The main fundamentals of the current situation in Sudan

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.