The negotiations that concluded with the signing of the CPA on 1 January 2005 had their roots in the early 1990s negotiation of a Declaration of Principles, and years of preceding negotiations. Then, in 2001, US President George Bush appointed John Danforth as Special Envoy for Peace to take a lead on the USA’s involvement in Sudan.
1 Sally Healy, ‘Peacemaking in the Midst of War: An Assessment of IGAD’s Contribution to Regional Security’, Crisis States Working Papers Series 2, no. 59 (LSE, 2009). After 11 September 2001 (a few days after Danforth’s appointment), the USA’s notion that its security was linked to common interests of countries around the world was reinforced.
2 For a discussion of post-Cold War commonality, see Zoe Marriage, Formal Peace and Informal War: Security and Development in Congo (Routledge, 2013), pages 15–17. This was especially the case in Sudan. In this new, post 9/11 context, the US government increasingly cooperated with the Sudan security services, alleviating some of Government of Sudan (GoS)’s concern about US favouring of the SPLA.
3 Douglas Johnson, ‘New Sudan or South Sudan? The Multiple Meanings of Self-Determination in Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement’, Civil Wars 15:2 (2013), page 147. The USA had a new inclination to demand peace in Sudan, and it demonstrated its power over the Sudans by demanding peace.
At the heart of the CPA was an elite deal between SPLA leader, John Garang, and the President of Sudan, Omar el-Bashir, that created an oil-rich Southern government. Part III of the Power Sharing Agreement (May 2004) stated that ‘there shall be a Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS), as per the border of the 1/1/56’.
4 For discussion of the deal that made this possible, see Arnold Matthew and Matthew LeRiche, South Sudan: From Revolution to Independence (Hurst and Co., 2012), page 109. The CPA promised a referendum of Southern Sudan’s independence, allowing GOSS to be understood not simply as a regional government but as a state government in waiting. The CPA then gave the SPLM/SPLA dominance in the new Southern Sudan government. According to the Agreement, prior to the elections, the SPLM was given 70 per cent of the representation of the new legislature and executive, while 15 per cent went to Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the other 15 per cent to other Southern parties. The promise of elections in the CPA was a veil of commitment on paper to political liberalism, but the entrenching of the dominance of the SPLM/A created a de facto one-party system.
Scholarly criticism of the CPA has focused on it being an agreement between politico-military elites.
5 Jok Madut Jok, ‘Lessons in Failure: Peacebuilding in Sudan/South Sudan’. In: T. McNamee and M. Muyangwa (eds), The State of Peacebuilding in Africa (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). ‘These deals often focus on elite power and resource-sharing arrangements, while ignoring the communal and societal dynamics that fed the war and leave embers in its wake’.
6 Ibid., page 364.