Breaches of cessation of hostilities agreement In southern Sudan reported
NAIROBI, June 17, 2004 (IRIN) — The Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s
Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) have repeatedly violated the terms of an
ongoing cessation of hostilities agreement, raising questions about the
sincerity of the entire peace process, according to a think-tank.
Violations of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the Cessation of
Hostilities agreement, originally signed in October 2002, have occurred in
a number of different ways, according to the South Africa-based Institute
for Security Studies (ISS) in a report entitled “Insecurity in South
Sudan: A threat to the IGAD Peace Process”.
Shifting allegiances among southern Sudanese militias had led to direct
clashes over territorial control between the Sudanese army and allied
forces on the one hand and the SPLM/A on the other hand in the Shilluk
Kingdom in Upper Nile in recent months, leading to widespread looting and
tens of thousands of displaced, said ISS.
[IGAD, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, is the regional
body that has been brokering the Sudan peace talks.]
SHIFTING ALLEGIANCES
In western Upper Nile, in-fighting within a government-allied militia, the
South Sudan Independence Movement, had led to widespread looting of
cattle. Akobo in eastern Upper Nile had also repeatedly passed from the
control of the SPLM/A to government-allied militias and vice versa since
it fell to the SPLM/A in October 2002, ISS reported.
To access the report go to
http://www.iss.co.za/AF/profiles/Sudan/sudan1.html
The unresolved issue in all three areas was to which side territory
belonged when militias in control of an area changed their affiliation
from the government to the SPLM/A, as happened recently with Lam Akol in
the Shilluk Kingdom and Tito Biel and James Leah in western Upper Nile.
“Unfortunately these questions have never been answered satisfactorily.
Indeed, in an environment completely lacking in transparency, such
questions have never even been raised at the popular level,” said ISS.
Efforts by IRIN to reach the SPLM/A for comment in this context were
unsuccessful.
Muhammad Ahmad Dirdeiry, the Sudanese deputy ambassador in the Kenyan
capital, Nairobi, said maps had been submitted to the MOU Channel of
Communications Committee showing each side’s areas of control, as of 17
October 2002, when the MOU was originally signed. “If somebody wants to
defect now [from the government side to the SPLM/A], he is free to do so,
but his territory will remain controlled by the government,” he said.
Once a permanent ceasefire agreement had been signed by both sides, the
militias would “very gradually” be given jobs in the army, police, prisons
and wildlife services, according to a protocol on security arrangements,
he added.
But recent fighting suggests that militia commanders – who share their
loot with local officials – may not be so keen to give up their territory
and means of income, the report said.
In a recent round of fighting in western Upper Nile, some 3,000 head of
cattle stolen from civilians were distributed among local militia
commanders, leading members of local government and members of military
intelligence, according to ISS. In the Shilluk Kingdom, the lion’s share
of the looted cattle went to the militia leaders, with military
intelligence and the local administration also taking a cut.
Furthermore, neither Khartoum nor the SPLM/A have any control over the
militia commanders, who recruit locally and control considerable
territory, says ISS.
Whereas precise areas under militia control are debatable, they certainly
include much of Upper Nile, parts of northern and western Bahr al-Ghazal,
Bahr al-Jabal and much of Eastern Equatoria, according to ISS. “What can
be said with confidence is that claims made by the SPLM/A and its
supporters to hold sway over 80 percent of southern Sudan, and to surround
all of the government towns in the region are clearly false,” according to
a previous report.
FURTHER VIOLATIONS
A second obvious breach of the Cessation of Hostilities agreement was the
regular movement of forces by both Khartoum and the SPLM/A, ISS noted.
Khartoum had moved Nuer militias, which are traditionally based west of
the Nile, to the Shilluk Kingdom, and transferred large numbers of its
armed forces from southern Sudan to the western region of Darfur, where a
conflict is ongoing. Similarly, the SPLM/A had moved forces from Bahr
al-Ghazal to western Upper Nile and the Shilluk Kingdom to assist militia
commanders who had defected from the government and were trying to keep
control of their territory, ISS said.
A third abuse had been the denial of aid to displaced people in the
Shilluk Kingdom, in violation of Article 5 of the Cessation of Hostilities
Agreement, which states that “the parties shall allow unimpeded
humanitarian access to all assistance for people in need”.
“One of the most glaring abuses of the rights of civilians has been the
refusal of the national army to permit food distributions in many parts of
the region, allegedly on the grounds of insecurity,” ISS reported.
It was widely suspected that restrictions on the distributions were
imposed because Khartoum did not want the international community to
witness the destruction that its allies had perpetrated “right under the
noses of the army”, it added.
Dirdeiry told IRIN he was unaware of such an accusation against the army
and that it had not been complained about to the MOU Channel of
Communications Committee. “This has never been raised before,” he said.
“The only issue raised was an attack made by one militia on a relief
centre.”
FAILURE TO HIGHLIGHT ABUSES
Whereas the abuses had been ongoing, the Verification and Monitoring Team
(VMT: mandated to monitor ceasefire violations), the Civilian and
Protection Monitoring Team, (mandated to monitor attacks against civilians
or civilian property/possessions), the UN and the broader international
community had failed to highlight them, thereby sending out the wrong
message, ISS said.
“The failure of the Sudan IGAD peace secretariat and the VMT to act
decisively in the case of Akobo, a failure which was then repeated in WUN
[western Upper Nile] and the Shilluk Kingdom, encouraged disrespect of the
Cessation of Hostilities Agreement and gave a powerful and wrong message
to the belligerents,” it said.
Responding to the accusation, Lazarus Sumbeiywo, IGAD’s chief mediator,
asked what action IGAD could possibly have taken. “Think-tanks sit in
offices, officers sit in the bush. You better ask them what actions we
could have taken.”
How this bodes for the implementation of future ceasefire agreement, the
details of which have yet to be worked out, remains uncertain. “Even with
a peace agreement, the parties will have to move rapidly to reach a final
resolution on security arrangements in the transitional period, a process
that, as argued above, is highly problematic and will prove even more
challenging to implement, given doubts about whether there is any real
commitment to either the peace process or to tackling the root causes of
the conflict,” ISS said.