Self-Determination Revisited
03 May, 2020
Donald Booth
The issue of self-determination that emerged out of the protracted civil strife in Sudan, resurfaced again though in a different setting.
It was pushed to the forefront initially by the neighboring countries, who were suspicious of the Islamic, expansionist agenda of the Ingaz regime and found in the continuous fight of the SPLM a suitable vehicle to corner the regime in Khartoum either to restrict its Islamic program or opt for giving the South the right for self-determination. That was seen a clever outcome even against well-established principle in Africa of respecting the borders inherited from the colonial era.
As it was expected the southerners voted almost unanimously in favor of separation led by the SPLM and a tacit approval and blessings from the western powers led by the United States, whose Sudan policy was driven mainly by lobby groups.
The new state of South Sudan spent only two years to see itself falling into civil strife. And neither the absence of Islamic sharia, nor the opportunity to rule itself proved strong enough to keep the new country intact.
Yet despite the visible failure that self-determination and even separation is the solution to nation building problems, the SPLM-N led by Abdel Aziz Alhilu picked the same page from the old book of the mother SPLM and tabled self-determination again during the negotiations.
The move stems from the solid believe that all governments in Khartoum are the same regardless whether they are military, an outcome of a popular uprising or a democratically elected ones. Unlike the South, which has a degree of geographical and ethnic unity that justifies its call for self-determination, the new SPLM-N-Alhilu lacks all of that. In fact its call for self-determination for Southern Korodfan and Blue Nile is in effect covering two geographically separated areas. Moreover, the Nuba ethnicity spreads across other areas in Sudan, while these two areas include other ethnicities that don’t share the vision of self-determination.
These points in addition to other were the driving force that pushed for schism within the movement that saw the expelling of two main leaders Malik Agar and Yasir Arman.
Given the fact that Alhilu faction of the SPLM-N got the upper hand militarily and has managed to pool the nationalistic feeling of the Nuba behind him, it became hard to dislodge his believe in self-determination. Though it may not succeed, but it raises the high possibility that Alhilu movement could be the greater spoiler to the peace process.
However, some major development is evolving. Last week and during a speech at Columbia University, Donald Booth the US Special Envoy to Sudan stated clearly that the United States will not support Alhilu’s call for self-determination.
Given the fact that many Sudanese believe rightly or wrongly that Washington was in effect the midwife for South Sudan separation, they expect now that with such stated public statement against self-determination it moves step further and translate this position into concrete actions. After all the hope for a democratic transformation will be undermined if a group is allowed to dictate its will depending on its guns.
Definitely Booth’s statement has been relayed to both the government and Alhilu faction in private before, but declaring it now indicates that there is something in the offing.
As a starter there is a need to break the negotiation’s logjam that has been stalled because of the insistence of Alhilu to table the issue of self-determination as an option if the government fails to commit itself for secularism. The government position is that it is not mandated to tackle such issues, which should be debated within the expected constitutional conference.
Then there is the expected role of the forthcoming UN peace mission that has been requested by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and a UNSC decision is expected sometime this month.
This mission, which in effect will be entrusted with the issue of ensuring a successful transition to a democratic transformation will find itself into a collision course with those resorting to arms, who will find themselves automatically playing the role of spoiler as a way to be heard.
What Booth said in an informal gathering at Columbia University needs to be magnified and adopted as a stand from the international community as a whole. It has been a standard diplomatic procedure to issue some unanimous decisions to show the solid stand of the world community against one issue. It is time to issue one on the resurfacing self-determination in Sudan.
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