South Sudan fragile peaceTensions simmer in oil-rich region

Oil-rich South Sudan voted overwhelmingly to secede from the rest of Sudan in a January 2011 referendum. But the world's youngest nation - formed on July 9, 2011 - faces huge challenges, including rising violence, lack of government services and deep poverty.

• North-south border unresolved
• Troop build-up in oil-rich Abyei region
• Tribal clashes displace tens of thousands

The referendum was a key part of a 2005 peace deal that ended Africa's longest-running war, which pitted the Sudanese government in the north against rebels in the south.

The 21-year civil war killed 2 million people and forced more than 4 million from their homes, according to U.N. estimates. Displaced southerners who had fled to north Sudan and neighbouring countries began returning home in late 2005, but many remain displaced.

The separation of the south from the rest of Sudan is fraught with tensions, including the division of oil revenues. Most of the oil is in the south, but the infrastructure to export it is in the north. Other issues include the demarcation of the north-south border and the status of the oil-rich Abyei region which is claimed by both sides.

Clashes in two of Sudan’s border states – Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile - have forced many to flee to South Sudan.

The south is likely to take years, as well as billions of aid dollars, to get back on its feet after the war. It is one of the poorest regions in the world with some of the worst health statistics, few government services and little infrastructure.

Regular clashes in South Sudan between tribes and attacks by armed rebels force tens of thousands to flee their homes each year.

South Sudan separated from the north on July 9, 2011, after southerners voted overwhelmingly to secede in a referendum held in January 2011.

The referendum was a key part of Sudan's peace agreement which in 2005 formally ended the 21-year civil war between the government in Khartoum and rebels in the south.

The separation of the south from the rest of Sudan is fraught with tensions and unresolved flashpoints. These include the division of oil wealth, demarcation of the north-south border, the status of the oil-rich Abyei region which is claimed by both countries, and the status of displaced southerners living in the north.

Before the referendum, many experts said Khartoum would not give up the oil-rich south without a fight, and some fear the two sides may yet return to war.

Within South Sudan, armed rebel groups threaten the region's peace, and tribal clashes over land, water and cattle are common.

Africa's longest war

Sudan's two-decade civil war killed 2 million people and forced another 4 million from their homes, according to U.N. estimates. Many southerners remain displaced.

Often depicted as a conflict between the Arab, Muslim north and the black animist or Christian south, the war was fought over oil money, political power and religious issues.

The separation of north and south dates back decades. British colonialists separated the two until 1947 and, before independence in 1956, gave political power over them both to a northern elite. Fearing marginalisation by the north, southern army officers mutinied in 1955, forming the Anya-Nya rebel group. War between north and south continued until 1972, when a peace deal gave autonomy to the south and integrated Anya-Nya rebels into the national army.

But tensions grew over Khartoum’s systematic violations of the peace agreement, discovery of oil in the south and a growing Islamic shift culminating in the government’s countrywide imposition of Islamic sharia law in 1983. That year armed groups in the south, including the main rebel organisation, the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), began a fresh insurrection.

At its height the conflict spread, both politically and militarily, beyond the geographical confines of the south. The SPLM deployed soldiers to eastern Sudan to support fellow insurgents there, and developed links with Eritrea, which was dealing with an Islamic insurgency it said was supported by Khartoum.

Peace deal

The civil war ended in 2005 with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). But the road to peace has been rocky with both sides accusing the other of violating the accord.

Under the power-sharing agreement, the ruling party in Khartoum, the National Congress Party, gave up half its ministerial posts to the SPLM but held on to the most powerful ministries - energy, defence, justice and internal security.

Both sides agreed to split billions of dollars of oil revenues. Leaders in southern Sudan promised to use the oil money to build much-needed infrastructure and construct 10,000 km (6,200 miles) of roads within six years.

Under the CPA, the SPLM had the right to form a southern regional government and hold a referendum in 2011 to decide whether it should remain part of Sudan or secede.

