Reuters AlertNet - Killing me softly in south Sudan

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Killing me softly in south Sudan

14 Jul 2009 08:55:00 GMT

Written by: Michael Kleinman

Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.

Women walk through the town of Nasir in southeastern Sudan, June 21, 2009. Tribal violence in south Sudan that has killed hundreds of people in recent months and displaced thousands more. Attacks stemming from disputes over cattle have escalated in south Sudan between two rival ethnic groups in an area where livestock are prized by southern pastoralists and represent wealth, status and stability in fraught times.
REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly

This blog post is taken from Michael Kleinman's change.org blog on humanitarian relief

The deadliest region of Sudan isn't Darfur - instead, it's Jonglei State in South Sudan, where inter-tribal clashes killed more than 1,000 people in March and April alone.

Casualty calculus is always somewhat problematic, but illuminating nonetheless - by way of comparison, 143 people were killed in Darfur over the same two-month period.

Relatively little has been written about the violence in South Sudan, but the stakes are incredibly high. As the Enough Campaign recently explained:

"It is increasingly evident that there is a widespread breakdown of peace in southern Sudan, and that both the North and the South are bracing for war in 2011, regardless of concurrent recommitments to implementation of the faltering Comprehensive Peace Agreement [CPA.]"

Though there are rumors that Khartoum is stoking the violence in order to destabilize the South, there's a lack of hard evidence. (For intra-Sudan dynamics, think Cain and Abel. Albeit heavily armed.)

Sudan scholar Douglas Johnson - author of the fascinating if somewhat dry book The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars - recently explained that the violence runs back to the north-south civil war, when each side armed various proxy militias.

Failure of the CPA has the potential to dwarf any violence over the past few years in Darfur. The north-south civil war lasted from 1983 until the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, killing roughly 1.9 million civilians.

The next big test - "milestone" if you're feeling optomistic, "hurdle" if you're not - for the CPA comes in the next few weeks, when the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague rules on the disputed boundary in Abyei, an oil-rich region along the north-south border.

Oh, and erratic rains might trigger a food crisis in Jonglei and three other states in South Sudan. For a comprehensive look at the humanitarian situation in South Sudan, please see the most recent UN OCHA humanitarian action weekly report.

On a happier note - The Fugees.

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Blogged by Michael Kleinman

Michael Kleinman is an aid worker, lawyer, and consultant. From 2004 to 2007 he worked for CARE, first as the organization's Advocacy Advisor in Afghanistan, then covering Sudan, and finally as CARE's Regional Advocacy Advisor for East and Central Africa. He left CARE in early 2007 to take a position with International Relief & Development in Iraq. Prior to going overseas, Michael worked for the Harvard Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, providing assistance to the United Nations. He is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School. He runs change.org's blog on a humanitarian relief.