Sudan and South Sudan are edging towards a war neither can afford

THE military build-up is immediately apparent in the barracks in Rubkona, just a few miles south of the disputed border between the two Sudans. It is usually home just to the 4th division of the South Sudanese army, but pickup trucks with mounted machineguns and the logo of the 6th division loll in the shade while the 2nd division puts on a show for visiting journalists. Both units are usually based much farther south. Alcohol laces the breath of a parading soldier early in the morning. Generals, including the army chief of staff and the deputy head of military intelligence, discuss the latest events.

On April 20th South Sudan announced the withdrawal of its troops from the Heglig oilfields north of the de facto border after seizing them ten days earlier. The leaders of the new country, which formally gained independence from the north only nine months ago, had come under intense pressure from the African Union and the UN, which described the advance as an “illegal act”. The north claimed a military victory, saying it had killed hundreds of Southern Sudanese. The truth probably lies in-between: finding it harder than it anticipated to hold on to Heglig, South Sudan retreated under fire. Civilians and soldiers looted anything of value. Oil installations are severely damaged—a big blow to Sudan’s economy, which is already reeling from the south’s secession.

Along the grassy border, even after the southern withdrawal, fighting has continued. There were ground clashes on April 22nd and Sudan conducted a series of air raids. On April 23rd MiG jets roared over Bentiu and Rubkona (see map). Plucky locals, not all in uniform, fired haplessly at them with AK-47s and the odd machinegun. The aircraft tried to destroy a bridge between the two towns, which allows South Sudan to send reinforcements to what is now thought of as “the front”.

One jet also strafed Rubkona’s market, killing at least two people. The next day, farmers and charcoal-sellers were among those wounded when a market in Lalop was hit. A local leader, Taban Deng, claims that well over 80 civilians have been killed in air raids since the beginning of March. Nyaka Tunguar, a teaseller, was the only survivor when a rocket hit her stall. “I was injured and five people died, but they died for their land, so I am proud.” Nationalist sentiment is running high in both countries, though Sudan’s archbishop, Daniel Deng, is probably right when he warns that the two governments are close to starting a war that their people do not need or really want.

Sudan’s leaders deny any cross-border incursions. President Omar al-Bashir was bullish when he visited Heglig after its recapture. “There can be no negotiations”, he said, with the South Sudanese, who understand only “the gun and bullets”. A couple of days earlier he described South Sudan’s politicians as insects to be eradicated. Hardliners in Khartoum, the northern capital, want the army to sweep deep into the south, or at least to take over oilfields beyond the border. More thoughtful types in the top brass realise the northern army is overstretched; it is already engaged in the rebellious regions of Darfur, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile.

The United States has protested loudly against aggression on both sides. A presidential envoy visited the north and south but had relatively little to offer. The African Union (AU) urged both sides to stop fighting, and said they had three months to sort out their disagreements, which include the exact location of the border, the status of each country’s citizens in the other state and, above all, oil. But the AU has few powers for imposing a resolution.

Some of its members may be better placed to influence events. Ugandan officials have warned that they will respond to a Sudanese attack on Juba, the southern capital, from the air. That is no empty threat: a recent purchase of Russian Sukhoi fighter jets puts Sudan in range. Kenya, like Uganda a big investor in the south, has been more measured in its response, stressing that South Sudan should become a member of the East African Community, a trade block. Kenyan leaders are keen for South Sudanese oil to flow through a proposed pipeline to a new port due to be built on Kenya’s coast near Lamu.

Ethiopia is also involved. Meles Zenawi, the prime minister, has worked hard to build trust on both sides. Ethiopian traders supply many Sudanese in both countries with cheap goods. Mr Meles has previously hosted talks and sent peacekeepers to some parts of the disputed border. He could now decide to withdraw or reinforce them. Ethiopian officials say they are working with Egypt, with which it has had testy relations, to find a common position.

But can outsiders persuade the warring parties to stand down? The north is not very responsive at the moment, whereas southern politicians are sending mixed signals. President Salva Kiir flew to China on April 23rd, another country with influence on both sides, and listened to pleas for peace. But his vice-president, Riek Machar, said back home, “We will defend ourselves. If they continue bombarding, if they continue to attack us, we definitely will retaliate.”

