Sudanese troops mass near border as South Sudan prepares for independence

Salva Kiir will declare South Sudan an independent state on Saturday

With just days until Africa sees its newest state born, violence continues in Sudan's northern border state of Southern Kordofan.

 

The Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP) has identified an apparent massing of northern troops in Southern Kordofan's capital, Kadugli. There appears to be a convoy with Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) vehicles and artillery stretching two kilometres in length, and manned by approximately 1,000 troops.

SSP has also released satellite imagery from Monday 4th July which shows SAF aircraft and helicopter gunships at the Kadugli airfield, which seems to support reports that SAF had used helicopters to hunt Nuba people in Southern Kordofan's Nuba Mountains region.

According to UN reports, over 70,000 people have fled the state since violence began in early June, many of whom have crossed into what will soon be South Sudan.

A UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report issued on 5th July confirmed violence in and around Kadugli every day from 30th June to 5th July, which suggests the situation is not getting any less volatile.

While there have been rumours that the agreement between Sudan's ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the northern sector of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM-N) that was signed in late June in Addis Ababa, had collapsed, the NCP has insisted it is holding.

A NCP spokesperson said that Sudan's President Omar Al-Bashir had met with former South African president Thabo Mbeki, who has led the African Union mediation efforts, which showed that the agreement was still being upheld.

Mbeki told reporters that he met with Sudan's President Omar Al-Bashir on 6th July to discuss Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile.

The Addis Ababa agreement said the NCP would recognize the SPLM-N's right to continue "as a legal political party in Sudan." Al-Bashir said on 4th July that the SPLM-N had yet to conform to laws on creating political parties, and therefore could not yet be recognised.

While the agreement dedicated both sides to working on a ceasefire agreement, on Friday, 1st July, Al-Bashir instructed the SAF to continue military operations in Southern Kordofan, according to the Sudan Tribune.

It is alleged that northern forces have been targeting the Nuba people, many of whom fought on behalf of the SPLM/A during Sudan's two decade long civil war.

The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement which brought the civil war to an end established the process by which South Sudan will now become independent. But very little, other than ill-defined popular consultations, was specified for those in the north who had fought against Khartoum.

In the run up to the South's independence, southerners in the northern army have been being dismissed. The final group will be dismissed in a 'dismissal ceremony' on 7th July.

According to SAF spokesman Al-Sawarmi Khalid Sa'ad, all of the dismissed had received their full financial and pension entitelements.

Sa'ad was scathing in regards to the SPLA's actions in the north, and said that SPLA fighters from the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile were dismissed without financial entitlement or moral support.

“The SPLA left the northern Sudanese who fought alongside it to face an unknown future”, Sa'ad said.

South Sudan has planned considerable celebrations for Saturday 9th July, when they will declare their independence. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said he will attend.

Sudan's Al-Bashir announced on 7th July that he planned to attend.

The US has announced it will send a delegation that includes a number of high ranking diplomats and military figures and will be headed by US envoy to the UN, Susan Rice. There was originally speculation that US President Barack Obama would attend, but it does not appear this will happen.

While South Sudan will be an independent nation as on Saturday, it still has not resolved a number of issues with the north, including border demarcation, ownership of Abyei, and how to deal with oil revenues.

Sources: Egyptian Gazette, Satellite Sentinel Project, Sudan Tribune, Sudan Vision, Times of India, UN OCHA

For more information, please see the Menas Borders website, here.

Sudan parties reach agreement on Southern Kordofan

The Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in Sudan signed an agreement aiming for a full ceasefire in the northern border state of Southern Kordofan on Tuesday 28th June.

 

"In South Kordofan there was an agreement on general principles on cessation of hostilities the intention is to arrive to a ceasefire," SPLM minister for cooperation Deng Alor told AFP.

There has been heavy fighting in Southern Kordofan since 5th June between Sudanese government forces and northerners allied with the ruling party in the south, the SPLM.

The deal sets the framework for political and security arrangements in the two border states of Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan and is part of an ongoing mediation effort by the African Union (AU), led by former South African president, Thabo Mbeki.

The framework agreement stipulates that the National Congress Party (NCP), the ruling party in the north, will recognise the northern contingent of the SPLM as a “legal political party in Sudan.” NCP officials have previously said they will not allow the SPLM-North to exist after 9th July, when the South becomes a separate state, as it would mean the SPLM-North was an extension of a foreign party.

Under the agreement, fighters aligned with the SPLM in Southern Kordofan will “be integrated, over a time period and with modalities to be agreed, into the Sudan Armed Forces.”

There were two major catalysts for the current outbreak of violence in Southern Kordofan. The first was the election of NCP candidate Ahmed Haroun as governor of the state, in what the SPLM called a rigged election. Haroun is wanted be the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes in Darfur, which borders Southern Kordofan.

