---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Ashworth <[email protected]> Date: Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 7:56 PM Subject: [sudan-john-ashworth] Panthou/Heglig: lowering the temperature? To: Group <[email protected]>
It will probably be some time (if ever) before we learn whether SPLA decided to withdraw voluntarily, pressured perhaps by the USA, or whether SAF recaptured Heglig. As Reuters says, "Limited access for independent journalists to Sudan's remote conflict zones makes it difficult to confirm the often contradictory claims issued by all sides" (article 2, below). It may be a bit of both; SPLA still has guerilla roots and losing soldiers' lives defending a city is often less effective than withdrawing and then harassing the enemy's supply lines once they have reoccupied it. Whichever it is, South Sudan appears to have achieved its political objective of bringing its own narrative to an international discourse which was dominated by Khartoum's narrative. The world is now aware that Juba claims Panthou/Heglig, and that South Sudan can, when the situation demands, move out of its normally restrained stance and demonstrate its resolve to bring Khartoum to the negotiating table on equal terms. South Sudan has also reclaimed the moral high ground by responding to international requests to lower the temperature of the conflict. The world now awaits a similar conciliatory gesture from Khartoum. As the British Ambassador said, “We hope... that both sides will refrain from further military action”. Uganda's stance (article 4, below) contrasts starkly with that of the AU. This is not the first time that Uganda has broken ranks with the rest of Africa over Sudan. Uganda has first-hand experience of Khartoum's support for the LRA. The international community should take seriously this warning of a regionalisation of the war if Khartoum continues to seek to resolve its disputes with South Sudan by military action. John BEGIN 1. South Sudan Says It’s Pulling Out of Oil-Rich Heglig Region By Jared Ferrie and Salma El Wardany - Apr 20, 2012 4:46 PM GMT+0300 South Sudan said it’s withdrawing its forces from the disputed border region of Heglig as Sudan’s defense minister said Sudanese soldiers drove them out. “An orderly withdrawal will commence immediately and shall be completed within three days,” government spokesman Barnaba Marial Benjamin told reporters today in Juba, the capital. The decision to pull out is “without prejudice to our stand” that Heglig is part of South Sudan, he said. Sudanese Defense Minister Abdel Raheem Muhammad Hussein said in a speech on state television that his country’s forces entered the region at 1:15 p.m. today and liberated Heglig town. “The enemy suffered huge losses,” he said. South Sudan occupied the oil-rich Heglig region on April 10 in an escalation of fighting between the two countries. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday called the move an “illegal act.” While both nations claim Heglig, Sudan has administered its oil fields since the south seceded in July, assuming control of about three-quarters of the formerly united country’s production of 490,000 barrels a day. After southern forces occupied the area, oil production of 40,000 barrels a day has been shut down, out of Sudan’s total output of 115,000 barrels a day, the Sudanese ambassador toKenya, Kamal Ismail Saeed, said in Nairobi on April 18. Oil Facility Burning Sudan will seek compensation from South Sudan for the damage caused by its occupation of Heglig, Omar Dahab, head of the international cooperation department at the Foreign Ministry, said in a phone interview from Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. The damage is still being assessed, he said. South Sudan’s military spokesman, Philip Aguer, said Sudanese forces yesterday bombed the central processing facility in Heglig. “That facility has been burning through the night,” he told reporters today in Juba. Benjamin called on Sudan to halt aerial bombardments and ground incursions into South Sudan, while the U.K. government urged the two countries to resume negotiations. “We hope the withdrawal will be orderly and that both sides will refrain from further military action,” Alastair McPhail, the U.K. ambassador to South Sudan, told reporters today in Juba. Jared Ferrie Journalist, South Sudan +211 (0) 991 896 982 +211 (0) 977 567 867 END1 2. S. Sudan orders withdrawal from oil area, easing crisis Fri Apr 20, 2012 2:30pm GMT * Sudan says "liberated" the area * Sudan state TV plays military-themed montages * South Sudan says air strike hit Heglig oil facility By Ulf Laessing and Alexander Dziadosz JUBA/KHARTOUM, April 20 (Reuters) - South Sudan said on Friday it would withdraw its troops from the disputed Heglig oil region more than a week after seizing it from Sudan, pulling the countries back from the brink of war. Sudan said it had already "liberated" the area, as state television showed footage of hundreds of people gathered in the streets of Khartoum chanting, cheering and waving flags. South Sudan's seizure of the territory had raised the prospect of two sovereign African states waging war against each other openly for the first time since Ethiopia fought newly-independent Eritrea in 1998-2000. Tensions have been rising since South Sudan split away from Sudan as an independent country in July, under the terms of a 2005 settlement, taking with it most of the country's known oil reserves. The countries have still not agreed on the