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The South Sudanese army has been at the verge of war with the north's Sudan's Sudanese Armed Forces since the north invaded a contested border zone two weeks ago. Though independence looks set to become official in July, the picture on the ground here in the south is increasingly messy.
More war in Sudan? It's in no one's interest. Northern Sudan tells UN peacekeepers their time is up Satellite photos show Sudanese war crimes, watchdog claims Battle for Abyei could ignite civil war in Sudan The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) is a former guerilla movement that fought a liberation struggle and civil war against the northern Sudanese government for more than two decades before signing an internationally-brokered peace deal in 2005. The deal granted the South the right to decide whether to break away from the north and form a new state.
The SPLA is not only overwhelmed by the internal and external challenges to stability within its territory, but it is also accused of violating human rights and harassing United Nations agencies and international aid groups attempting to respond to the humanitarian crisis in the fallout of northern Sudan's invasion of the border region of Abyei. The rumors are making aid groups fearful of sending convoys of fuel and food stocks to frontline areas where wounded, hungry, and generally vulnerable populations need the assistance.
The South's army officials have been frank in my recent discussions with them over the allegations against the Army here in the South.
“[Orders] reach the ground. But as anywhere in the world you will not have 100 percent discipline,” Col. Philip Aguer, the SPLA spokesman, told me today in South Sudan's capital of Juba. He said that the process of both transforming a guerilla army into a conventional one and the intense challenges of integrating rebel militia forces into the army are daunting, especially at a moment when the northern army is aggressively flexing its muscles in Abyei, a territory of great strategic, historical, and emotional importance to southerners.
Based on United Nations internal reports I obtained while looking into allegations made by local government officials in remote, often inaccessible reaches of the oil-producing Greater Upper Nile region, it is fair to say that the SPLA stands accused of egregious violations of human rights including killing of civilians and destruction of their homes and properties.
South Sudan or South Central Los Angeles, whats the difference?Incentivization of violence rebellions is the threat to Peace and stability in South Sudan
There are no white people in South Sudan to help control the violence.
Thats the difference
JUBA, Sudan, June 8 (UPI) -- Washington expressed deep concern over reports of clashes between military units in the Sudanese state of Kordofan, adding it undermined a 2005 peace deal.
The south's ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement said at least 17 soldiers were killed in clashes between rival forces in the capital of Kordofan state, the Sudan Tribune reports.
Mark Toner, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, in a statement said the latest violence in Sudan threatens to undermine a 2005 peace deal that ended a civil war in the country.
"Such violent acts not only result in the loss of innocent lives but they further throw into jeopardy the peace that both sides had worked so hard to build," he said.
The 2005 peace deal gave South Sudan the right to vote to form an independent state. The report in the Tribune notes that while Kordofan is part of northern Sudan, it has strong ties to the south.
An SPLM official told the Sudanese newspaper that his forces didn't start the conflict. He claimed forces from the north launched attacks that started during the weekend.
The situation in Sudan is tense ahead of South Sudan's formal independence in July.
I wish the Sudanese government would honor whatever deal was signed in the CPA. A deal is a deal; unless proven unconstitutional.
As the July 9 date for the secession of South Sudan approaches, something very ugly is happening in Sudan. Northern Sudan has initiated a series of violent affronts on contested regions: the border region of Abyei last month, and now, South Kordofan, a northern state whose inhabitants mainly identify with the South. While the assault on Abyei has resulted in an already acknowledged humanitarian crisis, the consequences of the attack on Kordofan are likely to be even more severe.
An early UN assessment of the aftermath of the brutal seizure of Abyei found that the actions by Khartoums military and militia forcesincluding killings and ethnically targeted destruction of propertywere tantamount to ethnic cleansing. More than 100,000 Dinka Ngokthe northernmost of the Dinka tribal groups, the largest in the Southfled for their lives to the south of Abyei. A mass of satellite and ground photography depicting ethnic cleansing and the extraordinary statements by former U.S. State Department Ambassadors-at-Large for War Crimes of the crimes against humanity further testified to the gravity of the assault.
Conditions are poor for those who fled Abyei, and for many there is no assistance at all. Khartoum has thrown up an economic blockade on goods moving from North to South Sudan, including fuel, leaving many relief organizations without mobility. Many of the displaced are severely suffering. The New York Times reported on one woman, slumped in the meager shade of a thorn tree, her belly rumbling from the nearly toxic mix of wild plants, who had lost two of her children in the chaotic exodus out of Abyei.
