The White Army: an introduction and overview

This document reports on the conflict in southern Sudan. It particularly focuses on the origins, organisation, leadership and capacity of local armed groups of the Nilotic people.

Throughout southern Sudan local armed groups have emerged to protect their communities, cattle, and property. Cattle camps were transformed into a ‘white army’ that was generally aligned with the Khartoum government via the forces of Dr Riek Machar. The signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement on 9 January 2005 eventually saw the destruction of the White army.

Key points include the following:

•  the pacification of South Sudan has brought the social crises within Lou and other peoples increasingly to the fore 
• the defeat of the white army has involved the virtual destruction of the local economy
• the SPLM (Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement/Army) does not have the capacity to pick up the pieces and so that task will fall to the international community
• to the extent that the white army is defined solely as a security problem there is a danger that its destruction will mean that attention is diverted elsewhere.
• a failure to effectively confront the poverty, and lack of opportunities available to the Nuer and other groups that produced the white army, could give rise to a new cycle of violence that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was meant to end.