How does one begin a column on Sudan? First, all roads lead to Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. At the moment there are three rounds of talks concurrently taking place in Addis Ababa. Two of these talks concern Sudan, and a third deals with South Sudan. On Monday, one of the rounds of talks was indefinitely postponed. The two others are stalled. The African Union High-Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP), led by former South African president Thabo Mbeki, has consistently pushed for a draft framework agreement to end the ongoing fighting between the Sudanese government and the opposition Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), which holds sway in two Sudanese provinces, South Kordofan and Blue Nile. Non-Arab ethnic groups predominate in these provinces. Sandwiched between South Sudan and Ethiopia, Blue Nile is peopled by those who have resisted the Arabisation policies and the Islamising Sudanese society project of Sudanese president Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, resulting in a bitter 20-year conflict that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands and rendered thousands more homeless. It has emerged as the front line in the Sudanese government's Islamist state-building project. In September 2011 fighting erupted in and around Al-Damazin, the provincial capital of Blue Nile. Sudanese government forces bombarded SPLM-N strongholds in the entire Blue Nile state, and thousands subsequently fled into Upper Nile, South Sudan, to settle in inhospitable locations such as the Jamam refugee camp, now home to some 40,000 desperate refugees. All in all, there are an estimated 120,000 Blue Nile refugees in Upper Nile, and humanitarian agencies suspect that ethnic cleansing is underway. If the response to this situation is too slow, Africa and the international community may lose the initiative and the credibility that is sorely needed to end the war and the refugee crises it has engendered. Although less attention is now being paid to the plight of the Blue Nile refugees, the Al-Bashir regime's atrocities are escalating in the province on the pretext that the population is sympathetic to the SPLM-N. Meanwhile, malnourishment and unhygienic living conditions, including the lack of access to potable water, are taking their toll on the lives of the hapless refugees. In the wake of the 2011 Al-Damazin massacres by Sudanese government forces and the heroic resistance of the indigenous people led by Malik Agar, then governor of Blue Nile and now commander of the SPLM-N, Al-Bashir summarily dismissed Agar and replaced him with general Yahia Mohammed Kheir, affiliated with Al-Bashir's ruling National Congress Party (NCP). The strategically located province is home to the Roseires Dam, the main source of hydroelectric power in Sudan until the completion of the Merowe Dam in 2010. It is against this backdrop that the Addis Ababa talks between the Sudanese government and the SPLM-N are now being adjourned. The government has not learned the lessons of the Al-Damazin debacle, and it has been taking pains to build a broad coalition against the SPLM-N even though the bulk of the population has never wavered in their support for it. The African Union mediation proposal is bound to fall on deaf ears unless the protagonists are able to balance vision with pragmatism. The mediation has already delayed a decisive meeting between the Sudanese government and the SPLM-N for 24 hours in order to conduct further consultations. The SPLM-N is allied to the opposition Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) and is in no mood to negotiate with an intransigent Al-Bashir. The SPLM-N does not duck a fight, and nor does the SRF and allied Darfur armed opposition groups. The SRF groups have established a coordination committee chaired by Darfur armed opposition leader Minni Minnawi to supervise the positions of the negotiating teams in Addis Ababa. And the peace plan of the African Union Peace and Security Council is coordinating concurrently with armed opposition groups in Darfur for scheduled talks with the Sudanese government. As if to confuse the situation further, the South Sudanese are engaged in possibly equally futile negotiations orchestrated in parallel with the power-sharing proposals and peace talks taking place in Addis Ababa. The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has brought together the South Sudanese protagonists to create a “national unity government” in South Sudan, but already the peace talks sound hollow to most South Sudanese. What is more certain is that South Sudan's neighbours are making Herculean efforts to end the fighting in the war-torn country. The South Sudan Cessation of Hostilities Workshop in Addis Ababa is supposed to educate military officers on how to monitor and uphold the implementation of the ceasefire agreement. The week-long workshop, however, has no chance of success unless the battle-hardened and poverty-stricken South Sudanese protagonists manage to end the country's endless wars. Former South Sudanese vice-president Riek Machar, now leading the uprising against the government of South Sudan's president Salva Kiir, is to hold peace talks in Ethiopia's Gambela region, inhabited mainly by Nilotic ethnic groups related to those in South Sudan. Machar is to chair the Gambela talks a few days after he finishes with the workshop in Addis Ababa. Kiir, too, is under intense pressure to show himself as a more substantial politician than he currently looks. The ongoing fighting is further aggravating the security and deplorable humanitarian crisis in South Sudan. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Gutierres, has conceded that the refugee situation in South Sudan is fast deteriorating. UN agencies, the African Union, IGAD and neighbouring countries are trying their best to help end the two Sudans' ongoing wars, but with what success it is still far too early to say.
