July 23, 2011 (JUBA) - South Sudan’s Salva Kiir Mayardit on Saturday said that the oil contested region of Abyei belongs to the nine Dinka Ngok chiefdom’s and argued that the North-aligned Misseriya tribe do not have any territorial right in the area except access to water and pasture for their cattle.

Salva Kiir (Reuters/file)

After South Sudan seceded from the North on July 9, Abyei has remained in North Sudan. A referendum was scheduled solve the dispute in January but the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) refused to allow the Misseriya to vote, claiming that as nomads who enter the region for part of the year are not residents of the area.

Kiir said that historically, the borders between North and South Sudan are known.

"The people of Abyei, the people of Northern Bahr el Ghazal, the people of Unity State, the People of Western Bahr el Ghazal, the People of Upper Nile and the people of Warrap State know their borders. They know them tree by tree and distance by distance," said Salva Kiir

The SPLM leader was speaking at a meeting with community leaders from Abyei who paid him a visit to congratulate him on the independence of South Sudan and for becoming the first president of the new country.

“The people of South Sudan will not leave you alone. Abyei belongs to you. This is what the CPA says. It is your historical and ancestral homeland," said Kiir explaining Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) is very clear on whose land is Abyei.

Juac Agok, the Deputy chairperson of the SPLM for the area also in a separate interview with Sudan Tribune on Saturday said The Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which are the legal and binding documents, give clear definition of Abyei that it can never be claimed by anyone a part from the Nine Dinka Ngok chiefdom.

“The CPA is very clear document. It defines Abyei as land which belongs to the nine Dinka Ngok chiefdom transferred to Kordofan region in 1905. It does not say that Abyei was a shared area transferred to Kordofan [in North Sudan]. It talks only about Dinka Ngok chiefdom. This is not what we say. It is what the agreement which we signed with the National Congress Party says, so why are the people refusing to implement”, said Agok in reference to the government in Khartoum.

Ngor Ayuel, the Abyei community vice chairperson in an interview with the press at South Sudan’s presidential palace said they came to give a congratulatory message and assurance of support to the president and to share with him situation facing internally displaced persons in areas to which they fled.

Ethiopia forces have started arriving the area, as part of a deal agreed after North Sudan’s army occupied the area in May. Ayuel said that although the Ethiopian army had begun to arrive in the area the Sudan Armed Forces have not yet started moving out.

The official also accused government in Khartoum of advising the army to remove uniforms and put on civilian clothes in order to be considered by the international community to have withdrawn its forces away from the area.

The contested oil-producing region of Abyei is one of the remaining issues between the CPA signatories that need to be negotiated between the parties after the South Sudan independent earlier this month signaling the end of a six year interim period of power and wealth sharing.

In 1905, the area predominantly home to the Ngok Dinka, was transferred by the British colonial authorities from South Sudan to North Sudan for administrative purposes. Over a half century the Ngok developed a strong sentiment to return to the South where they perceive their physical and cultural heritage to be rooted.

These aspirations, along with other grievances of other Southerners, such as marginalisation and the introduction of Islamic Shari’a Law became the basis for the first phase of civil war in Sudan, starting just before independence from Britain on January 1, 1956.

In the 1972 Addis Ababa agreement ending that conflict and the Ngok Dinka were promised a referendum on whether Abyei should be in North or South Sudan. However, officials from the area say Khartoum never allowed that referendum to take place.

“This is not the first time the government in Khartoum tried to renege any agreement on Abyei. They have done it many times in the past. The 1972 peace agreement allowed the people of Abyei to hold a referendum to decide their fate but it was not held because authorities in the North did not want the people of Abyei to become part of the south”, said chairperson of The Abyei Referendum Forum, Ambassador Chol Deng Alaak.

Because of this, according to ambassador Alaak, the leaders from the Ngok area joined the SPLM when it was formed in 1983, triggering the 22 year war that the CPA ended.

The two warring parties, Khartoum’s NCP and the SPLM, ultimately agreed in 2004 to the Abyei Protocol, which was drafted by the United States; it was the last major piece of the CPA to be signed.

However, the protocol has not been implemented and the referendum has not go ahead.

As a result of the protocol not being implemented, Alaak said, there has been "virtually no functional governance or services for the abandoned population in Abyei for years. Our people have always been subjected to killing and displacement.”

Alaak described the Misseriya tribe as a neighboring pastoralist population whose large traditional home area lies to the north of Abyei with Muglad as its principal town.

He accused president Bashir of supporting the so-called Murahaleen, who were active in raiding and in some cases enslaving Dinka communities in order to destabilise the area during the conflict, which ended in 2005.

President Bashir has frequently mobilised Misseriya elements for military purposes in Popular Defense Forces (PDF) a government aligned militia and the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF).

Sudan’s president has been indicted for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court for alleged atrocities in the western Darfur region.

Alaak said that, Bashir has often mobilised Misseriya for his legions by publicly promising them that he would get all of Abyei for them, virtually a commitment to a policy of ethnic cleansing. These promises have fueled high levels of tension between Misseriya and Ngok Dinka, he said, explaining that this had strong implications for the Misseriya way of life.

For several dry months of each year, by long-standing agreements with the Ngok, the Misseriya need to bring their animals into Abyei and even further into South Sudan for water and pasture, a necessity that Bashir’s inflammatory actions could threaten, Alaak said.

In May, 2008 the 31st brigade of the SAF and other Misseriya elements of the Sudan government’s military attacked Abyei and burned most of it to the ground, displacing the entire Ngok population.

As in SAF’s recent occupation of Abyei, the UN protective force hunkered down in their base and did not venture out to protect civilians or provide a visible deterrent.

The SPLM and the Khartoum government went to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2009. The court defined the territory of Abyei, which was in dispute; both the SPLM and the Khartoum government promised to implement the PCA decision, though Khartoum ultimately failed to do so.

Alaak accused Khartoum of undermining Protocol on Abyei with intentions to deny conducting referendum in which the voters would be members of the Ngok Dinka community and other Sudanese who are residents to decide the future of the area. After the Southern Referendum vote on January 9, 2011, Khartoum escalated the pressure on Abyei by moving SAF into the area, displacing tens of thousands.

Some observers suggest that Khartoum ‘took’ Abyei to use as a bargaining chip to maximise its leverage in negotiating a final North-South agreement on oil revenues and other issues such as debt and citizenship.

(ST)