1956 BORDER DEMARCATION: STILL ANOTHER FLASHPOINT

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