ABSTRACT
Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005 was a major political event. A country that had started on the road of independence in 1956 as a unitary state with a liberal democracy along Westminster lines had become a place of two dominant armed camps. On one side was the national government, an authoritarian Islamist regime that had seized power through a coup in 1989, and from 1999 was effectively a one-party state under the National Congress Party (NCP). On the other side was a rebel movement in the predominantly non-Arab south that had been fighting from 1983 under the title of Sudan Peoples Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/SPLM). Yet behind the armed politics lay the influence on both sides of the economy, which both had sought to manipulate as a dimension of conflict in different ways and for different motives. The main thrust of this chapter is to consider the significance of the political economy in the decisions to negotiate peace; the financial and economic aspects of the peace process, and the implementation of those aspects of the CPA since 2005. While it had been intended in the CPA that both parties would work to make unity attractive, in the event that failed to happen and the referendum in the South in January 2011 was overwhelmingly in favour of separation. As a result the questions concerning political economy involve consideration of two separate states from July 2011 onwards. But before these themes can be pursued it is necessary to start with the broader picture of the country’s political economy within which developments surrounding the CPA need to be set. The agreement included a referendum for the South in January 2011 that resulted in an overwhelming vote for separation and resulted in the independence of South Sudan on 9 July of that year.
