From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Thu Apr 09 2009 - 09:46:40 EDT
Southern Sudan - Fear of fragmentation
Apr 9th 2009 | NAIROBI
>From The Economist print edition
A recent fragile peace is under threat
HUNDREDS of women and children were killed last month in Southern Sudan's
province of Jonglei, either shot or run through with spears. Some locals put
the toll at more than 700. Officials in Juba, the capital of the largely
autonomous region of Southern Sudan, say the figure was lower. In any event,
a fresh spate of killing now threatens the broad peace that the region has
been enjoying-and could even upset the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed
in 2005 between Sudan's mainly Arab government in Khartoum and rebels in the
black African south who had waged a war of independence for most of the
previous three decades.
At first it seemed the killings were the result of routine cattle raids by
Nuer warriors on the Murle, whom the Nuer accused of rustling thousands of
cattle. Such raids usually end in a handful of deaths on either side. But
the scale of the Jonglei killings, with the Nuer apparently riddling
civilians with gunfire from weapons they were meant to have given up, has
cast a pall of gloom over the south. It has not been lightened by the
failure of the local Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) to intervene.
There have been killings elsewhere in the south too. Some fear the
north-south accord is near to collapse.
Southern Sudan's president, Salva Kiir, who is Sudan's national
vice-president too, has every reason to play down the Jonglei killings. A
slump in oil revenue, which accounts for most of his regional government's
budget, as well as corruption in Juba, has left him unable to pay his civil
servants and troops. This has led to riots by disabled SPLA veterans and
mutinies by soldiers. The border with Uganda, which handles nearly all of
Southern Sudan's trade, has been closed by veterans who said they had not
been paid for seven months. Mr Kiir had to intervene with cash and grain to
end the mutiny. Ugandan lorry drivers stranded on the Sudanese side of the
border claimed that the SPLA harassed them.
Since 90% of Southern Sudan's people live on less than $1 a day, tightening
belts is not an option. They are as hungry, poorly educated and diseased as
the ill-starred people of Darfur. Tribal leaders in the south say
competition for water and grazing is adding to the tension between the
tribes. Groups such as the Murle will return deaths in kind. The UN says
187,000 Southern Sudanese were displaced by tribal fighting last year. This
year the number may double. As the Jonglei slaughter shows, plans to disarm
have not been fulfilled. The worry is that the SPLA, a ruthless lot hardened
by years of war, will end up taking sides, further unsettling the south and
threatening the peace agreement.
Mr Kiir wants to stamp out "tribal spoilers" before national elections next
year. Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, who was recently indicted by the
International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague for alleged crimes in
Darfur, is nervous about the possibility of Mr Kiir running as a candidate
for the national presidency, appealing to voters even in the Arab bits of
the country. Mr Kiir has so far been careful not to voice an opinion on the
ICC warrant but may try to use it to squeeze concessions from the north-on
oil and the Nile waters, among other things-before a referendum in 2011,
when the Southern Sudanese will be asked if they want to secede from Sudan
to form an independent country, probably to be called New Sudan.
This may put Barack Obama's administration on the spot. American lobbies
have concentrated on Darfur, largely to the exclusion of Southern Sudan. A
policy review headed by Samantha Power, one of Mr Obama's foreign-policy
advisers, may be hard on Mr Kiir even as it endorses the ICC's effort to
bring Mr Bashir to justice.
The review may also suggest ways of dealing with the Lord's Resistance Army,
a murderous Ugandan militia that was recently hammered-but not defeated-by a
joint offensive of Ugandan, Congolese and Southern Sudanese troops,
underwritten by the outgoing Bush administration. Many in Juba are terrified
that the Lord's Resistance Army may now kill and rape its way through
Southern Sudan, perhaps with weapons and training provided by the national
government in Khartoum, which remains loth to see the south of the country
peeling peacefully away.
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