Haroun beat SPLM candidate Abdel-Aziz Al-Hilu, who is also the leader of the Nuba, a non-Arab ethnic group who lives in the region.

The second catalyst was the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) announcement in May that the SPLM-North should disarm by 1st June, or else the SAF would do it by force.

The agreement signed in Addis Ababa on Tuesday will result in the two forces being combined eventually, although the actual mechanisms by which this would occur have not yet been decided.

It did specify that the NCP and SPLM-North would form a joint political committee to ensure that "the issue of governance in Southern Kordofan shall be discussed and resolved amicably…within 30 days.”

The two sides have also agreed to start working on a cease-fire agreement and to allow humanitarian access into the state.

Many people within Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states fought alongside the south in Sudan's decades-long civil war, fighting against repression and marginalisation by Khartoum.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which brought the civil war to an end in 2005, set out the process that will on 9th July lead to the independence of South Sudan (although this was not the aim of the CPA), but very little was promised to the indisputably northern states of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile except ill-defined 'popular consultations' on their future constitutional status.

In recent weeks there have been reports of 'ethnic cleansing' by northern troops in Southern Kordofan and Al-Hilu has said that over 3,000 people have been killed or have disappeared due to their ethnicity or political affiliation.

Southerners voted overwhelmingly to split from Sudan in a January independence referendum, but the period since has been marred by violence in a number of border states, including the oil-rich Abyei region, which is claimed by both sides.

South Sudan will become Africa's newest state on 9th July.

The UK's Minister for Africa Henry Bellingham said South Sudan's independence was "incredibly exciting".

"It is an historic moment for Africa and the world, the creation of a new country," he said, speaking from Malabo, which is to host an AU summit later this week.

"But we don't want the great celebrations of this new country to be undermined and marred by what's happening in Abyei and South Kordofan."

Sources: BBC News, Business Recorder, Sudan Tribune

UN votes for Abyei peacekeepers as Southern Kordofan violence continues

The UN has voted to deploy peacekeepers to Abyei

The UN Security Council has voted unanimously to send a 4,200-strong Ethiopian peacekeeping force to the disputed Sudanese territory of Abyei, in line with the agreement signed between Khartoum and Juba on 20th June.

The force will monitor the withdrawal of Sudanese troops from Abyei, who occupied the region's main town on 9th June after being attacked by groups with links to the south.

The resolution establishes a new UN peacekeeping force, which will be called the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA). It will have a mandate to protect civilians and “to protect the Abyei area from incursions by unauthorised elements,” according to the BBC.

Sudan's UN Ambassador Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman said northern troops would be withdrawn as soon as the Ethiopian troops had been deployed.

Abyei has been a crucial sticking point between the north and south as the country gets ready to split on 9th July. Oil-rich Abyei straddles the border and is claimed by both sides.

It was meant to have a referendum in January over whether it would join the south or remain with the north, but the vote was put off indefinitely due to disagreements over voter eligibility.

The southern Sudanese voted overwhelmingly to split from the north in a January referendum, established as part of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which brought Sudan's decades-long civil war to an end.

The US's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomed the passage of the Abyei resolution, but expressed deep concern at the continuing violence in the northern border state of Southern Kordofan.

"Tens of thousands of people have been driven from their homes, and there are reports of very serious human rights abuses and violence targeting individuals based on their ethnicity and political affiliation," Clinton said.

Heavy fighting broke out in the border state three weeks ago, and renewed violence began last Wednesday, 22nd June in Southern Kordofan's Nuba Mountains, home to Sudan's indigenous non-Arab Nuba people.

Many Nuba fought on side the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) during Sudan's civil war. While the civil war is usually categorised as a north-south battle, the fact that the Nuba, whose territory clearly lies within the north, fought on behalf of the south shows the situation to be far more complicated than it is often portrayed.

According to the Guardian, 16 people were killed and at least 32 injured in an aerial attack on Sunday 26th June in the Nuba mountains.

The aerial strikes, which have happened almost daily for the past three weeks, are said to have been carried out by Sudanese planes.

Senior Sudanese officers have told the African Union panel on Sudan, headed by former South African president, Thabo Mbeki, that the strikes are intended to prevent the SPLA from resupplying the Nuba.

But others say the air strikes and other attacks have targeted individuals due to their ethnic or political affiliation, and some have called the situation 'ethnic cleansing'.

Nuba leader Abdel Aziz al-Hilu told the AU panel that over 3,000 people had disappeared, “either killed or their whereabouts are not known, either because they are Nuba or they are SPLA.”

The UN peacekeeping force in Sudan, UNMIS, has been ordered to withdraw from Southern Kordofan by 9th July, the date South Sudan will declare independence.

