Then the forces of the NDA, Beja and SPLA lost their eastern sanctuaries. In January 2000, as part of the post-Turabi diplomatic offensive, Khartoum renewed relations with both Eritrea and Ethiopia. Sudan and Ethiopia had often been hostile neighbours. Eritrea, however, was a new state born in April 1993. It became one of the most repressive regimes in Africa under its war leader, Isaias Afawerki. Once a close ally of the guerrillas who overturned the Derg in Addis, and despite a ‘velvet divorce’, the former allies fell out over the most pointless piece of desert around Badme. The border area had no oil and hardly any people. Yet Eritrea and Ethiopia fought for two years in a conflict that involved fighter jets, tanks and half a million troops, sometimes in trench warfare akin to the Great War. Both sides admitted that the conflict was ‘insane’. It was also one-sided: Ethiopia’s population was sixty million compared with Eritrea’s four million. Since Eritrea had cut off Ethiopia’s access to the sea, it made sense for Addis to cosy up to Khartoum to use Sudanese routes to the Red Sea.
Since independence many of Eritrea’s internal tensions had been externalized. Roughly half of the population was Muslim, and Khartoum did at one stage assist a Muslim insurgency, but it also provided massive humanitarian support in border camps inside Sudan, despite limited resources. For a small population the Eritreans were remarkably active in other people’s wars – some in the Horn likened Eritrean military enterprise to the Israelis (with whom Asmara had solid ties). The Eritreans had long been engaged with the SPLA, especially in training on armoured warfare. Female Eritreans had fought hard in their own liberation war and were reportedly seen driving SPLA tanks. Asmara also reached out to seize islands belonging to Yemen as well as strips of Djibouti plus fighting in the Congo and Somalia. Its troublemaking drew rebukes from the African Union and its poor domestic human rights record prompted regular condemnation from the UN.
Making peace with troublesome Eritrea made eminent sense for Khartoum, whose forces rolled up the SPLA troops north east of Kassala, inflicting heavy losses. The Sudanese apparently deployed some of their new tanks recently purchased from Poland. The tanks arrived on the very day that Khartoum exported its first oil shipment in May 1999.5 Military delegations also came from China and the ex-Soviet dealers in Bulgaria, plus Iran. The defence budget now accounted for half of government spending.
Taking a hit in the east, the SPLA tried to regain the initiative by moving for the first time in large numbers into the sparsely populated desert regions of the western Bahr al-Ghazal. Unfriendly locals regarded this as a Dinka invasion and the logistics were difficult. The SPLA withdrew to concentrate on the far more populated and strategic oil areas around Heglig and Bentiu. Matip’s pro-government militia had been battling the SPLA commanded by Peter Gadet, who was to develop a colourful military career as a rebel after the peace deal and in the 2013 civil war. The arrival of fresh SPLA forces prompted Khartoum to reinforce quickly, with armour, along the new oil roads. The government also launched an aerial bombing campaign in Equatoria. The fighting was partly an action-reaction cycle and partly an attempt to go into peace talks with a military advantage.
The main Kenyan peace negotiator, General Lazarus Sumbeiywo, had organized a second peace summit in June 2002 at Machakos, in the hill country forty miles south east of Nairobi. The previous IGAD summits had led to endless and fruitless point-scoring. This time, both north and south were utterly war weary. A troika of senior diplomats from the US, UK and Norway were in on the act, as were Eritrea, Ethiopia and Uganda. And the effective ringmaster was Sumbeiywo. The essence of the final deal was agreed in the form of the Machakos Protocol. A comprehensive peace agreement would lead to a six-year transition of joint administration in Khartoum and then a referendum would be held to decide on southern independence or to maintain unity. The north always assumed that if they gave southern politicians a big enough share of the trough they would stay inside one Sudan. After all, Khartoum had rented, if not bought, many senior southern commanders before. And the chief prize was John Garang, who believed in unity anyway. Khartoum had promised self-determination before, but the wording of the new protocol allowed for the north to practise sharia law, the main source of southern discontent, while the SPLM renounced its commitment to a secular unified Sudan. This deal seemed the most promising so far and the assembled diplomats had enough clout to bang heads together if either combatant started backsliding too far.
