CIAO DATE: 12/2013
November 2013
The situation in Sudan’s forgotten East – without deadly conflict since the 2006 Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement (ESPA) – stands in contrast to the fighting besetting the country’s other peripheries. But this peace is increasingly fragile. Seven years after the ESPA’s signing, the conflict’s root causes remain and in some respects are more acute, due to the failure to implement many of the agreement’s core provisions. Mirroring elsewhere in the country, with no sign of genuine efforts by Khartoum to address the situation, conflict could erupt in the East again and lead to further national fragmentation. All ESPA stakeholders urgently need to reconvene and address the deteriorating situation; the leading sign atories need publicly to concede that the promises of the original agreement have not met expectations and reach a consensus on remedial measures. The ESPA’s failure is another example of Khartoum’s piecemeal approach to re- solving conflicts and the divide-and-rule default politics of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP). Post-2006, attention and resources rapidly shifted to Darfur and now Blue Nile and South Kordofan. The fail ure to implement the ESPA, together with NCP machinations, has hopelessly divided – mostly along tribal lines – the Eastern Front (EF), the alliance of armed groups that signed the agreement. At the same time, continued exploitation of the region’s resources by a centre that shares little is fuelling a secessionist agen da even among the eastern branches of the NCP. Various eastern factions now call for toppling the regime and joining the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), an alliance of essentially southern and Darfur-based rebel groups. Renewed armed conflict is more likely, especially given the spreading war in South Kordofan, Blue Nile and Darfur.
Resource link: Sudan: Preserving Peace in the East [PDF] - 1.4M