South Sudan- Sudan Abyei Conflict is Not New, solve it
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Nairobi Comprehensive Peace Agreement Commonly known as CPA that led to the succession of South Sudan from the oppressive North Sudan laid foundations to the newly and youngest African state role in the stability of the entire great lakes Peace. However, the stand off over the Abyei conflict seems to be dragging the two countries into unprecedented agony that may require the United Nations intervene.
In 2011, I wrote an article that reflected that the Abyei question was supposed to be dealt with before the South went on and being declared independent from the Khartoum government. I argued that ' this referendum might be a lasting solution for the atrocities of civil wars over the oil rich country and only when it’s independent that it would benefit from its mineral resources.’
Just what I had predicted the Abyei conflict would take much longer owing to the fact that the now two nations would be independent of each other and therefore economic interests in the Oil rich region dominate the need to have lasting solution. In a statement, President Salva Kiir had reassured that he was committed to have a state free from intimidation; he had farther accused the North for what he termed as gross violation of African Union Stand of respect of international Demarcation of borders. The border between the North and the South was a subject under the CPA and therefore South Sudan went on with the referendum vote with unfinished business that is now 2years on and nothing is seen to have come from the conflict management.
Africa is watching the AU put measures that ensure that Abyei conflict is solved which involves the portioning of the border points.
Earlier April 12 President Omar El-Bashir made his first state visit to the South since July 9 2011 with an aim of trying to resolve the dispute that has carried on since 2010 as the South anticipated independence.
For the purposes of understanding of the conflict, Abyei is Located between the Bahr el-Ghazal and Southern Kordofan provinces. Abyei is geographically, ethnically and politically caught between northern and southern Sudan and It is home to the Ngok Dinka tribe, cousins of the South’s populous Dinka tribe, and bordered to the north and north east by the Misseriya, Arab cattle herders (baggara) who pass through every year to graze their animals.
Relations between the Misseriya and the Ngok Dinka have historically been amicable, indeed are cited as a model for North-South cooperation. They lived within separate administrative boundaries in colonial days, until 1905, when the British transferred the nine chiefdoms of the Ngok Dinka in Abyei from Bahr el-Ghazal to Kordofan province.
According Policy Briefing Africa Briefing Number 47 Nairobi/Brussels, 12 October 2007 report, “The July 2002 Machakos Protocol provided the framework from which the CPA grew: in exchange for northern Sudan remaining under Sharia (Islamic law), the South would get an autonomous government and a self-determination referendum on secession or unity after a six-year interim period. It defined southern Sudan within the borders that existed at independence on 1 January 1956, thus excluding Abyei from participating in the self-determination referendum, along with northern SPLM strongholds in the Nuba Mountains. (Southern Kordofan) and Southern Blue Nile (now Blue Nile State)”
With that history the two states may find it hard to deal with but Sudan’s claim of 50 per cent state may be a solution that would leave both sides contented with.
According to the Tribune, Bashir left without striking a deal on the local administration of Abyei but vowed to work hand to hand with Kiir to resolve the outstanding issues that affect the stability of the region.
Among the issue is whether south Sudan gets a lion’s share in the joint administration in Abyei, where Kiir insisted that his government could get 60% and Sudan 40% a move that Bashir rejected and said he had offered the 40% pledge just to coerce the South Sudanese to vote for their Unity in the 2011 referendum vote.
The CPA provided for a 50-50 share and the Khartoum later pushed for 60-40; a move that it later retracted and tried to justify that it was for the sake of the unity between north and south. NCP-SPLM government signed the CPA in Nairobi in 2005 absorbing the Late John Garang’ as the President of South Sudan and Vice President of Sudan for 5 years and later succeeded by referendum that got over 90 per cent approval by the South on January 9 2011 and later granted independence 7 months later.
"President Salva stressed on the need to respect previous arrangement. He wants the 60% representation and 40% representation for the government of Sudan. This was how it used to be but president Bashir said it is better to use 50-50 representation", Barnaba Marial [information Minister-S Sudan] said.
The Post-Independence interactions led to the signing of the Cooperation Agreement that has so far bore the setting up of temporary institutions and set up a referendum commission to help resolve the Abyei conflict that has taken the two countries long to deal with.