Nevertheless, the ceasefire accompanying the Machakos deal was soon broken over the control of the prized town of Torit. Tribal militias also engaged in their customary cross-border raids. This aside, it was clear that the main combatants would make the real decisions, not arm-twisting foreigners. In July 2003 President al-Bashir and John Garang met for the first time in Kampala. This signified a step change on the steep climb to a final deal. Despite the oil revenues, reformed army and new equipment, the president as general made the military decision that the war was not winnable, at least in the short term. In twenty years of fighting in the second phase of the war, two million southerners had been killed and millions displaced to the north or were anguishing in camps in the south or in Kenya and Uganda. The northern army had suffered tens of thousands of fatalities. Conscription had filled some of the gaps, but volunteering for jihad, either individually or through the PDF, had lost steam since al-Turabi had been ousted. And though southerners were fighting in their own terrain and tribal lands, few understood what the SPLM wanted politically, especially as Garang was in a small minority in not fighting primarily for only southern freedom. Most southern peasants simply wanted the war to end so they could raise their cattle, practise their own religions and, with luck, send their children to school in peace. The southern war was not ideological except for a minority whose nationalism, or perhaps faith, transcended tribal loyalties. Superstition was much more important than any ideology. The spirits of ancestors and recent kin held more sway than any -isms, especially in a land where the dead were many and the living comparatively few.
The peace settlement
Over twenty – if not fifty – years, a solution had not been achieved because, to use a Marxist phrase, a correlation of forces had not been reached. Hardliners on both sides had tipped the apple cart when moderates made some breakthrough in numerous IGAD attempts in the 1990s. Many southern commanders, despite their truces and temporary deals, nursed a visceral hatred of the historical enemy in the north. Some northerners were racist bigots who knew little of the south and wanted the ‘mutiny’ or ‘rebellion’ to be crushed by superior force, not least to spread Islam for the infidels’ own salvation. Garang and al-Bashir were pragmatic military men who understood that they had fought almost to a stalemate. True, the northern army was now better equipped and Khartoum was less isolated diplomatically. Garang had also built up his army, largely tempered the tribal divisions, and had the support of the southern neighbours and indeed much of black Africa. Crucially, however, Washington had decided to throw its weight behind the deal and all the IGAD members were lending support, largely directed by the Americans. There was no big external spoiler. China had every reason to be a backroom cheerleader too, because of the increasing oil supplies. In the end, the allure of oil riches, which the war could destroy, was a prime inducement. Both north and south needed to share the oil to prosper as one or two states. They were like two lungs in the same body. The south was desperate for economic development, while the more educated urban society in the north demanded better schools, jobs and pensions. Both Garang and al-Bashir faced a crisis of expectation that only peace could satisfy. Both men had perhaps reached an age when they were concerned with their legacies. What better accolade could there be from their respective audiences than ‘the man who ended the longest war in Africa’? It was surely time.
The south was largely behind Garang’s peace drive, though some commanders were agitated that disputed areas were not dealt with properly at Machakos, especially Abyei. Contested areas included the Nuba Mountains and southern Blue N
ile as well as other irredenta claimed by Juba, including land administered by Ethiopia and Kenya. Critics wondered whether the Dinka ascendancy in the SPLA was betraying other southern tribes and Christians in the north, across the old border. Should the 1956 colonial border be redrawn? The status of the 1,200-mile border problem was to endure, although Garang’s vision of unity paid less heed to this problem. In Khartoum, some hardliners in the ruling NCP party and in the officer corps baulked. It was the perennial debate, one that affected contemporary electorates in Britain and America – why pull out of Iraq or, later, Afghanistan with no clear victory? Why betray so many soldiers who had made the ultimate sacrifice? While opposing critics would say simply ‘Why reinforce failure?’ Of course in Sudan the armies were not expeditionary forces – they were at home, except arguably for SPLA forces over the border. Freedom of religion was a crucial issue in the south, but it did not match the former proselytizing zeal of northern Islam. Would giving up the south be a betrayal of Allah and all his martyrs, the very foundation of the state, and certainly the 1989 revolution? Inevitably, everyone had to give something up for peace, the greater good. That’s how negotiated peace deals work.
