South Sudan to close borders with north as fighting flares

The South Sudanese government has announced that the border with Sudan will be closed from December, in retaliation for an allegedly illegal blockade imposed by the north. The move comes amid renewed fighting with pro-southern rebels in Blue Nile state.

Atem Garang, a senior figure in the South Sudanese government, announced the border closure on 24th September, following months of accusations that Khartoum had sealed off border crossings. The breakdown in trade has contributed to high prices and food shortages which have affected thousands.

The closure suggests that Juba's patience with Khartoum is running out. Last week, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir called for greater cooperation with Sudan on key issues including border demarcation.

It also takes place amid a sharp deterioration in the security situation along their 1250 mile border. A major offensive by Sudanese forces against rebels in the border state of Blue Nile has displaced tens of thousands, according to aid agencies. The military operation is aimed at the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement North (SPLM-N), which is politically and ethnically linked to South Sudan and which has been fighting northern forces for several months.

Since the independence of South Sudan in July, Khartoum has been seeking to reassert control over border regions which have a heavy SPLM-N presence. The Sudanese military is now using aerial bombardments and ground assaults against the region, leading to widespread accusations of civilian casualties. A UN-backed call for demilitarisation, which both sides agreed to, seems moribund.

Officials in the SPLM-N have called on the US to impose a no-fly zone along the border region, warning that the Khartoum government's offensive threatened the independence of South Sudan. US officials have rejected the request.

The fighting, as well as Sudan's efforts to block access to Blue Nile and South Kordofan, another rebel province, is also hampering cross-border trade and communication. Any further intensification of the conflict would make it even more difficult to freely cross the border, and lead to a serious deterioration in relations between Khartoum and Juba.

Sources: Sudan Tribune, Guardian, AFP

Abyei remains contested, says South Sudan

A senior official from South Sudan has said that the oil-rich border region of Abyei will remain disputed, until the governments of Sudan and South Sudan agree on a deal which will protect the rights of its residents.

Speaking on 17th September, Luka Biong Deng, a co-chair of the Abyei Joint Oversight Committee (set up to monitor the implementation of agreements there), said that Abyei would retain a special status until a legal and binding decision is made.

Biong said that the current agreement governing the administration of Abyei, which was signed in June, is not a permanent mandate. Abyei is nominally controlled by both states under UN supervision, since a referendum to decide its fate – alongside the vote which led to South Sudan's independence – was not held due to disputes between Juba and Khartoum.

Biong asserted, however, that the international community continues to work under the impression that Abyei belongs to north Sudan, and is therefore unable to provide the necessary support and assistance to it. At present, both Sudan and South Sudan have forces stationed in Abyei; there is also a UN peacekeeping force, composed of Ethiopian troops. Both sides are due to withdraw their forces by the end of September.

Troop withdrawal, said Biong, is a key first step towards a plebiscite. With the UN in charge, both governments will continue to administer it "until the final status of the area can be determined in a manner that respects the will of the residents of Abyei".

Biong's statement is intended to emphasise that the current arrangement, with both states jointly administering the region, is not permanent. It reflects a confidence that Abyei's residents, which have tended to support the south and have a range of grievances against the government in Khartoum, will agree to join South Sudan in any referendum and thereby handing control of the region's oil wealth to Juba.

Any flare-up in fighting would provide a good excuse for the north's government to maintain forces in the region and put off a referendum. Ensuring a smooth, demilitarised transition is therefore critical for the South Sudanese government.

Sources: Sudan Tribune, BBC

Sudan refers Kordofan border clashes to UN Security Council

Following intensive clashes in the border region between Sudan and newly-independent South Sudan, the Khartoum government has filed a complaint with the UN Security Council accusing its neighbour of fomenting instability.

The clashes in South Kordofan began in June, a month before the formal declaration of South Sudanese independence, but have flared up recently, with the Sudanese government accused of indiscriminate aerial bombing of civilian areas. Around 200,000 are believed to have fled their homes. An unexpected government ceasefire announced on 23^rd August does not appear to have ended the fighting.

Sudanese government forces are seeking to neutralise armed rebels from the Nuba ethnic group. Although now located north of the border, many of the Nuba sided with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army during the southern group's twenty-year war against Khartoum. Non-Arab like most of South Sudan's population, the Nuba community also complained of discrimination and oppression by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum. 

Sudan now views the pro-southerners which are left within its territory as a potential fifth column for the new government in Juba. In its complaint to the UN, the Sudanese government has accused South Sudan of arming and instructing the rebels in the Nuba Mountains. A Sudanese government spokesman said on 30^th August that Khartoum has “documented proof” that the insurrection is being orchestrated by Juba. 

The complaint also cited numerous alleged border violations by South Sudan, including the deployment of military forces in the disputed, oil-rich area of Abyei (which borders South Kordofan) in violation of the 2005 peace deal, and failing to withdraw forces from a disputed border strip. Juba has denied all the accusations.

This new international element to the long-simmering rebellion increases risks for the wider border situation between Sudan and South Sudan. South Kordofan is adjacent to Abyei, a focal point of north-south tensions because of its oil wealth. 

An uptick in fighting between the Sudanese army and the rebels, or cross-border raids, could raise the prospect of the southern Sudanese military – at this point still a cobbled-together force of former rebels – becoming involved.

