From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Wed Sep 16 2009 - 18:15:07 EDT
FEATURE-Tribal killings stir dark memories in south Sudan
Wed Sep 16, 2009 7:58am GMT
* Wave of violence in Sudan's south
* Blood-letting raises fears ahead of referendum
* Raid on village kills 38
By Skye Wheeler
WERNYOL, Sudan, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Daruka Lueth knew it was no ordinary
cattle-rustling raid the moment more than 800 armed tribesmen circled her
south Sudanese village of Wernyol at dawn and opened fire on its thatch
huts.
Sudan's oil-producing south has been plagued by ethnic clashes for as long
as anyone can remember, mostly fought over livestock with relatively few
casualties.
This year larger and more dangerous forces have been at work, forces that
have already killed more than 1,200 people in a wave of violence that has
targeted villagers as often as cattle herders and women and children as
often as men.
The blood-letting has raised fears for the cohesion of the region's fragile
tribal patchwork, just as it is preparing for a referendum on whether to
split away from Sudan to become Africa's newest independent state.
The bullets ripped through the huts' walls in Wernyol as the attackers from
the Lou Nuer tribe closed in on Aug. 28. They shot through doors and cut
down villagers as they fled, killing 38 and injuring 64 by the end of the
half-hour raid.
There is a jagged line of graves on the outskirts of the rain-soaked
settlement, where Wernyol's residents from the Bor Dinka tribe were buried
where they fell.
The ground inside Lueth's hut is still marked with patches of blood, and
outside another small mound of earth shows the last resting place of her
17-year-old son, Chol Mabior.
"We were in here hiding. They came and shot my son," she said, talking to
Reuters inside her home.
"The violence began like this in 1991," she added, referring to the last
time she had to flee Wernyol, during a particularly bloody episode in
Sudan's 1983-2005 civil war.
NORTH-SOUTH CLASH
That conflict -- which ended in a 2005 peace deal that promised elections,
scheduled for April 2010, and the secession referendum in 2011 -- was
fundamentally a clash between the country's Muslim north and the mainly
Christian south.
But it also set southern tribe against southern tribe, as the northern
government armed and infiltrated rival groups to divide its enemy and rule.
Tribal militias were formed with shifting loyalties. In 1991, the entire
southern insurgency split along tribal lines leading to a vicious round of
Dinka-Nuer massacres that have not been forgotten or forgiven. Again,
Khartoum was blamed for encouraging the division.
For many, the parallels with today's violence are disturbing.
"This is the re-birth of old militia," the spokesman for south Sudan's army,
Kuol Diem Kuol, told Reuters.
Senior officials from the south's dominant Sudan People's Liberation
Movement (SPLM) have openly accused northern politicians of once again
arming tribes and militias to destabilise the south ahead of the referendum.
Khartoum denies the accusations.
BLAME
Khartoum may get a lot of the blame, but it is not the only potential
culprit, says John Ashworth, in a recent study for campaign group Pax
Christi.
"Not all the culprits can be traced to Khartoum, and some may have links to
SPLM," he wrote.
"Southern politicians and former militia leaders are perceived as being
involved, using local ethnic tensions for their own ends. When asked who is
behind the trouble, local people often answer, 'The politicians. The
intellectuals. People from the town'."
There have already been signs of splits within the SPLM, as leading figures
try to strengthen their fiefdoms ahead of national elections, scheduled for
April 2010.
Lam Akol, one of the leading figures in the 1991 split, formed a new
breakaway faction in June -- the SPLM for Democratic Change. Soon after,
south Sudan's army accused Akol of arming fighters from his Shilluk tribe
involved in another attack -- an accusation he also denied.
Cattle rustling is still playing a large part in the violence. Some of this
year's attacks have been launched in revenge for earlier cattle thefts.
Those traditional flashpoints have become more dangerous with the ready
supply of weapons, left over from the civil war and other conflicts, and
bored jobless youth, disaffected by the lack of development in the south
since the peace deal.
If the attackers' main aim is to disrupt the 2010 elections then their
tactic could be working, says Ding Akol, the commissioner of Wernyol's Twic
East County.
"In this environment can we do registration of voters? I don't think so. I
think it will be a partial election."
The intense fighting, which has been focused on the surrounding Jonglei
State, is also bad news for development.
Moldova's Ascom oil company is exploring close to Wernyol and much of the
rest of the state is included in a huge largely unexplored concession run by
French major Total.
In Wernyol itself, the thousands of residents who fled after the attack have
started to return, many to find their relatives killed and their harvests
destroyed. Few believe the August attack will be the end of the matter.
"They killed old people and babies. They came purposively to kill and
destroy the peace," said villager Makuol Bul Kiir, barely able to contain
his anger.
"They may come again and crush us others."
A few jumpy southern soldiers have also returned, taking up defensive
positions at the edges of the village facing out into the south's huge and
highly fertile pasturelands. (Editing by Andrew Heavens)
C Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved
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