Trouble anew in southern Sudan

Khartoum’s unwillingness to budge over oil fields in southern Sudan, despite the 2005 peace deal, is causing concerns of a possible renewed north-south war that could also doom Darfur.

Khartoum’s refusal to honor a landmark peace accord that helped to end two decades of war with southern rebels is breeding fresh anxiety in the troubled country, which has been under the scrutiny of the international community, for another brutal war in Darfur.
Officials in the Sudanese capital have calmly refused to agree to the full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed in 2005 with the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), an issue now beginning to create anxiety in the Sudan.

Khartoum says the case of the Abyei district, which produces 67 percent of oil in Sudan, is an internal matter in which the UN had no business meddling.

However, this response runs contrary to the CPA. The oil-producing region is supposed to revert to the south, but the north is unwilling to share the region’s oil wealth.

The Abyei issue, one of the most critical issues that led to the 21-year war in southern Sudan, remains a dominant indicator of the future of the country’s fragile peace. The southern Sudan political leadership, in the hands of Salva Kiir Mayardit, has been sending simple, but chilling messages to the northerners: “We will not renegotiate Abyei and we will not let it go.”

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