Sources: BBC, Reuters, Sudan Tribune

Khartoum will respect South Sudan referendum outcome: al-Bashir

South Sudan has welcomed assurances made by Sudan's President Omar Al-Bashir on 3rd January that he will respect the outcome of Sunday's independence referendum.

South Sudan's information minister Dr Barnaba Marial Benjamin was quoted by the BBC on 5th January saying he was pleased by al-Bashir's comments. Benjamin said the vote will allow the people of South Sudan to decide their own future for the first time since 1898.

Al-Bashir made what is being seen to be his 'fairwell visit' visit to South Sudan, and in a speech to southern officials in Juba he said, “The preferred choice for us is unity, but in the end we will respect the choice of the southern citizens.”

Al-Bashir said he remains committed to lasting peace with the semi-autonomous region, and said that even if a new state was born, Khartoum would offer any technical or logistical support and training needed.

"The benefit we get from unity, we can also get it from two separate states."

Al-Bashir's talk was seen by analysts as a sign that the leader had finally accepted what the likely outcome of the referendum would be. He warned against people trying to disorganise the vote, and said they would face the full force of the country's laws, if implicated.

The South Sudan leader Salva Kiir announced, as a sign of reciprocation, that he would expel all Darfur rebels present in the south's territory. The issue of Darfur rebels has been a major sticking point between the north and the south, with Khartoum repeatedly accusing Juba of housing rebels that have been fighting against the central government since 2003.

“No opposition in the north shall take Juba as a base,” Kiir was quoted as saying in the Sudan Tribune.

There are still many issues pending between the two sides, such as border demarcation, oil revenue sharing, citizenship and the fate of the oil-rich Abyei region. At a press conference with Kiir, al-Bashir said both sides were agreed to continue dialogue on these issues and that they would be resolved before the end of the interim period.

If Southern Sudan votes for independence, which they are widely anticipated to do, Africa's newest country will come into being on 9th July 2011, exactly six years after the peace deal took effect.

The voter registration process went relatively smoothly, and nearly four million southerners – as only southerners are eligible to vote – registered. Tens of thousands of southerners living in the north have returned to the south to cast their vote, although their return has caused numerous problems in terms of housing and other resources.

The voting process will start on 9th January and will last for a week. At least sixty per cent of registered voters must take part for the referendum to be valid. This is seen by some sources as the most potentially tricky part of the referendum, as low literacy levels, little history of voting, and poor infrastructure means getting everyone to the polls may be more difficult that achieving the simple majority needed for a verdict either way.

Both sides have agreed to let all Sudanese, but particularly the many southerners living in Khartoum, choose which nationality to take. But al-Bashir's recent announcement that he will enforce a stricter version of Sharia law in the north if the south secedes may prompt even more southerners to leave the north. The returnees will provide an even greater challenge for the new Southern Sudan government.

Sources: BBC News, Sudan Tribune

For more information on Sudan, please see the menas borders website, here.

The Ilemi Triangle 'Sovereigntyscape' (Part Two)

This article, available here, considers the Ilemi Triangle with reference to James Sidaway's (2003) notion of 'sovereigntyscapes'. It does so in order to consider Ilemi as a product of a variety of interactions - the global demand for oil, histories of violence and imperialism, and the geopolitics of the cold war and beyond - rather than as simply an example of a 'weak' or 'failed' African sovereignty. On this view, the Triangle is arguably not merely emblematic of particular deficiencies of an African sovereignty (vis-à-vis a 'western' counterpart) but, rather, a product of sovereign excesses, including those that have emanated from far beyond the Triangle itself.
Read the full article here:

The Ilemi Triangle Sovereigntyscape (Part One)

The Ilemi Triangle is an area of disputed land in East Africa of approximately 10,000 square kilometres. Kenya (the state with de facto control) and Sudan have been the principal claimants of the territory although Ethiopia has also played a role. Imperial conquest, treaties and mapmaking are central to the contemporary problem although precise delimitation of the three imperial spheres—Ethiopia, the British in Kenya and Uganda, and the joint British-Egyptian administration of Sudan—was not something that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nonetheless, the intersection of these forces meant that Ilemi became important precisely because of the lack of attention that it received during the colonial boundary-making process of 1914. Ilemi’s sparse settlement, remoteness, lack of infrastructure and variously inhospitable swampy and mountainous landscapes all meant that the area could be treated as relatively insignificant.

But Ilemi, like other areas of south Sudan, is potentially rich in oil. ‘Nevertheless,’ writes Nene Mburu (2003), ‘no explorations have been made in the contested territory partly due to insecurity from the . . . civil war in southern Sudan and partly due to a hands-off attitude by each regional government.’ Ilemi’s value may also be recognised in its dry-season pastures which have been ‘the focus of incessant conflicts among transhumant communities and an enigma to boundary surveyors who previously failed to determine its precise extent and breadth’ (Mburu). This article, the first of two on the Ilemi Triangle will narrate a brief historical account of the Ilemi problem and the trajectory that the future resolution of the dispute may take. The second will consider the Triangle in the context of recent work by in political geography on ‘sovereigntyscapes’, principally by James Sidaway (2003). Indeed, Ilemi might be pointed to as an example of deficiency in African sovereignty itself but, as this work argues, rather than perceive a crisis of sovereignty we might more usefully recognise a crisis of interpretation. In this sense, weak or failed sovereignty in Africa should be considered in light of excess hegemonic, often Western, power rather than through the reproduction of an orthodox discourse on the characteristic deficiency of African sovereignty.

Read the full article here.