IT WAS all too good to be true. What appeared for a while to be a surprisingly peaceful transition to independence for South Sudan, due to come into existence formally as the world’s newest independent state on July 9th, has instead seen the country mired again in bloody conflict with up to 60,000 refugees on the move and a mounting death toll. The grip of the north-south ethnic, religious civil war, which had raged almost continuously since 1955 and killed about 2 million people, seems to be reasserting itself; the 2005 peace accord which laid the basis for partition, now only a thin thread between peace and an outright return to war.
Attacks by troops and militias linked to the northern government of Khartoum, including aerial and artillery bombardment and ethnic cleansing, initially in the region of Abyei and now South Kordofan, both areas of disputed borders, are creating a major humanitarian crisis for the local Nuba people, NGOs say. And there is a real danger that the south’s army will become embroiled.
Underpinning the latest conflict are the unresolved issues of partition – the line of parts of the north-south border had been left to await further consultations with local people; and the two governments have yet to agree how to manage oil industry revenues after the split. Seventy-three per cent of the country’s oil came from the south, much of it on disputed land, while the north controls the pipelines necessary to distribute it. Observers argue the orchestrated attacks on southern-aligned groups which are having such a devastating effect on civilians are a bad-faith attempt by Khartoum to pre-empt such discussions.
Southern Kordofan, a northern province, is also home to thousands of armed and seasoned fighters who fought alongside the south during the civil war. Human rights agencies and church groups have accused northern security forces of conducting house-to-house searches and arresting or killing suspected political opponents. The UN mission to Sudan is demanding a “stop to indiscriminate military attacks against civilians” and immediate access for humanitarian organisations.
Compounding the dangers to the new state is also the deeply worrying level of south-south violence. More than 1,500 people have been killed in recent months, the UN says, in tribal warring over cattle and clashes between seven local militias and government forces in nine out of ten of the south’s provinces. In one cattle raid on Tuesday 29 died. What price independence?