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From: Tsegai Emmanuel (emmanuelt40@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Oct 20 2010 - 10:18:15 EDT
Sudanese Efforts to Delay Southern Independence
October 20, 2010 | 1349 GMT
Summary
Sudan’s defense minister said two upcoming referendums, one of which is for
Southern Sudanese independence, should be postponed. The statement reflects
Khartoum’s continued efforts to delay the possible departure of the oil-rich
south.
Analysis
On the same day that Sudanese Defense Minister Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein
said both the Southern Sudanese referendum on independence and a separate
referendum for the region of
Abyei<http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20101014_northern_sudanese_leaders_discuss_delaying_abyei_referendum?fn=4517404766>should
be delayed due to “the reality on the ground,” a leading Southern
Sudanese army official criticized the United Nations Mission in Sudan
(UNMIS) on Oct. 19 for failing to monitor northern troop buildups in several
border regions. Tensions are rising in Sudan less than three months from the
day both referendums are scheduled to occur, and while Khartoum’s official
line remains that it is committed to holding them on time, its real position
is far different.
By including the Southern Sudanese referendum in his remarks, which were
delivered in Cairo following a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak, Hussein becomes the highest-profile member of Sudan’s ruling
National Congress Party (NCP) to call openly for rescheduling both
referendums. If these referendums are going to take place on time, as the
U.S. and Southern Sudanese governments insist, they will do so only over the
objection of Khartoum, which does not relish the idea of losing access to
Southern Sudan’s oil wealth.
The official line from Khartoum has been that the government is committed to
holding the Southern Sudanese
referendum<http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20091229_sudan_agreement_last?fn=5617404723>as
scheduled Jan. 9, 2011. While some northern officials recently have
said
the vote on Abyei should be delayed, NCP leaders have been more careful when
speaking about the larger, more important referendum in the south. Khartoum
does not want that vote to take place, but rather than simply saying this,
it expresses its position by attaching a series of conditions to its consent
for the referendum to proceed on schedule. These conditions include a full
border demarcation; an agreement on splitting oil revenues from border
regions; an agreement on how to divvy up Sudan’s large foreign debt; and a
separate set of stipulations for the Abyei vote.
None of the preconditions Khartoum wants resolved have been fulfilled, nor
will they be in the next two and a half months (and especially not by Nov.
15, when voter registration for the southern referendum is to begin). These
are all ways for Khartoum to show that it opposes the referendums’ occurring
at all, all while nominally complying with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement
(CPA) that ended the latest civil war in 2005.
Khartoum’s Three Levers over Southern Sudan
The Sudanese government has three main levers over the south. The first is
legal, the second is military and the third is involves using Abyei as a
bargaining chip.
Khartoum controls both the Southern Sudanese Referendum Commission (SSRC)
and the Technical Border Committee (TBC), which respectively are in charge
of organizing the referendum and of drawing the line between north and
south. Both groups contain members from north and south but ultimately fall
under northern control. The SSRC has demonstrated how it can string out the
process of voter registration to justify a delay, while the TBC is almost
hardwired for gridlock over where the actual border should be drawn (to say
nothing of the next step, which involves a physical demarcation of the
border drawn on paper). As the legal foundation for the referendums is the
CPA, which also ordered the creation of the SSRC and TBC, Khartoum uses its
influence over these bodies to paint any vote held against its wishes as
illegitimate.
The military, however, is the most obvious — and effective — tool at
Khartoum’s disposal. Both north and south still have troops deployed along
the border regions, though the exact numbers and locations of troops are
shrouded in rumor and secrecy. In recent weeks, accusations from each side
regarding the other’s troop movements have been frequent. A recent example
came on Oct. 18, when two Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM)
officials claimed that a marked increase of northern troops has occurred
well south of the border in Unity state. One of the officials claimed that
several credible Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) sources had informed him that
Sudanese President Omar al Bashir ordered Hussein on Oct. 14 to redeploy
certain troops from northern territory into “strategic places” within the
south. These troops reportedly were instructed to collaborate with any of
the active southern militia groups, which Khartoum used heavily as proxy
forces against the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) during the most
recent north-south civil war. A separate SPLM official said that the SAF,
which used to have no more than a battalion in Parieng county (the very
northern tip of Unity state), had increased its forces, armed with modern
weapons, to “five times” the previous number. No timeline for the increase
was given.
