MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Jerry Fowler speaks with Jason Matus, a development expert who first started working in Sudan in 1994. Focusing on the 2005 peace agreement signed between the Sudanese government and the Southern rebel group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, Jason explores the significance and progress of three regions--Abyei, the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile--in implementing the agreement.
TRANSCRIPT:
JERRY FOWLER: My guest today is Jason Matus. Jason is a development expert who first started working in Sudan in 1994. He has worked for and advised a number of international non governmental organizations, as well as the United States government on issues related to development and food security in Sudan; especially the region known as the Nuba Mountains, as well as Abyei and the Blue Nile Region. Those three areas were included in a 2005 peace agreement signed between the Sudanese government and the Southern rebel group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. Jason joins us from Nairobi. Jason, welcome to the program.
JASON MATUS: Thank you Jerry, thank you.
JERRY FOWLER: First, let us just start with some basics about this peace agreement that was signed in 2005. What is the significance of the three areas—the Nuba Mountains, Abyei and the Blue Nile—to this peace agreement?
JASON MATUS: The most important thing—I would say there are four reasons why these areas are nationally important to the peace; not just the local peace. First is that clearly their model for solving the problems throughout Sudan—and this was put into the protocol specifically for Nuba Mountains, which is now called Southern Kordofan and the Blue Nile state, so they are considered models for solving the problem throughout Sudan because the set of grievances that were raised at the talks are nationally relevant—issues of recognition of customary rights, land, greater autonomy of the states, freedom of worship, separation of religion and state—those kind of issues were raised at the talks and the agreement tries to go through these issues and provide a model—as it says at the beginning of the agreement—that should help other conflicts, like in the East and Darfur, as well as in the South. That is one reason.
The second is that they are really tests in large part to the overall Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The CPA is a national agreement though it does the most for the South; it is a national agreement. Abyei, which is a part, it has a special status within the agreement; it sits as there are citizens in both the Northern state of Southern Kordofan and they are citizens in the Southern state of Wadup, and under the presidency, and they secured a parallel referendum, like the Southern referendum that will take place; so they get to choose whether they would like to be part of the North, go to the South, and if the South chooses for an independent country after six years, then they can stay with that arrangement. Now, Abyei is clearly a test because of the oil and because of its position historically between the North and the South to see if the parties are willing to implement the wider agreement, in particular the Southern referendum. Now, the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile are much more a test for the overall national reformers for the changes that should take place in the agreement—security reforms, financial reforms, wealth sharing, and the overall elections—and I think, really, it is a litmus test to see in Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile whether there is going to be kind of a national change in the way Sudan is run.
Now, those are the two kind of main reasons; the others is that there is economic importance of the three areas. They have oil; they have massive or large-scale agricultural schemes; they have the Blue Nile which flows north of Khartoum—eighty percent of the Nile waters flowing north of Khartoum come out of Ethiopia through Blue Nile. Now, these areas provide resources that are of national interest, and so therefore, they are important economically for the nation, but the way they have been developed historically was listed as one of the main causes of the conflict in the three areas and nationally. Basically the model has been to nationalize these resources, lease them out to a few investors, mostly from outside of these three areas, and then the people are pushed to the margins—both the Nuba, the farmers, the sedentary community, and the nomadic community are all pushed to the margins for this investment—and their customary rights are not being recognized.
JERRY FOWLER: All the benefits are going to the center in Khartoum?
JASON MATUS: Again, the benefits are going to the center in Khartoum, and it is really this kind of economic domination from the center that has really caused an imbalance in income, an imbalance in the quality of life, where few groups are better off on the periphery, where the majority is quite poor. It is important economically, but how they supply, how they manage these resources is absolutely critical.
The last reason why it is important, and probably one of the reasons that all the people are watching the three areas is that they remain the frontline, the Machakos Protocol, which was the first protocol signed in a series of protocols that make up the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, agreed to using the 1956 boundaries to demarcate the North and the South. Now the bulk of SPLA forces are supposed to deploy South of the ’56 line, and these government SAF forces to the North with joint forces in the middle, and so you have, really, the bulk of forces straddling these three areas, so conflicts, whether they are local conflicts, have a very good likelihood of escalating, of drawing back in these larger parties. The risk of triggering a wider conflict is higher in these three areas then it is in other places. For those reasons, that is why the three areas are important for national peace.
JERRY FOWLER: In terms of what we have seen since the signing of the peace agreement in early 2005, what can we say about the way the model is holding up in terms of the tests?
