Sudan: Comprehensive Peace Agreement
NewsNotes, July-August 2008
On
June 9, 2008, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
welcomed an agreement to resolve dangerous conflict near the town of Abyei, which lies in an oil-rich area close to the boundary
between northern and southern Sudan. On Sunday, June 8, the National Congress
Party of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) had agreed to
a road map to resolve the Abyei dispute, including
through arbitration.
The Comprehensive Peace Agreement
(CPA), signed by the government and former rebels in January 2005, ended the
long-running north-south civil war, but an impasse since then over the
boundaries and status of Abyei has been one of the
stumbling blocks to fully implementing the peace accord, as the area is
contested by both sides.
The Secretary General said that he
“particularly welcomes the commitment of the two parties to allow the UN
Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) unrestricted access and freedom of movement in the Abyei area.” He gave his assurances that the UN would continue
to provide assistance to people who have been displaced.
In another statement, the UN
rejected U.S. accusations that peacekeepers failed to protect the people of Abyei during violence there in mid-May, saying that the UN
does not have the capacity or the mandate to intervene when large-scale
hostilities break out. But U.S. special envoy to Sudan, Richard Williamson,
asserted that UNMIS does have a mission to intervene to protect innocent
people, which they did not do.
The deployment of a new Joint/Integrated
Unit (JIU) battalion to Abyei and the removal of
separate contingents of northern and southern soldiers will pave the way for
the return of tens of thousands of people recently displaced by fighting,
according to a senior official.
JIU’s were
foreseen by the CPA. They are made up of an equal number of troops from the
Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and fall
under the command of the Joint Defense Board, an arm of the presidency. A joint
police force from the southern and northern governments will also be sent to Abyei.
The town of Abyei
was largely destroyed after fighting broke out in mid-May between the SPLA and
the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). According to the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the fighting sent tens of
thousands of the largely Dinka Malual
and Dinka Ngok residents of
Abyei fleeing southwards. Bishop Antonio Menegazzo of El Obeid told reporters at the time that about
90 percent of the huts in Abyei had been destroyed.
Roger Winter, a former special
representative to the U.S. State Department for Sudan, a major contributor to
the CPA process and now an advisor to the government of Southern Sudan, visited
Abyei on May 16-17, immediately after the attacks. He
wrote: “… [T]he town of Abyei has ceased to exist.
Brigade 31 of the SAF has displaced the entire civilian population and burned Abyei’s market and housing to the ground. These events were
predicted, and absent effective word and action, they became inevitable. Somehow
the government of the United States of America missed all the signals – again…”
In
a June 15
article in the New York Times, New
America Foundation Fellow Eliza Griswold describes Abyei as the place where “two worlds collide and two governments compete for
territory inch by inch; under the ground lies as much as half of Sudan’s
estimated five billion barrels of oil. In many ways, Abyei is a microcosm for the entire country … If Darfur is a land grab, then Anyei is an oil grab. Last
year, an estimated $529 million of oil revenues came from the region, according to the International Crisis Group …
Khartoum has used the south’s oil to build the north’s infrastructure. A
combination of war, sanctions and public outcry forced Western companies to
abandon Sudan’s oil over the past decade, and China, among others, stepped in.”
Faith in action:
Write to President
Bush and Secretary
of State Rice urging the United States to remain fully engaged in the work
for peace in Sudan. Specifically, to take substantive steps to: (1) ensure CPA
implementation and prevent a resurgence of the North-South conflict; (2) help
revitalize the Darfur peace process; (3) bolster resources and manpower for
UNAMID; and (4) substantially increase bi-lateral funding for humanitarian and
development needs throughout Sudan.