JUBA/KHARTOUM, 23 April 2010 (IRIN): This month’s chaotic elections have widened divisions within the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM), according to analysts, who warn of risks to a referendum on southern secession, to future relations between two potentially independent states, and to the very stability of Sudan as a whole.
The January 2011 referendum, which will give southerners the opportunity to form a new independent country, is one of the most important provisions of a 2005 accord (CPA) that ended decades of war between Khartoum and the southern-based SPLM insurgents. The peace deal has entered its final stage, but its southern co-signers could be entering a critical final chapter as well, with wide-ranging implications.
“Southerners have reason to celebrate being able to vote, but the rancour and divisions within the SPLM are growing just as it needs to pull together,” warned the latest Small Arms Survey report.
“If half the resources and energy – both Sudanese and international – had gone into reconciliation activities as have been devoted to “democratization”, Sudan’s future might seem more promising,” the report from the Geneva-based research group said.
– I think this process has had serious implications for the SPLM at a moment when it really can’t afford to be divided,” said Maggie Fick, a Juba-based Southern Sudan researcher for the Enough project, a US advocacy group critical of Khartoum.
The most visible of the fault lines running through the SPLM, and perhaps most relevant to the future of all Sudanese, lies between its northern and southern wings, or “sectors”. For years, the two have pursued different, but supposedly complementary goals: the northern sector has worked to unite opposition forces against the Khartoum government to forge a so-called “New Sudan”.
The southern sector has been more involved in achieving varying degrees of self-determination for the long-marginalized south, for Abyei (an oil-rich county which straddles the north-south border), and for the states of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile, which although lying on the northern side of the border, fall under the aegis of the SPLM’s southern sector.
The two sectors have co-existed since the late SPLM leader John Garang established them in 2005. But as the New Sudan focus dimmed following Garang’s death that same year – and as the prospects of southern secession grew sharper – the party’s twin movements appeared increasingly disjointed.
During the lead-up to the elections – critically important for the northern sector, but seen by some in the south as little more than a bump on the road to the referendum – strong disagreements between the two camps broke into the open.
– This is an ideological difference in the first place,” said one SPLM member in Khartoum. – Some people in the southern sector do not think beyond the borders of Southern Sudan.”
The SPLM needs to put a lid on instability, or else the NCP could use it as an excuse to try to postpone the referendum, and if that happened, the SPLM has threatened to unilaterally declare independence Amid growing complaints that the co-governing National Congress Party (NCP) had rigged the elections in advance, SPLM Secretary-General Pagan Amum, seen as sympathetic to the northern sector, promised in late March that the SPLM would join other opposition parties should they announce a total boycott of all the polls in the north – presidential, legislative and gubernatorial.
A range of contentious issues relating to the CPA and the referendum are up for discussion between the SPLM and CPA over the coming months. Some, such as the demarcation of the north-south border, need to be resolved before the referendum can take place. Others relate to how a future independent south and Khartoum would work together. These include how they would share their oil revenue and other resources, their international debts and their infrastructure.
Some fear such electoral bickering could quickly degenerate into something far more serious. The South has a long history of inter-ethnic conflict, with many groups used as proxy forces by Khartoum during the war. Many of these militias, still controlled by powerful political figures, were never properly demobilized or fully re-integrated into the official standing armies.
The Small Arms Survey report warned that “anger at what is seen as an exploitative, corrupt, unrepresentative, and ill-performing Juba government is widespread and growing”.
– The SPLM needs to put a lid on the instability, or else the NCP could use it as an excuse to try to postpone the referendum, and if that happened, the SPLM has threatened to unilaterally declare independence, warned Claire Mc Evoy, manager of the Survey’s Sudan project and co-author of the report.
– That could easily lead to another armed conflict between north and south, she added.