UNMIS bases have been attacked and on 17th June, a UN patrol was detained by government troops and subjected to a mock firing squad in the state capital, Kadugli. They were allegedly told "leave South Kordofan... we will kill you if you come back here.”

The latest report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the situation in Southern Kordofan had calmed in recent days.

But the report also suggested that northern authorities were forcing some of the thousands of displaced people to return to Kadugli against their will.

A “combination of incentives through assistance and intimidation was used to exert pressure on the displaced people to return to Kadugli,” the OCHA report said.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, a variety of insidious methods have been used, some of which have been detailed in an internal UN report. Sudanese intelligence agents pretending to be Red Crescent workers allegedly entered an UN-protected camp and ordered the displaced people to go to a stadium.

Humanitarian agencies movements have been restricted and facts are hard to verify, but reports of forcibly moving populations bears worrying resemblance to many of the well documented allegations made against Khartoum's actions in Darfur.

Indeed, one of the catalysts for the current problems in Southern Kordofan was the election of Ahmed Haroun as governor of the state in mid-May. Haroun is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes in Darfur, and his election was protested heavily by the South's ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).

Sudan's President Omar Al-Bashir is also wanted by the ICC, which has created considerable difficulties in arranging the ceremony marking the secession of South Sudan, due to take place in under two weeks.

The US's President Barack Obama has said he will only attend South Sudan's independence ceremony if Al-Bashir is not there.

Al-Tayyar Arabic daily newspaper in Khartoum has said this is the case with a number of world leaders.

“A number of European heads of state, including the French President Sarkozy and UK Prime Minister as well as the US President Barack Obama, have in principle welcomed the invitation to attend the South's independence ceremony, but they conditioned their appearance in Juba on the non-attendance of the president of the republic Omar Al-Bashir, pointing to the crimes with which he is charged by the International [Criminal] Court,” the paper quoted an anonymous southern official as saying.

Whether Al-Bashir will attend is not yet clear.

Sources: AFP, BBC News, Christian Science Monitor, the Guardian, Sudan Tribune

For more information, please see the Menas Borders website, here.

Sudan leaders agree to "full demilitarisation" of Abyei

Thabo Mbeki (L), South Sudan's Salva Kiir and Sudan's Omar Al-Bashir in April, 2011

Leaders from north and south Sudan signed an agreement pledging to end fighting in the disputed border region of Abyei, on Monday 20th June.

 

The agreement was reached after days of mediation by former South African president, Thabo Mbeki, in the Ethopian capital of Addis Ababa.

 

The deal requires both northern and southern troops to leave Abyei, to be replaced by Ethiopian peacekeepers, in an agreement that Mbeki has said will provide for the "full demilitarisation" of Abyei.

 

Both Sudan and South Sudan claim the oil-rich border region of Abyei, and northern forces seized the town last month, causing over one hundred thousand people to flee, mostly to the south.

Violence in the northern border state of Southern Kordofan has also led to 60,000 people being displaced.

Some 4,000 Ethiopian troops are expected to be brought in after the Sudanese army has left, although the UN will determine the exact troop numbers and their mandate.

With South Sudan planning to declare independence on 9th July, 2011, Mbeki said in his announcement of the deal, it was crucial that the peacekeepers were brought in as soon as possible. He urged the UN Security Council to authorise their deployment without delay.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the agreement and pledged “the full support of the United Nations to the parties in facilitating its implementation.”

Ban also urged the two sides to resolve "all outstanding issues related to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement and post-secession arrangement, and to reach an immediate cessation of hostilities in Southern Kordofan State and provide their full co-operation to humanitarian agencies in meeting the needs of the affected population."

The violence, which started on 5th June, continues in Southern Kordofan state. US permanent representative to the UN, Susan Rice, spoke of reports that alleged that forces aligned with the north had “searched for southern forces and sympathisers, whom they arrested and allegedly executed.”

Mbeki said political leaders from Southern Kordofan would be arriving shortly in Addis Ababa to hold talks on ending the conflict.

Violence broke out after residents in the state's Nuba Mountains, many of whom fought for the south during the country's decades-long civil war, were ordered to disarm by the new Khartoum-allied governor, Ahmed Haroun, who has been indicted for war crimes in Darfur by the International Criminal Court.

South Sudan voted overwhelming in favour of independence in a January referendum, prescribed by the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which brought civil war to an end.

 

Abyei was meant to have its own referendum on whether it would stay in the north or join the south, however the vote was postponed indefinitely over disagreements on voter eligibility, to do with the nomadic, Khartoum-backed Misseriya Arab tribespeople.

Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan states are clearly in the north, however many of their residents fought with the south during the civil war, and tension has been high as the South prepares to separate.

Sources: BBC News, the Guardian, RTT News

For more information, please see the Menas Borders website, here.

 

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.