ابيي تقترب من ان تكون جنوبية

Quote: 1 Francis Deng, The Man Called Deng Majok: A biography of power, polygyny, and change (Yale University Press, New Haven, NJ, 1986), p. 229. 2 The CPA covers an interim period of six years until a referendum in 2011, when the people of the ten states of the Southern Sudan will vote whether to remain part of a united Sudan or become independent. During that time the country as a whole is to be governed by a Government of National Unity in Khartoum, and the South by a Government of Southern Sudan in Juba. The NCP is the majority party in the GONU, while the SPLM is the majority party in the GOSS, at least until elections currently scheduled for 2009. The GOSS includes Southern members of the NCP as well as representatives of other Southern opposition parties. 3 The Misseriya are divided into two main sections: the Humr (‘red’) and Zurg (‘black’) Misseriya. They were united under the paramount nazirship of Babu Nimr in 1942, but it is the Humr, rather than the Zurg, who share the pastures and waterways of the Abyei Area with the Ngok Dinka. Ian Cunnison, ‘The Humr and their land’, Sudan Notes and Records 35, 2 (1954), pp. 50–1. 4 K. D. D. Henderson, ‘The migration of the Messiria into south west Kordofan’, Sudan Notes and Records 22, 1 (1939), pp. 55–62; P. P. Howell, ‘Notes on the Ngork Dinka of western Kordofan’, Sudan Notes and Records 32, 2 (1951), p. 241; H. A. MacMichael, The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan (Frank Cass, London, 1967 [1912]), pp. 140–6; Ian Cunnison, Baggara Arabs: Power and the lineage in a Sudanese nomad tribe (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1966), p. 1; Cunnison, ‘The Humr and their land’, p. 50. 5 Henderson, ‘Migration of the Messiria’, pp. 55–63. There has been no detailed historical research in the area, drawing equally on oral testimony from the Ngok and Humr, since Henderson’s time. Henderson’s article was frequently cited as evidence to the ABC by both sides in the dispute (not always accurately), and was accepted as a baseline for pre-twentieth-century history. Given the highly public and vigorously contested versions of the past the Ngok and Humr gave, it is unlikely that a more thorough collection of oral testimony will produce a more neutral record any time soon. 6 Henderson, ‘Migration of the Messiria’, pp. 66–8; Deng, Deng Majok, pp. 46–7. 7 Henderson, ‘Migration of the Messiria’, pp. 69–70; MacMichael, Tribes, pp. 143, 148. 8 B. Mahon, ‘Extract from a report by Mahon Pasha, on country from El Obeid, via Kadugh [sic] and Shibun, to Sultan Rob’s country on the Bahr El Homr, about 2 days from Lake Ambady’, in ‘Sudan Intelligence Report’ [‘SIR’] 92 (March 1902), App. F, pp. 19–20; B. Mahon, ‘Report on tour of inspection through western and southern Kordofan, 11 March, 1903’, ‘SIR’ 104 (March 1903), App E, p. 19; ‘SIR’ 127 (February 1905), p. 2; MacMichael, Tribes, p. 148; ‘SIR’ 126 (January 1905), pp. 1–2; R. C. Bayldon, ‘Summary of Bimbashi Bayldon’s Report on the Bahr El Arab sudd’, ‘SIR’ 128 (March 1905), App. C, p. 10. Even in the 1950s the Humr referred to the Bahr el-Arab as the Bahr ed-Deynka (Cunnison ‘The Humr’, p. 51). 9 The trace map folder for map 65-K (Abyei) in the Sudan National Survey Authority in Khartoum shows that the 1912 edition of the map bore the warning note, ‘The course of the Bahr el Arab is entirely unsurveyed.’ Corrections made in December 1918 shifted the known position of the ‘Gurf/Kir’ (as it was still identified) further north and east of the position on earlier maps, and changed the name of the Ngol from the ‘Bahr el Homr’ to the ‘Ragaba ez-Zarga’. 10 ‘SIR’ 128 (March 1905), p. 3; W. F. Sweny, ‘Annual report. Bahr-El-Ghazal Province 1905’, in ‘Reports on the Finance, Administration and Condition of the Sudan 1905, Part IV. Provinces’ (El-Sudan Printing Press, Khartoum, 1906), p. 3; J. R. O’Connell, ‘Annual report. Kordofan Province 1905’, in ‘Reports on the Finance, Administration and Condition of the Sudan 1905, Part IV. Provinces’ (El-Sudan Printing Press, Khartoum, 1906), p. 111. 11 Michael and Anne Tibbs, A Sudan Sunset (Hobbs the Printers, Totton, 1999), p. 167. In the hierarchy of Native Administration the nazir umum among nomad Arabs was the #####alent of paramount chief among the African tribes of the South. 12 Deng, Deng Majok, pp. 223–8. 