Sudan’s first multi-party elections in 24 years were held in April 2010. They were a key part of the peace process, but opposition parties in both the north and south boycotted the polls saying the conditions for elections were unconstitutional and undemocratic.

They had called for the polls to be postponed until a genuinely inclusive transitional government was established that would implement reforms needed for free and fair voting.

President Bashir and his National Congress Party (NCP) won the national presidential and parliamentary polls. Salva Kiir was elected southern president and his SPLM swept the board in the south.

Humanitarian crisis

South Sudan is trying to cope with a massive influx of people returning to South Sudan, which has created tensions over land and stretched the few available services.

Most of the 4 million who fled the civil war were internally displaced and about 600,000 people were refugees scattered throughout six neighbouring countries.

The first part of 2008 saw a surge in returnees as people headed home to be counted in a national census in April, and many returned ahead of the south's 2011 referendum.

The pace of new arrivals increased after July 2011, with an estimated 500 people a day entering South Sudan, according to the U.N. Secretary-General’s November 2011 report on South Sudan. Most of them are in the border states of Unity, Northern Bahr al-Ghazal and Upper Nile.

Hundreds of thousands of people have returned to the south, but thousands remain displaced in the north, reluctant to return to a region still devastated by the war. Many have lived their entire lives in urban environments in northern Sudan and been educated in Arabic, with free access to health and education.

South Sudan is a bleak place to live, with widespread hunger and staggering mortality rates. Many communities lack clean drinking water, land to farm, work opportunities, health facilities and schools.

According to Refugees International, South Sudan ranks near the bottom in the world in all social indicators including education, literacy, and child malnutrition.

Nearly half of teachers in South Sudan have only completed primary education and have no other qualifications, the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported in 2009.

It has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world - much worse than rates in the north.

The area had little infrastructure before the civil war and much of what it had was destroyed during the war. Today there is only about 40 km of paved road, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

The lack of infrastructure affects hunger levels, because it is difficult to transport food from regions that produce a food surplus to those where food is in short supply.

Hunger reached crisis levels in Jonglei, Warrap, Upper Nile, Unity and Western Bahr al-Ghazal states, because of the combined impacts of conflict, poor rains and food and fuel price hikes caused by border closures, the United Nations said in November 2011.

In January 2012, the United Nations said 120,000 displaced people needed emergency food aid in Jonglei.

Across the country, up to 3 million people face food shortages in 2012, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET) said in December 2011.

Fighting displaces tens of thousands of people every year, and makes it difficult to deliver aid. The United Nations said aid agencies were unable to reach up to 60 percent of the country for parts of 2011, and reported many incidents of the national army and others commandeering aid, attacking aid workers and restricting their access to people in need.

In Unity and parts of Jonglei state, armed groups have re-laid mines, hindering people’s ability to travel.

Tens of thousands have fled fighting in Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile states and sought refuge in South Sudan.

Building a new state

South Sudan faces many challenges as it builds a new state, both within its borders and from Sudan.

NORTH-SOUTH ISSUES:

Negotiations between the north and south have so far failed to resolve some key issues from the 2005 peace deal.

Both Khartoum and South Sudan are heavily dependent on oil revenues, and the division of oil wealth is still under discussion. The majority of Sudan's oil comes from the south, but all the infrastructure to export it (pipelines, refineries and Red Sea port) is in the north. Under the peace deal, Khartoum received half of the revenues from oil found in the south, once pipeline fees and other costs had been deducted.

In January 2012, talks reached a crisis point. South Sudan shut down its oil production in protest after Khartoum started to seize some southern crude to compensate for what it called unpaid transit fees.

The demarcation of the 2,000 kilometre north-south border has not yet been resolved. In June 2011, both sides agreed to form a demilitarized buffer zone, to be monitored by international peacekeepers and independent observers. And in September, they signed a border security agreement, establishing joint teams backed by U.N. peacekeepers to monitor the buffer zone and its 10 crossing points.

