Fresh Scars on the Body Politic
8 min readBy FRANK JACOBS
Oh, to have been in that room in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on Oct. 16. That’s when the leadership of the world’s newest country met with Xanana Gusmão, the prime minister of East Timor, the first new country of the 21st century [1]. Surely, Mr. Gusmão must have lectured on the nitty gritty of starting up a brand new country. And undoubtedly, talk must have turned to borders: how to demarcate, secure and police them. (Yes, such are the daydreams of borderspotters like myself.)
Not that these borders are necessarily the stuff that daydreams are made of. New borders are to geopolitics what fresh scars are to medicine — painful, and potentially inflammatory, but, for both countries involved, also inevitable.
East Timor has a few advantages over South Sudan. As one half of a relatively small island, its total land border with Indonesia is only about 150 miles long. And even though it possesses a quirky coastal exclave in western Timor [2], there are no major outstanding territorial disputes to speak of [3].
South Sudan, on the other hand, is not an island — except metaphorically, in a sea of troubles. In the months leading up to its independence, it became fashionable to label the oil-rich but dirt-poor country a “pre-failed state” — a France-sized nation with less than 100 miles of paved roads.
When it declared its independence on July 9, it not only inherited long borders with five neighboring countries (Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic), it was also endowed with about 1,300 miles of new international border with its former antagonist and parent state, Sudan [4].
Joe Burgess/The New York TimesBoth countries agreed to demilitarize a six-mile zone on either side of the new border, but such goodwill (or mere public show) can’t hide the fact that this gigantic horizontal gash across Sudan, snaking its way from the Central African Republic to Ethiopia, is still very much a throbbing cicatrix. Even though the breakup concluded decades of armed conflict between north and south, the secession of a quarter of the country must have been traumatic for the central government in Khartoum. Formerly Africa’s largest country, Sudan is now relegated to third place, after Algeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo [5].
”Rump Sudan” still looks unfamiliar on the map, incomplete, like a broken elephant tusk. Maybe it was a reluctance to officiate the passing of “Old Sudan,” a familiar cartographic Gestalt for its size if nothing else, that explains why Google Maps dilly-dallied for over two months after South Sudan won independence before finally putting the new country on the map, in mid-September. Old borders, after all, die harder in the mind than on the ground.
This new frontier, for all the blood that has been shed in its establishment, has proved to be far from a capstone on decades of violence. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which led to the referendum which led to independence, has transformed the rebels of the Southern People’s Liberation Army into a legitimate government. But in a depressing replay of what came before, it is now in turn fighting its own internal rebellions: as recently as last week, heavy fighting in Unity, a border state and the source of 98 percent of the new country’s oil wealth, claimed the lives of a large number of rebels — former and present.
And despite the “demilitarization,” tension between north and south remains, in no small part because of outstanding border issues. The peace agreement created the international border by dusting off the internal borders as they existed in 1956, when Sudan gained its independence from Britain. While that may have been the least-worst option — sidestepping both the border changes imposed by the north and those claimed by the south — it still is a bit like trying to fit into an old suit worn by a younger, thinner self. Expect discomfort, and be prepared for some ripping. In Sudan’s case, the likely conflicts center on two disputed areas, Kafia Kingi and Abyei.
Though historically a part of the south, Kafia Kingi, on the border with the Central African Republic, was transferred from the region of Bahr el Ghazal, now in South Sudan, to the region of Darfur, which remains in Sudan. But the South Sudanese would like it back, thank you very much. The (North) Sudanese can play pass-the-parcel with the issue, and claim — rightfully — that it wasn’t them what done it: the British colonial administration transferred the area in the 1930s.
Similarly, the British transferred Abyei from south to north in order to get to grips with a pastoralist conflict between tribes of Dinka (from the south) and Messiria (from the north). That ethnic conflict is still at the center of the local tug of war. Officially, the Abyei area has been declared a condominium: its inhabitants have dual citizenship of both the states of South Kordofan (in the north) and North Bahr el Ghazal (in the south), pending a referendum on which side of the fence they want to land on. But in fact, the (North) Sudanese army has taken over the area by force, clearing out officials and citizens whose loyalty lies with the South.
