مقال مهم للنييورك تايمز عن الرابح و الخاسر في موضوع أبيي

Quote: Memo From East Africa Border Town Incursion Poses Big Risk for Sudan By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN Published: May 23, 2011 NAIROBI, Kenya — With just seven weeks to go before declaring independence, a goal that has taken more than 50 years and millions of lives, southern Sudan’s leaders watched the northern Sudanese Army — their longtime nemesis — steamroll into the disputed town of Abyei over the weekend and essentially annex it overnight. Diplomatic pressure does not seem to be working to calm the situation, so the question now is whether the south will mobilize its army and try to capture Abyei, or be forced to swallow a humiliating defeat. “They really don’t have any good options,” said an American official who works on Sudan but was not authorized to speak publicly. “They’re so close to getting what they worked so hard to get, and a war could risk all that. But I can tell you they’re very, very mad, at the highest levels.” The calculus goes something like this: If the south were to stage a counterattack or up the ante militarily, the north could accuse it of violating the peace treaty, signed in 2005, that set out the terms for southern independence. Analysts say the north would then refuse to recognize the south’s independence come July 9, when southerners are preparing for a huge celebration, the birth of their new nation. A bitter contest between north and south could quickly emerge, both on the battlefield and on the global diplomatic stage. Some nations would probably recognize an independent southern Sudan while others would back the government of Khartoum, in the north, and treat the southerners as renegades. What adds a layer of complexity — and volatility — is Abyei’s symbolic power. It is a sparsely populated area, dusty and thorny, and it does not even produce much oil anymore — a few thousand barrels per day. But it straddles the north-south border, both sides claim it and both sides have strong allies living there. The Misseriya nomads, who drift in and out of Abyei and are aligned with the north, are “ferocious fighters” whom the government has used in the past as proxy militias, said Abdelwahhab El-Affendi, a Sudanese political scientist at the University of Westminster in London. Khartoum “feels obliged to them, especially since it may need them again,” he added. As for the southerners, Abyei is home to some of their top leaders, including several ministers and military commanders. To make matters more complicated, although Abyei is ethnically and culturally connected to southern Sudan, local Abyei chiefs agreed decades ago to be administered by the north. With better education opportunities, the Abyei contingent reached the top ranks of southern leadership. “There’s a tension in the south,” said Zach Vertin, an analyst for International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that advocates the prevention and resolution of violent conflict. “There are some who don’t want to risk renewed war or threaten the south’s independence over the territory, and there is another prominent constituency that feels it cannot capitulate any further.” On Monday, about 100 people staged a rally in Juba, the capital of southern Sudan, chanting “Abyei is 100 percent ours.” But while southern officials expressed frustration, they did not say what they would do next. “We do not declare war,” said Col. Philip Aguer, a spokesman for the southern military. “We respect the territories of southern Sudan.” Western diplomats continued to urge the northern Sudanese to pull out of Abyei, but there was no sign they were budging. United Nations officials said gunmen allied with the north continued to burn down huts and stores, #####ng what they could. Most residents, and the few southern troops that had been stationed in Abyei, fled just before the attack. In Washington on Monday, the Obama administration’s special envoy to Sudan, Princeton N. Lyman, said the north’s incursion into Abyei was “disproportionate and irresponsible” and warned that it jeopardized the peace agreement and efforts to normalize relations with the United States. The administration has promised to remove Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, to appoint an ambassador and to consider debt relief and other measures following the independence of southern Sudan in July. But “if we don’t have Abyei being negotiated, rather than occupied, it will be hard to move forward,” Mr. Lyman said. According to a Western official in Khartoum, a similar crisis was narrowly averted a few weeks ago. Western and African diplomats in early May had talked the northern government out of invading Abyei after southern forces ambushed northern troops, which were simply following protocols and convoying into Abyei as part of a United Nations-backed plan to have a few northern and southern troops run patrols together. The government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges connected to massacres in Darfur several years ago, agreed to show some restraint, even though at least a dozen of Mr. Bashir’s soldiers were killed. But after this happened a second time on Thursday, with another, similar ambush, the north tapped its air superiority — it has new Chinese-made fighter jets, compared with a few helicopters in the south — and bombed near a strategic bridge in Abyei on Friday. That set the stage for it to move all the chess pieces forward — tanks, troops, artillery — on Saturday. Despite the show of force, analysts say, the north does not want to start a war either. The south has tens of thousands of experienced fighters and a command cadre partly trained in the United States. Mr. Bashir seems to appreciate that any war with the south would be long and ugly, just as it was on and off since independence in 1956. A war would also mean that the north could lose access to oil, which it shares with the south and will most likely continue to share with it. While the bulk of the crude is in the south, the pipeline to export it runs through the north, virtually guaranteeing some type of north-south symbiosis after independence. So, why would the north risk an escalation? Because Abyei has essentially become a bargaining chip, Mr. Vertin said. “This is aimed at influencing negotiations,” he said. With the clock ticking toward July 9 and so many unresolved issues on the table — how exactly to split the oil; where to draw the border; how to share Sudan’s $38 billion debt — the north may have seized Abyei to strengthen its hand in the final round of negotiations before Africa’s largest country breaks into two.

Quote: الضغوط الدبلوماسية لا يبدو أنها ستنجح في تهدئة الوضع، وبالتالي فإن السؤال المطروح الآن هو ما اذا كان الجنوب سيخوض معركه و يسعي للسيطره علي أبيي، أم أن سيجبر على ابتلاع هزيمة مذلة.[ يقول مسؤول اميركي يعمل في السودان ( لم يريد التحدث علنا) ان الجنوبيون ليس لديهم أي خيارات جيدة "،. وقال "انهم قريبون من الحصول على ما كانوا يعملون من اجله ، وخطر الحرب غيركل ذلك. إنهم غاضبون جدا، وعلى أعلى المستويات ".

Quote: اذا قام الجنوب بهجوم المضاد أو صعد عسكريا، سيتهمه الشمال بانتهاك معاهدة السلام التي تحدد شروط لاستقلال الجنوب. ويقولالمحللون ان الشمال حينها سيرفض الاعتراف باستقلال الجنوب.

Quote: ويمكن يكون هناك سباق محموم بين الشمال والجنوب في ساحة المعركة وعلى الساحة الدبلوماسية العالمية. قد تعترف بعض الدول بدوله جنوب السودان و تساند دول أخري حكومة الشمال

Quote: ما يزيد الموقف تعقيدا رمزية أبيي فهي منطقة عدد سكانها بسيط و مغبرة وشائكة، ولا تنتج الكثير من النفط حتى بعد الآن -- بضعة آلاف برميل يوميا. ولكنها تمتد على جانبي الحدود بين الشمال والجنوب كلا الطرفين يدعيها كلا الجانبين له حلفاء أقوياء ممن يعيشون بأبيي