War Famine and Flight in Sudan I Introduction

TIM ALLEN

The papers by Mawson, Keen and Hutchin- son in this issue of Disasters were originally prepared for a workshop which I convened at St. Antony's College, Oxford, on 28 Apnl, 1990. I think it would be true to say that, for all of us, this proved to be a deeply disturbing occasion. The idea was to bring together as many people as possible who had done recent research in Sudan, to pool their knowledge and communicate it to concerned individuals and organisations. In the event more than forty participants took part, including many Sudanese nationals. For some, it was a rare opportunity to describe what they had experienced to an involved and informed audience. While, for those of us who have not lived in Sudan during the last few years, it was a day when the full seriousness of the situation was vividly confronted, perhaps for the first time. It was a meeting characterised by shared anger, frustration and shock.

Several presentations at the workshop involved participants talking about what they had seen, or what had happened to them personally. Others were academic papers which explored a particular issue in more detail. It was generally felt that since there is such poor coverage of what is happening in Sudan in the international

The September issue of Disasters will include an annotated bibliography, compiled by the Assis- tant Editor, of all articles on Sudan published in the journal since 1979. - Editor

media, and so little understanding of the country's plight, there would be a value in putting some of the information imparted into the public arena as quickly as possible.

There is no doubt that at the heart of Sudan's problems is the war, which has now dragged on for seven years. Like the first war, which broke out on the eve of independence in 1955, it has been largely ignored. Moreover, the little reporting that has been done has too readily resorted to cliches about "black, "animist" Southerners fighting "Arab", Moslem Northerners. Yet it has become apparent that, in terms of fatalities directly resulting from the fighting alone, the current Sudanese war is one of the most devastating ever fought in Africa. It is also a far more complex affair than is often suggested. It broke out in 1983 as much because of conflicts within the south, as because of renewed oppression from the north, and it is at least partly for this reason that the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army (SPLA) has adopted nationalist rather than secessionialist objectives. Divisions between southern factions had become increasingly violent during the last years of regional autonomy, making a return to the politics of compromise established in the Addis Ababa Agreement (which ended the first war) unlikely. These divisions have, in addition, been exploited by successive governments in Khartoum in an attempt to fight the war by proxy. "Tribal" militia have been employed to fight the SPLA in the

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south, as well as to raid from Southern Kordofan. The SPLA has also sometimes resorted to this approach, and as a conse- quence there are now marauding, armed bands moving about with only a tenuous attachment to either side. Formerly small scale conflicts between ethnic groups have escalated out of all proportion. Andrew Mawson’s paper examines these develop- ments in the border zone between the south and the north, and comments on the appal- ling effects on the Dinka groups living there.

Much of the discussion of the war at the workshop focussed on two crucial points: first, who is gaining from it? and, second, will it be possible to pick up the pieces at the local level when it stops? The first of these questions was raised in a work-in- progress paper by Alex de Waal, which is worth summarising, since it offered an important counter-weight to the cultural determinism which so often passes for analysis in debates about Sudan’s political economy. It additionally helped explain why governments in Khartoum have failed to negotiate a settlement when it is so obviously in the national interest.

Essentially de Waal’s argument was that there has been an economic trans- formation in Sudan during the 1970s and 1980s, linked to the growth of a capitalist class. The impetus was the massive inflows of capital during the early Nimeiri years, in the form of loans and remittances from the thousands of Sudanese working in the OPEC states of the Arabian peninsular. From the late 1970s, however, when Sudan’s debt became due and IMF austerity measures were introduced, the composition of the new capitalist class changed. Those that had previously made fortunes sought ways to invest abroad, and capital in Khartoum became increasingly dominated by the National Islamic Front (NIF), and the military. In rural areas the changes in the national economy prompted traders to search for short-run profits. When the 19851

86 drought broke in the west, for example, rural people stopped selling animals, and their price rose to unprecedented heights in Khartoum. Traders responded by organising raids into Bahr a1 Ghazal to capture Dinka cattle. Similar practices were adopted by southern capitalists to supply Juba, and competition for monopoly positions in the cattle trade may have had something to do with the army mutinies of 1983 (which are usually taken to be the start of the present war).

