Abyei administrator urges global support to end inaction
September 15, 2022 (JUBA) – South Sudan’s appointed Chief Administrator for Abyei, Kuol Deim Kuol has urged the international community and United Nations to support calls for a referendum to resolve the status of the disputed region.
Speaking to Sudan Tribune on Wednesday, Kuol expressed frustration that Sudan and South Sudan failed to implement the Abyei Protocol and abide by the 2009 court ruling.
Under the terms of the Abyei Protocol, which was part of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), the residents of the Abyei have been declared, on an interim basis, to be simultaneously citizens of Sudan’s West Kordofan State and South Sudan’s Northern Bahr el Ghazal State until Abyei’s permanent status is determined through a referendum.
“Yes, people are getting frustrated. This is why you hear this and that proposal. We understand these frustrations as the authorities and as their leaders but we encourage them to exercise patience and only appeal for calm because every situation has an end. Nothing is permanent”, said Kuol.
He added, “And as leaders, we appeal for the support of the international community, the people of goodwill, the friends of the people of Abyei, and the United Nations to support the choice of the people of Abyei”.
Abyei, Kuol stated, is valuable in terms of national security, geography and resources.
“From a geopolitical standpoint, Abyei is vital as well. It serves as a bridge between Sudan and South Sudan and by extension to the rest of the region. South Sudan, is the one of direct routes to Sudan and to the rest of northern Africa and Middle East,” he said.
The Chief Administrator stressed that Abyei is key for both country’s economic corridors.
Meanwhile observers and border experts see the conflict over the disputed oil-producing region as a cocktail of resources, geography and territorial conflict over the area between Sudan and South Sudan, with the endowment of resources playing a third-party role.
The people of South Sudan view the contested area as entirely belonging to the world’s youngest nation. The citizens of the region have in the past joined the war of liberation struggle in the south, hoping that the south would stand to support them after it secedes.
After secession from Sudan in 2011, the people of Abyei feel let down by the leadership in the south, causing them to conduct their own referendum in 2013. Neither Sudan nor South Sudan recognises the referendum outcome, putting the region’s future in limbo.
Youth leaders and community leaders are now floating the idea of an independent sultanate while intellectuals and prominent personalities advocate for peaceful existence with the neigbouring communities and a formation of a state separate from Sudan and South Sudan. This idea, among other views, has drawn mixed reactions.
A sultanate is a state or country governed by a sultan.
Abyei, an area of 10,546 km² on the border between South Sudan and Sudan that has been accorded “special administrative status” by the 2004 Protocol on the Resolution of the Abyei Conflict in the peace deal that ended Sudan’s second civil war.
(ST)