ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA—When South
Sudan gained independence last July, the capital was electrified.
Jubilant citizens crowded the streets, flags in hand, faces painted in
the national colours of black, red and green to celebrate their newly
gained freedom. Parties raged through the night. South Sudan’s
President, Salva Kiir, sat with his northern counterpart — and the
ceremony’s guest of honour — Omar al Bashir, who wished the world’s
newest country success.
“We fulfil our commitment to help the
new state of South Sudan in its first steps, because we want it to
succeed, and because its success will be our success,” Bashir said.
Finally, after two decades of bloody civil war that killed nearly two million people, two viable states had been forged.
Today, the jubilation has faded as
violence escalates along the disputed oil-rich border that separates the
two countries. The mood in the former British colony is no longer
conciliatory. Instead, each side is accusing the other of launching
attacks as full-blown war looms.
This week, clashes erupted in the
Heglig oilfield along the border, which both countries claim as their
own, though a 2009 court of arbitration agreement places it in Sudan.
Both sides accuse each other of sparking the fighting, the most intense
since the South gained independence.
“What you are seeing now in the
border is sort of a miniature version of what we saw during (the civil
war),” said Magdi El Gizouli, a fellow at the Rift Valley Institute in
Kenya. “Effectively, they are at war.”
Fighting intensified Thursday with
the South accusing the North of aerial bombardments in the town of
Bentiu in South Sudan. The message from Juba was that it would continue
to fight back.
“We are defending ourselves, which is
the natural law of the animal. When you are attacked, you fight for
self-preservation,” said Philip Aguer, the military spokesperson for the
South’s army. “That is our constitutional duty. We will never give up
our duty.”
The message from Khartoum was
similar. “Definitely our position is to fight these troops until they
withdraw from our land,” said Sudan’s Foreign Affairs spokesman,
Al-Obeid Meruh.
This week, a report from Geneva-based
research group Small Arms Survey said both Sudan and South Sudan are
guilty of arming rebels groups in each other’s territory.
“The re-emergence of proxy arming, a
hallmark of the second civil war, is especially disturbing. Both
Khartoum and Juba have raised the stakes by supporting allies to
destabilize the other,” the report said. “The impact on human security
is devastating.”
Soon after fighting broke out this week, the parliaments of both countries urged their respective citizens to take up defences.
“The message was basically to alert
the public that there is an impending military aggression by Khartoum
and the (people) simply can prepare themselves to defend themselves,”
said South Sudan’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Nhial Deng Nhial.
A summit between Bashir and Kiir
scheduled to take place in Juba last week was called off when the first
reports of violence in Heglig emerged at the end of March. With fresh
reports of violence, it seems even more unlikely the heads of state will
meet.
Despite the war rhetoric flung around, both sides maintain they do not want to return to major conflict.
“We are not interested in war, we are not interested in fighting and we have made that very, very clear,” Nhial said.
Meruh said his country fears a return
to war and his government this week appealed to both the United Nations
and the African Union to urge South Sudanese forces out of Sudanese
territory to end the fighting.
“We hope to put the maximum pressure on the South Sudanese state to withdraw their troops from our land,” he said.
The international community has been
quick to slam both sides for the violence. UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon on Wednesday called for “an immediate de-escalation of the
situation between South Sudan and Sudan in order to avoid further
bloodshed.”
Last month, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, John Baird, similarly cautioned restraint.
“In a climate of hardening rhetoric
and hostile cross-border incursions, Canada strongly urges Sudan and
South Sudan to agree to an immediate ceasefire and resumption of
negotiations,” he said in a statement.
The bitterness between the Sudans is
rooted not only in lingering civil war wounds and border disagreements. A
fight over oil resources has erupted, widening the impasse. Juba took
75 per cent of the country’s oil with it when it broke away, but all
exporting and processing facilities remain in the North.
Khartoum is demanding $36 per barrel
in export and processing fees. Juba is looking for something closer to
$6 per barrel. In January, after months of disagreement, the South shut
off its oil, which makes up 98 per cent of the fledgling country’s
economy. Even before the shutdown, South Sudan was one of Africa’s
poorest countries.
African Union-led talks have been
ongoing in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, since July to solve the
impasse, but have failed to come up with a deal. Gizouli said the
negotiations, led by former South African president Thabo Mbeki, are not
comprehensive enough. Instead, only piecemeal agreements have been
signed, including a non-aggression pact signed in February, which
neither side has followed.
“It has to be a wider package than
the formula which they are negotiating now,” Gizouli said. “This
piecemeal negotiation is obviously not working. They need a package
where trade-offs can be exchanged.”
Until then, he said, “Thabo Mbeki and his panel are losing their edge; they’re exhausting their credibility.”
Security talks were set to resume in
Addis Ababa this week, but were cancelled as fighting mounted in Heglig.
“I am afraid to say (talks) are postponed. It is quite difficult to
negotiate in this sort of atmosphere,” Meruh said.
With both sides pledging to defend what they consider their sovereign territory, it seems likely fighting will rage on.
“If South Sudan remains in Heglig, I
think we might have an escalation,” said Nenad Marinkovic, field
researcher for U.S.-based research group Enough Project.
But he said continued fighting is not
in either country’s best interest. “War is the worst solution right now
and it is going to be devastating for both countries.”
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