Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
08KHARTOUM395
2008-03-17 05:47:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Khartoum
Cable title:  

1956 BORDER DEMARCATION: STILL ANOTHER FLASHPOINT

Tags:  PGOV PINS PHUM KDEM MARR MOPS SU 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXRO6446
OO RUEHDU RUEHMR RUEHPA RUEHRN RUEHROV RUEHTRO
DE RUEHKH #0395/01 0770547
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
O 170547Z MAR 08
FM AMEMBASSY KHARTOUM
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 0232
INFO RUEHZO/AFRICAN UNION COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUCNIAD/IGAD COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHGG/UN SECURITY COUNCIL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC PRIORITY
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 KHARTOUM 000395 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

FOR S/E WILLIAMSON, AF/RSA, AF/SPG, AND USAID, NSC FOR
BPITTMAN AND CHUDSON

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/16/2018
TAGS: PGOV PINS PHUM KDEM MARR MOPS SU
SUBJECT: 1956 BORDER DEMARCATION: STILL ANOTHER FLASHPOINT
FOR CONFLICT

Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Alberto M. Fernandez. Reasons 1.4 (b,d
)

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 KHARTOUM 000395

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

FOR S/E WILLIAMSON, AF/RSA, AF/SPG, AND USAID, NSC FOR
BPITTMAN AND CHUDSON

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/16/2018
TAGS: PGOV PINS PHUM KDEM MARR MOPS SU
SUBJECT: 1956 BORDER DEMARCATION: STILL ANOTHER FLASHPOINT
FOR CONFLICT

Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Alberto M. Fernandez. Reasons 1.4 (b,d
)


1. (C) SUBJECT: Senior SPLM officials involved in the
NCP/SPLM Joint Executive Talks are concerned that forthcoming
demarcation of the North/South 1956 border will fuel
popularly-led violence that could push the SAF and SPLA in
direct conflict across the disputed boundary region. Both
parties have recognized "an urgent need for quiet resolution"
to the quandary, but SPLM leadership in Juba remain
frustrated by their own "renegade technicians" assigned to
the Ad-Hoc Technical Border Review Commission who have not
kept them abreast of Commission's findings. Select ministers
within the Government of Southern Sudan allege that
stove-piping within the Ministry of Presidential Affairs has
allowed Kiir to be blind-sided by the magnitude of the issue
and its potentially explosive consequences. END SUMMARY.

--------------
SHIFTS IN THE BORDERLINE STATES
--------------


2. (C) Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS) Minister for
Internal Affairs Paul Mayom and Minister for Legal Affairs
and Constitutional Development Michael Makeui told ConGen
PolOff that the Ad-Hoc Technical Border Commission is
circulating a near-final map of the 1956 North-South border
which substantially reduces the size of the South. According
to Makuei, "significant areas" of the southern states of
Upper Nile, Western Bahr el Ghazal, and Northern Bahr el
Ghazal will be transferred to the North to become parts of
White Nile, South Darfur, and Southern Kordofan states
respectively. Mayom criticized the planned alterations to
the Bahr el Ghazal region that encompassed its copper belt
and suspected uranium deposits. "The latest map conveniently
places these resources under Khartoum's control," he fumed.
He said these proposed changed are in addition to already
proposed (and according to the SPLM, highly suspect) shifts

of land in the oil field areas of Unity State and the
disputed area of Abyei. In contrast to proposed shifts
within oil field areas on maps that Makeui contends "were
hand-drawn by NISS," both ministers ruefully acknowledge that
"while multiple maps are flying around Khartoum," historical
data unearthed by the bipartisan commission appears to
substantiate proposed border alternations elsewhere along the
North-South line.


3. (C) Makeui reviewed for ConGen PolOff the potentially
explosive political and social impact of a
historically-substantiated "downward shift" of the
North-South border. People who believe themselves to be
Southerners - heretofore afforded the right to a referendum
in 2011 - would find themselves stripped of that privilege
the day after boundary demarcation. This could spark
violence amid population shifts. The SPLM, in order to avoid
either scenario, might be compelled to reach a compromise
elsewhere in the CPA -- for example if they successfully
persuaded the NCP to accept a "political solution" to
boundary demarcation that kept the "1956 border" largely as
it is recognized on the ground today. Makeui underscored that
both sides recognized the need for a "quiet solution far from
the Sudanese people" before demarcation has begun. "As of
now," he cautioned, "boundary stakes are to be placed into
the ground at the end of April."

