U.S. Warns Sudan That Normalization of Ties in Jeopardy After Abyei Seizure

23 May 2011

Washington — The United States on Monday warned the Sudanese government that the process of normalizating ties will come to a halt unless it withdraws its forces from Abyei which lies on the North-South borders.

On Saturday Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) made a quick and successful takeover of the contested region forcing troops from the Sudan People Liberation Army (SPLA) to withdraw southwards.

On the same day president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir issued a decree dissolving the Abyei administrative council without consulting with his First Vice President Salva Kiir who is also the president of Southern Sudan.

Khartoum said the military offensive was in response to an attack by SPLA on a SAF convoy escorted by UN peacekeepers last week which led to heavy casualties within its ranks. The United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) at the time condemned the attack but declined to assign blame.

A visiting delegation from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) deplored the attack by what it described as Southern forces on SAF convoy but also demanded Khartoum’s withdrawal from the oil-rich region and reinstatement of the Abyei council.

Western countries were quick to condemn the SAF’s seizure of Abyei calling it a violation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that was signed between the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the Sudan people Liberation Movement (SPLM) that ended more than two decades of civil war.

South Sudan voted almost unanimously for secession in the referendum stipulated by the CPA. A simultaneous exercise was supposed to be conducted in Abyei by its residents who were to decide whether they want to be part of the North or South.

However, the ex-foes were unable to reach an agreement on who is eligible to vote between the Dinka Ngok, who are permanent residents of the region, and the Arab Misseriya who spend part of every year in Abyei as they seek pastures for their cattle.

The Sudanese government over the weekend said that it will not withdraw from Abyei until new security arrangements are reached with the South and after the residents decide their fate in the referendum.

Today the Sudanese parliament overwhelmingly approved the SAF incursion into Abyei after a briefing by the defense minister Abdel-Rahim Mohamed Hussein. The latter stressed that the army will not withdraw “one inch” without new arrangements.

Only the lawmaker representing the Popular Congress Party (PCP) headed by Islamist opposition figure Hassan Al-Turabi objected to the defense minister’s remarks. MP Ismail Hussein described the national assembly’s support as a “political blackmail” and accused the politicians of seeking to drag the country into war.

He said that the lawmakers’ approval does not suit the price paid by the country in the form of losing the south. The remarks drew strong rebuke from the speaker Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Tahir accusing the MP of being “droopy” and added that he is not surprised because the PCP is an ally of the SPLM “outwardly and inwardly”

In Washington the U.S. special envoy to Sudan Princeton Lyman said actions undertaken by Khartoum in Abyei endangers the North-South negotiations on pos-referendum issues before the South officially becomes independent next July.

“We feel that the attack on the UN convoy was deplorable and wrong, but we feel the response of the government was disproportionate and irresponsible. We think those forces should be withdrawn; the civilian administration, which President Bashir unilaterally dissolved, should be recreated; and we have urged that President Bashir and Vice President Kiir, who is head of the Southern Sudan administration, immediately come together and calm this situation down and restore the level of cooperation they talked about after the January 9th referendum. They have not been meeting recently and so far have not been in direct touch, and we feel that’s an extremely important thing for them to do” Lyman told reporters at the State department today.

Lyman further said that normalization of relations is now complicated by the SAF takeover of Abyei.

“[I]n our roadmap toward normalization, it includes specifically a resolution of the Abyei problem, which has to be a negotiated solution, and it involves full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. So this action complicates both of those conditions, and what it means is that our ability to move toward normalization is going to be complicated as well” he said.

“We had started the process, as you know, of looking at how to take them off the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. We’ve been working with the World Bank and others on the debt situation. We’ve been looking at the prospect of naming a full ambassador after July 9th in Khartoum. All of these are important steps in normalization. They can’t be fulfilled if we don’t have a successful CPA” Lyman added.

A senior U.S. official, who spoke to The Washington Times on background citing the sensitive nature of the developments, said the United States had offered a road map to the Bashir government for delisting.

It required Sudan to meet specific conditions to get off the list of state sponsors of terrorism and regain full diplomatic relations with the United States. The criteria included a political settlement for Abyei.

“Abyei was probably the most important element of [the conditions] if you had to rank them, and [recent developments in Abyei] are a serious setback,” the U.S. official said.

Fatahelrahman Ali Mohamed, deputy chief of mission at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, said it is “unfair” for the Obama administration to link the removal of Sudan from the terrorism list to Abyei.

“Our country is ready and committed to work with the United States, but it is not helpful if the U.S. is perceived as being tilted toward the south,” he added. “The Sudanese military forces went into Abyei to restore peace.”

However, U.S. and Sudanese officials, from the north as well as the south, downplayed fears of a bigger conflict.

The senior U.S. official noted that northern forces easily pushed out southern troops from Abyei and that the south lacks the ability to respond to northern aggression.

“I don’t think that the south is prepared for a full-scale war. That said, I don’t think the north is, either,” he said, describing the northern Sudan Armed Forces as a “broken institution.”

Enoch Awejok, acting head of the Southern Sudan mission in Washington, agreed that there was “no opportunity for war”.

“Neither side is blameless,” said the U.S. official. “Our first order of business is calming them down and getting them to talk to each other.”

Another U.S. official speaking to the New York Times said the South is treading carefully for fear of disrupting their breakup process from the North.

“They really don’t have any good options,” said an American official who works on Sudan but was not authorized to speak publicly. “They’re so close to getting what they worked so hard to get, and a war could risk all that. But I can tell you they’re very, very mad, at the highest levels.”

BURNING & LOOTING IN ABYEI

The United Nations peacekeeping operation in Sudan strongly condemned what it claimed was “burning and looting currently being perpetrated by armed elements in Abyei town”.

“The Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) are responsible for maintaining law and order in the areas they control” said a statement by UNMIS.

UNMIS called on the Sudanese government to “urgently ensure that the Sudan Armed Forces fulfill their responsibility and intervene to stop these criminal acts”.

Kouider Zerrouk, a spokesperson for UNMIS, said most of the residents have fled towards the town of Agok in Southern Sudan.

“We can’t ascertain the exact number,” he said, but added that hundreds of thousands of people may have been displaced by today’s attacks and the recent clashes in the wider Abyei area.

Mr. Zerrouk said the identity of the armed groups conducting the looting and burning was not clear, but they were likely to be pro-northern.

“We don’t know who they are in terms of whether they are organized militias or just a group of civilians taking the opportunity of having an empty town and looting and burning the place”.

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