Reports of troop movements in oil-producing regions like Unity will only
intensify as Jan. 9 comes closer, given that both north and south have a
significant interest in distorting the facts on the ground. UNMIS, a neutral
observer, will serve as a valuable guide to what actually is happening, but
cannot be expected to provide a perfect rendition of events. UNMIS is
hampered both by the small size of its overall force (just over 10,000 in an
enormous territory with decrepit transport links) and its limited mandate
(it must gain consent from both north and south before engaging in many
monitoring activities), which impede effective intelligence collection.
The U.N. Security Council announced Oct. 15 that UNMIS had been instructed
to redeploy certain units to “hot spots” along the north-south border to
focus its resources on areas deemed particularly contentious (most likely
meaning primarily the oil-producing regions, though the precise hot spots
were left undefined). This decision drew Khartoum’s ire, as it came in
response to a personal plea from Southern Sudanese President Salva Kiir, who
told a visiting UNSC delegation in Juba in early October that he feared the
SAF was gearing up for another war. Almost immediately after the decision to
deploy to hotspots was announced, reports surfaced that 100 UNMIS troops had
already been sent to Abyei. A U.N. official subsequently denied these
report, however, claiming on Oct. 19 that the troops in question were on the
verge of leaving the region, and were only there at the moment as the
vestiges of a routine patrol carried out in September.
The United Nations has been very clear about the fact that UNMIS will not be
increasing in size, but merely reshuffling its deployment locations. The
main problem is that Khartoum does not want the force to monitor the most
sensitive regions along the border, for obvious reasons. This led to
criticism from the SPLA on Oct. 19, when senior officer Mat Paul claimed
that the southern army had informed the United Nations three times since
August of ongoing SAF troop buildups in border regions including Southern
Kordofan and Abyei, but that UNMIS had merely “kept quiet.”
Though the Abyei issue is related to the larger Southern Sudanese
referendum, it is treated as a separate dispute by the CPA. The chances of
this separate referendum being delayed are high, and an upcoming round of
talks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, between the NCP, SPLM and various tribal
delegations is not expected to lead to a breakthrough. Khartoum is doing all
it can to delay the Abyei referendum, either to provoke an SPLA response
(and thus justify the north’s hardened position in other arenas) or to use
Abyei as a bargaining chip for southern concessions elsewhere. More than any
other region in Southern Sudan, Abyei has the ability to spark a larger
conflict. This is especially evident in light of the report that Bashir gave
the go ahead for the SAF to begin cooperating with proxy militias in the
vicinity of Unity state, which borders Abyei.
Southern Sudan and Oil
Amid all of this looms the issue of oil revenues. The northern government is
acutely aware of the potential financial losses southern secession would
bring. In an interview given Oct. 17, the Sudanese finance minister warned
Sudanese citizens of looming austerity measures should secession occur and
the north lose 70 percent of its oil reserves and 50 percent of its shared
oil revenues.
Exactly how much of the oil production Khartoum would lose is debated, but
by any tally it would represent a significant blow to the Sudanese economy.
Control over oil revenues thus remains the driving force behind Khartoum’s
delay tactics regarding the independence referendum.
But just as the north stands to lose so much from secession, the south
stands to lose 100 percent of its oil revenues if Khartoum were to shut off
its access to the only export pipelines in the country. Each side thus needs
the other, as the Kenyan export
alternative<http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20100913_possible_kenyan_alternative_southern_sudanese_oil?fn=2817404793>is
years away at best. Faced with the stark choice between war and
cooperation, the sides are likely to broach the topic of how both could
profit from an independent Southern Sudan’s oil production — while
simultaneously preparing for a fight.
Read more: Sudanese Efforts to Delay Southern Independence |
STRATFOR<http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20101019_sudanese_efforts_delay_southern_independence#ixzz12uMmgOKr>