Sudan

F

Civil War

After a year of military rule, Sadiq al-Mahdi, the great grandson of Muhammad Ahmad, was elected prime minister in the first free election in 18 years. Voting was postponed in 37 southern constituencies, however, due to a guerrilla war led by southern rebels known as the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) against the Muslim Arab government. The newly elected assembly was to draft and approve a new constitution and to hold elections every four years. However, severe food shortages, guerrilla unrest, a mounting debt crisis, and other problems weakened the government’s power.

In June 1989 a military coup headed by Brigadier Omar Hassan al-Bashir toppled the Mahdi government. A state of emergency was imposed, and Sudan was ruled through a 15-member Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation. Conditions deteriorated in the early 1990s, as the Bashir regime suppressed political opposition and stepped up the war against non-Muslim rebels in the south. In 1993 Bashir took tentative steps toward multiparty democracy, including the dissolution of the military government, but the decision to retain most of his former ministers prompted many to perceive these changes as largely cosmetic.

In January 1994 about 100,000 refugees fled to Uganda when Sudanese troops led an offensive against the SPLA. In March safety zones were established for the transportation of provisions and relief workers to the war-torn south. Throughout 1994 mediators from the Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and Development (IGADD), consisting of representatives from Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, attempted to negotiate a peace agreement between the Sudanese government and the SPLA. In September the negotiations resulted in the creation of the Supreme Council for Peace, an 89-member body with 38 representatives from the rebel-dominated south. In March 1995 former United States president Jimmy Carter moderated a two-month cease-fire in an effort to allow relief workers to treat cases of river blindness and guinea worm disease in the south. The SPLA resumed its attack in July.

In March 1996 Bashir and his supporters swept presidential and legislative elections. Hassan al-Turabi, the head of a powerful Islamic fundamentalist movement called the National Islamic Front and a national spiritual leader, was elected to the National Assembly and made speaker. In April Sudan faced international condemnation after evidence surfaced linking Bashir’s government with a June 1995 assassination attempt on Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia. In May 1996 the United Nations (UN) levied sanctions against Sudan for refusing to extradite to Ethiopia three suspects in the assassination attempt.

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By the mid-1990s the SPLA, led by John Garang, a former officer in the Sudanese army, controlled most of southern Sudan and a number of important towns. In mid-1998 peace talks, the SPLA and the government tentatively agreed to accept an internationally supervised vote on self-determination in the south. However, no date was set for the vote, and the talks failed to produce a cease-fire. Peace talks continued through the 1990s, but they repeatedly stalled over major issues such as the government’s unwillingness to separate state and religion and disagreement over where the boundary between north and south would lie. Several temporary cease-fires were called during this time in support of the peace effort and to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid, including the delivery of food and vaccines, to the war-torn south.

In December 1999 a power struggle between Bashir and Turabi came to a head. Turabi attempted to pass constitutional amendments designed to reduce Bashir’s presidential powers by calling for the creation of the office of a prime minister, accountable to the National Assembly, and the removal of presidential control over the selection of state governors. In response to this threat to his authority, Bashir dismissed Turabi and declared a state of emergency, dissolving the National Assembly and suspending parts of the constitution.

Sudan’s main opposition parties boycotted December 2000 presidential and legislative elections, criticizing the ongoing state of emergency and the fact that voting would not be held in most southern constituencies. Bashir was reelected with 86.5 percent of the vote and his party, the National Congress Party, won 355 of the 360 seats in the National Assembly.

G

Violence in Darfur

As the south grew more peaceful in the first years of the 21st century, violence flared in the western region of Darfur. In 2003 rebel groups in Darfur attacked government garrisons in the region. The Darfurian rebels demanded greater autonomy for Darfur and the settlement of many local grievances, especially over land rights. The government responded to the garrison attacks with a ferocious counterinsurgency campaign involving an Arab militia known as the Janjaweed as well as government troops. In the process, entire villages were destroyed and many civilians were brutally tortured, raped, and killed.

The government and Darfurian rebel groups signed a cease-fire in April 2004, but the violence soon resumed. In July 2004 the United Nations (UN) Security Council passed a resolution demanding that the Sudanese government disarm the Janjaweed militia or face the threat of punitive measures. However, the government denied sponsoring the militia, which continued to mount attacks in Darfur. In August the African Union (AU) began sending peacekeeping forces to Darfur. However, the AU mission, which eventually included 7,000 troops, proved unable to control the violence. The government of Sudan resisted international pressure to allow United Nations peacekeeping forces in Darfur.

The AU convened peace talks in 2006 that resulted in a detailed peace agreement in May. However, not all of the rebel groups signed the agreement, and a new round of fighting broke out in Darfur. Efforts to obtain a lasting peace agreement continued in 2007. In June 2007 AU and UN officials met with Sudanese government officials in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. The talks resulted in an agreement to allow a joint AU-UN peacekeeping force of about 20,000 provided that a majority of the troops were African. In July 2007 the UN Security Council authorized a force of about 26,000 peacekeepers to be deployed in Darfur, including the 7,000 AU forces already there.

Earlier, in 2005, the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened an investigation into war crimes committed in Darfur. The UN estimated that as a result of the conflict in Darfur more than 200,000 people, mostly civilians, died from violence, starvation, or disease. In addition, more than 2 million people crowded refugee camps in Darfur and neighboring border areas in Chad, creating a dire humanitarian crisis. International relief workers faced extreme difficulties reaching those in need due to the continuing violence and strict restrictions placed on their movements by the Sudanese government.

H

Peace in the South

In January 2005 the Sudanese government and the SPLA signed a comprehensive peace agreement to end Sudan’s 21-year-long civil war. It was the longest-running conflict in Africa and claimed an estimated 1.5 million lives. The agreement outlined a six-year transitional period, during which southern Sudan would establish a separate administration and enjoy relative autonomy. The agreement established an interim national unity government with a power-sharing arrangement in which the National Congress Party would have a 52 percent share of power and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the political wing of the SPLA, would have a 28 percent share. Opposition parties in the north would have a 14 percent share, and opposition parties in the south would make up the remaining 6 percent. Oil revenues would be divided evenly between the north and south, although most of Sudan’s oil is located in the south. According to the agreement, at the end of the six-year period the people of the south were to vote on whether or not to secede from Sudan.

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