By Majak Mading
They have known nothing but pain and suffering. If it is not the deafening sounds of rockets and gunfire, it is the looting of their property and abduction of their children. While the Southern Sudanese are preparing to usher in an independent nation in July and the North is consolidating its leadership, residents of the Abieyi region will have nothing to celebrate.They have bore the brunt of the war between the North and the South because they live in the disputed border region which is rich in Oil resources. Now, they are preparing for the worst after fresh tension arose between the North and the South over renewed attacks.
Helpless villagers say the fighting over oil in the area has disrupted their lives as they cannot access water and other facilities. The Southern People’s Liberation Movement has accused the North of amassing troops at Abieyi allegedly to spark off another round of war. Mohammad Omar Ansari, a spokesman for the residents of Misseriya in Abieyi, described the situation as catastrophic, accusing the Ngok Dinka of denying his tribe access to sources of water by force and mobilizing fighters in their path. “It is a disaster. People are suffering and something has to be done soon,” he said. Ansari claimed that the SPLA had already killed 11 children from the Misseriya and abducted 7 as well as burning 11 vehicles within the last few days. He stressed that the Arab tribe will defend its wealth and threatened to burn everything if the SPLA started a war. “We will not sit back and watch as our people are killed. We will hit back,” he said angrily.
The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) has so far vehemently protested the deployment of additional police to Abieyi from the North, describing the move as “an open invasion”. The statement comes in response to reports that the Federal Ministry of Interior in the North dispatched 1,500 policemen to beef up security in the area along the oil areas at the extreme north of Abieyi.
Ansari said the territorial areas awarded to the Nine Dinka Ngok chiefdoms by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in July 22, 2009.
There are forces in Lengera village north of Abieyi named in Arabic as Goli. Others are in Kej also named Difra in Arabic and at Bongo. The new troops from the North who are allegedly well-equipped entered the area on Thursday, the same day a high profile Presidential meeting was taking place in Khartoum to discuss the way forward on Abieyi and post-referendum arrangements.
Deng Arop Kuol, the Abyei Chief Administrator, said this week that the deployment of the additional troops was not agreed by the two parties and that their presence is illegal and provocative. He accused the National Congress Party (NCP) of intending to forcefully take control of areas where oil is drilled by sending troops to the region. “The recent move by the ministry of interior in Khartoum to deploy 1,500 policemen in the area without the knowledge and approval of the SPLM and the Abieyi administration shows the clear intention of the NCP to take control of the oil-rich regions,” he said.
He added: “This is unacceptable and the citizens of Abieyi will not tolerate it. The interest of the NCP in the area is nothing other than the pursuit of oil and has nothing to do with the demands by the Misseriya to access water and pastures”.
“The National Congress Party is not genuine in its claim to include Misseriya in the referendum vote. They are only using Misseriya as a cover up for oil. This is what they are after. They do not care about the demands and future of the Misseriya as far as I know. But they should follow proper procedures,” said Kuol. He further said giving oil to the NCP will not solve the water and pasture issues in the region.
But the spokesman of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), Colonel Khalid Sa’ad Al-Sawarmi denied that the military had sent any troops to Abieyi. Citizens of Abieyi did not vote as parties to the CPA which did not reach a compromise on voter eligibility and composition of the referendum. The SPLM spokesperson in Abyei on the other hand accused the United Nations Mission in Sudan of failure to resolve the dispute through agreed procedures. He urged former South African president Thabo Mbeki who leads an African Union panel to investigate and reject whet he termed an “NCP plot to grab Abieyi.”
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is scheduled to hold a session on Abieyi attended by NCP and SPLM officials. The Sudanese foreign ministry spokesperson Khalid Moussa said that the meeting was requested by NGO’s working on the Abieyi issue. Moussa said that Sudan’s envoy at the UN held talks with P-5 members at the council to brief them on the realities on the ground.
Under the 2005 deal signed the by SPLM and the NCP, the citizens of Abieyi, like others in South Sudan, were allowed to vote in a referendum. The vote would have allowed citizens of Abieyi to decide whether they should remain in Kordofan in central Sudan where they were transferred or return to Bahr el Ghazal in South Sudan from where they were detached in 1905. The referendum was supposed to occur concurrently with the January 9 national referendum for the people of Southern Sudan.