The premise of this paper is that the current governance structures in both the Republic of Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan have not merely failed but have become the primary drivers of human suffering and regional instability. The crises from 2013 to 2025 in both countries are not temporary emergencies to be managed but the final, catastrophic outcome of over half a century of systemic dysfunction. One must first conduct a clinical dissection of this long and devastating history of state failure to understand the necessity for a radical intervention.
The roots of division
The conflicts that have defined Sudan since its independence in 1956 were not accidental; their roots were systematically planted during the colonial era and allowed to fester in the post-colonial state structure. The Anglo-Egyptian condominium administered Sudan not as a
single entity but as two distinct territories. The northern provinces were governed as being more akin to Arabic-speaking Egypt, while the southern provinces were treated as separate and more aligned with other East African colonies. This policy of “divide and rule” was explicit: trade between the two
regions was discouraged, Arabic language and names were prohibited in the south, and Christian missionaries were encouraged in the south while Muslim proselytizing was banned. The result was the creation of profound and deliberate inequalities in education, economic development, and political
experience, fostering deep mistrust between a Northern population that viewed the South as “backwards” and a Southern population that harbored memories of 19th-century enslavement by Northerners.
This colonial legacy proved catastrophic at both independence in 1956 and 2011. A “Sudanization” process followed the 1946 decision to integrate the two areas in 1954, which saw power exclusively transferred to northern elites. Of eight hundred senior administrative posts vacated by the British, a mere six were given to southerners, the same process repeated in 2005, packed within the CPA, where SPLM/A cadres replaced and took control of the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS). This political and economic marginalisation of the predominantly ‘Christian south’ by the ‘Arab-Muslim north’ was the immediate trigger for violence. In 1955, months before formal independence, the Southern Corps of the Army mutinied, igniting the First Sudanese Civil War (19551972). This conflict, which claimed up to a million lives, set the template for all future struggles, including the Anya Nya II, SPLM/A, and possibly Anya Nya III or IV.
The Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972 provided a temporary respite, but the underlying structure of the state remained unchanged. The discovery of oil in the border regions in the late 1970s and early 1980s added a powerful economic driver to the existing ethnic and religious tensions. In 1983, President Gaafar Nimeiry’s decision to abrogate the south’s autonomy and impose Islamic Sharia law nationwide was the final spark that ignited the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005). This war, a direct continuation of the first, was even more devastating, resulting in the deaths of two million people.
This historical pattern demonstrates that conflict was not an aberration but the foundational organizing principle of the post-colonial Sudanese state. The state was not conceived as a neutral arbiter for a diverse population but as a vehicle for the political and economic dominance of a central elite based in Khartoum and now through the CPA in Juba. The wars were never simply about governance, marginalization, identity, religion, or ethnicity; these identities were mobilized in service of a more fundamental struggle over the control of power and resources, land, and later, oil, at the direct expense of the country’s vast periphery. This systemic, violent exclusion is the original sin of both the
Sudanese states (Sudan and South Sudan), and its legacy dictates that any future political arrangement that replicates this centralized model is structurally guaranteed to fail.
The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA): A flawed peace and a guaranteed failure
As discussed in an earlier paper, for this argument, we noted that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed on January 9, 2005, mediated by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and a troika of Western nations, in a 250-page document, was an attempt to create a “one- country-two-systems” model. It established a six-year interim period during which a Government of National Unity (GoNU) would rule while a separate Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) would administer the south. The agreement contained detailed protocols on power-sharing, wealth-sharing
(particularly of oil revenues), and security arrangements, culminating in a referendum on southern independence in 2011.
The CPA’s core provisions institutionalized the very divisions they claimed to overcome. The most significant flaw was in the security arrangements. The “Joint Integrated Units” (JIUs) they were supposed to form were largely symbolic, underfunded, and never truly integrated, with implementation lagging 18 months behind schedule. This “two-army” reality ensured that the ultimate arbiter of any political dispute would remain a military force, not a negotiation, as noted earlier.