exact position of their shared border and the dispute between them has already halted nearly all the oil production that underpins both economies. South Sudan President Salva Kiir ordered the unconditional withdrawal of his troops within three days, the country's information minister told reporters in the southern capital Juba. "The Republic of South Sudan announces that SPLA (southern army) troops have been ordered to withdraw from Panthou (Heglig)," Barnaba Marial Benjamin said. Benjamin said the withdrawal was in response to appeals from world leaders and "to create an environment for the resumption of dialogue with Sudan". U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for the South to pull out on Thursday. The South still believes Heglig, which many southerners call Panthou, was its rightful territory and wanted its status to be determined by international arbitration, Benjamin added. In Sudan, where television channels were playing bellicose military-themed montages, the defence minister said the "armed forces were able to liberate Heglig and clear it of South Sudan's forces and mercenaries." "We in the armed forces are ready to continue the operation to its limits until we reassure the Sudanese people," Abdel Raheem Muhammad Hussein said in a speech broadcast on state television. "The armed forces moved ... to preserve what is left of the oil facilities," he said. DAMAGED ECONOMIES Philip Aguer, spokesman for South Sudan's army, said Sudan had bombarded Heglig on Thursday, caused the central processing facility to catch fire. "A MiG yesterday bombed oil facilities in Heglig and one facility was hit, the central processing facility, which separates water from crude oil," he said. "It caught fire yesterday and was burning." Limited access for independent journalists to Sudan's remote conflict zones makes it difficult to confirm the often contradictory claims issued by all sides. Heglig was central to Sudan's economy because it produced about half of the 115,000 barrel-per-day oil output that remained in the country after the South seceded. An oil official on Wednesday said Sudan had lost about 40,000 barrels per day of output as a result of the fighting. The landlocked South shut down its roughly 350,000 barrels per day of output in January in a dispute with Khartoum over how much it should pay to export via pipelines, a Red Sea port and other infrastructure in Sudan. Much of South Sudan's oil was routed through the Heglig processing plant until the shutdown. The south secured its independence in a referendum promised in the 2005 peace accord that ended decades of civil war between Khartoum and the south. Religion, ethnicity and oil fuelled the conflict that killed about 2 million people. (Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz, Ulf Laessing, Hereward Holland and Alexander Dziadosz; Writing by Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by Andrew Heavens) http://af.reuters.com/article/sudanNews/idAFL6E8FK5VA20120420?sp=true END2 3. Sudan declares “liberation” of Heglig as Juba announces SPLA pullout April 20, 2012 (JUBA-KHARTOUM) – Sudan announced on Friday that its armed forces had defeated South Sudan’s army and regained full control of the oil-producing region of Heglig, shortly after Juba announced an immediate withdrawal of its army. South Sudan’s information and media minister, Barnaba Marial Benjamin, on Friday told reporters in Juba that the country’s president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, had ordered the immediate withdrawal of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) from Heglig. "The Republic of South Sudan announces that SPLA troops have been ordered to withdraw from Panthou (Heglig)," Benjamin said. "An orderly withdrawal will commence immediately, and shall be completed within three days," he added. Shortly after South Sudan’s announcement, Sudan’s defense minister Abdel Rahim, Mohamed Hussien appeared on state television to declare the liberation of Heglig. Hussein said that Sudan’s army (SAF) liberated the area after defeating SPLA forces. Heglig was occupied by the SPLA last week, leading to the worst standoff between Sudan and South Sudan since the latter seceded last year. The outbreak of military confrontations followed months of failed negotiations between Khartoum and Juba over border demarcation, citizenship and oil exports. (ST) http://www.sudantribune.com/BREAKING-NEWS-Sudan-declares,42329 END3 4. Uganda warns Sudan over attacking Juba IN SUMMARY: We shall intervene. Army chief Gen. Aronda says reports that LRA rebels have made contact with Khartoum, coupled with lessons from the past, will push Kampala to pull the trigger. By Risdel Kasasira Daily Monitor (Uganda) Posted Friday, April 20 2012 The Chief of Defence Forces, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, has said Uganda will be forced to intervene if the fighting between South Sudan and Sudan escalates into a full-scale war. Gen. Aronda said the UPDF also has intelligence information that Khartoum was “again making contacts” with the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels, whom he said have moved towards Bahr-el- Gazel. “We will not sit by and do nothing. We will be involved having suffered a proxy war by Khartoum. Our people in northern Uganda suffered and intelligence information also indicates that the LRA, who have an estimated 200 guns, are again in contact with Khartoum,” he said. Gen. Aronda was on Wednesday night presenting a paper on the role of