The main fundamentals of the current situation I Sudan are
1. The
Khartoum ruling establishment would love to strengthen it’s position by creating
a war-like situation and thus uniting the population behind it’s war efforts.
2. The
South Sudan government is struggling to hold together it’s ragtag army and an
ambitious army general could mount a local initiative and thus change the whole
equation.
3. The
third force in the Sudan conflict are the South-Sudan backed militias who have
been fighting the Sudanese government for overthrowing of the government in
Khartoum.
4. The
biggest source of problem between the two sides is the distribution of the oil
money in a fare manner between the two parties. Most of the oil wells happen to
be part of South Sudanese territory whereas the distribution pipelines which
pour oil from South Sudan to the outside World, all culminate in the Sudanese
territory of Port Sudan. So the question of transit-fee here is very crucial
particularly for the government in Khartoum.
5. None
of the governments pose overwhelming power to destroy each other. In fact it is
clear from recent clashes that both powers lack not only enough firepower to overwhelm
each other but they also lack enough monitory power to outlast each other.
6. Both
the governments need to unite their people behind themselves considering that people
in the respective countries have been suffering a lot ever since this conflict
first started.
7. The
interests of the outside players are also very important to understand the
nature of the conflict. The governments of Ethiopia and Kenya have been
directly backing the South Sudanese government. The South Sudanese government
is also considering the creation of a proposed oil pipeline from it’s territory
to Lamu , a Kenyan port.
There is also much foreign interest in
terms of countries like Israel, China and the USA to the current situation in
these two countries.
Israel has been apparently willing to
deport a considerable number of its ever-so-growing economic asylum seekers in
the Southern Sudanese territory irrespective of their origins. So naturally as
a country with less number of dependable allies in the African continent, the
Israeli government was one of the most important of the countries to back the
establishment of an independent South Sudanese state.
China also has an important stake in the
region. Considering that it is the biggest consumer of Sudanese crude, China
would always like to have an important say in what goes on between Khartoum and
Juba.
The main interest for the Chinese would be to
ensure safe passage of Sudanese crude into the Chinese economy and they are
willing to bring pressure on both the two disputing parties to prevent further
tension.
The Americans would also have an interesting
stake in the region since the Americans consider the government in Khartoum as not
enough open-minded to the dictations of AFRICOM and thus they would like to
maintain a strong amount of pressure upon the Sudanese government.
The wild card in this conflict could well be
the fluid situation arising out of chaos after the fall of the Muammar Qaddafi
regime in Libya and the loose situation with regards to the flow of arms in the
region. Already the country of Mali has seen a rise in Islamic sentiments in it’s
northern territory and with more clashes between the two Sudans, the Islamic
elements who are always eager to fill these types of political vacuums, may
decide to fill in the gaps that may arise out of the situation in Sudan.
In the final analysis , one needs to
mention that at present we can expect a continuous stalemate between the two
parties since no one side posses enough resources to claim outright victory
over the other and the outside pressure on both the countries for keeping the
stalemate are considerable.
So we can expect one side to up the ante
from time to time for securing concessions so we need to embrace for periodic
upheavals in the overall situation.
Without the International community putting
into place a relief mechanism to alleviate the causes of the parties it would
be important to understand that this prolonged stalemate between the parties is
an inevitable outcome here.
