Sudanese officials seek to defuse tensions in Abyei
February 21, 2008 (KHARTOUM) —Officials from Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) met with leaders from the Arab Misseriya tribe in a bid to avert a confrontation in the oil rich region of Abyei.
Hareeka Izz El-Deen Hareeka, one of the Misseriya leaders told the official Sudan News Agency (SUNA), that their meetings with the SPLM asserted the need for peaceful resolution of the dispute.
However he blamed the SPLM for the escalation of tensions between his tribe and the SPLM.
“The intervention of the SPLM in favor of the Dinka tribe, attempting to dominate Abyei, the appointment of an executive council in the area and the failure of the SPLA to move south of the 1956 borders complicated the matter” he added.
Last week the Misseriya leaders announced that they have appointed Mohamed Omar Al-Ansari as the governor of Abyei. The new governor gave the SPLM an ultimatum until next Saturday to abandon the administration to a group called “Abyei Liberation Front”, or else they will face a military offensive.
Al-Ansari said he is flying to Khartoum to consult with “security officials” and to address the Abyei natives in the capital and brief them on the latest developments.
Luka Biong Deng, Minister for Presidential Affairs in the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) said that the SPLA will respond swiftly to any attack “targeting any natives of Abyei regardless of their ethnicity”.
Clashes erupted between Sudan People Liberation Army (SPLA) and the nomadic Misseriya tribe, who go to Abyei for cattle-herding, during November and December of last year which claimed dozens of lives.
Both sides accuse each other of initiating the violence. Recently members of the Misseriya tribe closed the route leading to Abyei.
The SPLM chairman Salva Kiir instructed SPLA units in December not to attack the Misseriya tribe or any other tribes in the area.
The war of words has indicated that the dispute in Abyei could turn into a full blown military war between the Misseriya tribe and the SPLA. The Sudanese presidency has convened a late night meeting to discuss the deteriorating situation in the region.
Bishta Mohamed Salem from the Dinka-Misseriya reconciliation committee said that they are awaiting the results of the meeting at the presidency.
“If the outcome comes unfavorable to the Misseriya we will not carry arms but will try to get our rights through dialogue and peaceful means” he said.
However Al-Ansari said he is optimistic that the issue will be resolved “within the next 48 hours”.
Kiir told the semi-governmental Al-Ahram daily last week that the NCP is the party blocking the implementation of the Abyei protocol which is part of the Naivasha agreement that ended two decades of the civil war between the North and the South.
Under the protocol a commission known as the Abyei Boundaries Commission (ABC) was to “define and demarcate the area of the nine Ngok Dinka Chiefdoms transferred to Kordofan in 1905, referred to herein as Abyei Area”.
“The ABC report should be binding to all parties but the NCP rejected it and is looking for an alternative. This is not acceptable to us and we will stick the report” Kiir said.
However the president Omar Hassan Al-Bashir said that the NCP is committed to the Abyei Protocol only with the border of 1905. He further said the government is not concerned with the ABC report and that the latter is of no value to them.
The Abyei region has been described as Sudan’s Kashmir by the ENOUGH project saying that it may develop into a “national war with regional implications and historically devastating repercussions”.
The SPLM signed a peace deal in January 2005 with the government of the National Congress Party in January 2005 ending two decades of civil war in Southern Sudan. The peace deal made the SPLM, the ruling party in the south and the NCP the ruling party in the north.
In 2011, southerners will be asked to vote in a referendum on whether they want to be independent or remain part of Sudan.
(ST)