NAIROBI – The northern Sudanese army has seized a strategic town along Sudan’s contested north-south border in a serious military escalation that has the potential of igniting an all-out civil war, Western officials said on Sunday.
A column of northern Sudanese tanks rolled into Abyei, a flashpoint border town on Saturday, after weeks of hit-and-run clashes between northern and southern forces.
The southern part of Sudan is gearing up to declare independence in July and both northern and southern Sudan claim Abyei, making it one of the most combustible issues between the two sides. The Abyei area produces a small amount of oil but more than that, it has become a potent, emotional symbol for both northern and southern Sudanese. It has been called Sudan’s Jerusalem because of the difficulties of resolving its status.
“The SAF (Sudan Armed Forces) have taken this evening the control of Abyei town and repelled the enemy forces, ” declared a Sudanese state television news bulletin on Saturday night. According to United Nations officials inside Abyei, there were at least a dozen northern tanks now prowling the town. But the United Nations monitoring team in Abyei was hampered from making more detailed observations because several mortar shells landed near the United Nations compound, and United Nations personnel were reluctant to venture into Abyei’s streets.
The southern Sudanese forces, who have tens of thousands of heavily-armed soldiers – some of them trained by the United States, have not indicated yet how they will respond. On Saturday night, Philip Aguer, a spokesman for southern Sudan’s military forces, told AFP, “The SAF have entered Abyei, there is still fighting but they have come with tanks, they are shooting and shooting. ”
“Our police have been fighting but the SAF have sent many soldiers in, ” he added, speaking by phone from Juba, the capital of southern Sudan.
The crisis comes right as a delegation from the United Nations Security Council is in Sudan, visiting both sides in preparation for the division of Sudan this summer.
Abyei has been a sore spot for years, a clear potential spoiler in the separation of north and south Sudan. It has a hybrid history, a dusty, arid patch of Sudan that is culturally and ethnically linked to the south and populated by mostly Southerners but incorporated administratively as part of the north for decades. Northern nomads cross through Abyei to bring their herds to watering holes and the area has been like a mosaic of cultures between north and south Sudan.
Abyei was supposed to have its own referendum to decide whether it would join the north or the south but that got shelved because of heated arguments over who was eligible to vote. Meanwhile, southern Sudan held a referendum in January in which more than 95 percent of Southerners voted for independence.
While its status is unresolved, Abyei has been administered by a joint north-south committee and the only soldiers in the area are supposed to units made up of Northerners and Southerners. But in the past few months, human rights groups have seen a sharp build-up by both sides around the contested border.
Over the past few weeks, northern and southern forces have been attacking each other in rural areas around Abyei town. On Thursday, southern forces ambushed a convoy of northern troops, killing more than dozen northern soldiers. Southern forces had staged a similar attack in early May.
One Western official on Sunday said that the southern forces had indeed provoked the north and that it was unlikely that northern forces would now withdraw from Abyei.
