Last July, the key adversaries in Sudan's 20 year civil war signed the Machakos peace protocol, beginning a comprehensive transition process between the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). Since then the warring parties have stumbled along a path toward peace, often guided and pushed forward by their international partners. As one of the key partners in the Sudan peace process, the U.S. government has offered critical support and leadership to keep the two sides talking and the negotiations moving ahead.

Later this month, the Bush administration must present a report—mandated by legislation signed into law in October 2002 called the Sudan Peace Act—certifying that the two sides in the talks are negotiating in good faith and that negotiations should continue. If the president finds that the government has not engaged in good faith negotiations or has unreasonably interfered with humanitarian efforts, the act states, the president, after consultation with the Congress, shall implement a series of punitive diplomatic and economic measures against the government of Sudan.

The views summarized below reflect the discussion at the meetings; they do not represent formal positions taken by the Institute, which does not advocate specific policies.

The U.S. Institute of Peace and the Sudan Civil War

For years, the United States Institute of Peace has attempted to foster peace in Sudan: staging conferences, holding working group sessions, conducting research, and contributing grants totaling nearly $1 million to projects aimed at ending Sudan's tragic civil war. These efforts continue still.

The Institute's most recent innovation aimed at promoting peace in the Sudan is the Sudan Peace Forum (SPF), a working group of Sudan experts drawn from the Bush administration, Congress, academe, U.S. civil society organizations, and other relevant sources. This group is convened regularly to discuss developments in the ongoing Sudan peace process and identify ideas for strengthening it.

The goals of the SPF are two-fold. First, to stimulate in-depth discussion among key actors in the Washington policy community about the Sudan peace talks in order to generate ideas and occasional reports designed to support the negotiations. Second, to disseminate news about developments in the Kenya-based talks in that community.

During the first four months of 2003 the SPF held three meetings exploring numerous important issues. Each session was co-chaired by U.S. Institute of Peace Board Chair Chester A. Crocker and Institute Senior Fellow Francis M. Deng. Guest speakers have included high-ranking national and international public officials and other experts.

Sudan Peace Forum Findings

Several key insights have emerged from the SPF gatherings:

• Over the past year, the main warring parties in this stubborn, decades-long conflict have made significant progress towards a peace settlement. Today, the people of Sudan are slowly moving toward ending a conflict that has claimed more than two million lives and destabilized the entire northeastern Africa region.
• While there are many factors contributing to the current success of the ongoing Sudan peace talks, the sustained high-level commitment to the negotiations by the U.S. government has been fundamental to the progress achieved over the past year. U.S. diplomacy in the peace talks, while low-key, has become an important force for cohesion, binding the numerous international actors and the Sudanese parties together.
• Clearly challenges remain in the search for a comprehensive Sudan peace treaty that is based on the goals of unity and justice. While continued human rights and ceasefire violations by the government of Sudan against the SPLM/A are most troubling, over the past year the SPLM/A has also taken actions detrimental to the peace process.
• Among the critical issues on which the parties remain far apart is the status of the three marginalized areas of Abyei, Nuba Mountains, and Southern Blue Nile The recent talks at Karen, Kenya, focused on these areas, which, although administratively in the North, have much in common with the South in racial, ethnic, and cultural terms and in their marginalization. How their problems are addressed could be pivotal to the cause of peace.
• Yet thorny issues must not obscure the progress that has been made, including a ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains, agreements committing the government of Sudan to allow eventual self-determination of the southern (SPLM/A) region, and plans for wealth (oil revenue) sharing. Each of these elements has required major compromises by the parties and would have been unthinkable prior to the serious engagement of the United States and the other members of the Observer Troika (Norway and the United Kingdom), in support of the Kenyan-led Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) talks. [IGAD is a sub-regional organization formed by seven countries of the Horn of Africa: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda.]
• Current U.S. policy toward the Sudan is bearing fruit. Indeed, stepping away from the Sudan negotiations by the United States would risk an unraveling of the entire peace process.

Conclusion

These are troubled times and the Bush administration is faced with urgent, and sometimes competing, foreign policy priorities. Yet the potential humanitarian, strategic, and political rewards for the United States stemming from a Sudan at peace could well become a hallmark of this administration's commitment to conflict resolution in Africa while buttressing the goal of African development and fighting the war against terrorism.

This USIPeace Briefing was prepared by Timothy Docking—an Africa specialist and program officer with the Research and Studies Program at the U.S. Institute of Peace. The views summarized above reflect the discussion at the meetings; they do not represent formal positions taken by the Institute, which does not advocate specific policies.

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan institution established and funded by Congress. Its goals are to help prevent and resolve violent international conflicts, promote post-conflict stability and development, and increase conflict management capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by empowering others with knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by directly engaging in peacebuilding efforts around the globe.