<<previous  |  index  |  next>>

Background

Abyei: Unresolved under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement

The oil-rich border area of Abyei has long been a potential flashpoint for conflict between Northern and Southern Sudan, and remains so today. The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended more than 20 years of civil war between central government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) attempted to put in place a mechanism to resolve the contentious issue of Abyei. However, partly due to delays in implementation, this has had only limited success.

Under the CPA, Abyei is one of three ‘transitional areas’ (along with the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan State and the Blue Nile State) for which the two sides agreed to postpone final resolution of its boundaries and, by extension, political settlement. Under a protocol to the CPA, the ‘Abyei Protocol,’ the parties agreed to establish the Abyei Boundaries Commission, which comprised representatives of the Khartoum government, the SPLM and international experts, to determine the geographic borders of Abyei. The presidency of the new Government of National Unity (GNU), formed by the NCP and the SPLM after signing the CPA, would then appoint a local interim administration for Abyei to govern the area until 2011.¹

Unlike the other two transitional areas, the citizens of Abyei were granted the right to decide by local referendum in 2011 whether to remain in North Sudan or become part of Southern Sudan. This referendum is to be conducted independently from the national referendum under which residents of Southern Sudan will vote whether to become an autonomous state or remain part of Sudan.

The Protocol provides that, for the period until the referendum in 2011, the net oil revenues from Abyei will be shared between the GNU and the Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS), with small percentages allotted to local populations.² However, the ruling NCP has interpreted the Protocol to mean that this arrangement does not begin until the Abyei border has been agreed, which has not yet happened. The Abyei Boundary Commission presented its findings to the presidency on July 14, 2007, but the NCP has repeatedly rejected it.³ The NCP argues that with no boundary yet determined it is not obliged either to appoint a local administration or to share oil revenues from the Abyei area. The stakes are high. The boundary proposed by the Commission includes 3 major oil fields–Heglig, Diffra and Bamboo Complex–whose 2005-2007 revenues were roughly $1.8 billion.⁴

Mounting resentment over lack of implementation of the CPA in general, and in particular the Abyei Protocol, culminated on October 10, 2007 with the SPLM withdrawing from the GNU.⁵ While the SPLM agreed to rejoin the GNU in December 2007, the status of Abyei remained unresolved.

National political tensions have exacerbated longstanding local ethnic and resource disputes. The Dinka Ngok, a sub-group of the Dinka ethnicity, has villages, agricultural land and wet and dry season pasture for their cattle throughout the area. Other Dinka groups from further south also farm and pasture cattle in the area. The Dinka is the largest and most geographically extensive ethnic group in Southern Sudan and regards Abyei as belonging to it.

Meanwhile, Misseriya Arab nomads – largely allied with the northern government – also claim rights over the land, which they pass over each year to vital dry season grazing along the river Kiir (Bahr Al Arab)and its tributaries in Southern Sudan. Some Misseriya have settled in the area around Abyei and many Misseriya traders live in Abyei town. This arrangement has sometimes led to clashes between Misseriya and Dinka, but these disputes have been settled locally, generally without serious escalation.

National dynamics played into local tensions throughout the war years. However, since the discovery of oil in the area and the signing of the CPA, these tensions have taken on a new dimension. The arrangements for a future referendum provided the NCP and the GOSS with both the time and the incentive to influence the population count and the ethnic composition of Abyei in an effort to influence whether Abyei and its precious oil revenue remain with the North or join Southern Sudan.

Dinka Ngok leaders have accused the northern government of using Arab Misseriya as militia to drive out the Dinka and resettle Abyei with NCP supporters,⁶ while others point out that the SPLM has been encouraging return of Dinka populations to Abyei from Khartoum and Kenya, which they interpret as an attempt by the SPLM to increase southern support in the town. NGO staff who had been working in Abyei at the time told Human Rights Watch that some 6,000 Dinka returnees arrived in Abyei in April alone.⁷ 

Building Tensions

Between January and May 2008 both Khartoum’s SAF and the SPLA deployed additional forces to Abyei.

