Sudan: Major Reform or More War

[ICG logo. Image from crisisgroup.org] [ICG logo. Image from crisisgroup.org]

Sudan: Major Reform or More War

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following report was issued by International Crisis Group on 29 November 2012.]

Sudan: Major Reform or More War

Executive Summary

The “Sudan Problem” has not gone away with the South’s secession. Chronic conflict, driven by concentration of power and resources in the centre, continues to plague the country. The solution is a more inclusive government that addresses at least some of the peripheries’ grievances, but pledges to transform governance remain unfulfilled. A key hurdle – though not the only one – is President Bashir, who has further concentrated authority in a small circle of trusted officials and is unwilling to step aside. Many hope for regime change via coup but have not considered the dangers. The goal should be managed transition to a government that includes, but is not dominated by his National Congress Party (NCP). He might be willing to go along if he concludes greater disorder or even a coup is growing more likely, but only if the right incentives are in place. The international community should contribute to these provided a credible and inclusive transitional government, a meaningful national dialogue on a new constitution and a roadmap for permanent change in how Sudan is governed are first put firmly in train.

The regime in Khartoum is in crisis, faced with multiple challenges that, combined, profoundly threaten its existence and Sudan’s stability. The economy is in a freefall that any oil deal with South Sudan will only slow, not arrest. NCP members are deeply unhappy with the leadership, its policies and massive corruption. Feuding factions within the ruling party and the Islamic movement are jockeying to present an acceptable alternative to the NCP government. At the same time, political opposition forces are growing more assertive, and the war with the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) is slowly expanding, bleeding the military dry and draining the treasury.

Many hope a coup, or popular uprising, could force Bashir and the NCP regime out, but there is a great risk that either event could trigger more violence. Since he came to power in a military coup in 1989, he has deliberately fragmented the security services and frequently rotated commanders to make an army takeover more difficult. Unless commanders are united, the army could easily split into competing factions. There are also a host of other security services and armed militias loyal to different NCP leaders. Added to this combustible mix are numerous armed tribes outside of Khartoum that would seek to take advantage of turmoil in the capital to create facts on the ground difficult for a new regime to reverse.

Bashir and the NCP likely recognise that the dangers of the present phase are greater than the social and economic troubles they have survived in the past. Their instincts are to cut a deal with the fractured opposition (ceding some power and resources to one or two of the political parties and/or a major armed group) and take advantage of the partial settlement with South Sudan to get the oil flowing again. But that can only buy more time, not resolve the causes of chronic conflict or stop the spreading civil war.

The international community should learn the lessons of past failed settlement initiatives: Sudan needs a truly comprehensive peace agreement, not a partial settlement that serves the government’s divide-and-rule tactics and perpetuates the unacceptable status quo. At the same time, the NCP needs to be part of any transition. Leaving it out in the cold would be costly. Its elites are too powerful to ignore, and the opposition is too divided and inexperienced to rule alone. A comprehensive solution and genuine political reform including national reconciliation acceptable to all, with the NCP on board, is the only way out of the trap of endless conflict.

The president and his colleagues will have to reach their own conclusion that the present crisis requires more radical adjustments than those they used for survival previously. If they do, however, the international community, by providing incentives, can help them to act on that conclusion consequentially and responsibly. These should be carefully tied to Bashir and the NCP meeting specific, irreversible benchmarks, such as those Crisis Group set out as early as 2009, and verifiably continuing the transition process. Such cooperation might be unpalatable to many who hold Bashir responsible for atrocity crimes, but it would be necessary to prevent further conflict and continued humanitarian crises in Sudan as well as South Sudan. He is crucial to a managed transition that incorporates both the NCP and opposition leaders – civil and armed – and that could put Sudan on a more inclusive, sustainable path. The alternative would be continuation of the status quo, with the NCP desperately clinging to power at whatever humanitarian cost, and the opposition pursuing a military strategy that risks more national fragmentation.

Most Sudanese know what is necessary to end decades of conflict. Even before independence in 1956, it was clear that power and resources should be shared more equitably with marginalised regions. The historical focus was often on South Sudan, but other areas have suffered as well. At different times, most peripheral regions have risen in armed revolt to demand greater representation and more development. This dynamic will not change unless there is fundamental structural reform of how the country is governed, and all its political forces – the NCP, the traditional parties, the SRF and youth groups – work together to create a more inclusive and representative government that accepts and respects the tremendous diversity of the Sudanese peoples.

Recommendations

To achieve an inclusive transitional government and initiation of meaningful and verifiable national dialogue

To the Government of Sudan:

  • Bring the NCP, opposition forces and civil society together in an arrangement to manage government for a limited period with well-defined parameters (based on agreed principles reiterated in multiple agreements over decades) that is intended to lead first and foremost to a comprehensive ceasefire and humanitarian access to conflict areas, as well as to allow the political forces to come together to flesh out a roadmap for a durable peace process.
  • Create a process that includes armed and unarmed political forces from all regions to:
    • debate and agree on a system of governance that can put an end to the conflicts between the “centre-Khartoum” and Darfur, Southern Kordofan, Blue Nile, East and North; and
    • draft a permanent constitution.
  • Implement legal and judicial measures to end impunity, such as:
    • appointing non-partisan judges, including in the special courts;
    • ensuring the independence of courts and reviewing police investigation, arrest and prosecution procedures;
    • holding all government forces and associated militias accountable for their violations of international humanitarian law; and
    • amending the provisions in the police law, the criminal law and the criminal procedural law that give the police and security personnel immunity.

To the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) and Political Opposition Forces:

  • Subordinate individual ambitions in order to develop and articulate detailed political platforms and visions that can form the framework for the transition process.
  • Work to broaden the opposition’s support base and popular support for a transitional framework.

To assist in ending conflict and building sustainable peace and reform

To the Republic of South Sudan:

  • Urge the SRF and other opposition forces to recognise that a managed transition is much preferable to a coup or violent regime change and their likely attendant chaos.
  • Encourage the SRF to develop a detailed political platform and work with other opposition forces.

To Members of the UN Security Council, AU Peace and Security Council and Council of the League of Arab States:

  • Demand and work for a single, comprehensive solution to Sudan’s multiple conflicts.
  • Offer President Omar al-Bashir, as well as NCP elites, incentives to create a transitional government and firmly and irreversibly place Sudan on a transitional path, including:
    • assistance to stabilise the economy, such as normalisation of relations, lifting of sanctions, expediting Highly Indebted Poor Country (HPIC) status and other debt relief measures, on condition that transition roadmap benchmarks are met and progress is made in negotiations with South Sudan on post-separation issues; and
    • If concrete moves towards a credible transition process are undertaken, and should it emerge as a genuine obstacle to its peaceful conclusion, a Security Council request to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to defer prosecution of Bashir for one year under Article 16 of the Rome Statute. There would be no obligation to renew such deferrals if Bashir reneges on his transition commitments.
  • Support through training and capacity building during the transitional period the establishment and growth of issue-based parties that can represent and articulate the demands of marginalised constituencies, including the peripheries, youth, women and urban and rural poor.

[Click here to read the full report.]

 

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412