Imperative of al-Bashir’s visit to South Sudan

In what is seen as a rare diplomatic shuttle, Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir this week visited neighbouring South Sudan which has been plagued by internal crisis following what President Salva Kiir claimed was an attempted coup on December 15 last year led by his ousted former Vice President Riek Machar, which he denied. Kiir sacked […]

In what is seen as a rare diplomatic shuttle, Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir this week visited neighbouring South Sudan which has been plagued by internal crisis following what President Salva Kiir claimed was an attempted coup on December 15 last year led by his ousted former Vice President Riek Machar, which he denied.
Kiir sacked his entire cabinet in July last year including Machar, a move that unsettled the oil-rich newly independent country which gained sovereignty from Sudan through a referendum in July 2011 after decades of war.
Infact, many of the sacked ministers including military officers were key figures in the two decades of war to form the new nation.
UN officials believe thousands have been killed since violence erupted on December 15, 2013 when clashes broke out at a meeting of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). Clashes have since spread to half of South Sudan’s 10 states.
According to the United Nations (UN) as the fighting spreads more and more civilians are fleeing to neighbouring countries, with some 2,500 people a day now seeking refuge in Uganda, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR says. As of Tuesday, 23,546 South Sudanese refugees had arrived in Uganda since the conflict erupted a month ago in the world’s youngest country. “They are now crossing at a rate of up to 2,500 people a day,” UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming told a news briefing in Geneva, Switzerland. Besides, tens of thousands of people have fled to UN compounds across the oil-rich country.
With the fighting still raging despite, the negotiations in Addis Ababa, the UN Security Council decided to boost the existing UN force (Unmiss) of around 7,000 peacekeepers and police to about 14,000.
After the violence broke out, forces loyal to Mr Machar quickly seized the key towns of Bor, the capital of Jonglei state, and Bentiu, the main town in oil-producing Unity state.
However, after the meeting between the two leaders, the Sudanese Minister of Information Ahmed Bilal said President al-Bashir and his South Sudanese counterpart, Kiir did not agree to establish a joint military force to protect oil fields as reported.
His foreign affairs counterpart, Ali Ahmed Karti was quoted as saying that the two leaders were “in consultations about the deployment of a mixed force to protect southern oilfields.”
On the whole, the two leaders agreed to send some Sudanese oil experts to South Sudan to help with the recovery of oil production lost as a result of the ongoing conflict. He said both countries agreed long before the conflict began to deploy joint forces along their shared border to prevent rebels from crossing into either country.
The two countries were contending for the oil wells in the Abyei region after South Sudan’s independence and were close to war regarding ownership but all seems to be quite for now. Ofcourse, Sudan fears the three-week-old conflict in its southern neighbour could disrupt oil flows and damage its own struggling economy.
On helping militarily in the conflict, the foreign affairs minister said Khartoum will not unilaterally take part in the conflict unless called upon by the African Union (AU) to send troops as part of an overall African peacekeeping mission. In another dimension to the visit, Sudan said that those coming into the country as a result of the crisis would not be considered refugees but citizens and would be allowed to go everywhere atleast until the conflict is over.
“There should be peace and security in South Sudan. We come so that we can bring peace to South Sudan, to our brothers and sisters in South Sudan. Our relationship is very important,” al-Bashir told reporters. He also said Sudan will never support rebels against any neighboring government stressing that it would only cause instability, exhaustion of resources and destruction of ties between countries.
The imperative of the visit cannot be over stressed. First, after a long war of self-rule by now South Sudan, al-Bashir is not favourable to another crisis that would rock the region just soon. Also, and perhaps, more importantly, having gone through calls from the international community and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face war crimes charges, the Sudanese leader took the opportunity of the conflict to achieve a quick diplomatic intervention to score a diplomatic point to show he cares in the resolution of the conflict.
Nevertheless, the visit aptly coincided with the negotiation for peace in the Ethiopian capital city of Addis Ababa between the South Sudan government and “rebels” broker by Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and Ethiopia Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn who are bent at stabilising the region.
The intervention of Uhuru and Desalegn is apt as the region is prone to conflict in surrounding countries of Central African Republic (CAR) and Democratic Republic of Congo and in Sudan’s Dafur. Al-Bashir’s visit is not only apt but timely to stem an escalation of crisis in a new State trying to find its feet.
In a reaction to the South Sudan conflict on the Voice of America (VOA) Hausa Service, former Nigeria envoy to Sudan, Ambassador Sulaiman Dahiru, said the people of newly independent country are not living in harmony. “The governments are not doing anything to better the lives of the people. The peasant people are suffering just the way as during the time of war while those in government are just living in affluence.”
The ex-diplomat noted that Dinka people who are more with Nuer and others following the trail explaining that Machar’s tribe who are Nuer would definitely feel left out and cause trouble in the country as there is nothing left for them in the government anymore.
Dahiru gave an analogy as the same thing happening in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Democratic Republic of Congo where the governments found it difficult to unite the people resulting in ethnic tension. Not sitting on the fence, the African Union frowned at the conflict in South Sudan. At a meeting with Nigeria’s Supervising Minister of Foreign Affairs, Professor Viola A. Onwuliri in Abuja, AU Commissioner for Political Affairs, Dr. Aisha L. Abdullahi said the “Africa Union is deeply concern as you know that South Sudan is our newest country in Africa. AU has tried its best to ensure peace in the country and its neighbour Sudan.”