http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1263632.html?#cutid2

Johnson takes a more southern view than Collins' History of Modern Sudan, and indeed invokes anthropology (which I always appreciate) as much as political analysis to tell, essentially, much the same story. (Johnson snipes at some of Collins' earlier work from the footnotes.)

Johnson's focus is, not unreasonably, on the north-south conflict. He provides a much deeper understanding than Collins of what made the resort to war not only credible but almost inevitable - and not only between the south and the north, but within the south, in particular when John Garang's lieutenant Riek Machar struck out on his own to lead what became a largely Nuer struggle against Garang's largely Dinka forces (though as Johnson rightly points out, one should not try and categorise too rigorously). Apart from 'tribal' identities, there was also the strategic choice between Garang's ideal of a secular state in the whole of Sudan, with southern autonomy, or the option of independence for the south which Machar explicitly adopted.

Johnson finished his book before the most recent peace agreement, and although at first sight the agreement itself disproves his conclusion that conflict is deeply entrenched and self-perpetuating, in fact he highlights many of the issues which remain unresolved even now, and will need to be sorted out in the short to medium term if peace between north and south is to continue.

Johnson also points out that humanitarian aid itself becomes a factor in the perpetuation of conflict: inevitably, the deliverers of such aid must compromise with (and thus empower) certain local forces against others.

While Johnson's book is very good at getting into the mechanics of South Sudan, I thought he missed on two other important areas. First, he seems to see the Darfur (and other) problems in the north as reflections of the north-south question. It's pretty clear that there are plenty of indigenous and external factors to make Darfur unstable even if the South were not an issue (and in fairness to Johnson, his book was finished before the worst in Darfur). Second, in his introduction he claims that conflict in Sudan, as elsewhere, is caused by internal problems being escalated by external actors. It's not at all clear to me, on the evidence that he and Collins present, that external actors were a prerequisite for the outbreak of conflict. It is, however, clear that external actors have played a crucial role in ending it - the 1972 autonomy deal would not have happened without Ethiopia, the current peace agreement is particularly a credit to Kenya. But the merit of Johnson's book is that he writes clearly enough that one can make up one's own mind about the extent to which the facts he presents justify his conclusions. ( )

Douglas Johnson is one of the best writers on Sudan, combining academic rigour (especially in anthropology and history) with a sense of the current reality on the ground. This is an excellent summary of the root causes of Sudan's oft-oversimplified civil wars. ( )

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