Aftermath of Conflict in Abyei Strains Relations in Sudan [PART 1 OF 5] | Voice of America - English
Observers continue to express concern that Sudan is on the brink of a return to a full-scale civil war, despite ongoing attempts to defuse tension between opposing forces in the south and the north of the country. In 2005, a peace agreement ended more than two decades of conflict between the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and President Omar al-Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP) government in Khartoum. But relations are once again strained after clashes in the oil-rich area of Abyei, which is claimed by both the SPLM and the NCP.
Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, one of the SPLM's chief negotiatorswith the Khartoum government, says it's going to take "many years" to rebuildAbyei. "It is actually a noman's land now," he says. Gatkuoth blames President al-Bashir's Sudan ArmedForces for "razing" the town, but the Khartoum government says it was provokedinto attacking Abyei when the SPLM began "flooding" the region with fighters ?a claim the southerners deny. The United States government says both partiesare responsible for the flare-up. Roger Winter, who wasthe US Special Representative to Sudan from 2001 to 2006 and helped to writethe protocol about Abyei in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA),recently returned from a visit to the area on behalf of the Enough Project, inWashington, D.C. He says Abyei has"virtually has ceased to exist. The population of the town is entirely gone?.The markets and the buildings, the houses, the residential homes and so forthwere entirely burned." Winter is adamant thatthe destruction of Abyei should never have happened: "In theory, the townshould have been largely demilitarized" in terms of the peace deal. But forcesfrom both the north and south have remained in the contentious region, notwanting to allow their rivals complete authority over Abyei. Winter says at the time of the violence in the area,"there were some police capacities in town, and then there was what's calledthe Joint Integrated Unit, which consisted of soldiers from the government inKhartoum, and soldiers that represented the government of southern Sudan. It'scalled the Joint Integrated Unit, but it was neither 'joint' nor 'integrated.'They were actually two separate groups of soldiers." Winter says because of this situation Abyei has remained"extremely tense," despite the peace agreement. United Nations soldiers, mainly from Zambia, were also inAbyei to try to keep the peace. But they were unable to do so. "Those U.N. soldiers largely remained in their barracksarea, in the U.N. compound, a secure area with machine gun posts around theperimeter and barbed wire and such. So mainly they were confined there," Wintercomments. "When we talked to the civilian administration of the U.N., they saidthat they had not been able to go into the town of Abyei itself (because) itwas considered unsafe, (and) when they tried they were turned back by thepersonnel of Brigade 31, which is the government force that did most of thismayhem." Winter blames the Abyei conflagration largely on theKhartoum government. He points out that three years ago, an internationalcommission, agreed to by the al-Bashir administration, set the area'sboundaries, giving much of the oil-rich territory to the SPLM. The southerners,though, continually declared their willingness to share oil profits withKhartoum. Nevertheless, al-Bashir's NCP refused to implement the commission'sdecisions, saying only that it had "exceeded the scope of its duties." Gatkuoth says Khartoum has continued to reap the oilrevenue for itself. There's also been no local governance in Abyei because thetwo parties have failed to agree on a structure to administer the region. Soresidents have been deprived of essential services and hardly any significantdevelopment had taken place in Abyei. Gatkuoth says Khartoum's insistence that it attacked Abyeiafter its troops were "threatened" by SPLM fighters is "not true. It isactually just another justification for them to attack Abyei. There was nojustification for us to be moving our troops there. The U.N. was therealready." The SPLM spokesman acknowledges that his party appointed achairman for Abyei, Edward Lino, before the clashes but insists that thisshouldn't have provided the Sudan government with an excuse to destroy thetown. Gatkuoth says Lino's presence in Abyei did not result in the SPLM sendinga lot of fighters into the area: "He (Lino) was having no forces; he was justhaving bodyguards to protect him ? between 15 and 20 people." DanielJok Deng, a Sudanese aid worker who operates in Abyei, says a militia from thelocal Misseriya Arab group helped the government forces attack the town. Hesays the al-Bashir administration is employing the Misseriya to drive out thelocal people of Abyei in the same way that it's using the janjaweed militia toattack the inhabitants of Darfur. "It is the same strategy. And the janjaweed, who arethe Arab nomads who are fueling the proxy militias of the government in Darfur,are the same community as the Misseriya and the Bagara and the Rezegat inKordofan, who have been used as militias in the Abyei area. So it's very muchthe same phenomenon and the same people and the same protagonists, so tospeak." A spokesman on Sudan at the U.S. State Department, JasonSmall, expresses confidence that both the Khartoum government and the SPLM aremoving to ensure that the destruction of Abyei doesn't result in a return towar. "I've heard thatboth sides were very much shocked by the situation and how quickly itescalated, and how this really did threaten and show perhaps some areas offragility of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement." Representatives of thegovernment of Sudan did not respond to numerous requests for interviews regardingthe Abyei issue.