The historic peace agreement currently being completed between the government of Sudan and the country’s main rebel group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), will mark the end of a long and bloody chapter of Sudanese history. Negotiated by the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the resolution of the conflict under regional supervision should bring a fitting conclusion to a war that was consistently supported and fuelled by the interventions of the same neighboring states that are today pushing for peace.

The SPLA’s revolt against the central government of President Gaafar Nimeiri began in 1983. Those leading the revolt opposed the government’s abandonment of the 1972 Addis Ababa peace agreement, which ended the first civil war, the government’s attempt to move forward on oil and water projects with little southern Sudanese input and benefit, Nimeiri’s manipulation of the South and southern interests for political gain, and Nimeiri’s decision to implement Islamic shari’a laws throughout Sudan in September 1983. The SPLA, led by Colonel John Garang, initially espoused a Socialist ideology and was embraced by Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, who shared the same beliefs. Ethiopia housed numerous SPLA training camps, which Mengistu funded and supported with Soviet assistance, encouraging the SPLA to set up their base of operations in Addis Ababa.

Despite Nimeiri’s 1985 overthrow and the 1986 election of a democratic government in Khartoum, the civil war continued in Sudan. Several attempts at negotiating a settlement took place under the democratic government of Sadiq al Mahdi without success. In the spring of 1989, a significant build-up of internal pressure to resolve the war prompted al Mahdi to agree to a peace plan predicated on the freezing of the Islamic shari’a laws. On June 30, 1989, the day before the bill that would have frozen the shari’a laws was to be passed, the National Islamic Front (NIF) led a bloodless coup, stealing power from al Mahdi and postponing any hope for a peace agreement.

Still supported by the interventions of Mengistu’s regime, the SPLA embarked on a string of successful military campaigns in the South, capturing larger tracts of territory from the government, and threatening to expel Khartoum altogether from southern Sudan. In 1991, two events changed the direction of the war. The first was the overthrow of Mengistu in Addis Ababa, which ended any further interventions on behalf of the SPLA and triggered an SPLA exodus from Ethiopia across the border the southern Sudan and Kenya. The second was a major split in the SPLA along broadly ethnic lines that halved the rebel forces. Khartoum capitalized on the split, eventually negotiating separate peace agreements with the key leaders of the breakaway factions, the Nuer leader Dr. Riak Machar, and the Shilluk leader Dr. Lam Akol.

The string of SPLA military victories in the South was slowly reversed, after SPLA lost Mengista as its main benefactor. The SPLA was now also fighting against its breakaway factions, which were increasingly being supplied by Khartoum. By 1994, Garang’s SPLA had nearly been pushed out of the South altogether, holding on to a scattering of small garrisons throughout the South and a few key outposts along the Ugandan and Kenyan borders, thanks largely to the support of the Ugandan President and Garang’s former classmate, Yoweri Museveni.

IGADD Intervenes

As Ugandan support for the SPLA grew, so did regional opposition to the Islamist government in Khartoum, fuelled by the regime’s support for opposition elements in countries throughout the region. The government of Sudan, the SPLA, and Akol’s SPLA-United faction engaged in a series of peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria, under the auspices of the Organization for African Unity (OAU) during 1992 and 1993. After failing to reach an agreement in Abuja, the Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and Development (IGADD) stepped in to broker a new round of peace talks between the government and the SPLA at the annual IGADD summit in late 1993. Originally formed in the mid-1980’s, IGADD was a regional body made up of Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti, designed to focus on drought emergency issues throughout the region. After incorporating Eritrea into the fold following its independence in 1993, IGADD reinvented itself as a body for regional security and development and formed a subcommittee made up of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda and Kenya to broker to Sudanese peace talks. In 1996, IGADD officially shortened its name to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and signaled a shift in its mandate towards conflict prevention and resolution.

The diplomatic efforts of the IGAD neighbors to end the war in Sudan were clearly displayed with the submission of the 1994 Declaration of Principles (DoP). Following the second round of IGAD talks in May 1994, the IGAD mediators put forward the DoP, outlining what they felt was the basis for a sustainable resolution of the civil war. The DoP states that democracy, secularism, and fair and equal development throughout the country are prerequisites for an end to the civil war. The DoP also recognizes and endorses the right of the South to self-determination, and seems to indicate, in somewhat ambiguous and unclear language, that the South should be granted a referendum on self-determination should the government fail to fulfill certain conditions, including secularization and democratization. The SPLA embraced the DoP, while the government rejected it, refusing to continue negotiations on the basis of the DoP. After two more failed rounds in 1994, the process stalled until 1997.

The government’s return to the IGAD process and its eventual acceptance of the DoP stemmed from a marked regional shift away from Khartoum in favor of the SPLA and other northern opposition groups. Continued Ugandan and growing Ethiopian military support and interventions for the SPLA allowed the rebels to once again reverse the military situation in the South and parts of the center of the country, leaving Khartoum more vulnerable. Eritrean and Egyptian interventions on behalf of the northern umbrella opposition National Democratic Alliance (NDA), of which the SPLA is a member, also saw a new military front open against the government in the Red Sea Hills of Eastern Sudan, along the Eritrean border. Against a growing tide of regional hostility, Khartoum accepted the DoP as a basis for negotiations, and returned to the IGAD table to once again discuss with the SPLA. Yet regional meddling in the Horn is a two-way street, and Khartoum increased its support for opponents of its IGAD neighbors, supporting the northern Uganda rebel movement, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), since the mid-1990’s, as well as various Ethiopian and Eritrean opposition groups, when convenient. The boldest of these efforts was Khartoum’s direct support for an assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1995.