As of Jan., 2013
We will look at three areas of border conflicts as a represent sample of what is increasing the refugee population.
The Republic of South Sudan became an independent nation on July 9, 2011, after Southern Sudanese voted overwhelmingly for secession in a January 2011 referendum agreed to under the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended decades of civil war.
South Sudan-Sudan boundary represents 1 January 1956 alignment, final alignment pending negotiations and demarcation.
A. Abeyei
The territory was to have its own referendum vote on whether to join South Sudan or remain part of the north. However, due to disagreements last year over who could to vote, the referendum failed to happen and the northern Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) occupied the territory.
Abyei is officially co-administered by the north’s South Kordofan state and the south’s Northern Bahr el Ghazal state, with security handled by a U.N. peacekeeping contingent called UNISFA; however, the part of the area north of the Bahr el Arab (Kiir) River is still occupied by the Sudanese army (PDF). South Sudan until recently maintained a police force in the area south of the river, but May 29 was taken over by the North.
A week after the takeover satellite images show that the Sudanese army burned and razed about one-third of all civilian buildings in the town during the violence.Tens of thousands of Abyei region civilians, including up to 35,000 children, have been displaced by the northern takeover.
Few aid agencies operate in the area. Almost eight years after a peace deal ended decades of civil war, which country Abyei belongs to remains one of the key unresolved issues between South Sudan. The two states have failed to agree who should be allowed to take part in a long-delayed referendum – now due in October 2013 – to settle the matter.
B. Kiir Adem
The two sides agreed in September, 2012 to withdraw their armies 10 km (6 miles) from the border to ease tensions and end an 11-month shutdown of South Sudan’s oil industry, closed off in a row over how much it should pay to export through Sudanese territory.
Two weeks later, just as crude exports were scheduled to flow again, South Sudan accused Khartoum of demanding the South disarm rebels in Sudan before switching the oil back on. South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir called it an "impossible mission".
Meanwhile, a dozen bombs fell on Kiir Adem, killing seven people, according to South Sudan’s army. Sudan denied bombing the town, but said it had attacked rebels inside Sudan.
Both sides have been meeting in Khartoum this week to try to break the deadlock. South Sudan’s chief negotiator said n Sunday oil exports could still resume by the end of the year.
Old migration paths complicate –
As with much of the frontier, the annual migration of the Sudanese Rezeigat and Misseriya tribes to South Sudan complicate rights, ownership and identity in "Mile 14," as the area is called.
During the dry season, the pastoralists drive their cattle south through areas populated by Dinka, who identify as South Sudanese, to seek pasture and trade.
At the end of the civil war, Sudan and the semi-autonomous South agreed to define the border according to boundaries set up by British colonial administrators before independence in 1956, but they have failed to find a map from the agreed period.
South Sudan presented a 1954 map showing Mile 14 was populated by Dinka Malwal. Khartoum was quick to point out the map also showed the land administered as part of Darfur, placing it in northern Sudan.
It is a tender issue for both sides. As part of the September deal, the South agreed to pull its troops from Mile 14, sparking protests from the Dinka Malwal tribe who feared their ancestral land would be traded.
Sudan’s armed forces agreed to keep their positions several miles away from the northern edge of Mile 14, a frontier defined by the Kiir River, or Bahr el Arab as it is known in Sudan
Demilitarizing the border should quell hostilities, but analysts say the two sides need to adapt a porous or "soft border" to ease the movement of people and goods.
"The freedom of movement is much more important than where the border lies," said Jok Madut Jok, executive director of the Sudd Institute, a policy research group based in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.
But in a climate of mistrust, with both sides trading accusations of supporting each other’s insurgents, neither government is likely to accept a porous border while security issues are unresolved.
"A soft border means the movement of people and goods across, which is a tricky issue because guns and support can cross the border more easily," said one foreign official working on border issues who asked not to be identified.
Such an approach would probably satisfy local communities. Some Dinka Malwal and Rezeigat leaders have already started charting their own course for peaceful ties.
"The British made the border. It’s on the map, but it’s not on the ground," Mohammed Ali Urashi, a Rezeigat representative, told Reuters at a meeting of local leaders in Gok Machar.
One aid worker estimated some 5,000 Rezeigat herdsman had brought around 100,000 cattle to graze south of the border last year despite bilateral tensions. They hope to do the same this year, but its success hinges on dispelling insecurity fears.
C. Helig
The small, remote oil town of Heglig, known as Panthou to South Sudan, is apparently located on northern Sudan’s side of the 1956 border. However, older maps don’t label the town at all, and until 2003 it was administered as part of Unity State in the Southern Sudan region. Then, just after the Sudan government and the future independent South had agreed not to share oil from north of the border, the government abruptly informed the southerners that Heglig in fact belonged to the north’s Southern Kordofan state.
Minds in the south weren’t changed so easily, and after two weeks of border clashes starting in late March of this year, South Sudan invaded Heglig. The southern government claimed they were only retaliating against earlier attacks by the north, but Sudan and the U.N. denounced it as an act of aggression. The South Sudanese army occupied Heglig from April 10-20, 2012, and advanced nearly as far as Kharasana before turning back – whether out of defeat or in order to stem international criticism is not clear.
Sudanese air strikes during the confrontation occurred deep within South Sudanese territory (PDF), including in Unity State’s capital of Bentiu.