The CPA provides that Abyei be secured by a Joint Integrated Unit (JIU) made up equally of SAF and SPLA forces, operating together and with a common mandate, uniform and doctrine. The two forces deployed a JIU of some 300 soldiers each to Abyei in January 2006,⁸ but both sides accused the other of failing to withdraw their individual forces from the area.⁹

In particular, the SPLA complained that the NCP failed to withdraw a SAF brigade (‘Brigade 31’) that remained stationed in the town. Instead, in mid April 2008, an additional 220 heavily-armed SAF arrived in Abyei to reinforce it.¹⁰ The SPLA denied the SAF commander’s counterclaim that the SPLA was building up its own forces in Abyei, but witnesses told Human Rights Watch of a build up of SPLA along the border to the south.¹¹

With so many forces present, skirmishes occurred frequently in and around Abyei. In one such incident on February 7, fighting broke out between soldiers from Brigade 31 and the SPLM after their vehicles collided on the road from Debab to Abyei, and seven people, including Gal Deng Alek, the SPLM commissioner of Bien Nhom, were killed in the accident and the fighting that followed. While an UNMIS investigation found that the incident was sparked by a road traffic accident, Dinka Ngok relayed it to Human Rights Watch as an ‘ambush’ by Brigade 31 – underlining the level of mistrust between the two sides.¹² Residents of Abyei told Human Rights Watch that this incident significantly exacerbated existing tensions between Dinka and Arab communities.

While the SAF Brigade 31 is largely made up northern Sudanese ethnic groups, including Misseriya, it also incorporates some 200 southerners formerly part of the South Sudan Unity Movement (SSUM). The SSUM, originally a militia group allied with Khartoum, was formally incorporated into the SAF after the CPA came into effect. Residents of Abyei told Human Rights Watch that between 2005 and 2008, SPLM authorities in Abyei complained to SAF and UN officials that SSUM soldiers were abusing civilians in Abyei and surrounding villages, including allegations that they had raped two Dinka women in Todaj, north of Abyei town, between February and April 2008.¹³

In addition to building up forces in Twic County, south of Abyei, the SPLA also deployed some 80 additional forces to Abyei itself in March 2008 as ‘bodyguards’ for the newly-appointed SPLM representative, Edward Lino. The NCP saw the appointment of Lino, a former senior commander in the SPLA, formerly head of its intelligence branch, itself as provocation, accusing the SPLM of making a preemptory appointment of an administration for Abyei, something that the parties agreed under the CPA be the prerogative of the Sudanese presidency.¹⁴

On a local level, the SAF also accused the SPLM of setting up a series of unauthorized checkpoints in northern parts of Abyei. One such checkpoint was put up at Dukra, 10 km north of Abyei town – the scene of the initial skirmish that triggered serious fighting in May.¹⁵ Witnesses also told Human Rights Watch that the SPLA arbitrarily detained a prominent Misseriya leader and an NCP representative in April 2008. According to their statement to UNMIS, they were held for four days without food before being released following threats by Misseriya leaders to launch an attack on the SPLA.¹⁶

Outbreak of Fighting

According to witnesses, on the evening of May 13, 2008 fighting broke out between SSUM soldiers of SAF’s Brigade 31 and Southern Sudan’s SPLA police at the checkpoint at Dukra. One SAF and one SPLA police were killed in the fighting, and another SAF (from the SSUM) was taken to the hospital in Abyei town. This incident brought tensions in Abyei to boiling point. The next morning a group of heavily armed SSUM/SAF in three pick-up trucks went first to Dukra where they again clashed with the SPLA, and then to the hospital where they found that the injured man had died in the night.

One medical worker told Human Rights Watch:

Lots of soldiers came inside the hospital with guns so the medical staff ran away. The soldiers refused to leave their guns outside. They had machine guns and AK 47s.¹⁷

According to residents who fled the fighting, at about 11.30 am the SAF began shooting apparently at random around the hospital and market area. SPLA soldiers responded, and over the next few hours there was extensive exchange of fire, including of mortar and heavy artillery, around the hospital, the market and residential areas.¹⁸ The JIU quickly divided into its Northern and Southern components, with the SAF element being brought under the command of the 31^st Brigade, and fighting against the SPLA element.

When fighting broke out most civilians were able to flee the town. However, some who were forced to stay or who returned told Human Rights Watch that in the following days SAF soldiers and Misseriya militia coming from the north extensively looted and destroyed civilian homes and buildings. By May 17^th up to half of the buildings in the town had already been burned to the ground.¹⁹ In the early morning of May 20, the SPLA launched a fresh offensive with reinforcements but were again pushed back, with a high numbers of casualties on both sides.²⁰