Sudan – What’s the Way Out Over Abie?

Tony Okerafor

28 May 2011

opinion

If the international community really cares for peace in the world, Abie is going to make a big contribution; I believed they can act. Where you have an army from my government attacking innocent civilians and killing them and driving them and making some refugees, and when you have U.N. in an area, surely, at least the first thing that can happen is protecting the civilians, not just watching them killed. “No! because we believe in peace. We believe Omar Bashir can do the right thing.”

The last sentence above, as in the rest of the quote before it, belongs to a female minister in the soon-to -be-independent Republic of South Sudan. She was answering an interviewer’s questions on Monday, May 23, following a whirlwind attack, during the weekend, by thousands of Sudanese government troops from the mainly Arab north into the disputed central region of Abie.

Within two days, the capture of Abie by the northern forces was complete, as an initial wave of 5,000 heavily-armed troops, using tanks and other armoured vehicles, raced across the town, looting, shooting and burning, until they reached a strategic bridge that connects Abie to the south. In the process, thousands of the town’s residents, who are mainly kinsmen of the Dimka majority in the south, have fled the advance of the Khartoum forces. The south Sudan government minister quoted above was lamenting what her government sees as the apparent failure of the international community, and the U.N. mission in particular, to take action to stop the invasion of Abie by Khartoum in its tracks. But, was her government planning a military response of its own, in order to beat back the northern advance? “No!” was her prompt answer to that interviewer’s question. Her government still believed in a peaceful solution, she said, and President Hassan Omar Al Bashir, the leader of the north, could still be made to retrace his steps.

Even as the minister spoke, a high powered delegation from the United Nations, U.N., Security Council was in Juba, South Sudan’s capital, to try to work out a peaceful way out of the crisis. Ahead of a crucial meeting with South Sudan government officials, members of the U.N. delegation form New York got a very warm reception from the southern president, Salva Kiir Mayadeed, who also doubles as the vice-president in Sudan’s “inclusive” government of national unity in Khartoum.

Clearly, Mr. Salva Kiir, going into Tuesday’s meeting, would have been heartened by a strong call from the powerful U.N. Security Council for the clashes in Abie to end, and for the northern forces to be withdrawn from the region forthwith. The United States has also spoken out forcefully against the invasion. Washington’s preference for a negotiated solution to over two decades of north-south conflict was the single biggest factor in influencing the northern authorities in Khartoum to negotiate and sign the Comprehensive Peace Accords, C.P.A., with southern leaders in January, 2005. But, now that Khartoum has invaded Abie, the Americans are bringing pressure to bear on the National Congress Party, N.CP., the ruling party in the north, to pull its forces out of Abie or risk losing out on U.S. pledges to forgive or write off debts owed to them by the Sudanese, running into a couple of a billion U.S. Dollars. The Obama administration has also threatened to suspend plans to remove Sudan from America’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, if President Bashir does not end what it called the occupation of Abie.

Meanwhile, before they flew off to Juba, the representatives of the U.N. Security Council member-states stopped over in Khartoum to meet with officials there. It has to be said that they came away apparently disappointed, because President Bashir or any of his senior cabinet members would not make themselves available.

But, what options are open to the international community, as it makes frantic efforts to ensure that north and south Sudan don’t return to the full-scale conflict of the 1980’s, 90’s and early 2000’s? Is there really anything that the U.N. can do at the moment to persuade or force Khartoum out of Abie? These are indeed difficult questions to answer, because Abie thrives on a long stand reputation as an oil-rich region, which makes it a very high prize for either side to take. Both north and south claim sovereignty over the town. The north say Abie is geographically closer to the north, while the South Sudanese point to the fact that the region’s majority population, the Dimkas, are of the same ethnic group as the most populous tribe in the south.

Abie is also home to a sizeable non-Dimka minority, mainly the Meseria Arabs, who see themselves as northern. Over the years, both sides in the conflict over Abie, namely the N.C.P and the south’s Sudan’s People’s Liberation Movement, S.P.L.M., are said to have used the Meseria and the Dimka to fight a proxy war in the region. As for the S.P.L.M, which runs an autonomous government in the south, Mr. Bashir and the N.C.P have been striving to bring Abie under their control at all costs. Juba accused Khartoum of trying to alter Abie’s numerical balance in favour of the north, and that had intensified ahead of the historic referendum in the south which took place on January 9, this year. The people of south Sudan had voted by a margin of nearly ninety-nine in favour of separation from the rest of the Sudan. By virtue of the C.P.A, Abie residents ought to have participated in the same referendum, same day, to decide whether to remain as a part of the north or to be part of an independence South Sudan. But, the plebiscite was prevented from holding in Abie by Khartoum.

As burning an issue as it is, the C.P.A. stipulates a resolution of the dispute over from Abie before July 9, when the south is due to formally declare its independence. With the north having now taken the area by force, any prospect of resolving the problem before July is close to nil. To make matters worse for everyone concerned, there has been strong evidence of a major military build-up by both the north and south in and around Abie. That fact may account for the reason behind the frantic efforts by the U.N. and other stakeholders to put a negotiating process in motion, with the overriding objective of discouraging any military response from the southern military. The U.N. and others will be emboldened by recent remarks coming from Juba that the S.P.L.M. will not seek to enforce what it sees as its sovereignty over Abie through force of arms. However, everybody knows that it will only be a matter of time before all that changes.

Even as South Sudan prepares to become the newest member-state of the U.N., there is a concern that Abie may yet be the subject of all-out war between two independent states, since neither side seems willing to surrender its claim to the region. One suggestion is for the U.N. to endeavour to press ahead with holding a referendum in Abie, in the hope that both disputing parties will feel bound to accept its outcome.

There are those who believe that the terms of a referendum in Abie, and the form a referendum will take, will be a subject of dispute in its own right between the warring parties. For example, they say there will always be the lingering dispute over who may be eligible to take part in the vote and who may not. In that case, says another school of thought, Abie could be put under the protection of the U.N., with U.N. Peace-keepers providing security. It should remain as a U.N. protectorate, while the north and south negotiate meaningfully on its future.

General Lazzaro Sumbeyo (retired) brings up the rear in this discussion. The Kenyan-born former four-star general was the chief mediator in the two-and-a-half-long negotiations in Naivasha, Kenya, between the north and south, which led to the end of hostilities, as well as the signing of the C.P.A. What in General Sumbeyo’s opinion, triggered the latest conflict? “It’s politics,” he says. “In my view, it’s politics; lack of political will to address the issue of Abie. (Lack of political will) on both sides. Even if it is the presidency that has to address it, it is a collegial presidency in Sudan, and that collegial presidency lasts until 9th of July, this year…”

The general’s own suggestion on how to resolve the burning question of sovereignty over Abie is indeed an interesting one-far removed from any view he’d expressed, be it before, during or since the January 30, 2005, signing of the C.P.A. by General Hassan Al Bashir of the N.C.P and Col. John Gerang of the S.P.L.M. Sumbeyo now advocates (for) a separate state of Abie, independent of both Khartoum and Juba, self-governing, but, with the United Nations acting as the guarantors of its security for the foreseeable future. That option, according to the Kenyan, removes any feeling of triumphalism or vanquishment on the part of the two rival claimants of oil-rich Abie and its citizens.

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