African militaries in promoting peace and security in East Africa and the Horn of Africa to a meeting of military generals and other security experts from Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia in Kampala. His comments appeared to confirm previously unverified reports that the militaries of some Great Lakes region countries have been mobilised in preparation for what could turn out to be Africa’s next war, this time pitting parts of Black Africa against a Khartoum-led Arab coalition. There are security reports saying the LRA, who were previously hiding in the forests of Obo, Central African Republic, have moved to Northern CAR near the Sudan border, sparking fears that the Ugandan rebels could be about to be re-injected into a conflict which for decades had Uganda and the Islamic regime locked in mortal proxy combat. Gen. Aronda told his colleagues from Kenya and Ethiopia to come up with a position on the fighting which has broken out between the two countries. South Sudan is Uganda’s biggest export trading partner and if the fighting escalates to all-out warfare, the country is likely to lose billions of dollars and contend with another humanitarian crisis as refugees stream across the northern frontier. The bilateral trade between Uganda and South Sudan is highly asymmetric with the volume of exports from Uganda being disproportionately larger than the volume of exports from Sudan to Uganda and largely informal. There is also flourishing informal trading between communities across the borders. Gen. Aronda called for an urgent meeting of the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which brings together eight eastern African countries to discuss the fighting that is taking place along the shared border around the oil town of Heglig, which South Sudanese troops captured last week. The two-day security meeting organised by Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE) and International Development Association (IDA) discussed fragility of the security situation in the Horn of Africa. When asked whether Uganda would be involved militarily, the UPDF spokesperson, Col. Felix Kulayigye, said: “I don’t want to speculate but as a member of IGAD, we shall not sit and watch the Comprehensive Peace Agreement being reversed.” In 2005, Khartoum signed onto the precursor to Southern Sudan’s independence, the CPA, with the then rebel Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, bringing to an end a conflict which had sucked in Uganda whose northern territories became a proxy fighting field between UPDF and the LRA. Gen. Aronda’s comments coincide with threats by the Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir to topple the South Sudan government in Juba and “liberate” the south Sudanese. But hours after Bashir’s threats, Juba announced they had captured another town near the border with the northern neighbour. The army spokesman, Col. Philip Aguer, said their troops fought off a huge SAF invasion targeting Western Bahr-el-Ghazel State, eventually capturing a spot that SAF has long held in Rajab County in the state. However, Juba said it was ready for talks with Sudan. Information minister, Dr Barnaba Marial Benjamin said in statement that they want SAF to withdraw from Abyei, cessation of hostilities, deployment of UN troops as some of the conditions that would enable the southern troops to withdraw from Heglig. Enemy state The northern state’s parliament was quick to brand its southern neighbour an “enemy” on Tuesday and called for the swift recapture of the region. The former deputy Kenyan chief of defence forces, Lt. Gen. John Koech, yesterday told Daily Monitor that the UN has to create a buffer zone to restrain the two countries from engaging in a bloody war. President Museveni recently told European Union delegates during a meeting at State House in Entebbe that Arab chauvinism is the cause of animosity between the two countries and the marginalisation of people in Nuba, Darfur, Blue Nile and Kordofan states. Background The frosty relationship between Uganda and Khartoum in the past years, was largely placed on accusations and counter-accusations between the two states. Whereas Uganda accused Khartoum of backing the Lord’s Resistance Army led by Joseph Kony that wreaked havoc in the north, Sudan on the other hand said Kampala was backing then rebel outfit SPLA, which was fighting for independence of the South. It was the initiation of the CPA, repulsion of LRA and ultimate independence of the South that provided some respite. Additional reporting by Machel Amos in Juba. http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1390156/-/avktvyz/-/index.html END4 5. South Sudan/Sudan: The human rights crisis behind the political spat By Alex Neve, Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada and Khairunissa Dhala, South Sudan Researcher, Amnesty International 20th April 2012, Juba, South Sudan “Have they forgotten about us?” - Sudanese refugee, Yida Refugee Camp, South Sudan The spectre of war between Sudan and South Sudan has loomed large during our time at the Yida refugee camp over the past week. Along the increasingly tense border, the mounting conflict between the two countries has loomed in the background as both a distant spectacle and a sinister threat. But many refugees are concerned that amidst the spiralling possibility of war, they feel increasingly forgotten. Each day has brought fresh reports of the deterioration in the relationship between the two countries, dimming the hopes for