The Sudan Handbook

sudan’s REGional RElations 265

and claims to have stopped supporting the LRA. But there is continued

suspicion that the Sudanese Military Security has continued giving

discreet support to Kony, including air drops of weapons, medicines

and ammunition. If this is the case, the intention must be to increase

confusion in the south and make the work of the new government in

Juba harder. It may also be to keep an active means of political destabili-

zation, in line with the political grand designs of the Sudanese Islamist

movement for the eventual Islamization of the Great Lakes region.

Uganda has benefited economically from the CPA. Southern Sudan,

which is oil-rich but unindustrialized, imports many goods from Uganda

and also employs many Ugandan skilled workers. In economic terms,

Southern Sudan, at the end of 2010, can be seen as a Kenyan/Ugandan

colony, a state of affairs that has caused much resentment on the Sudanese

side and has fed border tensions.

Kenya

In spite of having been used by the SPLM/A as a political rear base

during most of the civil war, Kenya is one of the few countries bordering

Sudan that has had a largely non-conflictual relationship with its govern-

ment. There are several layers of explanation for this paradox. First and

perhaps foremost, Kenya was an economic and refugee rear base for the

struggling southern Sudanese movement but never a military rear base.

Kenya provided administrative offices for the guerrillas, hosted a major

humanitarian aid operation with large refugee camps, and provided

accommodation for the SPLM leadership and diplomatic support. But it

offered no guns. One reason for this demilitarization of Kenya’s support

was the massive presence of UN aid agencies and independent NGOs,

which, particularly after the 1989 creation of the multi-agency Opera-

tion Lifeline Sudan (OLS), did not want their humanitarian action

mixed up with any form of military support. At the time the military

means of the SPLA were still concentrated in Ethiopia, so there was a

kind of task-sharing: guns in Addis Ababa and humanitarian supplies in

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors Nairobi. After the fall of the Mengistu regime in 1991, the guns switched

(www.riftvalley.net).