Sudan peace deal in jeopardy

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id agencies in Sudan today warned that the five-year-old peace deal between north and south Sudan could collapse. Reporter Alan Boswell finds out what’s going wrong with the 2005 peace deal that ended a generation of conflict.

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH, Boston.  Violence continues to flare in Sudan, Africa’s largest country.   The focus of that violence now is not Darfur, but southern Sudan.  Some 140 people have been killed there in recent days.  Southern Sudan was the battleground for a brutal civil war that ended in 2005.  That’s when Sudan’s government signed a peace deal with southern rebels after two decades of strife.  The peace deal called for elections, and a referendum on whether southern Sudan should secede.  But as correspondent Alan Boswell reports from the southern capital Juba, the upcoming votes are generating new tensions.

ALAN BOSWELL: Massive four wheel-drive vehicles, UN and NGO logos branded on their sides, lumber through the Juba potholes.   Zigzagging alongside are newly imported motorbikes, taxiing the locals.   Until five years ago, Juba, was a no-go destination for most foreigners.  Now, it’s the bustling government seat of the former rebels, and home to an influx of international organizations and a UN peacekeeping mission.  The newly constructed ministries and agencies sit awkwardly beside the rackety and worn-down neighborhoods.  Two long wars here against the Arab-dominated north have ensured that southern Sudan remains one of  the most undeveloped regions of the world.  But recent years have brought some hope.  Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese who fled into neighboring countries have returned since rebels and officials from the north signed a peace deal in 2005.   Key to the pact is a southern independence referendum, now only a year away. A critical test of the Khartoum regime’s commitment to implement the agreement will be national elections scheduled for April.  That vote has been postponed twice, and it now falls just nine months before the secession vote.   Here in the sun-baked Juba, the looming votes are raising tensions.

MAC MAIKA: Given the atmosphere of what has been existing between north and south always, suspicion is always there.

BOSWELL: That’s Mac Maika, a member of south Sudan’s election high committee. He’s charged with running the region’s ambitious voter registration drive and preparing for the April vote. He says he can’t trust his northern-based supervisors and worries about foul play .

MAIKA: The headquarters in Khartoum or people from the north don’t usually delegate enough authority for people in the south, especially with regards to resources. They always give you responsibility and then undermine you by withdrawing authority for implementation.

BOSWELL: It won’t be easy to hold a vote here.  Although the region is the size of France, it has just over 30 miles of paved roads.  Most southerners can’t read, and few are familiar with elections and ballots.   A United Nations team based in Juba is charged with trying to keep the shaky peace here.  David Gressley, heads the UN mission.  He says inter-ethnic violence has complicated his task.  Gressley says more than 2,500 southern Sudanese were killed in violence last year.

DAVID GRESSLEY: We are concerned that there’s been, particularly this year, a large number of women and children that have been killed in attacks, and they weren’t killed because they were in the crossfire or anything of that nature. It seems deliberate killings, in some instances.  This magnitude, the number of people, including women and children, is a bit unusual.

BOSWELL: Southern officials say government agents from the north are manipulating the inter-tribal strife. Anne Itto, heads the southern office of the former rebels’ Sudan People’s Liberation Movement.  She says Khartoum is actively arming the troublemakers, but she admits  she doesn’t have any hard evidence.

ANNE ITTO: There is a motive on the part of Khartoum to really support the militia groups and to support the cattle rustling, because they want to present the south to the world as a failed state, ruled by a bunch of people who cannot even maintain security, and therefore their interest to exercise their right to self-determination in a referendum should not be supported.

BOSWELL: But despite the lack of trust, the elections are still going forward.  Last week, the parliament in Khartoum passed a controversial measure.  It allows many southerners who came to the north fleeing the war the right to register and vote in the north.  Most analysts say southern Sudanese, if given the chance will vote for independence.  And  Khartoum isn’t keen to let the oil-rich south go.  And, since both sides have had years to re-stock and re-arm, tensions remain high.  For The World, this is Alan Boswell, Juba, southern Sudan.

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