A Young Prespective: This Month's Issue

Saturday, 17 February 2007

This Month's Issue

Sudan's Multiple Peace Agreements : The CPA, the DPA and the EPA

ANALYSIS

July 14, 2006

Posted to the web July 14, 2006
By Alex de Waal

This is fourteenth in a series of articles concerning the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), explaining what lies behind the long and complicated text of the Agreement. This article situates the DPA in the context of the Naivasha Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the hoped-for Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement ("EPA"), asking the question, how should we now envision the future of the Sudanese nation?

The DPA was negotiated as one part of a step-by-step approach to solving Sudan's problems. In 2004, the Kenyan mediators and the international partners took the decision to make the CPA the priority--in part because they did not anticipate reaching a quick agreement on Darfur and didn't want to keep the North-South peace as a hostage to an intractable conflict in Darfur. At the time, the Darfurian Movements complained that they were being neglected. Then, once the CPA had been signed, the Movements complained that many of their demands were simply ruled unacceptable, because they were not consistent with the CPA. For example, JEM's opening position was that there should be five Regions in Sudan with a Vice President from each one. At that time the SLM wanted a clear separation of religion and politics in Northern Sudan, an issue that the GoS, SPLM and international partners insisted had been settled at Naivasha.

Then, after July 2005, once the CPA and INC were in place, the main political attention switched to negotiating an end to the Darfur war, and many other Sudanese complained that the implementation of the CPA was being forgotten. It is certainly true that the diplomats in Khartoum divided their time and energy between key CPA challenges such as setting up the Assessment and Evaluation Commission and the Abuja negotiations. Important parts of the CPA implementation have lagged behind schedule.
Today, everyone hopes that there will be a settlement to the conflict in eastern Sudan--but that negotiating the "EPA" will not mean that the implementation of the CPA and DPA languish.

The implementation of the DPA will be just as complicated as the CPA. In some ways it is more demanding because of the fragmented situation on the ground in Darfur and the complexity of Darfur's security arrangements. Somehow, Sudan's political leaders and international partners must find a way of focusing both on the specific demands of implementing the DPA (and hopefully the EPA) while also paying attention to the bigger question of how Sudan is to undertake its overall national transformation to democracy, development and security for all. There is a danger of becoming so focused on the details and day-to-day challenges that the big picture is forgotten.

One of the criticisms most widely heard of the AU Mediation in Abuja was that, especially in the DPA's power-sharing chapter, its "compromise" proposals were not really a compromise at all, but were too close to the GoS position. Underlying this criticism is the view that the victims of the conflict in Darfur demand much stronger guarantees for their rights, their political participation and their protection, in the face of a government that is responsible for their suffering--a government that they simply don't trust. This "from the ground up" view is a perfectly legitimate. It is also consistent with the Constitutive Act of the African Union, which is strong on human rights and includes the important principle of intervention in the internal affairs of states when there are severe humanitarian crises and human rights abuses.
There is another framework and logic, which strongly influenced the African Union. Although the AU affirms the right and duty of intervention for humanitarian reasons, it remains an association of states dedicated to preserving stability in the state-based order across Africa. The Constitutive Act commits Member States to constitutional rule and democracy. One of the basic motives for the AU's Chief Mediator was therefore to preserve the CPA and INC as the foundations for Sudan's sovereignty and democratization. He wanted to ensure that the DPA supported the CPA, and did not unravel it.

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East Africa North Africa Sudan Civil War and Communal Conflict Peacekeeping and Conflict Resolution Post-Conflict Challenges Arms and Military Affairs

The CPA provided a framework for much of the negotiation of the DPA. The basic principles of the CPA include democratic transformation, human rights and political pluralism, fiscal federalism, security sector reform and the downsizing of the national army. At every point, the GoS negotiators--both NCP and SPLM--referred to these principles and insisted that they should not be altered. On this point, the AU agreed with the Government of National Unity. The DPA did not need to go into any detail on democracy because it is all already provided for.
Neither would the DPA have been workable if it had set off conflicts in other parts of Sudan. On this point, Dr Magzoub al Khalifa repeatedly reminded the African Union Mediation that he had obligations to ensure the continued stability of areas such as Kordofan and that any Agreement should not complicate the search for peace in Eastern Sudan. It wouldn't be a true peace agreement if it sparked off a conflict in another part of Sudan. Both Dr Magzoub and the SPLM members of the Government delegation insisted that the delicate and hard-won North-South division of power in the CPA could not be altered in any fundamental way. The AU Mediation was also sympathetic to these arguments.

Throughout the Abuja discussions, members of the AU team reminded the Movements that any power sharing formula decided in the DPA would be purely interim--it would last for just three years until the elections are held. "Better to make sure you have effective representation in institutions such as the Population Census Council and the National Elections Commission," they argued, "rather than pushing for a few extra seats today." But where trust is low, people demand assurances today instead of uncertain promises of future gains. The Movements' negotiators were not convinced by the idea of pinning their hopes on future elections--even with promises of generous donor support to change the liberation fronts into civilian political parties.

