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UNISCI Discussion Papers, Nº 33 (Octubre / October 2013) ISSN 1696-22061. IntroductionIn January 2005 the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) brought Africa’slongest-running war in Southern Sudan to its formal end. Essentially a two-party powersharingtreaty between the Government of Sudan and the largest rebel organization inSouthern Sudan, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), the CPA, whichprovided a roadmap for peace between the main warring parties and facilitated the secessionof Southern Sudan in July 2011, faced a number of challenges due to being imposed over acomplex landscape of local political actors.The CPA implementation period, during 2005-2011, saw an unprecedented internationalintervention in Southern Sudan. By focusing on the local protagonists, the main externalactors sought to prevent them from returning to war, and emphasized the (re)construction ofstate structures in Southern Sudan where the war had primarily taken place. Drawing from theliberal peacebuilding doctrine’s orientation towards statebuilding, the attempt to secure peacein Southern Sudan from 2005 onwards became linked with the short-term strategy ofconstructing authoritative state institutions and structures. However, the concentration on thestate as the main priority sidelined the building of national unity, a crucial aspect for devisinglong-term peace in Southern Sudan that had been torn along ethnic lines during the war. As aresult, the focus on statebuilding aimed at achieving the absence of armed violence, or“negative peace”, in the short-term, while sidelining the long-term process of bringingnational unity through nationbuilding, the main element generating conditions of moresustainable, long-term, “positive” peace.This article analyzes the external intervention during the CPA implementation inSouthern Sudan in 2005-2011. It treats statebuilding and nationbuilding as separate in order todemonstrate the limits of the current intervention aimed at building a legitimate andauthoritative state. The article argues that the external intervention in Southern Sudan,characterized by “peace-through-statebuilding” approach, suffered from limitations reflectedin governance and economic development during the CPA implementation, and points outthat the focus on statebuilding and distribution of development dictated by the exclusivepartnership between the main external actors and the narrow group of local protagonists (theSPLM/A-Government of Southern Sudan leadership) brought about conditions which, byneglecting nationbuilding and distributing economic opportunities and economic developmentexclusively, failed to promote inclusive nationbuilding and generate state legitimacy byexcluding significant sections of southern Sudanese society. Finally, the article shows that thisnarrow short-term strategy of external intervention was unable to generate conditions forsustainable, “positive”, peace until the independence of the Republic of South Sudan in July2011. This situation has remained largely unchanged since then.The article is organized in the following manner. First, it provides a brief introduction tothe evolution of peacebuilding towards peace-through-statebuilding in the international postconflictinterventions and explains its relationship with nationbuilding. The article thenproceeds by presenting a short background to Southern Sudan and to the CPA, after which itconcentrates on examining the post-war intervention in Southern Sudan by highlighting thecentral issues in governance, development, and security sector. Finally, the article concludeswith a discussion about the importance of nationbuilding in decreasing direct and “structural”violence and improving conditions towards achieving “positive peace”.14
UNISCI Discussion Papers, Nº 33 (Octubre / October 2013) ISSN 1696-22062. Peace-through-State-building and Nation-buildingThe term “Peacebuilding” 2 first appeared in the 1970s. It subsequently resurfaced in theUnited Nations (UN) agenda in the early 1990s when it featured in Secretary General BoutrosBoutros-Ghali’s An Agenda for Peace (1992) 3 that set the initial framework for “post-conflictpeacebuilding” in the UN intervention strategies. The peacebuilding agenda, targeting statesemerging from armed conflict, assumed achieving Western-type state order as an optimalsolution with the premise that ensuring the conduct of democratic elections soon after a peaceagreement and creating a foundation for market economy would bring about liberaldemocratic and economic order and long-lasting peace. 4 However, after the initial experiencesin the 1990s guided by these principles, which included the failures to contain violence inAngola, Liberia, and Rwanda, 5 this approach confronted vibrant criticism for its imposition ofpolitical and economic order based on Western norms leading to “mission civilisatrice”. 6 Thiswas represented in ever more intrusive interventions which increasingly involved institutionbuildingin the receiving states. 7In the aftermath of 11September 2001 attacks on the United States, Washington becamemajor player in influencing the multilateral liberal peacebuilding agenda. Its focus onstatebuilding that had from the 1990s featured “building loyal and politically stablesubordinate states” shifted towards “building legitimate states [based on] broad-based popularsupport for nascent states by creating democratic institutions and spearheading economicreforms”. 8 This in turn pushed the general peacebuilding agenda further towards theassumption that sophisticated social engineering could take over, or at least speed up, themore “natural” process of state formation. 9 As a result, increasing focus was put on theimportance of (re)constructing states and state institutions according to the Western normswith an assumption that this would promote sustainable peace.Through the increasing focus on statebuilding an attempt has been made to arrive closerto a holistic approach to building sustainable peace. This “comprehensive” idea emphasizesthe social contract and the provision for essential needs, such as security, and basic services,incorporating the broad view on human security. This “holistic” approach adopts aconventional approach to security through the state. Security is deemed principally as thestate’s responsibility, and focus on elevating state capacity is assumed to automatically2 Galtung, Johan: “Three Approaches to Peace: Peacekeeping, Peacemaking, and Peacebuilding”, in Galtung,Johan (ed.) (1975): Peace, War and Defense: Essays in Peace Research, Vol. II, Copenhagen, Christian Ejlers,pp. 297-298.3 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros (1992): An Agenda for Peace. Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peacekeeping,Report of the Secretary-General, A/47/277 - S/24111, The United Nations.4 Paris, Roland (2004): At War’s End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict. Cambridge, MA, CambridgeUniversity Press; and Paris, Roland and Sisk, Timothy D.: “Introduction: Understanding the Contradictions ofPostwar Statebuilding”, in Paris, Roland and Sisk, Timothy D. (eds.) (2009), The Dilemmas of Statebuilding:Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations, Abingdon, Routledge, pp. 1-20.5 See i.e. Paris, Roland and Sisk, Timothy D. (2007): Managing Contradictions: The Inherent Dilemmas ofPostwar Statebuilding, New York, International Peace Academy; and Paris, Roland and Sisk, Timothy D. (eds.)(2009): The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations, London,Routledge.6 Paris, Roland: “International Peacebuilding and the Mission ‘Civilisatrice’”, Review of International Studies,vol. 28, n° 4 (2002), pp. 637-656.7 This was particularly the case with the interventions in Kosovo and Timor-Leste.8 Lake, David: “The Practice and Theory of US Statebuilding”, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, vol. 4,n° 3 (2005), p. 257.9 Krause, Keith and Jütersonke, Oliver: “Peace, Security and Development in Post-Conflict Environments”,Security Dialogue, vol. 36, n° 4 (2005), pp. 447-462.15
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