Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

COLUMN: Peace in southern Sudan is good news for northern Uganda
By Eva Kolker
Brown Daily Herald (Brown U.)
10/16/2006

(U-WIRE) PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Who cares about a peace process in southern Sudan? It hasn't helped the people of Darfur (western Sudan) in their battle against the Sudanese government. If Darfur remains in turmoil, how has the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2005, creating the New Sudan in the south, changed anything?

Darfur aside, the CPA was instrumental in bringing about peace in the region, not only in southern Sudan, but in neighboring northern Uganda as well.

The roots of the fighting in Darfur and in southern Sudan are similar. On gaining independence from joint Egyptian-British rule, the Arabic north controlled the Sudan, which comprised not only ethnic Arabs but also black Africans. As in many post-colonial nations, the clumping together of ethnicities without previous affiliations erupted into civil war, in Sudan's case between the Arabs in the north and the black Africans in the south. Civil war has been a constant in Sudan for the past half-century: in southern Sudan, the government was fighting several factions of black African militias, the main one called the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement.

Countries in the region have taken an interest in the civil war in Sudan from the beginning. Uganda, Sudan's southern neighbor, has long been accused by the Sudanese government of supplying weapons and military supplies to the SPLA in an effort to aid fellow black Africans in their struggle for independence. Because the Ugandan government supported the SPLA against the Sudanese government, the Sudanese decided to go tit-for-tat and support the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group in northern Uganda that threatens to overthrow the Ugandan government and rule by the Ten Commandments.

Although the LRA claims to operate on behalf of the main ethnic group in northern Uganda, the Acholi, its activities call that claim into question. The LRA raids, kills and plunders in villages throughout northern Uganda and never comes close to threatening the Ugandan government based in Kampala, which in the southern part of the country. The LRA is notorious for its ruthless practices, cutting off the lips, ears and even legs of those who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the LRA is most known for abducting children and turning them into child soldiers to fill their ranks. In the past 20 years, the LRA has abducted over 20,000 children and forced over 1.6 million people into internal displacement. For years, this Ugandan civil war stood in deadlock; the LRA received weapons and protection from the Sudanese government, while the Ugandan government remained ineffective in its attempts to curb LRA violence.

With the signing of the CPA between the SPLA and the Sudanese government, the autonomous region of the New Sudan was created for a six-year interim, after which the population of southern Sudan will have a referendum on whether to stay independent or join the rest of Sudan. Not only did this peace agreement between the SPLA and the government of Sudan reduce the weapons flow from the Sudanese government to the LRA, but it also enabled the Ugandan forces to better track the LRA inside southern Sudan, ridding the LRA of a safe haven to gather troops and weapons. As a result, the LRA dispersed into various locations in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from where the LRA's leader, Joseph Kony, is now encouraging peace talks.

Although peace in southern Sudan hasn't helped the people of Darfur achieve self-determination, it has been instrumental in the progress towards a cessation of hostilities and the possibility of peace in northern Uganda. Finally, after 20 years, there is hope that a conflict less known than Darfur but equally devastating will come to an end.

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