With the 9 January date for referenda for south Sudan's independence looking unlikely to be met, the United States is scrambling to prevent a return to war, writes Graham Usher With less than three months to go before referenda that may partition or plunge Sudan into war, the Obama administration is raising the country to a foreign policy priority. The hope is to steer to a peaceful shore the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that in 2005 enshrined the right of self-determination to the south. The fear is that a delayed or contested vote will reignite a war that killed 2.5 million Sudanese and displaced millions more. As of now war seems the likelier prospect. Voter registration has yet to begin for six million or so southerners who, by all accounts, will vote massively for independence on 9 January. In a second, smaller poll to decide whether the border region of Abyei will join the north or south a referendum commission hasn't even been formed. On 12 October talks between the north's National Congress Party (NCP) and the south's Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) broke down over who was eligible to vote in Abyei. A NCP official said the referenda would have to be delayed "three or four months" or else "an alternative" to voting would have to be found. A SPLA official said any delay would risk violence. Instead, the south would organise "their own referendum and invite the international community to monitor it." Some Western states have allegedly winked to Juba that they would recognise the outcome of a "unilateral" referendum (though not a unilateral declaration of independence). Abyei encapsulates why Africa's newest state could have a bloody birth. Bestriding a still undefined border, the region is home to both farmers from the south and nomads from the north and brims with oil. Despite an interim of five years, not a single one of these issues -- borderline, citizenship, resource sharing -- has been resolved. On the contrary -- says SPLA leader and South Sudan President Salva Kiir, Khartoum has used the peace to "prepare for war and may also be moving troops southwards". Khartoum says SPLA guerrillas have mounted their own incursions into Abyei. Western diplomats say both sides are building up forces along a still-to-be-decided border. And among observers there is a real fear that a single spark -- like a unilateral referendum in Abyei -- could trigger a reaction in which Khartoum seizes not only Abyei but other major oilfields in the south. It happened before. In 2008 Khartoum- backed militias drove up to 60,000 people from Abyei, an act many southerners saw as ethnic cleansing. A year later an international court in The Hague ruled that while the region's fertile pasturelands belonged to the south, its oilfields and Nile pipeline belonged to the north. Khartoum may think similar pre- emptive strikes would prove just as profitable. This is perhaps why Kiir asked a United Nations Security Council delegation in Juba this month for an UN-administered buffer zone along any putative new borderline. International policing of the entire 1,250- mile border won't happen but UN troops could up their presence "in some hotspots", said UN peacekeeping chief, Alain Le Roy. On 18 October, the UN sent 100 extra troops to Abyei. But Khartoum has refused any overall increase in the 10,000-strong UNMIS mission in Sudan, despite a request from Kiir for more troops. An eruption of violence in Sudan would in any case "overwhelm the UN forces", said a Western diplomat. Is there any way to reverse a drift to war? Outwardly the Obama administration has warned Khartoum that it must hold "credible", "peaceful" and "on time" referenda on 9 January or face "more pressure and deeper isolation". Quietly it has offered a stack of incentives to persuade President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir to "live with an independent south", says a source. If Khartoum abides by the referendum results, the US has promised to lift restrictions on non-oil trade and investment, especially in agriculture. And if Khartoum fulfils its CPA obligations by the deadline of July and resolves the conflict in Darfur, the US will lift sanctions and remove Sudan's designation as "a state sponsor of terrorism". It would also normalise relations and support efforts at the World Bank and IMF to clear Khartoum's $38 billion debt. Would this be enough to sweeten the pangs of partition? Al-Bashir is said to be loath to lose a fourth of Sudanese territory not only because of the example it would set for Sudan's other restive peoples in the Nuba mountains, southern Blue Nile and Darfur. He knows also that three-fourths of Sudan's existing oil reserves are in the south. "Any shift from the current 50-50 split" in sharing oil revenues between Khartoum and the south "towards an eventual tilt in Juba's favour (would have to happen) very gradually," counsels Africa analyst Philipe de Pontet. "The US will have to lean hard on Juba to reign in its maximalist demands on oil revenues". There is also what Khartoum calls the West's "demonisation" of the north, by which it means the International Criminal Court's indictment of Al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur. The US is not a member of the ICC. But through the Security Council it could ask the court to defer (though not cancel) any judgement, say analysts. Such a move would enjoy support from the African Union, Arab League and permanent UNSC members Russia and China, all of which see the ICC ruling as a "neocolonialist imposition" and, even more, a very dangerous precedent. It would also likely get a nod from Obama's special envoy to Sudan, retired General Scott Gration, who has said the indictment had made US diplomacy more difficult. But it would be opposed by Western states like Britain and France, both ICC members, let alone human rights organisations that have campaigned long and hard for an ICC with teeth. In any case, such a reprieve could only come as part of a package in which Al-Bashir fully accepted an independent southern Sudan and an end to violence in Darfur, say analysts. And so far he has accepted neither.
