Date: Wed, 21 May 2014 14:52:34 +0200
Review − A Poisonous Thorn in Our Hearts
James Copnall's exploration of 'Sudan and South Sudan’s Bitter and Incomplete Divorce' is at its best when it is telling human stories of courage and tragedy.
BY <http://www.thinkafricapress.com/author/harry-verhoeven> HARRY VERHOEVEN
ARTICLE | 21 MAY 2014 - 1:45PM |
The partitioning of states is seldom the smooth, forwards-looking process that secessionists and their international supporters tend to predict on the eve of independence.
The most notorious example of this is undoubtedly the partition of the Indian Subcontinent in 1947 after which up to one million Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were gruesomely massacred on both sides of the new India-Pakistan divide, and some <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/partition1947_01.shtml> 10 million people migrated across the border. For some, the huge-scale violence was symbolic of some of the very reasons for Pakistan’s independence, but to others it only highlighted the folly of dividing a land in the hope of arresting inter-communitarian strife.
The Horn of Africa was the theatre of similar tragedy after Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia in 1993. Within just a few short years, the conflict that had raged for multiple decades had restarted, claiming even higher casualty rates than before as armies of the two now sovereign republics clashed between 1998 and 2000 and then continued to fight one another by proxy.
If the costs of staying together in a United India or Ethiopia were prohibitively high, the resources and lives expended in the aftermaths of break-ups cannot have been much lower.
Separation pains
James Copnall’s new book, <http://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/a-poisonous-thorn-in-our-hearts/> A Poisonous Thorn in Our Hearts, attempts to tell the story of the now almost three years of turbulence since South Sudan's breakaway from Sudan on 9 July, 2011.
By the time South Sudanese citizens voted 99% in favour of independence in January 2011, secession seemed like it had long been inevitable, but this was not necessarily the path set out just 6 years earlier.
When the <http://unmis.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?tabid=515> Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed in 2005 by the government in Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the document not only aimed to put an end to decades of brutal conflict but held the promise of restructuring the Sudanese state. The proposed changes included: democratisation of government; decentralisation of decision-making; wealth-sharing between different regions; and the recognition that Sudan’s immense socio-cultural diversity could be an asset, rather than a headache for elites who had previously been set on policies of Arabisation and Islamisation.
In case these transformations would fail, southern Sudan was given an option of last resort. At the end of a six-year interim period, a referendum would be held over the question of self-determination.
The fact that an overwhelming majority of southerners opted for independence in that 2011 vote was testament both to the failure of the CPA in fundamentally changing the nature of the Sudanese state and to the festering wounds caused by the decades of injustice and violence that had preceded the peace agreement.
Copnall, the BBC's correspondent in Sudan between 2009 and 2012, was a privileged observer to the months leading up to partition. In his book, he proves himself to be a skilful narrator in examining the disappointments of the first 30 months of South Sudanese independence as well as the post-secession hangover in the north.
Copnall's central argument is that: “separation was not a total rupture; it was, and is, a bitter, incomplete divorce.” According to him, secession not only failed to resolve many of the problems carried over from old Sudan, but also generated a whole range of new issues including economic, social, political and military problems. While the loss of three quarters of the proven oil reserves to South Sudan triggered a steep recession in Khartoum, putting unprecedented urban pressure on President Omar al-Bashir’s Al-Ingaz regime (a coalition of generals and [ever fewer] Islamists, in power since 1989), South Sudan began to resemble the state from which it had seceded.
As Copnall shows with verve, the transition from liberation movement to governing party has been a particularly troubled one for the SPLM. The possibly genocidal civil war that is currently raging between forces led by President Salva Kiir and those led by his former vice-president Riek Machar predated A Poisonous Thorn in Our Hearts, but the signs of a gathering storm are ably described by Copnall.
Following independence, the SPLM rapidly embraced an authoritarian and violent model of governance, centralising power in the capital Juba and around Kiir. This generated various rebellions of a similar centre-vs.-periphery nature to the ones that have characterised conflicts in Sudan since 1956. Foreign (Sudanese) sponsors were, by default, alleged to be behind the uprisings in Jonglei, Unity and Upper Nile State, commanded by the likes of David YauYau, George Athor and Peter Gadet.
Arguably part of the reason behind the SPLM's failures is the lack of self-criticism within the party. For the SPLM High Command as well as its vociferous Western supporters, there could be little serious discussion of the abysmal 2010 regional elections, the disastrous forcible disarmament campaigns, and the mounting corruption, all of which helped foment popular and elite-level discontent. This devastating lack of introspection is brought out well by Copnall who draws on an impressive range of governmental and non-governmental sources across South Sudanese society to warn against the enduring militarisation of politics.
Remaining mysteries
If one of the book’s great strengths is its documenting of the unravelling of the early dreams of independence in South Sudan and the divisions within the SPLM, its discussion of post-2011 Sudan is somewhat less persuasive. Copnall's excellent discussions of some of the grassroots dynamics in South Kordofan, the region along the Sudan-South Sudan border, notwithstanding, an important part of the story remains untold, particularly when it comes to the high politics. Copnall’s relatively limited access to Al-Ingaz bigwigs and security officials means that much of Khartoum decision-making remains remarkably opaque. For example, the issue of Islamism − which is officially still the guiding ideology of the ruling National Congress Party and the politico-philosophical framework for some of the Al-Ingaz revolution's most sweeping attempts at social engineering − remains a blackbox.
Copnall undertakes preciously few efforts to understand or empathise with the reasons why al-Bashir's 1989 coup was launched and the important reforms that were enacted, such as: the democratisation of public education; the frontal attack on Sudan’s feudal political elites; and the Islamists’ refusal to take blind orders from Western and Arab overlords. Al-Ingaz may indeed be the most corrupt and violent regime ever to have ruled the country, but being repulsed by it is not an excuse for trying to understand it better, and on its own terms.
The jihadi-styled Popular Defence Forces, the modernising intellectuals of the Islamic Movement, and the conservative upper echelons of the Sudanese military also remain abstract entities in the book. Copnall wrongly claims them to be alien to Sudanese society when it would have been better for him to investigate them as real people whose political behaviour requires explanation rather than just disapproval.
Between two stools
Overall then, A Poisonous Thorn in Our Hearts is a welcome contribution to a vibrant library of academic and non-academic works on one of the world’s most fascinating and disturbing polities. But with sharper editing and a different structure, the book may have been an even stronger one.
Copnall is at his best when he retains his journalistic identity: the impressionist observing the bombing of Bentiu; the interlocutor allowing Nuba women to speak of having to survive amidst rocks from shelling by one’s own government; the narrator painting the illusions of wealth sparked by the oil boom in Khartoum. Unfortunately though, two factors disturb his momentum: the constant use of subtitles and subheadings which irritatingly distracts from the text’s flow, and Copnall’s attempts to do deep analysis as well as description and inductive arguing.
At regular intervals, A Poisonous Thorn in Our Hearts tries to tick too many boxes and ends up falling in between two stools: neither able to provide a theoretically-rooted, deep historical account of key pathologies in Sudan and South Sudan, nor to retain the attention of the non-specialist reader. The book contains too much detail for those not intimately acquainted with the bewildering complexity of the Sudans, but simultaneously fails to propose new ways of thinking about them that would successfully challenge those who (think they) know the countries even better than Copnall. The human stories, many of them a mixture of courage, tragedy and irony − like the Sudans themselves − represent this book’s greatest asset. They should have been allowed to stretch out even further to explain why Sudan and South Sudan can’t live with each other and can't live without one another.
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