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Living with civil war: conflict survival strategies in southern Sudan

Do policy-makers understand the risk-related behaviour of the victims of Africa’s growing number of conflicts? Do religious and ethnic differences sufficiently explain the duration and severity of Sudan’s civil war? How have southern Sudanese households exposed to the risk of this long-lasting conflict managed their assets to reduce and avoid anticipated and actual negative effects?

A paper from the Institute of Development Studies examines the assets management strategies of war-affected households in Sudan’s Bahr el Ghazal region. Critiquing approaches to the causal analysis of civil war, it argues that Sudan’s civil war has been caused by grievances and sustained by greed at global, national and community levels. The international community is reminded of its blame in furthering this conflict.

Conventional analysis of the causes of civil war focuses on internal and national factors during and when the civil war occurred – thus running the risk of attributing conditions in the course of conflict as the root causes. In Sudan the primary causes are rooted in the British colonial legacy and the crisis in subsistence livelihoods caused by structural adjustment, Sudan’s debt burden, the development of oil and water resources and the policies advocated by multilateral institutions. Although religious and ethnic diversity features as the main causes of the civil war in Sudan, it is argued that Sudan has not been failed by such diversity but rather by its ruling elites.

The report makes a distinction between endogenous (originating internally) and exogenous (originating externally) counterinsurgency warfare and demonstrates that the former – warfare made by those living alongside each other – has had a far more destabilising impact on households’ assets management, rural livelihoods and social capital than the conventional warfare between the government of Sudan and those fighting for southern independence.

Evidence is produced that:

Non-poor households are more susceptible to the effects of counterinsurgency warfare – because they are robbed of cattle and crops by government-sponsored Dinka and Arab militias – than poor households.
There is a significant positive correlation between famine mortality and initial wealth among households exposed to endogenous counterinsurgency warfare.
There is an inverse correlation between famine mortality and wealth among drought-affected households.
The dominant argument in the risk literature – that the more households are exposed to risk events, the greater the likelihood of livelihood diversification – is not confirmed: many households have returned to dependence on a single crop or abandoned agriculture for a purely pastoral existence.
While endogenous warfare destroys social capital, exogenous conflict can strengthen cohesion, social ties and community-level risk-sharing arrangements.

Policy-makers are urged towards a better understanding of the root causes of recurrent civil wars wherever they occur. They are encouraged to:

recognise the opportunities to support commonsense risk management strategies of war-affected populations by delivering poverty programmes even as conflict continues
recognise the obligation of the international community to curb multinationals which pursue extractive development of natural resources, sustain counterinsurgency and condone human rights violations
understand that conflict in southern Sudan cannot be ended without a massive injection of international resources to tackle long-standing deprivation and horizontal inequalities
encourage local markets in order to normalise relationships between communities and facilitate grassroots peace-building initiatives
put pressure on all combatants to allow marginalised communities to participate in freely choosing a sustainable architecture for post-conflict Sudan.

Source(s):
‘Confronting civil war: a comparative study of household assets management in southern Sudan’, IDS Discussion Paper 381, Institute of Development Studies, by Luka Biong Deng, 2002 Full document.
‘The Sudan Famine of 1998: Unfolding of the Global Dimension’, IDS Bulletin 33(4), by L. Deng, 2002 Full document.
‘Famine in the Sudan: Causes, Preparedness and Response; a political, social and economic analysis of the 1998 Bahr el Ghazal famine’, IDS Discussion Paper 369, by L. Deng, 1999 Full document.

Funded by: USAID, Hugh Pilkington Trust, World Food Programme

id21 Research Highlight: 16 April 2003

Further Information:
Luka Biong Deng
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Falmer
Brighton BN1 9RE, UK

Tel: +44 (0)1273 606261
Contact the contributor: L.B.Deng@sussex.ac.uk

Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK

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