(From: www.AllAfrica.com)

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1) A Brief Prehistoric account of Sudan

Early history of Sudan From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Aerial view of the Nubian pyramids at Meroe in 2001This article details the early history of the Sudan region, from prehistoric times up until the coming of Islam shortly after the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632. Included are discussions of the regions of Kush, Meroe, and Christian Nubia. Prehistory Archaeological excavation of sites on the Nile above Aswan has confirmed human habitation in the river valley during the Paleolithic period that spanned more than 60,000 years of Sudanese history. A prehistoric burial discovered in northern Sudan reveals what is believed to be the world's earliest indication of warfare, dating to the 12th millennium BC [1]. By the eighth millennium B.C., people of a Neolithic culture had settled into a sedentary way of life there in fortified mud-brick villages, where they supplemented hunting and fishing on the Nile with grain gathering and cattle herding. Anthropological and archaelogical research indicate that during the predynastic period Nubia and Nagadan Upper Egypt were ethnically, and culturally nearly identical, and thus, simultaneously evolved systems of pharaonic kingship by 3300 BC. [2] But during the close of the Nagada III period, Nagada, in its bid to conquer and unify the whole nile valley, seems to have conquered their southern neighbors and thus, "egyptianized" them. [3]. The result appears to have been the depopulation of the entire Lower Nubian area, either by the genocidal efforts of the First Dynasty Egyptian kings, or by the migration (forced or voluntary) of the nubians to areas north and south.

2)Kush

Kush Main article: Kush Northern Sudan's earliest historical record comes from Egyptian sources, which described the land upstream from the First Cataract, called Kush, as "wretched." For more than 2,000 years after the Old Kingdom (ca. 2700-2180 B.C.), Egyptian political and economic activities determined the course of the central Nile region's history. Even during intermediate periods when Egyptian political power in Kush waned, Egypt exerted a profound cultural and religious influence on the Kushite people. Over the centuries, trade developed. Egyptian caravans carried grain to Kush and returned to Aswan with ivory, incense, hides, and carnelian (a stone prized both as jewelry and for arrowheads) for shipment downriver. Egyptian traders particularly valued gold and slaves, who served as domestic servants, concubines, and soldiers in the pharaoh's army. Egyptian military expeditions penetrated Kush periodically during the Old Kingdom. Yet there was no attempt to establish a permanent presence in the area until the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2100-1720 B.C.), when Egypt constructed a network of forts along the Nile as far south as Samnah, in southern Egypt, to guard the flow of gold from mines in Wawat. Around 1720 B.C., Asian nomads called Hyksos invaded Egypt, ended the Middle Kingdom, severed links with Kush, and destroyed the forts along the Nile River. To fill the vacuum left by the Egyptian withdrawal, a culturally distinct indigenous kingdom emerged at Karmah, near present-day Dunqulah. After Egyptian power revived during the New Kingdom (ca. 1570-1100 B.C.), the pharaoh Ahmose I incorporated Kush as an Egyptian province governed by a viceroy. Although Egypt's administrative control of Kush extended only down to the fourth cataract, Egyptian sources list tributary districts reaching to the Red Sea and upstream to the confluence of the Blue Nile and White Nile rivers. Egyptian authorities ensured the loyalty of local chiefs by drafting their children to serve as pages at the pharaoh's court. Egypt also expected tribute in gold and slaves from local chiefs. Once Egypt had established political control over Kush, officials and priests joined military personnel, merchants, and artisans and settled in the region. The Egyptian language became widely used in everyday activities. The Kushite elite adopted Egyptian gods and built temples like that dedicated to the sun god Amon at Napata, near present-day Kuraymah. The temples remained centers of official religious worship until the coming of Christianity to the region in the sixth century. When Egyptian influence declined or succumbed to foreign domination, the Kushite elite regarded themselves as champions of genuine Egyptian cultural and religious values. By the eleventh century B.C., the authority of the New Kingdom dynasties had diminished, allowing divided rule in Egypt, and ending Egyptian control of Kush. There is no information about the region's activities over the next 300 years. In the eighth century B.C., however, Kush reemerged as an independent kingdom ruled from Napata by an aggressive line of monarchs who gradually extended their influence into Egypt. About 750 B.C., a Kushite king called Kashta conquered Upper Egypt and became ruler of Thebes until approximately 740 B.C. His successor, Piankhy, subdued the delta, reunited Egypt under the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, and founded a line of kings who ruled Kush and Thebes for about a hundred years. The dynasty's intervention in the area of modern Syria caused a confrontation between Egypt and Assyria. When the Assyrians in retaliation invaded Egypt, Taharqa (688-663 B.C.), the last Kushite pharaoh, withdrew and returned the dynasty to Napata, where it continued to rule Kush and extended its dominions to the south and east.Kush was known as the mother of gold.

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Saturday, 17 February 2007

This Month's Issue

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An Interesting Read (Contents)

1) A Brief Prehistoric account of Sudan

2)Kush

Pyramids in Nothern Sudan