Now, even greater violence is rapidly unfolding in South Kordofan, which abuts Abyei and lies immediately north of an oil-rich region in the South. For the past week, there have been many reports of ethnically-targeted executions (including women and children), destruction of churches, the killing of church officials, and bombings of civilian targets in the Nuba Mountains. Geographically situated within South Kordofan State, butnowhere contiguous with the are that will become South Sudan, the Nuba area is populated by an ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse people who sided with the South during the civil war and feel deeply uncomfortable with the threat of Khartoums Islamism and Arabism. Because the center of military resistance is within the Nuba, and because Khartoum wishes to eliminate the region as a source of future threats,much of this assault on Kordofan will take place in the Nuba Mountains.
We have no way of knowing exactly how many have fled in South Kordofan but the estimates are growing with terrifying speed; the UN estimate for the capital of South Kordofan State, Kadugli, is around 40,000. Human Rights Watch reports tens of thousands of people fleeing toward El Obeid, the capital of the North Kordofan State. The World Council of Churches, an organization with close ties to the people of the Nuba, reports that as many as 300,000 civilians are besieged and cut off from humanitarian assistance. The highly reliable Sudan Ecumenical Council has declared that [other civilians] have fled to the Nuba Mountains, where they are being hunted down like animals by helicopter gunships. With critical shortages of water and food already reportedit is also now the hunger gap, the period between fall and winter harvests and the next round of harvests beginning in Octoberconditions for those who have fled and are cut-off from any assistance will only grow more deadly.
Ominously, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has given a free hand to military forces in South Kordofan, apparently giving license for the persecution of anyone accused of sympathizing with the southern Sudanese movement and party, the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM), which is overwhelmingly made up of African tribal groups. Human Rights Watch reports receiving credible reports that various northern militia carried out house-to-house searches and set up checkpoints, killing civilians in the process.
I wish the Sudanese government would honor whatever deal was signed in the CPA. A deal is a deal; unless proven unconstitutional.
Well it looked too good to be true when it was signed, Sudan is not going to let South Sudan keep all of that oil.
I wish the Sudanese government would honor whatever deal was signed in the CPA. A deal is a deal; unless proven unconstitutional.
Well it looked too good to be true when it was signed, Sudan is not going to let South Sudan keep all of that oil.
Tough luck! Then Sudan should not have written up and signed agreement that it did not intend to honor.
High_Gravity, stop the too much drinking and smoking! Did you not just say "Sudan is not going to let South Sudan keep all of that oil"? Thus my response:
"Tough luck! Then Sudan should not have written up and signed agreement that it did not intend to honor."
Fears of another civil war are playing out in Sudan as troops led by President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir have overrun towns and attacked tribesmen loyal to the south around a contested border region of oil reserves and well-armed militias.
Bloodshed and streams of refugees are a dangerous prelude to July 9, when southern Sudan, after decades of conflict that left more than 2 million dead, gains independence. The south will inherit the bulk of the nation's oil supplies and the incursions by northern forces appear to be part of Bashir's strategy to press the south for last-minute concessions.
The north's economy is struggling and Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region, is loath to let billions of dollars in oil revenue slip away. U.S. and other Western officials worry, however, that Khartoum's attacks along the border and in a neighboring northern state could tip the country into war and upset a volatile stretch of East Africa.
Northern troops and tanks captured the contested Abyei border region last month, forcing tens of thousands of civilians to flee their homes. Holding Abyei would give Bashir a larger share of oil or allow him to negotiate money from the south in return for withdrawing his soldiers. The north and south have yet to agree on boundaries or a formula to share oil revenue.
The northern-controlled oil state of South Kordofan has also turned volatile. The state is filled with militants who battled the north in the civil war that ended with a 2005 peace agreement. Bashir sent his army into the area last week when tension rose after a northern-backed candidate, who was also wanted by the International Criminal Court, was elected governor.
The United Nations says fighting between southern and northern elements has forced at least 40,000 people to flee Southern Kordofan's capital, Kadugli. The north claims the Southern People's Liberation Movement, or SPLM, which runs the southern government, is instigating trouble. The south contends the north has invented that pretext to harden its grip across the Nuba Mountains and increase pressure on the border.
"The government in Khartoum seems to have taken a more belligerent and proactive military approach to the situation, perhaps thinking this gives them some advantages in the negotiations, first by the military takeover in Abyei and then by sending forces into South Kordofan," said Princeton N. Lyman, U.S. envoy to Sudan, in an interview with Voice of America. "I'm not sure why the government chose in the last few weeks to turn to this kind of a policy, but it is very, very threatening to the whole negotiating process."
Bashir and SPLM President Salva Kiir met Sunday for talks in Ethiopia, with the Sudanese media reporting that Bashir has agreed to pull back his troops from Abyei before July 9 and replace them with Ethiopian peacekeepers under the United Nations flag. The report could not be independently confirmed. Bashir has reneged on previous promises.