Sudan’s many conflicts were not just north-south, although that was the greatest challenge. The dozen or so political parties in the NDA had been excluded as had southern political rivals of the SPLM. What of the Beja and Darfuris? Doing a one-to-one deal was how the military minds of al-Bashir, Garang and Sumbeiywo managed to coalesce. Perhaps only experienced soldiers, not politicians, really understand how to end wars. That was certainly a mindset in many African circles, especially authoritarian ones.
A hard thirty months of nailing down the fine details of the Machakos deal were still to follow, made more anxious by the outbreak of a full-scale war in Darfur in February 2003. At the same time, government militias – whom peace might leave out in the cold – were involved in renewed fighting around the West Nile oilfields. The scattered foreign monitoring teams were also perplexed by the internecine fighting, especially when Lam Akol quit his rump SPLA-Unity in October 2003 to rejoin Garang, and fighting between the two rump SPLA-Unity militias ensued. The Norwegian-led monitoring team in the Nuba Mountains was very successful, however, and humanitarian aid flowed into the region.
The next round of talks was supervised again by General Sumbeiywo. In October 2002 Ali Othman Taha headed the Khartoum delegation and Garang tended to lead the southerners, or occasionally his number two, Salva Kiir. The crucial issues were power-sharing, wealth-sharing and security, as they had been in the palavering leading up to the 1972 peace agreement. The southerners remembered all the broken promises. In January 2003 the negotiators met again, this time directly face to face. At the next round in April 2003, the Kenyan general wanted to speed up the talks – aware that Darfur could derail the whole process – by offering what he called ‘compromise’ solutions to bridge the gaps. The next round was scheduled to be at Nakuru. The town was traditionally a hotbed of Kenyan politics, but it was also adjacent to the lake and national park famous for its flamingos. The Kenyans tried to exploit the natural beauty of their country to enhance their diplomacy. Unfortunately, the proposed compromises in the draft for Nakuru were rejected by Khartoum. President al-Bashir was angry at what he saw as IGAD’s and, especially, Kenya’s favouritism to the south. The power-sharing document diluted the central – his – presidential authority. He was touchy about this, not surprisingly after a ten-year battle with the wily al-Turabi to maintain his position as president. Al-Bashir had a habit of speaking his mind and he could sometimes be impulsive, even in diplomatic circles. He said publicly that IGAD ‘could go to hell’. How to share power and all the variations on the federalist theme had always been at the heart of the Sudanese conundrum.
In Khartoum al-Bashir came under pressure from his hardliners, who fretted that a peace deal could ignite support among al-Turabi’s supporters for an alleged sell-out. The ruling NCP also worried about yesterday’s politicians in the NDA. Al-Bashir did want peace, but not at any price. He did not give in to his hardliners, not least because some of his military allies were worried about the potential scale of the Darfur conflict. Ali Othman Taha told me:
We were getting the heat on Darfur in the peace negotiations … We were aware of the qualitative change in the conflict in Darfur. Garang was putting the pressure on. Remember he wanted to unite the whole country – he was treating Darfur as part of his own constituency.
The SPLA was indeed fuelling the rebellion in Darfur to add extra leverage. Also, the popular mood in the three towns was for an end to war. Nor did Egypt and the Arab League want the IGAD-led talks to fail.
The troika of the US, Britain and Norway was also crucial in keeping the peace train on track. I asked Taha who really banged heads together at the talks. ‘Sometimes it was the Norwegians,’ he said, ‘or the Kenyans or the Americans.’ Yet in the end the two sides themselves had to agree because external pressure could sometimes be counter-productive. The Ugandan leader, Yoweri Museveni, in a lively breach of political correctness, jokingly asked: ‘How can those with turbans on their heads have peace with those who wear ostrich feathers?’ The Kenyans were, as ever, more diplomatic: they suggested a one-on-one between the two principal negotiators – Garang and Taha. Both agreed.
