Tempus 2007 v 43

Tidskriften

Will the war start all over again?

Oct 18th 2007 | JUBA
From The Economist print edition
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9988710

Fears are rising that civil war may resume in a part of the country that has had a rare few years of peace

“THIS time,” said the south Sudanese general, jabbing at the table, “we will take the war to their children. We will fight the war in the north and they will not forget it.” A few dusty streets away, in Juba, the capital of south Sudan on the banks of the Nile, an emotional crowd of supporters of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), which runs the south, gathered round the grave of John Garang, its charismatic leader who was killed in a helicopter crash in 2005. The protesters were listless in the midday furnace of the equatorial sun but their message was fierce and clear. If the north failed to honour the peace agreement signed in 2005, they would fight again.

That deal ended a war between north and south Sudan that had bloodily sputtered on and off for 50 years, killing some 2m Sudanese and displacing 4m more. The accord was a rare foreign-policy success for George Bush's administration. Now it may be unravelling. Does that herald a return to bloody conflict?

On October 11th the SPLM suspended its participation in the government of national unity in Khartoum. All of the SPLM's 18 ministers refused to turn up for work. Only Sudan's vice-president, Salva Kiir, who is also president of south Sudan, stayed on—but then Mr Kiir is not often in Khartoum these days.

The SPLM has many grievances, among them the initial refusal of Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's president, to let it reshuffle its ministers in the national government. It also objects to raids on its offices in Khartoum. But these slights are as nothing, says the SPLM, to the failure of Mr Bashir's ruling National Congress Party (NCP) to implement the north-south peace agreement. The southerners say they want progress before the third anniversary of the peace deal, on January 9th—or they will stay out of the national government and the peace accord may then collapse. It was unclear under what terms the SPLM would return to the government fold.

The northerners' initial response has been emollient. Mr Bashir has agreed to reshuffle the SPLM ministers and has arranged to meet Mr Kiir. But the underlying differences—over how to share power and wealth, mostly from oil—persist. The 27m or so northerners, mostly Arab and Muslim, are deeply reluctant to share power with the 8m or so southerners, who are black, Christian and animist.

If war broke out, it would probably be fought in the disputed oil fields in the borderlands between north and south: in southern Kordofan, Abyei, Unity and the Upper Nile states (see map). Rebel groups from Darfur might even join the fray.

The SPLM says there are 16,000 northern soldiers dug in, mainly around the oil wells in the border areas, together with hundreds of ill-disciplined and unauthorised “oil police” who would do the northern government's bidding. The southerners can probably muster some 70,000 former guerrillas who look a little more regular these days, in clean spats and uniforms, but they are still nearly all illiterate, ill-equipped, easily frustrated and prone to drinking and picking fights among themselves.

Under the peace agreement, northern troops should have been withdrawn in July, to be replaced by a joint command of northern and southern troops. Instead, the northerners appear to be reinforcing their positions. The mood is particularly tense in Abyei, an area the south thinks it can win over in elections due in 2009. The region's strategic importance and the NCP's need to be seen by its supporters (most of them Muslim Arab northerners) to stop what they see as the erosion of their country make it unlikely that Mr Bashir will be willing to carry out what he agreed to in 2005. Southern enthusiasm for the deal only raises suspicions in the north that Mr Bashir signed too much away.

A lot of oil is at stake. Some talk of 6m barrels a day in the future, albeit much of it low-grade. There are plans for pipelines westwards through Congo to the Atlantic and south-east through Kenya to the Indian Ocean, as well as a South African-planned railway to run south into Uganda to connect with east Africa's network. But most business-minded observers think such plans fanciful, like the models of Juba skyscrapers in government offices.

What is less fanciful is the southerners' determination. Just as the north thinks it has good reason to hold the line, the south is loth to let the 2005 agreement go. For ordinary southerners it is talismanic, even sacred; having cost 2m dead, it cannot be dishonoured. Most southerners look eagerly towards a referendum on independence in 2011, as agreed in the peace accord. Rough opinion polls suggest that they would vote overwhelmingly to secede. Sticking to the accord is seen as the last hope for north and south Sudan either to come to a federal accommodation or to go their separate ways—in peace.

A miscalculation by either side in the coming weeks could set the south ablaze, not least because the UN, which has 10,000 peacekeepers there, is absent from the hotly contested areas and is unlikely to be deployed in them any time soon. “The fuel is on the ground,” says an experienced Sudan watcher. “It just needs a match.”

No one knows what to do
Set against the spectre of war is the reality of peace. The south has been safer than in decades. Bellicose words are often followed by calmer ones. “We know what war is,” says Pagan Amum, an SPLM leader. “We have waged it, we know its cost to our people.” He wants foreign governments, this time including China's, to make Mr Bashir try harder to secure peace. The SPLM is annoyed that America has failed to force the issue already.

Seen from Juba, muddle and frustration prevail. America and others are distracted by Darfur, whose protagonists are to meet in Libya later this month to talk peace. In south Sudan, foreign donors cannot decide if they are dealing with a humanitarian emergency or building a nation. Ministry buildings are going up, but many of Juba's people live in tents.

Life for ordinary southerners is still grim. One woman in eight dies giving birth, the world's highest rate. Poverty is grinding, infrastructure rotten. The lifeline road to Uganda is unpaved; prices shoot up when it gets mired after rain. Swathes of the south are inaccessible. Though there is hopeful talk of gold, uranium and cadmium (used in batteries), it is hard to see how an independent south would survive—even if it broke peacefully away. But that will not stop its people from trying.