With just three weeks to go until South Sudan officially becomes Africas newest nation, serious fighting between southern and northern Sudanese forces are already pushing this soon-to-be country to the brink of outright war.
Fighting rages in Sudan's Southern Kordofan Supplies run low in Sudan's embattled border regions South Sudan's army contributes to violence, confusion on the ground In the past few weeks, troops loyal to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir have taken control of the contested areas of Abyei and South Kordofan, border regions that have strong local support for South Sudans ruling party, the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM).
Both Abyei and South Kordofan were supposed to hold local votes this year to determine whether they would join the fledgling state of South Sudan or remain part of the North, but those votes have been delayed. Current fighting seems to put a peaceful, democratic resolution of their status out of reach for now.
Mediators from the African Union have brokered a tentative peace in Abyei, with Mr. Bashir pledging to withdraw his forces from the town of Abyei and both sides agreeing to a deployment of Ethiopian peacekeepers under the AU banner.
President Obama added his weight to calls for a cease-fire today, stressing the need for a political solution.
"There is no military solution," Mr. Obama said in an audio message issued through Voice of America. "The leaders of Sudan and South Sudan must live up to their responsibilities. The government of Sudan must prevent a further escalation of this crisis by ceasing its military actions immediately, including aerial bombardments, forced displacements, and campaigns of intimidation."
Splitting up Sudan into two separate countries was never going to be easy, especially since official borders between the two are not yet demarcated. And there are still questions about how to handle the nomadic communities that shift seasonally between territories that will end up in two different countries. But some human rights groups charge that the recent fighting led by Bashirs troops is an attempt at ethnic cleansing, pushing out ethnic groups that live in the North but politically align themselves with the South.
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Satellite Sentinel Project, a Washington-based advocacy group, says it has satellite images showing that the North's army, the Sudanese Armed Forces, burned about one-third of all civilian buildings in Abyei in an attempt to force out ethnic Ngok Dinka residents who tend to side with South Sudan's SPLM.
Northern troops continue to bomb SPLM positions around the South Kordofan capital of Kadugli and UN aid officials report that as many as 65 people may have been killed and 60,000 others displaced. Fighting in the Abyei region has displaced tens of thousands more, most of them seeking shelter across the official border inside South Sudan.
Whether the fighting is an attempt to establish North Sudans status as the stronger party in the North-South relationship or to scupper South Sudans chances of survival as an independent state remains to be seen. In either case, the effect will be devastating for the leaders of the oil rich, but underdeveloped South Sudan, who already had a daunting task of building a nation from the ground up.
Reporting from Khartoum, Sudan Leaders of northern and southern Sudan agreed Monday to demilitarize the disputed border region of Abyei after an incursion by northern forces, which still occupy the region.
The two sides signed a pact in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, where former South African President Thabo Mbeki acted as a mediator. He told reporters that Ethiopian peacekeepers would be dispatched under the U.N. flag to patrol the oil-rich area. The exact number will be decided at a U.N. meeting in New York, he said.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said his country was ready to send peacekeepers in order to prevent a new north-south war over Abyei. In New York, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice called for swift implementation of the demilitarization agreement.
"We welcome the news that the parties have just signed an agreement," she said in remarks to the U.N. Security Council.
After decades of fighting, southern Sudan, which holds the bulk of the nation's oil reserves, is set to gain independence on July 9. Last month, northern troops and tanks streamed into the contested Abyei region, sending tens of thousands of civilians fleeing south.
Last week, Sudanese President Omar Hussein Ahmed Bashir agreed to pull back his troops, but upon his return from Ethiopia, he initially denied an agreement had been reached. Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region, said last week that the incursion was aimed at protecting civilians in the disputed territory.
Aldirderi Mohammed Ahmed, head of the Abyei branch of the north's ruling National Congress Party, said the agreement Monday fulfilled government demands that the south also withdraw its forces from the region.
Still unsettled are the boundaries for the region and a formula for sharing oil revenue after the mostly animist and Christian south voted in a March referendum to secede.
Thomas Wani, a leading figure in the south's Southern People's Liberation Movement, said his party welcomed the agreement but was skeptical because of the north's history of broken promises.
"I really don't trust the NCP," he said, referring to the ruling party in Khartoum. "They agree today but they revoke it tomorrow."
Elsewhere in Sudan, heavy fighting was reported between northern and southern forces in Southern Kordofan, the province that includes Abyei.
Oh it's going to be a fight, there's no doubt HG.
Where do we see Muslims appreciating other cultures? I don't mean tolerating them until someone kills a few to take the desire to kill the unbelievers down a few notches.
There are 57 Muslim countries. Where do we see ONE of them treating their minorities with more than a low tolerance?