According to the Sudan Tribune the 2005 peace deal, the two sides agreed that a referendum would decide whether Abyei would remain in Sudan or join South Sudan. The Tribune further reported, “The area of Abyei was defined by the international court of arbitration in The Hague in July 2009; the rule outlined the traditional homeland of the Ngok Dinka chiefdoms.”
What leads to be disputed is that, “the protocol of 2005 deal did not mention the Ngok Dinka by name, only saying that those residents in the area would be allowed to take part.”
The tribune adds, “Khartoum has since argued that the Misseriya nomads should take part in the referendum. In 2010, the Sudanese government said it was in favour of partitioning of the area between the two countries.” A move that is opposed by Juba, “saying the right to vote should be reserved to the Ngok Dinka and some Misseriya nomads permanently residing in the disputed area.”
The Misseriya are split between the Humr and the Zurug sections. According to a report by the International Crisis Group report on Abyei, the problem is historical and dates back to 1956 ‘following Sudanese independence, the Dinka and Misseriya have been pulled towards opposite sides of the country’s civil wars. The first, from 1956 to 1972, polarized the communities along North-South lines. The turning point was 1965, when 72 unarmed Ngok Dinka in the Misseriya town of Babanusa were burned alive by a mob in a police station to which they had fled for protection. The Dinka began to gravitate increasingly towards the southern rebel Anya-Nya and the South’s cause, while the Misseriya received preferential treatment from the central government and identified firmly with the North.
‘’The 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement, which ended the first war, included a clause for a referendum to allow “any other areas that were culturally and geographically a part of the Southern Complex”, including Abyei, to choose between remaining in the North and joining the new autonomous southern region. The referendum was never held, and attacks against the Dinka continued throughout the 1970s, leading to the formation of a Ngok Dinka unit of the Anya-Nya II, in the small southern rebellion that began in Upper Nile in 1975.
Last year, an African Union panel on Sudan suggested that a referendum be in the region in October this year, but the two sides still have to set up the commission to run the vote.
When will the region gain stability? Well lets give our benefit of doubt that all is well with the Abyei Question that should be decided upon by the referendum with hopes the two sides will respect the wish of the residence of the region to be in either North or South of Sudan.
Nairobi Comprehensive Peace Agreement Commonly known as CPA that led to the succession of South Sudan from the oppressive North Sudan laid foundations to the newly and youngest African state role in the stability of the entire great lakes Peace. However, the stand off over the Abyei conflict seems to be dragging the two countries into unprecedented agony that may require the United Nations intervene.
In 2011, I wrote an article that reflected that the Abyei question was supposed to be dealt with before the South went on and being declared independent from the Khartoum government. I argued that ' this referendum might be a lasting solution for the atrocities of civil wars over the oil rich country and only when it’s independent that it would benefit from its mineral resources.’
Just what I had predicted the Abyei conflict would take much longer owing to the fact that the now two nations would be independent of each other and therefore economic interests in the Oil rich region dominate the need to have lasting solution. In a statement, President Salva Kiir had reassured that he was committed to have a state free from intimidation; he had farther accused the North for what he termed as gross violation of African Union Stand of respect of international Demarcation of borders. The border between the North and the South was a subject under the CPA and therefore South Sudan went on with the referendum vote with unfinished business that is now 2years on and nothing is seen to have come from the conflict management.
Africa is watching the AU put measures that ensure that Abyei conflict is solved which involves the portioning of the border points.
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| parts of Abyei destroyed in 2008 |
Earlier April 12 President Omar El-Bashir made his first state visit to the South since July 9 2011 with an aim of trying to resolve the dispute that has carried on since 2010 as the South anticipated independence.
For the purposes of understanding of the conflict, Abyei is Located between the Bahr el-Ghazal and Southern Kordofan provinces. Abyei is geographically, ethnically and politically caught between northern and southern Sudan and It is home to the Ngok Dinka tribe, cousins of the South’s populous Dinka tribe, and bordered to the north and north east by the Misseriya, Arab cattle herders (baggara) who pass through every year to graze their animals.
Relations between the Misseriya and the Ngok Dinka have historically been amicable, indeed are cited as a model for North-South cooperation. They lived within separate administrative boundaries in colonial days, until 1905, when the British transferred the nine chiefdoms of the Ngok Dinka in Abyei from Bahr el-Ghazal to Kordofan province.
