Sudanese belligerents in South Kordofan agree to cease hostilities, initiate talks

June 16, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – The warring sides in Sudan’s South Kordofan State have agreed to cease hostilities and enter into negotiations, AU mediators announced on Thursday, after nearly two weeks of ongoing fighting has killed an unknown number of people and displaced thousands.

“Both parties to the conflict have agreed to cease hostilities and enter immediately into negotiations whose details will be agreed after commencement,” former South African president who heads the AU High-Level Implementation Panel on Sudan (AUHIP), Thabo Mbeki, said from the Ethiopia capital Addis Ababa on Thursday.

Fighting in Sudan’s north-south border state of South Kordofan erupted on 6 June between north Sudan army, Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), and elements aligned with South Sudan’s army – the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) – after SAF attempted to carry out its earlier threats to disarm SPLA fighters in the area.

South Sudan’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) contends that its fighters in South Kordofan are northerners.

Heavy artillery and aerial bombardments were used by SAF in the fighting, which occurred mainly around the state’s capital of Kadugli and its close vicinity.

According to UN figures, over 60,000 people are believed to have fled the fighting which occurred mainly around the state’s capital of Kadugli and its close vicinity which were subjected to heavy artillery and aerial bombardments by SAF. Hundreds of people are believed to have been killed in atrocities committed by SAF and its allied militias.

South Kordofan is the site of oilfields and borders the troubled western region of Darfur as well as South Sudan, which is due to secede from the North in July after it voted to this effect in a referendum held in January under the 2005’s peace deal which ended more than two decades of civil wars with the North. South Kordofan is also home to the Nuba population which largely sided with the South against the North during the civil war.

News of the ceasefire deal follows an upsurge of rhetoric by North Sudan’s army whose official spokesman Al-Sawarmi Khalid Sa’ad told a press conference in Khartoum on Thursday that SAF was currently continuing its military offensive in the state to put out the rebellion.

“We are continuing our military operations in the mountains around Kadugli up to this moment, until the rebellion stops,” he told reporters in Khartoum. According to Sa’ad, the situation in South Kordofan was now under the army control.

However, despite the aggressive rhetoric, the army spokesman said that they were working on arrangements to integrate SPLA’s troopers in South Kordofan and the Blue Nile into SAF. He elaborated that these arrangements would seek to either integrate the soldiers into SAF, civil society or through the Demobilization, Disintegration and Reintegration program.

Sa’ad stressed that South Kordofan state is 100 percent northern and that no force apart from SAF would be allowed to carry arms after 9 July when South Sudan declares independence as planned.

Meanwhile, the cessation of hostilities deal was also confirmed by the secretary-general of the SPLM’s northern sector, Yasir Arman, who arrived in Kadugli among a high-ranking delegation of SPLM officials led by the governor of the Blue Nile State Malik Aggar and an AUHIP delegation as well as UNMIS SSRG Haile Menkerios. They held a meeting with the SPLM’s leader in South Kordofan Abdul Aziz Adam al-Hilu.

Arman told Sudan Tribune from Addis Ababa that the two sides had reached a cease-fire agreement, and that a delegation of the SPLM’s northern sector would immediately commence arrangements to enforce the cessation of hostilities and its concomitant political arrangements.

The SPLM official also addressed what he termed as the enormous humanitarian catastrophe created by the military operations waged by the government of the National Congress Party (NCP) which led to the displacement of thousands and killing of hundreds. Arman said that the delegation had also seen the effects of aerial bombardment in the area.

Arman said that the SPLA had so far “liberated six localities” and reported that the fighting was still going on in big towns, including Kadugli and vicinity of Al-Dilling.

In the meantime, UNMIS has urged SAF to open up airspace over South Kordofan, complaining that a six-day closure was “dangerously hampering” its operations to deliver aid to thousands of needy IDPS.

“It is vital that the government of Sudan acts immediately to ensure access to all airspace by U.N. flights to alleviate the growing suffering of those most affected by conflict,” UNMIS spokesman Kouider Zerrouk said.

(ST)