10 killed in clashes in Sudan's Abyei region

At least 10 people were killed in clashes between Arab nomads, militia fighters and police in Sudan's flashpoint Abyei region on 27th February, officials said, in the first report of significant violence since a tentative peace deal.

Both north and south Sudan claim the oil-producing area of Abyei, one of the most likely sources of potential conflict in the build-up to the secession of southern Sudan, due in July.

Fighting in Abyei between Misseriya nomads, linked to the north, and the south-linked Dinka Ngok people marred the start of voting in a referendum in January that saw the south vote for independence.

Later in the month, both sides reached a deal promising to pay blood money for earlier clashes and open up migration routes for livestock. Northern and southern leaders promised to hammer out a settlement on who owned Abyei.

Abyei's chief administrator Deng Arop Kuol, from the Dinka Ngok, told Reuters a group of Misseriya, backed by militia fighters, attacked the settlement of Todach in the early hours of Sunday morning, 27th February.

Kuol said the militia were part of the Khartoum-backed Popular Defence Forces.

"There are senior figures in the government who are inciting people to fight ... We don't know really what they are aiming at. Do they want to disrupt the (north-south border) demarcation process, or the process of the separation of the south?"

Senior Misseriya official Saddig Babo Nimr accused south Sudan's army of starting the fighting by attacking a nomadic camp north of Abyei, adding the fighting continued on Monday.

"You would have to ask the SPLA (southern army) why. From my perspective, they want to evacuate the area of Arabs ... I think the Misseriya are reinforcing."

Spokesmen from Sudan's northern and southern armies and the north's ruling National Congress Party denied any involvement.

UN peacekeepers visited the site and confirmed attackers, reported to be Misseriya, opened fire twice on a police station on Monday 28th February, killing seven, according to UN spokeswomen Hua Jiang.

Kuol said three attackers were also killed on Sunday, adding he was still waiting for details of Monday's fighting in Todach.

Kuol said there had been little progress in rolling out January's Dinka-Misseriya peace deal. Sunday's clash came days after a meeting between Dinka and Misseriya leaders ended without agreement, he added.

Abyei was a battleground in the decades-long civil war between north and south Sudan that ended in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement - an accord that promised the southern secession referendum.

Abyei residents were promised their own vote on whether to join the north or south. That plebiscite never took place after disagreements over who was qualified to vote and the failure to agree on the members of an organising commission.

Northern and southern leaders were due to meet in the Ethiopian town of Debre Zeit this week to try to resolve other issues, including the division of national debts, the position of their shared border and payments for transporting southern oil through the north to Port Sudan.

Source: Reuters

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High voter turnout in Southern Sudan, but violence continues in border region

A policeman in Southern Sudan shows the ink on his finger from voting

Sudan is only half way through the week-long voting period for the Southern Sudan independence referendum, but they are already nearing the 60per cent participation rate necessary for the vote to be considered valid, according to Khartoum's Al Sahafa newspaper.

It is thought that voter turnout in the nouth has reached 60per cent, while voter turnout in the north is at 30per cent and in the eight overseas countries where voting is taking place, turnout has been 63per cent.

As a result, it is almost certain that enough votes will be cast for the referendum result to be accepted. That not enough people would be able to vote was a major concern before voting started on Sunday, 9th January.

While fears of widespread return to violence have proved incorrect, there have been numerous clashes on the north-south border on recent days, and at least 33 people have been killed in the disputed Abyei region alone.

Khartoum has said that the clashes were between rival nomadic and farming tribes over grazing lands, but Juba believes that the Arab Misseriya tribesman, bankrolled by Khartoum, are behind the violence.

"There is always someone behind these things, it is not just a local thing like people are saying," said one senior Southern officer, who refused to be named.

In related news, the UN has acknowledged that it gave helicopter transport to a man wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Southern Kordofan governor Ahmad Mohammad Harun is wanted by the court on 51 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and rape in the Darfur conflict.

But a UN spokesperson said that Harun was crucial to negotiations between the Misseriya tribes people and Ngok Dinka people of Abyei, and that was why he was given transport.

"Governor Harun was critical to bringing the Misseriya tribal leaders in southern Kordofan to a peace meeting in Abyei to stop further clashes and killings,” according to UN spokesman Martin Nesirky.

Along with the violence in the Abyei region, there has also been 10 deaths in the border area between the north’s Southern Kordofan state and the south’s Bahr al-Ghazal state. Southern internal affairs minister Gier Chuang said the attack in the border region came as a convoy of returnees moving from the north to the south in order to vote was ambushed on Monday, 10th January.

Chuang said that with the exception of these isolated incidents, the vote was progressing peacefully. "Otherwise, the security in all of the states of the south remains normal and the south is on track to achieve the objective it has fought for for so many years," he said.

Violence in Abyei is the most worrying, as the fate of this disputed state is perhaps the issue that is most likely to cause war between the north and what we can expect will be a newly independence south. Abyei was meant to have its own referendum on which country to join, but it has been postponed as crucial sticking points - including the exact border demarcation and how to divide oil revenues - remain unsolved.

Southern Sudan’s leader, Salva Kiir said on Saturday 8th January that returning to war was not an option, and Northern leader Omar Al-Bashir has said he will accept the result of the vote, but there are many issues to be resolved between the two sides before Southern Sudan becomes a new country in July.

In a gesture of goodwill, al-Bashir has proposed to take on all of Sudan’s $38 billion (£24.5 billion) debt if the south declared independence, according to AFP.

Sources: the Telegraph, AFP, the Ghanaian Journal, Menas Associates

For more news and analysis on Sudan, see the Menas Borders website, here.