Two months of fighting along the border
between North
and South Sudan appears to be coming to a close, with both
governments agreeing to a peace deal that will see a bolstered U.N.
force occupy some disputed territory. In January, South Sudanese
voters supported secession in an election first set up by a 2005
Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which nominally ended the second
Sudanese civil war. With Southern independence becoming official on
July 9, tensions have flared in the disputed region of Abyei and the
Northern province of South Kordofan.
Abyei has been embroiled in voter
eligibility disputes since January. Both the Misseriya and Ngok Dinka
ethnic groups live in Abyei. Both trace their lineages to the region
and graze their livestock in some of the same areas. Small-scale
clashes over land and water resources grew into more hardened
disputes through both civil wars.
The Misseriya allied with the
government of the North, and the Ngok Dinka with the Southern Peoples
Liberation Movement, an armed organization that controls most of the
South. Tensions boiled over in mid-May when SPLM troops ambushed a
column of Northern forces. For roughly a month after that, Northern
forces occupied a significant part of the province, displacing tens
of thousands.
The people who reside in the Nuba
mountains—known as the Nuba—were virtually written out of the
2005 peace accord. While the Nuba were allied with the SPLM during
the second civil war, no special provisions were made for them; they
were considered part of the Northern province of South Kordofan for
voting purposes. The Nuba, who had expected potential self-rule and
an end to political marginalization as a result of their alliance
with the South, continue to fight for those goals.
The Nuba militia have significant
military capabilities. Fighting broke out between Northern troops and
the Nuba’s armed groups on June 5 when the North made moves to
disarm them. The fighting quickly escalated as both sides deployed
thousands of soldiers, leading to the displacement of almost half a
million people. Sporadic clashes between the two sides continue to
take place in South Kordofan.
Both the North and South have agreed to
withdraw forces from Abyei , and have accepted a plan that will boost
a UN. peacekeeping mission by adding approximately 4,000 Ethiopian
troops. In South Kordofan, the African Union is attempting to broker
a cease-fire between the two sides at the time of this writing.
The role of U.S. imperialism
U.S. imperialism has strongly supported
an expanded U.N. mission in Abyei. Over the course of the past two
decades, the U.S. government has supported Southern secession as a
way to weaken the Northern government in Khartoum, with whom they
have frequently clashed, particularly over Sudanese support for
Palestinian and other armed groups in the Arab and Islamic world.
Since coming to office, the Obama
administration has shown more willingness than the past two
administrations to engage with the North. The heightened tensions in
Northern Sudan, with the onset of Southern independence, may also
serve to drive Khartoum into a closer engagement with the U.S.
government.
The loss of the southern part of the
country will cost the National Congress Party government significant
oil revenues. The majority of oil fields are in South Sudan, but the
need to ship oil to North Sudan to sell it means the two sides must
work together. Thus, it is likely that the 50-50 profit-sharing
agreement now in force will be adjusted more to the favor of South
Sudan.
The NCP faces both internal
disagreements and a strong opposition, buoyed by the more precarious
economic situation. Reductions in state subsidies on fuel and other
commodities have caused protests across the North. For the NCP, the
economic squeeze makes the lifting of sanctions, particularly from
the United States, a high priority. The U.S. government, which is not
a party to the International Criminal Court, can also help shield
those NCP officials who are under ICC indictment for war crimes.
The opposition to the NCP includes
those like former Sudanese leader Hasan al-Turabi, who in the 1990s
hosted a number of Palestinian and other Arab armed factions in
Sudan, as well as the Sudanese Communist Party. Twice before,
Sudanese governments have been overthrown by popular revolt and the
possibility of a revolt or a coup is ever present. Therefore the
prospect of preventing further radicalization of the Khartoum
government is only one potential benefit the United States hopes to
gain from closer engagement
Additionally, avoiding war raises the
prospect of economic rewards from both oil and Southern
infrastructure development. Finally the Obama administration can
exploit some level of diplomatic credit for managing tensions in the
Sudan.
The U.S. strategy is currently in
accord with the rest of the U.N. Security Council and significant
elements of the African Union, all of whom, for varying reasons,
desire a working relationship with and an end to warfare between the
North and South.
The current situation in Sudan has to
be understood on several levels. The overarching conflict is an elite
competition between the NCP in the North and the SPLM in the South.
They each have interests in taking the maximum amount of oil-rich
territory, and territory in general, to control the balance of power.
This exacerbates a variety of national tensions, as land-use and
ethnic rivalries become proxies in the North-South struggle.
U.S. imperialism is looking to
manipulate the tensions in an effort to limit Sudanese support for
various national liberation and Islamic groups across the region,
protect the prospect of economic opportunity for both itself and its
regional allies, and gain “humanitarian” laurels for a role in
defusing tensions in Sudan.
For revolutionaries in the United
States, the principal focus of our struggle must be to raise the
demands: Lift the Sanctions! Hands Off Sudan! Imperialist
intervention of any kind can only hurt truly revolutionary forces and
oppressed nationalities.