According Policy Briefing Africa Briefing Number 47 Nairobi/Brussels, 12 October 2007 report, “The July 2002 Machakos Protocol provided the framework from which the CPA grew: in exchange for northern Sudan remaining under Sharia (Islamic law), the South would get an autonomous government and a self-determination referendum on secession or unity after a six-year interim period. It defined southern Sudan within the borders that existed at independence on 1 January 1956, thus excluding Abyei from participating in the self-determination referendum, along with northern SPLM strongholds in the Nuba Mountains. (Southern Kordofan) and Southern Blue Nile (now Blue Nile State)”
With that history the two states may find it hard to deal with but Sudan’s claim of 50 per cent state may be a solution that would leave both sides contented with.
According to the Tribune, Bashir left without striking a deal on the local administration of Abyei but vowed to work hand to hand with Kiir to resolve the outstanding issues that affect the stability of the region.
Among the issue is whether south Sudan gets a lion’s share in the joint administration in Abyei, where Kiir insisted that his government could get 60% and Sudan 40% a move that Bashir rejected and said he had offered the 40% pledge just to coerce the South Sudanese to vote for their Unity in the 2011 referendum vote.
The CPA provided for a 50-50 share and the Khartoum later pushed for 60-40; a move that it later retracted and tried to justify that it was for the sake of the unity between north and south. NCP-SPLM government signed the CPA in Nairobi in 2005 absorbing the Late John Garang’ as the President of South Sudan and Vice President of Sudan for 5 years and later succeeded by referendum that got over 90 per cent approval by the South on January 9 2011 and later granted independence 7 months later.
"President Salva stressed on the need to respect previous arrangement. He wants the 60% representation and 40% representation for the government of Sudan. This was how it used to be but president Bashir said it is better to use 50-50 representation", Barnaba Marial [information Minister-S Sudan] said.
The Post-Independence interactions led to the signing of the Cooperation Agreement that has so far bore the setting up of temporary institutions and set up a referendum commission to help resolve the Abyei conflict that has taken the two countries long to deal with.
According to the Sudan Tribune the 2005 peace deal, the two sides agreed that a referendum would decide whether Abyei would remain in Sudan or join South Sudan. The Tribune further reported, “The area of Abyei was defined by the international court of arbitration in The Hague in July 2009; the rule outlined the traditional homeland of the Ngok Dinka chiefdoms.”
What leads to be disputed is that, “the protocol of 2005 deal did not mention the Ngok Dinka by name, only saying that those residents in the area would be allowed to take part.”
The tribune adds, “Khartoum has since argued that the Misseriya nomads should take part in the referendum. In 2010, the Sudanese government said it was in favour of partitioning of the area between the two countries.” A move that is opposed by Juba, “saying the right to vote should be reserved to the Ngok Dinka and some Misseriya nomads permanently residing in the disputed area.”
The Misseriya are split between the Humr and the Zurug sections. According to a report by the International Crisis Group report on Abyei, the problem is historical and dates back to 1956 ‘following Sudanese independence, the Dinka and Misseriya have been pulled towards opposite sides of the country’s civil wars. The first, from 1956 to 1972, polarized the communities along North-South lines. The turning point was 1965, when 72 unarmed Ngok Dinka in the Misseriya town of Babanusa were burned alive by a mob in a police station to which they had fled for protection. The Dinka began to gravitate increasingly towards the southern rebel Anya-Nya and the South’s cause, while the Misseriya received preferential treatment from the central government and identified firmly with the North.
‘’The 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement, which ended the first war, included a clause for a referendum to allow “any other areas that were culturally and geographically a part of the Southern Complex”, including Abyei, to choose between remaining in the North and joining the new autonomous southern region. The referendum was never held, and attacks against the Dinka continued throughout the 1970s, leading to the formation of a Ngok Dinka unit of the Anya-Nya II, in the small southern rebellion that began in Upper Nile in 1975.
Last year, an African Union panel on Sudan suggested that a referendum be in the region in October this year, but the two sides still have to set up the commission to run the vote.
When will the region gain stability? Well lets give our benefit of doubt that all is well with the Abyei Question that should be decided upon by the referendum with hopes the two sides will respect the wish of the residence of the region to be in either North or South of Sudan.
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