There is grandstanding on both sides, along with the mobilisation of civilians. Sudan has boosted its Popular Defence Force, a state militia, and the south is telling its people to stop fighting tribal battles and defend the homeland. War is closer than at any time since the 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war. This time, there is unlikely to be a winner.

http://www.economist.com/node/21553453

The Sudans at loggerheads

Africa’s next big war?

Less than a year after partition, the two Sudans are close to conflict. China holds the key to peace

Apr 28th 2012 | from the print edition

BADLY drawn imperialist borders that cut across tribes or lumped too many diverse people unhappily together once fuelled much violence in Africa. Half a century after independence full-blown wars are much rarer, even if some borders still irritate. One of the last open wounds appeared to close on July 9th 2011, when the mainly Christian and animist south of Sudan seceded from the predominantly Muslim north. After decades of fighting that killed some 2m people, partition seemed to mark a success for both African and Western mediators.

Yet now that success is overshadowed by the threat of war. Over the past nine months the two Sudanese successor states were supposed to find a way to divide up such things as oil revenues, border posts and the rights of people living on one side of the border who wish to be citizens on the other. Both sides made outsized demands and engaged in extreme brinkmanship. New sparks flew when the south announced plans to build a pipeline to the Indian Ocean, through Kenya to the south-east, which would cut the north out of most of the oil trade. Militias, often proxies of the old rump state or the new southern one, attacked each other. International mediators, vital as brokers of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that paved the way for partition, stood aside, though Ethiopia and Egypt organised some talks and the UN proffered advice. Barack Obama last week made a stirring appeal for calm.

On balance, the north has been more obstructive than the south. For years it has repeatedly acted in bad faith, loth even to contemplate independence for the south. But more recently it is the south that has been reckless, sending its troops to capture the Heglig oilfield, which lies clearly to the north of the border. This has turned niggling animosity into a conventional battle for territory. The north recaptured its lost land on April 20th, killing hundreds in the process and bombing a market near the southern town of Bentiu on April 23rd (see article).

Negotiations have completely broken down. Both sides talk darkly of a “declaration of war”. This may be just more brinkmanship, but could tip everyone over the edge. Troops are massing on the border. The south, once a lot weaker in conventional terms, has bought a bazaar of arms, including tanks.

As well as causing untold misery in the Sudans, an all-out conflict could suck in other countries. Uganda’s government has threatened to help South Sudan against the north, which it suspects of funding a Ugandan terror group, the Lord’s Resistance Army. Other governments in the region are keenly aware that the Sudans sit on a fault-line between Muslims and Christians that cuts from east to west across the continent, reaching volatile Nigeria and beyond.

There be dragons

Common sense can and should prevail. Some northerners still want the south to fail as a state; it needs to be spelled out to them that, if this were to happen, the north would suffer badly too. The underlying question is financial: how much should the landlocked south pay the north for using its pipelines and export terminals on the Red Sea to export its oil? The north has been demanding a ludicrous price. But the Sudans need each other: the oil and the pipelines are both worthless by themselves. If the two countries could agree on a way to divide up the spoils, the rest should fall into place.

Outsiders can help break the deadlock. The United States can lean on the south to dissuade it from making foolish cross-border raids. At the same time, the West should make clear that it will lift sanctions currently imposed on the north because of its depredations in Darfur (a separate bloody conflict), but only if the north proves more willing to co-operate on every front, including the pipelines. The UN should also send peacekeepers as a buffer along the north-south border.

Most crucially, the Chinese should step forward. They are best placed of all to secure a lasting peace deal, for they alone have the contacts, the credibility and commercial interests on both sides. Once allies of the northerners, they are now just as close to the south. It was to Beijing that South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, flew at the height of the most recent spat.

