Rebels opposing peace deal on Southern Kordofan conflict

The African Union High Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP) and the Sudanese government, on March 21, signed a framework agreement for the cessation of hostilities and the resumption of separate talks in the states of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile and the Darfur region.
The document welcomes the national dialogue launched last October by President Omar al Bashir, but admits it was “not sufficiently inclusive having ousted the four opposition groups involved in the negotiations.”
In line with the agreement, Khartoum has agreed for the first time to negotiate at the political level with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement – North (SPLM-N) without imposing the condition of reaching a priority agreement on ceasefire and the disarmament of militias.
However, the SPLM-N and another three rebel groups who take part in the negotiations, the Justice and Equality Movement  (JEM), the Sudan Liberation Movement – Minni Minnawi (SLM-MM) and the Sudan’s opposition National Umma Party (NUP), went underground in January 2015, rejected the roadmap claiming that would not reduce the regime’s influence in the territories.
Sudanese rebel coalition has criticized the agreement because it does not separate the humanitarian from the political process and considers it ineffective to counter the ambiguity and lack of clarity demonstrated by the Khartoum government in the negotiations to bring an end to the conflicts.
At the same time, the African Union Commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has welcomed the initialling of the agreement by the Sudanese government and called on opposition groups to sign it by the end of March. While AUHIP chairperson, former South African President Thabo Mbeki, said that, for the first time the roadmap open the way for the signing for a cessation of hostilities and the start of political negotiations, in addition to allow reaching civilians in the areas affected by the fighting.

The origins of the Southern Kordofan conflict

Sudan’s South Kordofan state after the secession of South Sudan became the southernmost border area with the African country. This land has not found a fully defined placement after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) also known as the Naivasha Agreement, which in January 2005 closed twenty years civil war and opened the transition phase would bring the South to independence on July 2011.
The population of Kordofan long been opposed to the control of the Khartoum government, which have never taken into account the independence of this region, especially for the presence of important oilfields in the Abyei area.
The rebellion exploded shortly before South Sudan gained independence from Sudan. South Sudan’s autonomy has led almost all of the fifty tribal groups in the region to join in the SPLM-N, led by Abdel-Aziz al-Hilu, born and raised in the Nuba Mountains.
The SPLM-N is opposed to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and is particularly active in southern Kordofan part, dominated by the Nuba Mountains, which together with six other districts, for safety reasons, was excluded from the vote at the last presidential elections in April. A decision that has further intensified the armed clashes between the warring factions.

War crimes

In the last four and a half years, the SAF have indiscriminately shelled the area, causing a high number of refugees and in clashes between rebels and government troops were also killed several aid workers. While in January 2015 was destroyed a hospital operated by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, forcing the NGO to leave the country.
Right after the outbreak of the conflict, the United Nations had denounced glaring war crimes committed in the region by the Sudanese army, confirmed in a report published last August by Amnesty International.
According to the human rights organizations, since 2011, the Sudanese government has restricted international humanitarian presence in areas of conflict with direct consequences on the possibility of providing food supplies and medical care to the population exhausted by war.
The conflict has also prevented aid workers to assist children. UNICEF has estimated that just because of the ongoing hostilities, 165,000 children under five living in South Kordofan and Blue Nile have gone without routine immunization, leaving them at risk of contracting all vaccine preventable diseases.
A very worrying situation even because of the last outbreak of measles that hit the Sudan, judged by the local Department of Health one of the worst in recent history of the country.
@afrofocus