--------------
SPLM CONCERNS AND INTERNAL CRITICISM
--------------


4. (C) Minister Mayom expressed deep concerns about the lack
of "GOSS mentoring" of the commission's SPLM technical
experts about the political impact of a
geographically-altered South. Both ministers voiced criticism
about the lack of briefings to the GOSS Council of Ministers.
Moreover, Mayom maintained, Presidential Affairs Minister
Luka Bong Deng had become "overly reliant on the advice of
foreign boundary experts" (such as ABC Panel of Experts
member Douglas Johnson) and argued this is why not enough
attention had been paid to decisions being taken by the
Commission itself. "The pegging of the border begins in
April, and Luka is not arranging for the President to be
briefed? How do you think the people will react when on
Monday they were Southerners and on Tuesday they become
Northerners?"


5. (C) Mayom also expressed concerns about the military

KHARTOUM 00000395 002 OF 002


implications of a possible border shift. "Fundamentally,
demarcating the 1956 border will lead us nowhere but to war,
and the SPLM has been caught sleeping." The NCP now enters
the Executive Committee talks with better information and a
better outcome," he continued, "and now they have another
issue to use to defer a decision on the finalization of
Abyei." Normally circumspect Makeui described another
troubling military scenario. "Newly anointed ex-Southerners"
take up arms to protest the decision, forcing the SAF to
intervene against an uprising "nominally within the North."
Politically, the SPLA would not be in a position to stand-by
and watch attacks on its former citizenry, and the southern
military would be drawn into the fray. "It would be an
instantaneous reaction," Mayom noted. "We have troops there,
and the SAF is "barely an arms-length out of the South."

--------------
UNMIS FROM A DIFFERENT ANGLE
--------------


6. (C) UNMIS/Juba Civil Affairs Director Samantha Barnes is
equally worried about the impact of border demarcation, but
less persuaded that the Mayom and Makeui's doomsday scenarios
are at hand. Intra-commission disputes have delayed field
assessments to "critical junctures along the 1/1/56 line,"
and insecurity in the Southern Darfur/South Kordofan/Northern
Bahr el Ghazal border area, coupled with mid-January
incursions by janjaweed into four counties of Western Bahr el
Ghazal, have left 30% of the border unmapped. "We're past
the point of extrapolations from paper," she noted. "They
need to get out there and walk the line, and the GNU needs to
provide them the security and equipment to be able to do it."


7. (C) COMMENT: SPLM flat-footedness on boundary demarcation
mirrors its performance elsewhere on CPA-mandated national
commissions. The SPLM just does not not have the cadres and
capacity to build the south from scratch, negotiate detailed
agreements with the better prepared NCP, and handle a half
dozen other crises brewing in Sudan and the region. Possible
shifts in the way the 1956 border is interpreted and
demarcated on the ground appear to be significant according
to both SPLM and UNMIS -- should current map projections
hold. It appears that the South will lose more ground than
the North, and the SPLM appears unprepared to deal with this
issue politically. While there may be enough commensurate
land shifts northward and southward to encourage
horse-trading in the executive-level talks, the SPLM has in
the past rejected such an approach, for example on Abyei.
Mayom and Makeui's disenchantment with Luka Biong Deng's
handling of the issue thus far is striking. Neither man
considers the other a friend, and the fact that their
professional ire at Deng was not muddied by personal politics
points to dangerous fissures within the SPLM leadership. The
border demarcation issue bears close attention by the US and
others in the international community; we will continue to
engage with the parties and UNMIS to keep tabs on progress
and encourage the parties toward a peaceful and constructive
demarcation process. However, as our SPLM contacts have
pointed out, a less than favorable result for the SPLM could
provoke internal divisions in the movement and its armed
units, not to mention unrest among the affected villages
which may be forced to move. Conflict on the border is still
another Sudanese crisis that has not happened, and may not
happen, but could be just around the corner. The lack of
resolution on Abyei finally turned into a low-grade range war
after three years of waiting for a compromise. The
international community will be challenged to pay attention
to these potential flashpoints while continuing to work on
those crises, like Darfur, that have already burst into
flame. End comment.
FERNANDEZ