The Sudans were China’s sixth-biggest source of oil imports in 2011. The fighting has snarled up production. Alive to their own interests, Chinese leaders have started to inch from their longstanding doctrine of non-interference in imbroglios in far-flung places. Keeping the peace in the Sudans could be a showcase of a new Chinese diplomacy—to the benefit of all.

http://www.economist.com/node/21553442

Sudan and South Sudan: Giving divorce a bad name

South Sudan has invaded parts of the north less than a year after its secession

Apr 14th 2012 | KHARTOUM | from the print edition

THE cold war between Africa’s newest neighbours is heating up. South Sudanese troops advanced deep into Sudan on April 10th, capturing its most valuable oilfield, Heglig, in the biggest clash since the south seceded from the north last July. Southern troops claimed to be responding to air and ground attacks from their former master, but the scale of the offensive is unprecedented. A fragile peace process that has survived several bumps in the past few months may now falter. Sudan has suspended its participation in the divorce negotiations in neighbouring Ethiopia. Parliaments in both countries are calling for military mobilisation. The drums of war beat ever louder.

The last straw could be South Sudan claiming Heglig as its own. A ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2009 appears to put the field in the Sudanese state of Southern Kordofan. But the south now disputes this. “Heglig is deep inside our borders,” says Colonel Philip Aguer, a spokesman for South Sudan’s army, adding that its troops have moved farther north. Sudan will not accept this, and for once it seems to be getting some international support. The African Union is calling on the south to withdraw its soldiers immediately and unconditionally. Sudan has complained to the UN Security Council.

The crisis is a direct result of both sides’ failure to make progress in negotiations over post-secession security arrangements, citizenship rules and oil revenues, among other issues that should have been resolved long ago. Both countries have accused each other of supporting rebels on their territory since before separation. Of the two, the southern rebels in Sudan are by far the stronger. Known as SPLM-North, they supported the decades-long southern fight for independence but found themselves on the wrong side of the border at separation. The group controls much of the Nuba mountains in Southern Kordofan and launches guerrilla raids in Blue Nile state. Sudan says SPLM-North is getting weapons and supplies from South Sudan, and that its fighters go there to rest after battles. The northern rebels in the south are smaller but have sometimes caused havoc in Unity and Upper Nile states. A local oil worker says they previously helped to defend Heglig.

Just as Sudan faces a renewed threat from the south, the long-running civil conflict in its western Darfur region is escalating again. Three years ago, General Martin Agwai, then commander of African Union peacekeeping troops in Darfur, said the conflict was “over” and that banditry was now the biggest problem. But on April 3rd areas around Sortony in North Darfur were hit by aerial bombardments and attacked by pro-government militias on the ground, forcing thousands of civilians to flee and sparking fears that the bad old times are back.

They may be. A dissident report by former UN investigators that has been submitted to the Security Council—but not yet published—documents the recent recruitment of non-Arab militias by the Sudanese Armed Forces. They are accused of ethnic cleansing of the Zaghawa tribe,which is led by Minni Minnawi, a Darfuri rebel who last year withdrew from a peace agreement that had made him a presidential adviser. The report says the use of non-Arab militias marks a “significant evolution”. At least 70,000 civilians appear to have fled new attacks in 2011.

The UN report also documents fresh ammunition deliveries by the Sudanese army to Darfur and reports on a series of air bombardments of civilians in the Zaghawa stronghold of Shangal Tobay in early 2011. A UN arms embargo was apparently violated by the deployment of at least five Sudanese Sukhoi ground attack jets in Darfur and the acquisition by Sudan of new Antonov aircraft of a type that has previously been used in bombing campaigns. One Antonov was photographed next to open crates of bombs.

On the opposing side, Darfuri rebel groups seem to have formed an alliance with South Sudanese troops. Together they call themselves the Sudan Revolutionary Front. A separate report published this month by the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based think-tank, says that the two groups have claimed credit for the same attacks around Jau and Tarogi in February and for downing an unmanned Iranian-made plane in Southern Kordofan on March 13th.

The fighting is making life ever harder for the half million South Sudanese who live in the north. “I have been in this country for 43 years but am no longer welcome here,” says one, as he makes plans to leave in a hurry. Following separation, South Sudanese were given until April 8th to sort out their status. But South Sudan has failed to issue identity documents, leaving them in legal limbo. Most are keen to leave, fearing for their welfare.

Only a month ago a solution seemed at hand. Negotiators on both sides initialled a “Four Freedoms” agreement, allowing citizens to move, live, work and own property in either country. But Islamist hardliners in Sudan objected, accusing southerners of being fifth columnists. The loss of Sudan’s main oilfield will not reassure them.

http://www.economist.com/node/21552581