Armed and angry - Sudan's southern militias still a threat to peace

The Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) have taken major steps towards ending their 21-year old conflict. After two years of negotiations, they have signed six key protocols governing a referendum on southern Sudan after a six-year interim period; security, wealth-sharing and power-sharing arrangements during the interim; the status of Abyei; and the status of southern Blue Nile and the Nuba mountains. On 5 June, they will resume negotiations to thrash out implementation details, as well as a formula for a comprehensive ceasefire and international monitoring and peace-keeping. Two annexes plus the six protocols will then make up the comprehensive peace agreement. Last week's breakthrough that officially ended the bilateral "political" negotiations was welcomed by all concerned and widely hailed as the beginning of the end of Africa's longest-running civil war. But, Sudan watchers say, a number of potential spoilers remain, not least the numerous armed militias in the south. According to the South Africa-based think-tank, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), an umbrella of southern militias known as the South Sudan Defence Force (SSDF) poses a serious threat to harmony in the whole of Sudan. "Armed, angry at being left out of the peace process, and fearful that decisions are being made that will affect its interests, the SSDF poses a major challenge to both the peace process and to the success of the proposed six-year transitional period," says a report entitled "The South Sudan Defence Force: A Challenge to the Sudan Peace Process". To view the report go to www.iss.co.za The SSDF demands attention for a number of key reasons, says ISS. Although its membership is constantly in a state of flux, it has several thousand members who could mobilise thousands more, particularly among the Nuer community, who constitute southern Sudan’s second largest ethnic group after the Dinka. Its precise areas of control are debatable, but certainly cover much of Upper Nile, parts of northern and western Bahr al-Ghazal, Bahr al-Jabal and much of Eastern Equatoria. "What can be said with confidence is that claims made by the SPLM/A and its supporters to hold sway over 80 percent of southern Sudan and to surround all of the government towns in the region are clearly false," says the report. Thirdly, the SSDF provides strategic security around the oilfields of western and eastern Upper Nile and many of the garrison towns in the south. Lastly, it contains a substantial number of Nuer, who had a series of clashes with the Dinka-dominated SPLM/A in the 1990s that led to tens of thousands of deaths. "Given the SSDF's size, strategic location, and propensity to fight and resist whatever the odds, a viable and sustainable peace process that does not have its support (and that of a large majority of the Nuer in particular) is hard to imagine," says ISS. The SSDF, which comprises about 25 militias, was formed in 1997 following the signing of the Khartoum Peace Agreement between the Sudanese government, Riek Machar's South Sudan Independence Movement (SSIM) and five other southern factions. The agreement committed the government to a vote on self-determination for the south after an interim period of unspecified length, while the militias agreed to a tactical alliance with Khartoum. The biggest concentration of SSDF members are based in oil-rich Western Upper Nile where they have been used to depopulate and gain control of the oilfields. They are usually based close to garrison towns - from which they are supported logistically and supplied with arms - recruited locally, and are personality- and ethnicity-driven. Despite their significance, however, they have been almost entirely left out of the peace process. According to the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) mediators it would have been impossible to negotiate with all of Sudan’s different armed goups at the same time. “There was not a single militia included because they are either represented by the government or the SPLM/A. So they were indirectly included,” Lazarus Sumbeiywo, IGAD’s chief mediator told IRIN. Samson Kwaje, the SPLM/A spokesman told IRIN that all of the militias had either been absorbed into the SPLM/A or the Sudanese army. “There is no threat, they have been absolved into the army. So actually they don’t exist now.” In January 2004, Khartoum reportedly appointed some 60 SSDF commanders to senior ranks. But ISS says that Khartoum, the SPLM/A and the international community - including the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development mediators - have all wrongly assumed that the SPLM/A and the government are in control of Sudan’s destiny. “The first shock to the holders of this myopic view was the rapidly escalating war and humanitarian crisis in Darfur. The second shock could well be a demonstration of the inability of either the government or the SPLM/A to control and pacify the disparate elements of the SSDF.” PEACE NEGOTIATIONS The SSDF did manage to send a delegation of 17 officials to Kenya for discussions between the government and