JASON MATUS: Abyei, which had the first commission set, the Abyei Boundaries Commission, started pretty early on in the process, presented its findings, and those findings are supposed to be final and binding; they were just supposed to be implemented by the presidency—
JERRY FOWLER: I am sorry to interrupt, but what were the things that ABC—the Boundary Commission—were supposed to find? What were the issues?
JASON MATUS: The ABC was supposed to identify what are the areas of the nine sections of the Ngok Dinka which were transferred in 1905, which basically they were supposed to try to find and identify what territory the Ngok Dinka who inhabit Abyei, are residents of Abyei, what territory they had in 1905, and so they went through the notes and records, went through all of the historical data and then did interviews with quite a few different representatives on ground, community leaders, traditional authorities, and came up with what I think is quite a solid report, presented to the presidency, and to date it has not been implemented. Now, the kind of sensitivity around Abyei is that anything that has to do with the boundaries, anything that has to do with residency, who gets the vote in the referendum they have in six years, those are the real sensitive issues, and on the boundaries, there really has not been any progress on implementing the findings. There are lots of reasons but the most common pointed one is that there is oil wealth within the area, and the fact that it would be within the referendum and potentially moving to the South creates problems in the North, or for the NCP from what I assume. Then the issue of residency—who gets to participate in the government, who gets to vote in the referendum—the agreement calls for setting up a government, an Abyei area government, and that has not happened yet. What you have is a bit of a vacuum—in actually all three areas—where you have people coming back, but implementation, especially the setting up of the government, is not there, so the United Nations mission, the United Nations peacekeepers, are responsible for monitoring the area, and they are there, but again they have been limited by the NCP from monitoring North of the town, so they have a limited mandate in monitoring there. Then, the people are coming back, and I think an important thing to note about Abyei is that roughly 85 percent of the population of Abyei was displaced from Abyei during the War, so they have an agreement that recognizes their ethnic home area, but 85 percent of the people need to return to sort of exercise their mandate, participate in the new government, vote, and be part of the referendum, so there are a lot of challenges there.
JERRY FOWLER: The folks who are coming back are members of the Dinka tribe, the Ngok Dinka tribe, right?
JASON MATUS: Yes, the Ngok Dinka tribe, that is right.
JERRY FOWLER: They were displaced, but there are other ethnic groups that are in Abyei as well.
JASON MATUS: The discussion is about who can claim residency outside of the Ngok Dinka for Abyei area. Now, if it is the nine chiefdoms of the Ngok Dinka in 1905, and the residency equates to that, then it is very much an ethnic determination of who is from Abyei area. The challenges have been towards the boundary question: Are these the nine chiefdoms? Those are people who have been there, traders and other groups who have been there for awhile, but in terms of the residents from the nine chiefdoms in Gaugaria, most of the Misseriya have grazing rights within the Abyei area, but they do not have kind of the primary rights that the Ngok have to that area; this is most of the Misseriya who had grazed through the area.
JERRY FOWLER: And the Misseriya are a nomadic group that moves through the area?
JASON MATUS: Yes, they are nomadic; they move through the area their cattle during the rainy season, moving beyond Abyei into the South. This is a historical relationship; it has been around for a very long time, a couple hundred years is what I think the Abyei Boundaries Commission put it at, and their right to move is guaranteed within the agreement for Abyei, to resolve the conflict of Abyei, their right to move through and graze and stay for a significant period of time, but as residents and then as people who can participate in the referendum, that is what is being challenged. The issue of residency will be decided by the referendum commission. There is obviously a debate over who qualifies as a resident and that is going to be decided by the Commission for the Referendum.
JERRY FOWLER: In the broad picture, in terms of implementation in Abyei, they made early progress by the ABC meeting, but since then it has been very slow.
JASON MATUS: My feeling is that if Abyei is a test to this agreement, it is a failing test to this agreement.
JERRY FOWLER: What about the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile?