The talks took place at the Simba Lodge on the edge of Lake Naivasha in September 2003. Taha was on time. Garang, however, kept Taha waiting for four days before arriving. They were left alone in a room. General Sumbeiywo had positioned one large bottle of mineral water on a small table between them, with two glasses. It was to be a psychological game of who would appear to weaken first and take a drink. They talked awkwardly at first, and then fluently. Both were highly articulate men in English and Arabic. For some hours neither man touched the bottle. As Sunbeiywo put it, ‘The fate of the peace talks hung on the water bottle.’ Eventually Garang opened the bottle and served Taha a drink. As the Kenyan had hoped, the two Sudanese got on well. As Taha told me later, ‘We came to understand each other.’ That was fortunate for they talked, sometimes alongside their delegations, for the next eighteen months. Al-Bashir came to visit twice, before the final ceremony, but Taha talked on the phone to his boss almost daily. Taha admitted, ‘I felt isolated sometimes. Garang had his family with him. I did not.’
General Sumbeiywo was an attentive MC. He had worked as the Kenyan envoy to Sudan before the talks. Just before the formal negotiations started in 2002, the devout Christian prayed and fasted for three days. He said, ‘I really felt that God chose to use me in these negotiations.’ Despite all the twists and turns he stuck to it, even though during the talks he was retired as army commander two years early, because of political changes in Nairobi. Sumbeiywo got on well with both sides. On the first day of the Machakos talks the southern delegation asked him whether a specific point was ‘OK with Washington’. He answered very firmly, ‘I am not answerable to Washington.’ The southerners liked that – so did the Brits. Nevertheless, the Americans were constantly supportive of the peace process. In October 2003 Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, visited the Simba Lodge to encourage Garang and Taha.
President al-Bashir realized by early 2004 that the war in Darfur was not easily containable. The US lobbies were hyperactive in condemning Khartoum. And it was obviously going to get worse. Sudan might soon be stripped of its recently won re-acceptance in the international community. As a pariah it would lose leverage in the Naivasha talks. Al-Bashir would either have to walk away and deepen Khartoum’s purdah or delay and secure a less favourable peace deal. On the other side, the SPLM, now actively backing the Darfur rebellion, believed that the northern regime might collapse, given a little more international pressure. Time was working against al-Bashir. The main issues of transitional power-sharing had been agreed at Naivasha as well as agreements for separate referenda on the Nuba Mountains, Abyei and southern Blue Nile, with their mixed north-south populations. Khartoum started to stonewall at Naiv
asha, but the troika and IGAD helped to persuade the UN Security Council not to impose harsh measures on Khartoum regarding the alleged war crimes in Darfur. More sanctions would have forced al-Bashir to quit the peace talks. His own domestic base would not have permitted any other option.
The stay of execution on Darfur allowed Khartoum to promise to finalize all the deals by the beginning of the new year. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) comprised a series of deals and protocols signed during the exhausting negotiations. Designed deliberately with some creative and constructive ambiguity, it ended up as over 200 pages in English. In December 2004 the two sides finalized the details of a permanent ceasefire. As ever, the positioning of forces was a fundamental problem. The 90,000 northern troops in the south had two years and six months to go back to the north. The SPLA had eight months to pull back its smaller numbers (probably 30,000 troops) from the north. During the six-year transitional period of north-south joint administration in Khartoum in a government of national unity, both armies would contribute half of a joint force of 20,000 men. If the two sides stayed inside one country this figure would then be proportionately doubled to establish a national army. Meanwhile, both sides would have their own separate armies to make sure neither side was stitched up.
Oil revenues were supposed to be divided equally. Power-sharing was more complicated. An autonomous Government of South Sudan (GoSS) would run the south until 2011 when an internationally supervised referendum would decide on secession or not. Positions in the central government would be divided 70:30 to north and south, which roughly matched the respective populations. In the disputed border areas this would be a 55:45 ratio. Omar al-Bashir would remain as national president, but John Garang would become first vice president (while Taha was second vice president). Sharia was to be applicable in the north, but non-Muslims throughout Sudan would not be subject to Islamic law. With so many southern politicians moving to Khartoum where already millions of southerners, mainly refugees, were settled, it would be impossible to impose sharia law without massive frictions that would sink the peace deal. The CPA contained many other annexes, for example on financial matters such as banking. The south would have its own currency, the pound. More importantly, it would fly its own flag and sing its own national anthem.
Omar Al-Bashir and Africa's Longest War Page 22
