Peace or conflict in Sudan?

Peter Woodward
Professor of Politics, University of Reading, UK
p.r.woodward@reading.ac.uk

Sudan’s civil war in the south was often described as the longest war in Africa when it was ended in January 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). However by the time of its signing another conflict had broken out in Darfur, but the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) of April 2006 was signed by only one faction of the rebels and conflict subsequently escalated. The paper looks at why the CPA was a successful negotiation of the first conflict, and argues that the southern war was ‘ripe for resolution’. However it then goes on to argue that there were limitations to the CPA negotiations and agreement that contributed to the outbreak of conflict in Darfur, and it examines the connections between the two sets of negotiations. In examining the DPA itself the paper argues that the situation in Darfur was not ‘ripe for resolution’ and that both the negotiations and the terms were flawed. The final part of the paper argues that the situation in Darfur threatens not just that region but the future of Sudan since it has implications for other regions of the country, including the potential to encourage the south to vote for independence in the 2011 referendum that was a part of the CPA itself. Were that to happen, multiple conflicts would have dismembered Africa’s largest state.