JASON MATUS: At the very end of the talks both parties agreed to take in the former parts of Western Kordofan that were part of Southern Kordofan in 1974: it is kind of an internal geographical arrangement, but basically, now Nuba Mountains has given up the name Nuba Mountains and is now Southern Kordofan state, so in the protocol it is referred to as Southern Kordofan state. Now implementation in Southern Kordofan state; there is no constitution still, so therefore, the agreement needs to be put into a constitution that then sets the foundation for establishing a government. That has not happened. The governor’s office has been established, and the SPLM hold the first eighteen months in the rotating governorship, but the 45-55 power-sharing arrangement where the SPLM have 45 percent of the power and the NCP has 55 percent of the power without a constitution; at best they set up a caretaker arrangement and then that caretaker arrangement is really for the tops of government. In this case, there is about 30 something SPLM within a government that I think UNDP put at about 12,000-19,000 permanent jobs, 19,000 jobs that need to be integrated. The constitution is hung, implementation is slow, and right now, there have been a lot of incidents between nomads and different Nuba groups. Now, the Nuba groups are not a single ethnic group, they are not one tribe, they are a collection of different tribes with quite significant differences. It is one of the most linguistically diverse, ethnically diverse places on the continent in Africa, probably in the world, but the Nubas are kind of a common identity, more from a history than from an ethnicity. There have been a lot of conflicts between the different groups—the cattle and the camel nomads and some other groups coming down—and just in the last month, I have heard reports of up to twenty people killed in back and forth conflicts between the Nomads and Nubas, and a lot of these conflicts are taking place in areas that were formerly in the government control during the conflict. The problem is—like you are hearing from the Darfur situation—the wide perception and the kind of historic reality is that a lot of these conflicts were political, not local, tribal, and so whether it is the case or not the case, they need to be managed because the perception is that there is very little local left in terms of these incidents, and so that really causes a concern for people for stability, especially moving ahead, and again without a full integration of the police and military, and without a full government set up, and with the United Nations peacekeeping police and military monitors in the area, it is still not enough to keep; it is still worrying with these incidents. Summary for the Southern Kordofan or Nuba Mountains is that, really, they are far behind; just a constitution, a few people within the heads of the government but as caretakers, and the rotating governorship has happening, but with very little true reforms on key issues like land, education, and Blue Nile has got the most progress. It has a constitution, it has set up its government, there is some integration in the police and the military, so there is some good joint security, but really, as well as in Southern Kordofan, the areas are still quite divided. There is a real strong perception that there are SPLM areas and GoS areas, and the integration—the 45-55 integration—has not happened except for the tops of government, and there is a real sense that the few SPLM that have gone into government—they get a car and they get a house—but benefits are not coming out to the people from the government. They are not seeing the benefits, so in a lot of ways it looks like they are being absorbed, and in worst case, discredited. This question of how the two parties changes according to this agreement, there is a real question about that because neither party has agreements as one; they both have to change; the NCP, the former government structure has to reform itself according to the agreement. The SPLM has to turn itself into a government as well as a political party and an army. These major transitions are not taking place; it is really behind, and I think in Blue Nile there is a sense of implementation because these things have been done, but in terms of, has there been real reform or genuine change?, I would have to say no, and far from it.
JERRY FOWLER: What do you think it would take to get the pace of progress to pick up? Are there things that the United Nations or the international community could be doing?
JASON MATUS: That is a good question. I think the international community has been scaling up and they do see the importance of the three areas, whether it is the World Bank or USAID or it is the United Nations; there is a significant presence in these areas, and they do see the importance in terms of national stability. I think that is widely understood. I think the ball is really in the court of the parties, in particular the NCP who are still very well entrenched into their former positions before the agreement. The key thing now is that there is an evaluation and assessment commission which is a body that is supposed to monitor implementation of the agreement. I think the ones that should be set up for the state which is a parliamentary one and the presidential one need to be set up so that there is a challenge for people to feel that they are also able to articulate their concerns about implementation. I think that is important, but I also think the government itself needs to show, demonstrate some of the principles in the agreement—getting resources out to the least developed areas, investing in the poorest places and the poorest people, and just certain kinds of basic benefits. People want to see security, they want to see some services coming in—education, water, health—these are kind of key things to help people feel that there is progress, and I think the international community can pick up as much as they can, but really, the burden, or what people are looking for is not, is the international community being fair in implementing, but is the government? Is this new joint government able to demonstrate these things? I really say that the responsibility is back on them, and our ability as internationals and outsiders to put pressure or to work with them on this is all about will in the end.
JERRY FOWLER: In your sense, in terms of the NCP, the ruling party who are largely responsible for the catastrophe in Darfur, are the ones who been calling all the benefits you said were flowing to the center over the past decades. Is there any sense that they are really committed to reforming themselves and to actually implementing this peace agreement?
JASON MATUS: You have the center and you have the periphery; you have the people that make decisions within the NCP and you have the people who are appointed members of government, and I think that you find a strong will, especially among technical people to do that, and whether they have the authority or ability to make decisions, that is a real question, and I am in the handful of people, the minority of people that control most of the important decisions. I think the question is: are they willing? There have been quite a few tests of this agreement and from what I have watched I have not really seen a willingness to move it ahead.
JERRY FOWLER: Jason Matus is a development expert who first started working in Sudan in 1994. Jason, thanks so much for taking the time to be with us.
JASON MATUS: I enjoyed this Jerry, thank you for calling.
JERRY FOWLER: Thanks.
