Between 1992 and 1995 the split in the SPLA was entrenched by further defections of dissatisfied commanders to the Nasir faction, and through it to the government. Government support kept the new factions supplied in the field. These defections were not matched by the changing of allegiance of entire military units, or by substantial sections of the civilian population. Rather, as fighting between the SPLA factions intensified, both sides faced continuous desertions as demoralized soldiers refused to fight other Southerners and left their units to return home. Inter-factional fighting was superimposed over the fault-lines of the civilian population, as each side attempted to mobilize civilian opposition against the other.

Collaboration & defections

The central paradox of the Nasir faction was its military alliance with the government in pursuit of the goal of total independence of the South. It was a paradox that ultimately cost its leaders their political credibility and destroyed their movement.

Throughout the remaining months of 1989 the new military government categorically and publicly refused to compromise on shari‘a or the Islamic state, closing off any room for compromise on that issue. As the government failed to make any military headway in 1990 they hinted to several quarters that the war could be resolved by granting the South its independence, which was not then a stated objective of the SPLA. But a peace proposal based on this understanding, crafted by US Assistant Secretary of State Herman Cohen, was rejected outright by the government in March 1990. What the government had in mind by ‘the South’ was, however, considerably less than the old Southern Region. A government official casually revealed to a visiting American journalist at this time the acceptable boundaries of an independent South, which excluded all of its northern oil fields: a proposal reproducing Turabi’s 1980 map submitted to the National Assembly (Section 4.4.1).

In their contacts with the Nasir commanders prior to the coup, it is very likely that the government offered a general prospect of inde pendence for an undefined South. As subsequent events were to reveal, what the Nasir commanders thought they were going to get was always much less than the government was willing to concede. Negotiations between the two sides shadowed political developments in the Sudan.