Sudan People's Liberation Army: Disarmament in Jonglei and its implications

The next stage in the pacification of the south in the view of the SPLM/A leadership and of the UN – was the disarmament of the civilian population

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 9 January 2005 marked the formal end of hostilities between the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) and the national government’s Sudan Armed Forces (SAF). However, it did not end the multiple internal conflicts from which South Sudan suffered. As a result, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was followed by the Juba Declaration of 8 January 2006, which largely brought to a close the conflict between the SPLM/A and the SAF-supported South Sudan Defence Force (SSDF).

The next stage in the pacification of the south in the view of the SPLM/A leadership – and also that of the United Nations (UN) – was the disarmament of the civilian population, and that is the concern of this paper. Almost certainly part of the SPLM/A’s urgency in carrying out this disarmament was the conclusion that it needed to ensure that the south was internally secure before it could effectively confront the challenge posed by the SAF’s deployment to the oil-producing borderlands and its continuing efforts to foster instability in the south.

About the author

John Young is a Canadian academic with a PhD in Political Science and holds the position of Senior Research Associate with the Institute of Governance Studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. He has lived in Africa for 15 years, mostly in the Horn of Africa, and currently in Sudan where he writes on peace and security issues. He has published one book, ‘Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia’ (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and many articles and chapters. He is currently carrying out an assessment of the IGAD Sudan peace process.