Introduction

The book’s Introduction situates the reader in recent decades of recurrent wars and failed peacemaking attempts in the Sudans, giving central focus to the reproduction of armed conflict during and after the negotiation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The chapter introduces its central aims to prize open how contemporary peacemaking works and how it may go wrong, to understand why this might be inherent in peacemaking, and to open up ways to rethink peacemaking. The book’s touchstone for assessing peacemaking, ‘non-violent civil politics’, is explained and the book’s grounding in the political thought of Hannah Arendt is summarized. The book’s central arguments are introduced, notably that, tragically, the ends and means of making peace in civil wars often risks debilitating not fostering non-violent civil politics, in turn motivating violence and reinforcing its currency. Following this is a detailed chapter-by-chapter summary of the book, explaining its thematic, episodic and chronological structure. The chapter ends with a brief history, and foundational position, on war, politics and international intervention in the Sudans, helpful to those with less familiarity with these countries as well as accounting for the author’s interpretation of that history as an anchor to the study.