Peace in southern Sudan is far from sustained - Jan Pronk

UN SGSR Jan Pronk in his blog entry June 11, 2006 describes how the peace process in South Sudan is slowing down and, on top of many unresolved issues,

There are conflicts between nomads and settlers, between cattle raiders and herders, between shepherds and farmers, between returnees and the local population. Disgruntled soldiers, for long not having been paid, start looting. Crime is on the rise. Some Other Armed Groups, not having been part of the SPLA, but loosely associated with the former rival liberation movement SSDF, refuse to follow their leader Paulino Matiep, who has decided to join the SPLA. Instead they continue fighting. In Jonglei a civilian militia, the White Army, refuses to lay down arms. People living around the oil fields are being harassed or even evicted from their land. In many Southern states tribal conflicts explode into violent clashes. In the deep South the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is attacking villages.

Mr Pronk concludes by saying:

Chances are that we will get a second peace keeping task in Darfur. Presently we are preparing ourselves for this challenge. It could very well be more difficult than the task in the South. In Darfur there at least as many other armed groups as in the South and the Darfur Peace Agreement is more disputed than the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between North and South. But whoever might think that we could build a peace keeping force in Darfur by cannibalizing the forces in the South and redeploying some of these towards another part of Sudan would be mistaken. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is no solution. In the South we need all the forces we have, because peace is yet far from sustained.