When we think of Sudan today, Darfur is conjured. But Sudan endured a 22-year civil war between the Arabic north and the African south. Two million people were killed. At stake were several issues, but oil headed the list. A peace accord was signed in 2005, granting Southern Sudan a large degree of autonomy.
A number of people believe that peace may be in the process of unraveling, over the issues of land and, yes, oil. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof discusses this unfortunate process in his 28 February 2008 column and his 2 March 2008 column.
Here's what Kristof said in his 28 February column:
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is backing away from the peace agreement, and prodding Arab militias to revive the war with the South Sudan military forces. Small-scale armed clashes have broken out since late last year, and it looks increasingly likely that Darfur will become simply the prologue to a far bloodier conflict that engulfs all Sudan.
Even my presence here is a sign of the rising tensions and mistrust. The Sudanese government refuses me visas, but the authorities in the south let me enter from Kenya without a visa because they want the word to get out that war is again looming.
He continues:
Those who focused on Sudan’s atrocities in Darfur, myself included, may have inadvertently removed the spotlight from South Sudan. Without easing the outrage over Darfur — where the bloodshed has been particularly appalling lately — we must broaden the focus to include the threat to the south.
One of the lessons of Darfur, Rwanda and Bosnia is that it is much easier to avert a genocide ahead of time than to put the pieces together afterward. So let’s not wait until gunshots are ringing out again all over the south.
There are steps that the U.S. can take to diminish the risk of a new war. We can work with the international community to raise the costs to President Bashir of defying his treaty obligations.
We can warn Sudan that if it starts a new war, we will supply anti-aircraft weapons to the south to make it harder for the north to resume bombing hospitals, churches and schools. We can also raise the possibility of protecting the south with a no-fly zone, which might be enough to deter Mr. Bashir from starting yet another genocide.
One of the flash points is the enclave of Abyei near the border of South Sudan and southern Darfur. The Christian Science Monitor's Scott Baldauf reported on this in 27 February 2008 issue (see above map from the article).
Baldauf begins:
Khartoum, Sudan - Darfur is the more recognizable conflict, but another, arguably more explosive, battle is brewing in Sudan.
This potential flash point is Abyei, a small, ethnically diverse enclave on the border between the Arab north and the African south. Now, a dispute is under way over who should control the district – a power struggle infused with ethnic rivalry, marginalization, politics, and greed.
Split between Arabic-speaking nomads and non-Arabic-speaking farmers, Abyei is a territory where cultures once blended, but where a sharp dividing line has been drawn between two political forces that fought a civil war to a draw.
After a failed US-led mediation effort, Abyei has become a rallying cry for war. What's at stake? Pastureland, oil wells, and the continuation of a three-year-old peace deal that ended the 20-year civil war that killed more than 2 million Sudanese.
He continues:
Before the civil war between north and south Sudan, from 1983 to 2005, conflicts in Abyei were dealt with by traditional means among its two main communities, the Dinka and the Messeriya Arabs. If a Dinka farmer was killed on Messeriya Arab land, the Arabs would pay compensation to the Dinkas, regardless of who killed him; the same rule applied to the Arabs.
Abdul Rasool Al-Nour, a Messeriya Arab elder who helped to negotiate previous peace agreements between Dinka and Messeriya Arabs, says that the civil war has destroyed the trust between the two communities.
He concludes the article:
Abyei is just one of many points of contention between the two sides. Now politics is affecting relations between Dinkas and the Messeriya Arabs.
"There was an intermingling of traditions, of food, of forms of dress, of language," says Mr. Khaled. "Then, when you add the element of war, and the realignment of communities, the conflict took a different dimension, an ethnic dimension, a religious dimension, and of course, this is a very lethal thing."
According to the original plan, says parliament speaker Ghazi Salahuddin, the Abyei Boundary Commission was supposed to set the border according to a line demarcated by British colonial powers in 1905, which many Messeriya Arabs believe is the seasonal Bahr al-Arab river. Instead, the boundary commission experts couldn't find that boundary in the archival records, and unilaterally decided to locate it in a forested no man's land, which put the oil-rich town of Heglieg within Dinka hands.
"This was a good agreement, but the political reality is that the north regards Abyei as a Kuwait, and the south regards it as a Jerusalem, so we have a problem," says a senior Western diplomat, speaking on background. "So we should go back to arbitration. But right now, there is no progress on Abyei. This isn't a question of a glass half full or a glass half empty. There's no glass."
A bad situation is getting much worse, and when the war comes, it will be more like Darfur, and less like the previous civil war.
"If there is just one bullet in Abyei, that will be the end of peace." -- Col. Valentino Tocmac, South Sudan commander, Abyei
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