But the agreements are difficult to implement because of ongoing disagreement about the location of the border in several key areas and insecurity in the border region.

The citizenship of southerners living in the north is also a contentious issue. They now need work and residency permits to stay in the north. 

In December 2010, Bashir said that if the south seceded, he wanted to create Sudan as an Arab-Islamic state. In October 2011, he said Sudan will go ahead with plans to adopt an entirely Islamic constitution. This raises questions over the status of southerners living in the north and other minority African and Christian sections of the population.

Three oil-rich border states – Abyei, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile - are potential flashpoints between the two countries and there has been a build-up of forces and arms in all three states.

Many people in the states fought alongside the southern Sudanese in the civil war.

Under the 2005 peace deal, Abyei has the option of holding a referendum to decide whether to join the north or the south. However, this has not yet been held and the state is claimed by both sides. People in the north's Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states feel betrayed by the peace deal because it did not give them the same option.

For more, see AlertNet's Sudan briefing.

DOMESTIC ISSUES:

The government was created from a liberation movement with allied militias and its transformation from this to becoming a civilian democratic government will take a lot of work, experts say.

South Sudan has lost many of its best and brightest to the diaspora, and many of those who remained to fight for freedom and independence are poorly educated and lack the skills to build a new government and economy from scratch, regional expert Eric Reeves said.

Much of the government's budget is currently spent on the military and there is little left over to spend on development, in a region with few public services and very little infrastructure.

Armed groups are an ongoing threat to stability.

On independence, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Sudan (UNMIS) was wound up and a new mission, the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), was formed. Nearly 5,500 peacekeepers had been deployed by December 2011.

ARMED THREATS TO SOUTH SUDAN'S FRAGILE PEACE:

South Sudan is awash with small arms and now that southerners have achieved their common goal – independence from the rest of Sudan – experts fear tensions will resurface between the government and its dissenters.

In 2011, insecurity affected all 10 states - particularly Warrap, Unity and Jonglei – displacing more than 325,000 people, the United Nations said in November.

The 2005 peace agreement did not address some key areas affecting security in the south. It recognised only the SPLM, leaving out smaller armed groups in the south whose demands for a share of power and resources were similar to those of the SPLM.

The peace deal also did not address the potential for in-fighting, despite well-known rivalry between two main ethnic groups, the Dinka and Nuer. That rivalry was exacerbated by the Khartoum government, which manipulated tensions between Sudan's various ethnic groups for its own advantage.

In 2010, several armed groups formed after Sudan's national elections. The SPLM swept the board at the April polls, further estranging many opposition groups who said the southern government and army was dominated by the Dinka ethnic group. They also accused it of corruption, the U.S.-based advocacy group Enough Project said in a March 2011 report.

Although several rebel groups afterwards signed peace deals with the southern government, one of them - led by George Athor in Jonglei state - renewed fighting after the referendum on independence.

Other rebel groups are active in Upper Nile and Unity states, including the South Sudan Liberation Army.

Juba says the rebels are funded by Sudan, which denies the accusation.

Tribal clashes over land, water and cattle are also common, displacing tens of thousands of people each year, and many communities have refused to disarm as a result.

A cattle-raiding feud between the Lou Nuer and Murle tribes in Jonglei state killed hundreds of people and displaced some 100,000 between July and December 2011 alone. Women and children have been targeted in the fighting and grain stores destroyed. In January 2012, the United Nations said 120,000 people needed emergency food aid.

Tens of thousands were also displaced in the Lakes and Western Equatoria states in early 2011.

The Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is also active in the south, particularly in Western Equatoria and Western Bahr El Ghazal states, abducting children and forcing thousands to flee their homes every year. Many aid workers have to use armed escorts to travel in the area.

The SPLM has accused Khartoum of using some armed groups, including the LRA, as proxies to destabilise the region. Khartoum denies the accusations.