Furthermore, the CPA’s political mechanisms for building trust and a shared identity were systematically undermined or ignored. National elections, which could have created a new, more representative political landscape, were delayed until April 2010, at the end of the interim period, when the focus had already shifted entirely to the referendum. The democratic institutions envisioned by the CPA thus remained untested and hollow. Critically, the agreement deferred the most contentious issues. The consequences of these failures were immediate. As early as October 2007, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) temporarily withdrew from the GoNU, accusing Khartoum of failing to withdraw its troops from southern oilfields and implement the Abyei protocol.
This demonstrated the agreement’s profound fragility long before the 2011 referendum, which saw an overwhelming vote for secession. The CPA did not fail; it succeeded in its unstated but primary objective: to provide an internationally sanctioned, albeit violent and incomplete, pathway to separation. The lesson for any future settlement is stark and unambiguous: foundational issues of sovereignty, borders, and, most importantly, the monopoly of force cannot be deferred. A successful Sudan or South Sudan requires the immediate and complete dissolution of all pre-existing armed factions (SAF, RSF, SPLA, and all its factions) and their replacement by a single military command under a strong, neutral, transitional authority, preferably NATO.
The events unfolding since the 2011 separation are not new or separate crises. They are the final, violent convulsions of the failed state structures inherited from the CPA. By the end of 2025, Sudan and South Sudan will have reached a state of terminal collapse, their fates now so deeply and destructively intertwined that they can no longer be considered separate problems. Let us look at the two cases to put this into perspective.
Sudan: The war of annihilation and state implosion
The conflict erupted in Sudan on April 15, 2023. It is not a conventional civil war between two factions vying for state control; it is an act of state suicide. The battle pits the nation’s two most powerful coercive institutions, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), against each other in a struggle for total dominance, following an analogous situation experienced in South Sudan in 2016. The result has been the systematic destruction of the Sudanese state and society from within.
The humanitarian consequences are staggering and without precedent. By 2025, an estimated 30.4 million people, nearly two-thirds of the population, will require life-saving assistance, the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. The conflict has created the world’s largest and fastest-growing displacement crisis, with over 12 million people forcibly driven from their homes, including nearly 9 million internally displaced and over 3 million refugees. The violence has been characterized by extreme brutality. Both the SAF and RSF have been accused of war crimes, including extrajudicial killings, torture, and the deliberate targeting of civilians and humanitarian workers. In Darfur and Al-Jazirah states, the RSF has committed acts determined by the U.S. State Department to constitute genocide, including mass ethnic killings and the systematic use of sexual violence and hunger as a weapon of war.
The war has triggered a complete economic implosion. Sudan’s real GDP contracted by a catastrophic 29.4% in 2023, with a further projected shrinkage of 13.5% in 2025. The World Bank reports that the rate of extreme poverty (living on less than $2.15 a day) has more than doubled, engulfing 71% of the population, while unemployment has surged to over 47%. Inflation reached 170% in 2024 and has continued into 2025, decimating savings and purchasing power. The state’s capacity to function has evaporated. Government revenues collapsed to a mere 4.7% of GDP, severely limiting any ability to provide services. Over 80% of hospitals in conflict zones are non-operational, and the healthcare system has been destroyed, leading to massive outbreaks of cholera and other diseases. Famine conditions have been officially confirmed in Khartoum and in multiple IDP camps in Darfur and the Nuba Mountains, with millions more on the brink of starvation as warring parties deliberately block
humanitarian access.
All diplomatic efforts to halt the carnage have failed. Mediation tracks led by the African Union, IGAD, and others have fallen into paralysis, with the parties remaining “unrelenting” in their pursuit of a military victory that neither can achieve. The conflict is not a contest for governance but a war of mutual annihilation consuming the country’s human, social, and economic capital. The risk of the country’s permanent fragmentation into warring fiefdoms is no longer a risk but an emerging reality.
