North Sudan accused of failing to implement Abyei deal

JUBA, Thursday

More than a month after it was agreed and signed, the Abyei peace deal is yet to leave the paper on which it was written in order to have a meaningful impact on people’s lives in the contested oil-rich area.

The North Sudan army doesn’t trust the peacekeepers stationed in the area. And the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army does not trust the North Sudan army.

Many of the displaced people don’t trust the Sudan Armed Forces. Nor do they trust the United Nations peacekeepers. And they don’t trust the semblance of peace in the area.

Slowly re-emerging

Tensions are slowly re-emerging in Abyei, the contested oil-rich region where up to 90,000 people were displaced by heavy fighting in May, despite peace efforts.

The fresh tension arises out of a failure by the Northern troops to completely pull out of the area following the agreement, which required both the Southerners and the Northerners to leave the area by June 1.

“One of our military people reported yesterday that the remnants of the SAF forces are harassing people down there, even beating them,” Sudan People’s Liberation Army Spokesman Major General Daniel Parnyang said yesterday.

‘‘They are trying to provoke our people, but our people are patient.”

A Sudan Armed Forces 31st Brigade has been accused of causing a humanitarian crisis in Abyei, and the South Sudan government has called for the investigations of its leaders for crimes against humanity.

Some 10,000 Abyei residents fled to the North, and another 50,000 fled South.

The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in early July described Abyei as calm and stable in the majority of the areas where the displaced persons have settled.

But in a new report on July 22, New York based rights group, Human Rights Watch, says many displaced persons are not willing to return.

“Almost the entire population of Abyei fled,” Human Rights Watch says in a new report.

Were still living

“In mid July they were still living in temporary shacks or crowded into homes with other families. Many told Human Rights Watch they are unwilling to return until the Khartoum government fully withdraws its SAF military forces from the town.”

On Wednesday, Southern Sudan’s army accused northern forces of raiding a village in the oil-producing Abyei.

But the army in Khartoum said the accusations were untrue. The southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army said a village 10 kilometres north of Abyei had been attacked on Tuesday by the northern Sudan Armed Forces.

“They have burned down houses and schools,” the SPLA Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, James Hoth Mai, told Reuters.

He said he had no reports of casualties.

But the army spokesman in Khartoum said: “There is absolutely no truth in this matter ... . Until now we have withdrawn 77 per cent of our battalion from Abyei and we are continuing with this.”

Under the Abyei roadmap, the return of the displaced persons was conditional on the deployment of the security teams and the withdrawal of the Sudan Armed Forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army troops.

Joint, Integrated Units, deployed within 10 days of the June 8 agreement, were to replace the North and South Sudan armies, which should have moved out of Abyei by June 30.

A battalion of joint units, comprising 300 troops from the SPLA, on June 18 left Juba for Abyei to link up with an equal number of troops from the North. The two would fill the gap left by the departing South and North Sudan armies.

Southern Sudan has completed withdrawal of forces from Abyei.

The North Sudan army, Major General Parnyang said, retains a battalion in the town.

“They have taken the other battalions just outside Abyei, but one battalion is still inside,” he said.

The north Sudan forces have also looted houses and property from Abyei.

“Even their place, they have burnt it down and they are taking away what they burned. I don’t know what they found useful in that,” Parnyang said. “They have misbehaved; people are talking about that.”

The SAF has behaved while withdrawing the way it behaved while getting into Abyei. HRW gives a chilling account of what happened in Abyei as told by witnesses who fled the area.

Soldiers shot civilians as they ran and detained and then arbitrarily killed others.

“Their testimony suggests that at least 18 civilians were killed in the fighting,” HRW says. “In the days that followed the fighting, government soldiers and Misseriya militia looted and torched the market and civilian houses in Abyei town.”

Abyei’s entire market was completely destroyed. So were half the homes in the area. Even after the fight ended, the looting continued.

“Soldiers and militia also robbed and severely damaged the compounds and property of UN agencies and NGOs that had been supporting post-conflict reconstruction and humanitarian assistance in Abyei,” according to the report.

But even worse for Abyei peace is that trust in the UN peacekeepers to stop a recurrence of what happened is at an all time low.

HRW points out that in the run-up to, and during the fighting, the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) was severely hampered in its ability to protect civilians and to support implementation of the CPA.

“This was the result of inherent limitations in the UNMIS mandate, lack of sufficient personnel and resources, and movement restrictions imposed by both SAF and the SPLA,” says HRW.

The tragic element to this tale is that much of the peace in Abyei was largely because of the symbolic presence of UN peacekeepers.

But the failure of the UN to keep the peace in Abyei has to some people raised questions about the organisation’s ability to keep the peace in Sudan.