13 Kevin O’C. Hayes, ‘Dar rights among the nomads: an arbitral award’, Sudan Law Journal and Reports 5 (1960), pp. 336–7; Gaim Kibreab, State Intervention and the Environment in Sudan, 1889–1989: The demise of communal resource management (Edwin Mellen Press, New York, 2002), Chapter 4. 14 Kibreab, State Intervention, Chapter 5. Documents on the Rizeigat–Malwal dispute can be found in the National Records Office, Khartoum, Civsec I 66/4/35 vol. I. 15 Douglas H. Johnson, ‘Tribal boundaries and border wars: Nuer–Dinka relations in the Sobat and Zaraf valleys, c. 1860–1976’, Journal of African History 23, 2 (1982), pp. 183–203. 16 Francis Deng, The Dinka of the Sudan (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1972), p. 151; Francis Deng, Dynamics of Identification: A basis for national integration in the Sudan (Khartoum University Press, Khartoum, 1973), p. 60; Deng, Deng Majok, pp. 238–40; Abdalbasit Saeed, The State and Socioeconomic Transformation in the Sudan: The case of social conflict in southwest Kurdufan (University of Connecticut, unpublished PhD dissertation, 1982), pp. 221–5; David Keen, The Benefits of Famine: A political economy of famine and relief in southwestern Sudan, 1983–1989 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1994), pp. 40–2. 17 Keen, Benefits of Famine, pp. 54–61. 18 Keen, Benefits of Famine, pp. 60–2; David C. Cole and Richard Huntington, Between a Swamp and a Hard Place: Developmental challenges in remote rural Africa (Harvard Institute for International Development, Cambridge, MA, 1997), pp. 64–5. 19 John Ryle, ‘Displaced Southern Sudanese in Northern Sudan with special reference to southern Darfur and Kordofan’ (report, SCF-UK, London, February 1989), pp. 9–10; Alex de Waal, ‘Some comments on militias in the contemporary Sudan’, in M. W. Daly and Ahmad Alawad Sikainga (eds), Civil War in the Sudan (British Academic Press, London, 1993), pp. 144–51; Keen, Benefits of Famine, pp. 72–3; Cole and Huntington, Between a Swamp and a Hard Place, pp. 57–76. 20 Saeed, The State and Socioeconomic Transformation, pp. 163–4, 235, 420–3; Francis Deng, War of Visions: Conflict of identities in the Sudan (The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 1995), pp. 296. 21 ‘Abyei Protocol’ Resolution of the Abyei Conflict, Chapter IV of ‘The Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Government of the Republic of the Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Sudan People’s Liberation Army’ (Nairobi, 9 January, 2005) [hereinafter the CPA], p. 68. 22 ‘Abyei Annex. Understanding on Abyei Boundaries Commission’ in the CPA, p. 217. 23 Ibid. 24 Abyei Protocol, p. 68. 25 The experts were nominated by the US and UK governments, and the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) secretariat overseeing the peace negotiations. They were: former Ambassador Donald Petterson (chairman, nominated by the US), Dr. Douglas H. Johnson (historian, American, nominated by the UK), Prof. Godfrey Muriuki (historian, Kenyan, nominated by IGAD), Prof. Kassahun Berhanu (political scientist, Ethiopian, nominated by IGAD), and Prof. Shadrack Gutto (lawyer and land rights expert, South African, nominated by IGAD). 26 I was told of government pressure on Mukhtar by three participants in the Karen and Naivasha negotiations: one international observer and two from the SPLM team. In the subesquent debate over the ABC report Mukhtar has been more outspoken. In a meeting between Misseriya and Ngok leaders in Khartoum on 27 November 2006 he ‘noted that he had said something during the peace talks in Karin [sic], Kenya, for which he had been criticised by some people among the Misseriya, but which he was prepared to say again. He reiterated that while people coexisted and interacted, there was Dar El Denka (the land of the Dinka) and Dar El Missiriya (the land of the Missiriya), and found it unconscionable for some Arabs to lay claims to the land of the Dinka.’ ‘List of the Missiriya Arabs and the Ngok Dinka who met with Dr Francis Deng on November 27, 2006 at the Nile Hilton in Khartoum’ (typescript minutes in the author’s possession). 