disservice to the
people of South Sudan.
The author is a diplomat based in Addis Ababa.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or
subscribing to the RSS feed to have future articles delivered to your
feed reader.
This entry was posted in Making Sense of the Sudans. Bookmark the permalink.
--
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected]
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/southsudankob
View this message at
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/southsudankob/topic-id/message-id
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"South Sudan Info - The Kob" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/SouthSudanKob.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/SouthSudanKob/CAJb14ooTjKquhdNc06tNYt1LA%3Da94Wq4R1WC9z3811ZV0KQFPQ%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