peace after South Sudan’s independence in July 2011 ended a protracted civil war and mass human rights violations. South Sudan has occupied Sudan’s Heglig oil fields, though has today ordered its troops to withdraw. Bombs have rained down from Sudanese Antonovs and MiG fighter jets which streak through the skies above South Sudan’s northernmost regions. The rhetoric in the two capitals, Juba and Khartoum, is full of defiance and warmongering. The international community has certainly taken notice. Numerous world leaders, the UN Secretary-General and Security Council, and the African Union have all gone on the record, calling on the two governments to pull back from the brink of war and to recommit to the peaceful resolution of outstanding disputes related to finalizing their new border and divvying up lucrative oil revenues. What seems lost in the march to war is that for hundreds of thousands of civilians living along this troubled border – particularly in Sudan’s restive Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states – insecurity, fear and massive human rights violations have already been their reality for 10 long months. The Sudanese government’s heavy-handed response to the armed campaign mounted by the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army – North in the area has been marked by indiscriminate aerial and ground attacks. With countless deaths and injuries and hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee, Amnesty International has repeatedly documented this appalling human rights and humanitarian crisis. In Yida and other refugee camps in South Sudan we have seen and heard first-hand the many ways in which this crisis has not abated. Certainly, abuses and suffering continue across the border in Sudan. An 18-year-old girl told us how she watched on as a shrapnel fragment from an aerial bomb killed her 3-year-old sister. As she described it, “one moment we were running for safety and then suddenly she was dead.” A 38-year-old man described to us how his brother, father and uncle were all shot dead by Sudanese troops at the front door of their family home. There are many other tragic stories of death and destruction. New refugee arrivals, desperate to reach Yida before the impending rainy season makes passage impossible, are streaming in at a rate of some 200 per day. All talk of their fear of the continuing attacks and of the widespread hunger because it is impossible to plant crops in these conditions. The Sudanese government meanwhile blocks humanitarian aid to the area. Life is not easy in South Sudan’s refugee camps either. They are isolated and difficult to reach, and providing a regular supply of water and food is a great challenge. A disagreement between refugee leaders and UN agencies about whether Yida should be recognized as a permanent camp or a transit centre en route to locations further inside South Sudan, has meant that essential supplies – such as tarpaulins to protect shelters from the rains – have not yet been distributed. A small number of international organizations are doing important work against great odds at Yida, but UN organizations such as the refugee agency UNHCR and UNICEF are – to date – virtually absent. Refugee children are particularly vulnerable. A staggering 6,200 children – one-third of the camp’s population – are attending primary school at Yida. But there is no funding for their education. They are being taught by the camp’s 136 volunteer teachers. Among the students are hundreds of unaccompanied refugee girls, several of whom have spoken to us of the terrible insecurity they face living in the camp. And with the area’s infamous rainy season deluge only three weeks away, all of this is only going to get worse. That’s unless there is urgent and concerted action taken on both sides of the border and by the international community to bring this human rights crisis to an end. Human rights violations – particularly indiscriminate military attacks – must stop, immediately, in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile. And the Sudanese government must allow unhindered humanitarian assistance throughout the area. The UN for its part should spearhead an all-out effort to ensure the wide-ranging and pressing needs of Yida’s refugee population (which could increase by many thousands over the coming weeks) are met, before rains put them largely beyond reach. The prospect of a war between Sudan and South Sudan should clearly be a pressing concern for the international community. But the human rights crisis that already exists must not be forgotten. http://livewire.amnesty.org/2012/04/20/south-sudansudan-the-human-rights-crisis-behind-the-political-spat/langswitch_lang/es/#more-5569 END5 ______________________ John Ashworth Sudan, South Sudan Advisor [email protected] +254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile) +211 919 695 362 (South Sudan mobile) +27 82 050 1235 (South Africa mobile) +44 750 304 1790 (UK/international) +88 216 4334 0735 (Thuraya satphone) PO Box 52002 - 00200, Nairobi, Kenya This is a personal e-mail address and the contents do not necessarily reflect the views of any organisation -- The content of this message does not necessarily reflect John Ashworth's views. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, John Ashworth is not the author of the content and the source is always cited. You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sudan-john-ashworth" group. 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