South Sudan: The interlocking crises of a failed state
The 2011 secession promised that political independence, funded by oil wealth, would finally bring peace and stability to the South. The interlocking crises of 2024-2025 have proven this premise to be a catastrophic illusion. South Sudan has not escaped the collapse vortex; it has been pulled directly into it, demonstrating that its political and economic sovereignty is a fiction.
The country’s internal political situation remains exceptionally fragile. The 2018 Revitalized Peace Agreement has all but collapsed. Key provisions, including the unification of forces and judicial reforms, remain unimplemented, and long-delayed elections, initially set for 2024, have been postponed to December 2026. In early 2025, a new political crisis shattered the fragile unity government, with President Salva Kiir’s forces arresting senior opposition officials and his First Vice President Riek Machar. The ensuing military confrontations and deployment of Ugandan troops have brought the country to the brink of a return to full-scale civil war, with conditions described by the UN as “darkly reminiscent” of the conflicts of 2013 and 2016. It is just a matter of time before all systems go loose, with unprecedented carnage, albeit worse than what we show in Khartoum.
This internal political failure has been compounded by a devastating external shock originating from the war in Sudan. South Sudan’s economy depends entirely on oil, which accounts for nearly all its government revenue and hard currency. This oil must be transported to market via a pipeline from Sudan to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. In March 2024, this pipeline was crippled by the conflict in Sudan, effectively turning off the economic lifeline of South Sudan. The result has been a financial meltdown of almost unprecedented speed and severity. The World Bank has already projected that South Sudan’s GDP will shrink by 30% in the fiscal year 2025/2026. With oil revenues evaporating, the government has been unable to pay salaries to civil servants and soldiers, leading to a collapse in public services and an imminent institutional collapse.
The government is bankrupt, resorting to desperate borrowing from nations like the United Arab Emirates after exhausting credit from China. Internal conflicts, such as the recent dispute over local revenue collections between Central Equatoria state and the South Sudan Revenue Authority, compound this financial crisis. If such precedents continue unchecked, they will inevitably trigger the state’s total disintegration.
On the other hand, the South Sudanese Pound has gone into freefall, and hyperinflation has surged, with consumer prices projected to rise by 65.7% in 2025/2026. This economic collapse has created a humanitarian disaster. The World Bank projects that the country will experience universal poverty in 2025/2026, with 92% of the population living below the poverty line. Nearly 80% of the population faces severe food insecurity, the worst hunger crisis the country has ever known, a situation exacerbated by extreme flooding and the influx of over 1.1 million desperate refugees and returnees fleeing the war in Sudan.
In South Sudan, the pipeline disruption acted as an economic kill switch, demonstrating that South Sudan’s sovereignty is conditional on the stability of its northern neighbor.
Finally, the economies of Sudan and South Sudan are not distinct but are deeply intertwined and dysfunctional components of a unified resource production and transport system. The current governance structures in both nations have not only failed but have actively caused immense human suffering and regional instability. The crises stemming from the CPA-brokered independence are not temporary emergencies but the culmination of over half a century of systemic dysfunction. Treating these as separate political issues is a grave strategic error.
A lasting resolution to South Sudan’s economic and humanitarian crisis necessitates securing the entire oil infrastructure, which, in turn, requires stability within Sudan itself. The destinies of these two nations are now tragically and inextricably linked. This fundamental connection provides a
pragmatic argument for a new paradigm shift: the two-state experiment has failed. Both Sudanese states have forfeited their sovereignty by using their weaponry against their populace, thereby undermining their very existence. This is evidenced in Khartoum, Darfur, Nasir, Ulang, Malakal, Mayom, and Juba. This situation justifies an external executive intervention under the international community’s “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P).
Dr Ayine Nigo is an author and lecturer at the University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom. He can be reached via nigoayine@gmail.com.
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