If, on a map, Abyei looks like the buckle on the belt of the intra-Sudanese border, the analogy is an apt one. The ongoing tension is a miniature version of the recently resolved conflict between the two states: the north has used its superior firepower to gain the upper hand and create “facts on the ground,” but South Sudan, now independent, can feed the resentment of its ethnically cleansed partisans with petrodollars. Abyei has the potential to become the flashpoint of the South’s irredentist frustrations.
Ebrahim Hamid/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSudanese President Omar al-Bashir, right, greets his South Sudanese counterpart Salva Kiir on Oct. 8, 2011 upon the latter’s first official arrival in Khartoum.If only that were the end to South Sudan’s border troubles. The world’s youngest state is also one of its poorest, and its government thus is relatively powerless to impose its will on its borders — which, even setting aside the tensions with its northern neighbor, are hardly settled. Recent months have seen the South Sudanese accuse the Ugandans of encroachment on their territory, for example. The underlying conflict is older, and involves cattle-rustling between the Madi and Kuku tribes, on the Ugandan and South Sudanese sides of the border, respectively. The South Sudanese feel, perhaps justifiably so, that the weakness of their state is compelling some within Uganda to force the issue.
The main area of contention is the unresolved demarcation in the Logoba/Moyo district. A recent meeting between presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Salva Kiir of South Sudan did not resolve the issue, let alone relieve the tension. “At every opportunity, the Ugandans take the advantage,” laments a South Sudanese blogger. “Now that the country shares borders with six countries, South Sudanese must think of guarding and maintaining” their “territorial integrity, no matter what cost. That is what it means and takes to be an independent nation.”
Indeed, inherent in the modern concept of a nation are its endowments with a capital; a government, with state regalia like a flag and an anthem; and not least fixed borders — plus the will and power to enforce them. Clearly, South Sudan still has a long way to go [6].
It will be interesting to see if South Sudan aims to honor this lofty ambition with regards to the Ilemi Triangle, a disputed area on the border with Ethiopia and Kenya. Ethiopia has always conceded that Sudan was the rightful claimant to this area, its uncertain status caused by vague wording in a colonial treaty.
As the current claimant, South Sudan could ask Kenya, the current occupant, to vacate the area. But some suggest that the Southern People’s Liberation Army tacitly granted possession of Ilemi to Kenya in exchange for support during the struggle. With more pressing matters on South Sudan’s table, my guess is that President Kiir will not be in a rush to ask the Kenyans to leave.
Ironically, in the way that enemies often tend to resemble each other, South Sudan’s border problems mirror those of its northern neighbor. Even after jettisoning the South, the Khartoum government has had to deal with a major internal rebellion — this time in Darfur, the enormous midwestern area of the country. Is a second Sudanese secession looming? Not likely — the desert region has been “pacified” by a combination of army firepower and local pro-government militia.
On top of that, Sudan is also subject to festering, if less-well-known border disputes with Egypt. The Egyptian-Sudanese border deviates from the otherwise straight line along the 22º north latitude in three areas, all of which are potential flashpoints. The first is the Wadi Halfa Salient, where Sudan juts north along the Nile for about 16 miles. This was intended by the British colonial authorities to facilitate the administration of several local villages, which were easier to reach from Sudan than Egypt. From the 1960s onward, Egypt flooded most of this area when finishing the Aswan Dam, displacing the inhabitants of around 50 villages — eliminating the salient in practice, if not on paper. Yet Sudan is not willing to concede the territory in either sense.
Two areas further east are the Bir Tawil Trapezoid and the Hala’ib Triangle. Bizarrely, both Egypt and Sudan claim the latter, but neither claims the former — making it the world’s only remaining terra nullius [7] outside of Antarctica.
In an otherwise harsh and unforgiving climate, both Sudans appear to have the right ecosystem where borders — and border disputes — flourish. It will be a region that borderspotters will keep their eyes on for decades to come.
Frank Jacobs is a London-based author and blogger. He writes about cartography, but only the interesting bits.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/fresh-scars-on-the-body-politic/
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