the SPLM/A on security arrangements during the interim period, and appointed an SSDF member, Martin Kenyi of the Equatoria Defence Forces (EDF), to the government negotiating team. But the protocol on security arrangements reached on 25 September 2003 repeatedly acknowledges only two military players in Sudan: the government forces and the SPLM/A. Moreover, it makes clear that "no armed group allied to either party shall be allowed to operate outside the two forces". Instead, the unacknowledged groups in the south will be absorbed into the army, prisons, police and wildlife services, it says. By contrast, the Khartoum agreement signed in 1997 identified the SSDF as the only southern agent charged with providing security in southern Sudan. Nevertheless, the protocol on security arrangements was originally welcomed by SSDF members, who accepted that the SPLM/A was negotiating in their best interests, according to ISS. But since then much of the goodwill has dissipated, while violence in southern Sudan is on the increase. "Positions have hardened, and clearly there are sections of the government, SPLM/A and the SSDF now actively opposed to reconciliation between the SPLM/A and the SSDF," says the report. The protocol on wealth-sharing signed in January 2004 exacerbated the differences even further by agreeing to provide only 2 percent of the oil wealth to oil-producing states, as against 40 percent allotted by the Khartoum agreement. The response of many Nuer was one of "extreme anger", said ISS. VIOLATIONS OF CEASEFIRE Since the beginning of 2004, and despite an ongoing cessation of hostilities between the government and the SPLM/A - which governs allies of both the government and the SPLM/A - a number of conflicts in the south have intensified. From January to March 2004 areas in the oil-rich western Upper Nile region were torn apart by militia in-fighting, leading to dozens of deaths and injuries, looting, abductions and the displacement of thousands of people, as well as the destruction of schools and hospitals. In the Shilluk Kingdom of northern Upper Nile, an undetermined number have been killed this year, and tens of thousands displaced by forces formerly loyal to Lam Akol - who defected to the SPLM/A in October 2003 - which were allegedly accompanied by government forces. See: Displaced in Shilluk Kingdom in urgent need of aid, says rebel leader "The government supported one faction and brought in other groups from the SSDF, who were in turn divided, and for the first time in many months government forces became engaged in the conflict," ISS reported. Lam Akol warned last month that the attacks had stopped for now, but that fighting could flare up again, threatening the entire Sudanese peace process. "It is not a tribal conflict. It is a conflict between the government and the SPLM/A," he repeated. Key to the clashes in Shilluk was the vacume created by Akol’s defection and a struggle to take over his area of control - which is in southern Sudan - with both the SPLM/A and government-allied forces laying claim to it. NEW AND OLD ALLEGIANCES For the last two years, the SPLM/A has been striving to realign itself with the southern militias - many of which originally belonged to the rebel movement. A number of successes have been notable including defections to it by Riek Machar (Sudan People's Democratic Forces), Lam Akol (SPLM/A-United), Tito Biel and James Leah (leaders of SSIM) and Dr Theophilus Lotti (EDF). But territorial control and rivalry, ethnic tensions, competition for the spoils of war, and distrust of the Dinka-dominated SPLM/A mean that many forces, or individuals within forces, are unwilling to realign themselves. The result is a large number of armed men who control large areas of land and have shifting and opportunistic allegiances to different factions and leaders, say regional analysts. Furthermore, the SPLM/A is not supporting a "genuine reconciliation", according to ISS. During a high-level SPLM/A visit to Khartoum in December 2003, it did not meet either its major military foe, the SSDF, or government-backed southern politicians belonging to the Southern States Coordination Council. A regional analyst told IRIN that those in the SSDF with a political agenda would most likely realign themselves with the SPLM/A in the near future, in a pragmatic attempt to carve out a niche for themselves in the new Sudan. Muhammad Ahmad Dirdeiry, the Sudanese deputy ambassador in Nairobi, told IRIN the militias did not pose a threat to the peace process if commitments made to them were followed through during the interim period. But Sudan watchers say "the warlords" may well continue to cause trouble. Given Sudan's recent history, many observers agree that southern Sudanese have as much to fear from south-south strife as from north-south strife. "If the peace process does not pay more attention to these local factors, it could easily break apart even if a national-level agreement were to be signed under the auspices of IGAD," according to ICG. For further information on Sudan's militias go to ICG report entitled "Sudan's Oilfields Burn Again: Brinkmanship Endangers The Peace Process" available at www.crisisweb.org