By Kuir ë Garang*
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"However, the peace partners and the mediators glossed over these issues as if these pertinent issues would magically disappear without being addressed. Bold writings were on the wall."__________________________________________________
Downplaying reservations
A South Sudanese
gentleman asked me during my presentation on May 22, 2016 in Calgary, Alberta, about
the prospects for peace in South Sudan. Given that the two principal warring
parties had just signed the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the
Republic of South Sudan (ARCISS),
there was a considerable anxiety marked by thin hope about the possibility of
peace being realized after nearly two years of bloodshed,
political confusion and tribal division.
While I didn’t come out
as predicting what would happen to the agreement, I sounded very pessimistic
about a successful implementation of ARCISS. Since it was clear from the outset
that the two leaders where forced into signing the agreement and Riek Machar
was hesitant
about coming to Juba, it was easy to see that the agreement
would not hold.
First, President Salva
Kiir refused
to sign the agreement when it was signed by the opposition
leader, Dr. Riek Machar, on August 17, 2015. President Kiir ‘wanted time’ to
consult with his people in Juba. However, the international pressure and the
threats of sanctions from the United States, the United Nations, and the Inter-government Authority on
Development (IGAD) forced president Kiir to sign the
agreement about a week later in Juba on August 26,
2015.
As he signed, the president cited ‘serious reservations’
about the agreement. The fact that the two leaders signed the agreement on two
different days and in two different countries with one leader citing
‘reservations’, should have called for a somber reconsideration against rushing
to implement the agreement.
However, the peace
partners and the mediators glossed over these issues as if these pertinent
issues would magically disappear without being addressed. Bold writings were on
the wall. When President Kiir refused to sign the agreement on August 17th, Seyyoum
Mesfin, then the chief IGAD mediator said that ‘I hope that
President Kiir will sign. There is no reason why he requested time. We call on
President Kiir to reconsider his position so that they can sign and we can go
ahead.’ Instead of addressing Kiir’s reservations as the mediator in order to
assuage the feeling of discontent, IGAD was more interested in the ‘signature’
than the actual conditions necessary for a long-lasting peace in South Sudan.
When President Kiir finally
signed the agreement on August 26th in Juba and cited a host of
reservations, the United States, which is one of the key partners in the peace
negotiations and also one of the funders, said that it didn’t ‘recognize any
reservations’ from President Kiir. The agreement was
therefore signed under duress and obvious discontent so its implementation
would limp under the same nervous conditions.
While no agreement can be
completely free of ‘reservations’, the way in which the mediators dismissed officially
expressed grievances and hesitations is a cause for concern. Essentially, the
warring parties were expected to embrace the agreement under unfavorable, yet
obviously belligerent conditions. In other words, President Kiir and Dr. Riek
Machar had not voluntarily signed the agreement. Since the mediators knew the intransigence
of the two leaders and their past disagreements, it seems the mediators were
more interested in covering up their failure to make the two leaders regard the
agreement as a necessary compromise. Forcing the signatories to sign under uncertain
circumstances, claiming victory and then blaming any failure on the warring
parties seemed to have been the interest of the mediators and the peace partners.
While this sounds like an unfair accusation, the conditions of the mediation at
the time warrant this conclusion.
Undoubtedly, the costly
outbreak of fighting in July of 2016 after Machar went to Juba in April 2016 to
implement the ARCISS was a consequent of a forced agreement.
Following the July 2016
outbreak of violence that killed more than 200 people in July, there was an
outrage. However, the outrage
expressed by the mediators and peace partners was rather dishonest. If they
didn’t see the signs that the agreement would potentially fail, then the
mediation process was unaccountable and seriously flawed. And if they knew it
would potentially fail but just put their hope in its magical success then
there is a lot to be asked about the ethical status of IGAD as the peace
mediator.
But that is in the past
and someone might say that we can’t cry over spilled milk. Admittedly, the most
pressing and pertinent issue now is: what have we learned? As the world and
South Sudanese wait for the implementation of the Revitalized-ARCISS,
there is again much anxiety about what is going to happen in November. Since
the R-ARCISS travelled from Addis Ababa to Nairobi only to end up being signed
in Khartoum under the guidance of the former Sudanese President, Omer El Beshir
and postponed again from May this year to November, it is understandable for
one to be skeptical.
Mediation and coercion
Obviously, the chief aim
of the mediators is to create an enabling
atmosphere so that the warrying parties would find themselves
comfortable to negotiate in good faith and make concessions when necessary.
Unfortunately, this conducive atmosphere became rather a coercive one: sign or
face sanctions. Going
by effective mediation processes, the August 17, 2015
agreement was forced not mediated. Why did peace mediation become coercion? Was
this coercive agreement a diplomatic experiment in South Sudan or was it a
mediation of an agreement between two warring parties all of whom respect was
not necessary? The diplomatic stick
and carrot policy was inappropriate given the then
precariousness of the South Sudanese situation.
While the onus was on the
South Sudanese leaders to bring peace to the people of South Sudan, the
mediators and the peace partners must acknowledge their role in the agreement
failure to avoid repeating past mistakes.
Since the formation of
the unity government has been moved to November at the request of the
opposition leader, Dr. Riek Machar, it is now imperative that the mediators be
very vigilant. It was a good sign that President Kiir, after first objecting to
the extension of the formation of the government of national unity for another six
months from May to November, decided to compromise.
Dr. Riek Machar wanted
this extension for security
reasons. ‘So we need to establish adequate security from the
two forces,’ Dr. Machar said in April, ‘so that our people can have confidence
that this agreement will hold.’ Machar’s security concerns are understandable
given what government’s spokesperson, Michael
Makuei, said in June last year: “Machar cannot be part of
government. We have had enough of him.”
So, the way R-ARCISS is
limping now needs the mediators and all the peace parties to be very vigilant to
avoid repeating the atrocious events of July 2016. Paying attention to areas of
discontent in order to help the two leaders come to a situation where they can
meet without mediators is quintessential to the success of R-ARCISS. Since the
extension of the formation of the agreement, the leaders are yet to meet.
IGAD, the UN, the United
States and the AU, should ensure that areas of concerns are not dismissed the
way they were dismissed in 2015 and 2016. South Sudanese lives and the future
of the country hangs on the successful implementation of R-ARCISS.
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*Kuir Garang is the editor of 'THE PHILOSOPHICAL REFUGEE.' Follow on Twitter @kuirthiy