27 Two documents were particularly important in revealing this confusion. One was a 1902 itinerary presented by the government in support of their case, where a Condominium official reported crossing the ‘Bahr el-Arab’ at ‘Fauwel’ and then continuing south past Dinka villages to the ‘Kir, or Bahr el Jange [Dinka]’ (‘Route 101, El Obeid to Dar el Jange by Major E. B. Wilkinson, January and February 1902’ in Count Gleichen (ed.), The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, vol. II (HMSO, London, 1905), pp. 155–6). ‘Fauwel’, or Pawol, was one of the sites visited by the ABC and lies to the north of the Ragaba ez-Zarga/Ngol. The other was a 1904 letter found by the experts in the Sudan Archive at the University of Durham, which claimed that the Ngok Dinka chief Arop Biong lived on the ‘Kyr’ river, fifty miles south of the ‘Bahr el-Arab’ (W. A. Boulnois [Governor of Bahr el-Ghazal Province] to Wingate [Governor General], 23 December 1904, SAD 275/9/39–40). This was clear evidence that the provincial authorities of both Kordofan and Bahr el-Ghazal at the time believed that the ‘Bahr el-Arab’ was to the north of its actual location, and that the Ngok Dinka and this section of the Kiir lay inside Bahr el-Ghazal Province. 28 Abyei Boundaries Commission, ‘Abyei Boundaries Commission Report’ (14 July 2005) available at . Part 1 outlines the claims presented by the government, SPLM, Misseriya and Ngok, along with a summary of the evidence relating to them. Oral testimony is transcribed in Part 2, Appendix 4; documentary evidence is presented in Part 2, Appendix 5; and map evidence is discussed in Part 2, Appendix 6. 29 The distinction between ‘dominant’ and ‘secondary’ rights is discussed in the ‘Abyei Boundaries Commission Report’, Part 2, Appendix 2. 30 ‘Abyei Boundaries Commission Report’, Part 1, Map 1. 31 ‘Misseiriya [sic] chiefs in stormy meeting after handing over to the Presidency of the Abyei Boundary Commission Report’, Akhbar Al-Yaum, 16 July 2005. 32 I was later told that for one month after the report was posted on the Sudan Open Archive, persons in Khartoum attempting to read the document found their access blocked. 33 Njahira Gathara, ‘Trouble in Abyei’, Sudan Mirror, 2 March 2006 available at . 34 ‘Speech of the President of the Republic Field Marshal Umar Hassan al-Bashir to the Sudanese diaspora’, 2 January 2007 (in Arabic) available at . 35 Luka Biong, ‘Overview of the emerging security situation in southern Sudan’ (paper presented at the Consultative Workshop on Defence White Paper for Southern Sudan, Juba, 5 September 2007). The output of the Abyei oil fields is expected to decline after 2006, but it is still considered a signficant source of income for the NCP, with anticipated revenues of over $500 million a year. International Crisis Group, ‘Sudan: breaking the Abyei deadlock’ (Africa Briefing No. 47, 12 October 2007), pp. 1, 7–9. 36 ‘Sudanese tribe backs implementation of Abyei protocol’. Source: Al-Ayyam, Khartoum, in Arabic, 29 September 2007, BBC Monitoring ME1 MEEau 290907/as-mj. There is a split in the ruling family of the Misseriya. Babu Nimr’s sons by his Misseriya wives, led by Mukhtar Babu Nimr, have been active in dialogue with the SPLM and the Ngok Dinka. His sons by the niece of Sayyid Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi (the grandfather of the leader of the Umma Party, Saddiq al-Mahdi), led by former chief-of-staff General Mahdi Babu Nimr, have taken a more militant line, hostile to the Abyei Protocol and any accommodation with the Ngok. 37 ‘Sudan: joint military team discusses recent ambush on militia convoy’. Source: Suna news agency website, Khartoum, in Arabic, 22 March 2006, BBC Monitoring ME1 MEEau 220306/hs. 38 Battalion 250 of the 31st Brigade redeployed to Abyei from Diffra on 6 February, 2007. UNMIS, The CPA Monitor (February 2007), p. 44 available at . 39 Skye Wheeler, ‘Sudan deadlock over Abyei stops thousands going home’, Reuters, 15 August 2007, available at . ‘Gurtong interviews Kuol Deng, Abyei paramount chief of the Ngok Dinka’, 15 August 2007, available at . 40 UNMIS, The CPA Monitor (March 2007), section 3.1 available at . 41 Swangin Isaac, ‘Besieged SPLA platoon arrives Juba’, The Juba Post, 13–20 September 2007, p. 1 available at . 42 ‘Salva Kiir says “Sudan will likely reverse again to war”’, Sudan Tribune, 11 September 2007, available at . In an unscripted (and unreported) aside in his opening address, Salva Kiir explained that the sending of an SPLA team to screen the Misseriya recruits had been agreed with the Ceasefire Joint Military Committee, but SAF claimed that the SPLA had violated the ceasefire agreement by sending an armed platoon in uniform to Southern Kordofan. 43 Nick Wadhams, ‘Tension rises between North, South Sudan over Abyei region’, 15 August 2007, available at .