Following the outbreak of the war, extractions of this sort became the norm, and fortunes were also made through smuggling, and artificially-maintained scarcities of commodities in the garrison towns. The main beneficiaries were military officers and merchants. Significantly, the NIF, who had the greatest ideological com- mitment to the war (their stated aim is the Islamisation of the south), had the least direct commercial involvement in it. In 1988, the SPLA began to get the upper hand in Bahr a1 Ghazal and around Juba, the two areas where most of the money was being made, and almost immediately there was a strong movement for peace, led by army officers and merchants. The pressure was such that between March and June 1989, there was a pro-peace government in Khartoum. The coup of 30th June 1989 can therefore be viewed as a triumph of ideology over economic interest. The new regime is dominated by the NIF, which remains committed to war. Although NIF businesses would benefit from peace, they had not lost income directly as a con- sequence of SPLA successes, and peace would imply a larger national economy in which they would have to compete with other groups. Instead the NIF is trying to gain more control over a smaller (and shrinking) Sudanese economy centred on Khartoum.

De Waal’s argument is inevitably somewhat speculative, for data on the Sudanese economy is scarce, but it does

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highlight the materialist base of much political action in Sudan. There was also speculation at the workshop about what will happen when the fighting stops. In his paper, Mawson makes the point that, for the Dinka of the northern Bahr a1 Ghazal, there will be no return to the world of the 1970s. Other participants went further, maintaining that the destruction of rural economies throughout the war zone has been so complete, that there is no prospect of recovering the degree of local, socio- economic autonomy formerly enjoyed. The future will be one of labour migration, and tenant farming. This, however, was not the view of everyone. It was pointed out that in certain sections of southern Sudan controlled by the SPLA, people are manag- ing to cultivate and look after their cattle, and it would seem that, until very recently, Yei area was affluent enough to dissuade many Ugandan refugees from returning home, even after their refugee settlements had been attacked (by the SPLA). It is probable that the impact of the war has been very variable, and that parts of southern Sudan may still be viable places for pastoralists and small farmers to win a living. Several participants warned against apocalyptic prognoses. For the time being, there is simply not enough information to form an overall picture of what is going on.

The question of ’who gains?’ is taken up again by David Keen in his helpful over- view of Sudan’s famines in Darfur and the south. Compared to the war, the famines have received considerable attention, in large part because ”Western” donors were involved in their alleviation. Keen’s discus- sion is particularly thought provoking as it comments on the collusion of aid agencies with the corruption of some of the more powerful state officials and traders. Such people may have little concern with assist- ing those in need, and certain individuals may well be making a personal profit out of promoting and maintaining a famine situation. Keen argues that aid workers are

aware of what is going on, but often choose to ignore it. This in turn raises two issues: what relationship should aid agencies have with a state, which has played a role in creating the emergency in the first place and what role is it legitimate for them to assume in by-passing state structures?

Implicitly the same issues arise when reading the testimonies translated from Nuer by Sharon Hutchinson. These were collected during 1990 in the camps around Khartoum where thousands of southern Sudanese are caught in a kind of Limbo. They are feared, and unwanted in Khartoum, but the government does not want them to return to the south, where they might join the SPLA. The effort of international agencies to provide relief are deliberately hampered, and some people live in the most atrocious conditions imagin- able. That many of them have survived at all seems extraordinary. Moreover, they inhabit the outskirts of a city where human rights abuses of all kinds have become a common place. Sidgi Kaballo, of the Sudan Human Rights Organisation, spoke at the workshop of how there are now various security organisations operating indepen- dently of each other. All use torture as a normal means of interrogation, and it appears that the present regime is arresting any group that might organise resistance in the capital. Sometimes these security officers clamp down on the camps of the displaced, acting in deliberately insensitive ways. Hutchinson told of how two had walked into a church during a service, and smoked cigarettes. One wonders how long it will be before an incident is provoked which gives the army the excuse to start killing people.

There seems no doubt that the present situation in Sudan is far worse than it has ever been in the past, with hundreds of thousands of people having died as a result of war, or diseases associated with drought and famine, in the last few years. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the country has

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been of major councern to the relatively new breed of international organisation dealing with human rights. Three of them, Amnesty International, The Minority Rights Group, and Africa Watch have produced reports which were reviewed at the work- shop by Louise Pirouet, who played an active role herself in promoting awareness of human rights abuses during the first Sudanese war. Pirouet noted at the workshop how these organisations make a difference, in that at least they provide a forum through which pressure can be brought to bear on governments. But, as Bona Malwal emphasised, three excellent reports have not resulted in a serious response either from the Sudan govern- ment or its allies. Recording suffering only

has an impact if there is a political wiU to do something about it.

Note

The publication of these papers is partly sponsored by the Standing Committee for African Studies, University of Oxford.

Tim Allen Faculty of Technology The Open University Walton Hall Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA U.K.

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