South Sudan: Origins of the Ngok-Twic conflict

The recent cycle of violence in Abyei has not been the traditional Misseriya-Ngok Dinka conflict but rather between armed elements of the Twic Dinka & Ngok Dinka. For more background: https://t.co/29FCedzl5F https://t.co/qZ5JOUpbuy

— Lauren Blanchard (@LaurenBinDC) February 4, 2024

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The above Feb 4 post at X by Eddie Thomas contains an informative thread.

From Small Arms Survey (as per link in above Feb 4 post at X by Lauren Blanchard @LaurenBinDC):

Origins of the Ngok–Twic conflict 

The Ngok and Twic Dinka are historically very close. Friction only emerged in 2017, when the Abyei Area Administration (AAA) began a land registry in Annet, a bustling market near Agok, in southern Abyei. The Twic Dinka denounced the land registry, which was subsequently halted. The putative reason for this discontent was that some Twic Dinka claimed that Agok and Annet are located within Twic county, Warrap state. The Ngok Dinka, however, consider the boundaries of Abyei to have been determined by a decision of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2009, and Agok and Annet to be part of their territory. The Twic’s claim to these territories is very recent in origin and is not actually about long-standing territorial disagreements, but rather an attempt to control Annet and the humanitarian hub in Agok, where many international NGOs based themselves following SAF’s invasion of Abyei. 

Twic claims to southern Abyei are bound up in the mutual marginalization of the two communities. The Ngok Dinka feel forgotten by a South Sudanese government intent on forging a relationship with Khartoum. The Twic, too, feel marginalized; the removal of Bona Panek (the then Twic governor of Warrap) and his replacement by Aleu Ayieny Aleu saw the Twic lose influence in Kuajok and Juba (Craze, 2022). The Twic saw the weakness of Ngok Dinka as an opportunity. Agok’s status as a humanitarian hub and the tax base offered by Annet have provided a source of income for the AAA. Twic county has seen almost no economic development and, like the rest of South Sudan, has suffered from a government in Juba bent on the illegitimate acquisition of resources (Craze, 2023). Twic county is not alone: communities across the country have made exclusive claims to control of territory and resources in response to the exploitation of the country by politicians in Juba, and the withdrawal of the government from the provision of wages and services (Craze and Marko, 2022). 

View original: https://www.smallarmssurvey.org/attacked-both-sides-abyeis-existential-dilemma/origins-ngok-twic-conflict 

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IMPORTANT: Julie Flint's report for the Small Arms Survey: Rhetoric and Reality. The Failure to Resolve the Darfur Sudan Conflict

From Alex de Waal's blog Making Sense of Sudan
The Strife Inside the SLA
By Julie Flint
Monday, February 1st, 2010

The difficulties facing the Doha peace talks—highlighted in my report for the Small Arms Survey: Rhetoric and Reality. The Failure to Resolve the Darfur Conflict—have been starkly illustrated as meetings resume in Doha between mediators and representatives of some of the Darfur armed movements. (Planned talks between the movements and civil society have been postponed, apparently indefinitely, at the insistence of JEM.)

Since 5 January, rival factions of SLA-Abdul Wahid have been fighting each other in Jebel Marra. The fighting, which has been largely unreported, has caused civilians to flee from a number of villages in the south of the mountains, towards Nyertiti and Kass. There are fears that the violence, which has many fault lines, too complicated to explain in this short posting, could have repercussions among civilians in IDP camps where SLA-Abdul Wahid has a hold.

It will be impossible to reach a sustainable settlement to the simmering but still-unresolved conflict in Darfur, regardless of anything the government does or does not do, while the ‘revolution’ of 2003 is eating itself.

The intra-SLA fighting has claimed the lives of a number of commanders critical of the SLA Chairman, his decision to reside in France rather than Darfur, and his refusal both to participate in the Doha process and to seek reconciliation in the SLA faction he leads. Some of the commanders have died in armed clashes; others have perished in ambushes—most recently, a commander from Kass, Mohamed Adam ‘Shamba’, whose car was reportedly attacked with rocket-propelled grenades in Jebel Marra on 26 January.

The long-standing tensions within SLA-AW over Abdul Wahid’s management surfaced dramatically (albeit behind closed doors) in the middle of 2009 when senior SLA commanders—including several of those considered most loyal to Abdul Wahid—‘challenged him for 10 days’, in the words of one of those present, at a capacity-building workshop in Switzerland. The chief of staff of the SLA, Yousif Ahmad Yousif ‘Karjakola’, went as far as to call the SLA chairman incompetent. Others complained about a lack of support, including salaries and military supplies, and the refusal to participate in the internationally-mediated peace process led by Djibril Bassole.

The spark to January’s mini-war appears to have been the capture of Karjakola by JEM in November 2009 as he returned to Darfur from Chad. Abdul Wahid’s critics allege that JEM acted at the instigation of the SLA Chairman, and are super-critical of the US special envoy, Gen. Scott Gration, for not seeking the release of a senior commander who defied Abdul Wahid’s rejectionism and favoured participating in the peace process. After Karjakola’s arrest, I received calls from SLA commanders in Darfur claiming that they have evidence of a ‘hit list’ (reportedly backed by serious money) of pro-peace reformers. I am aware that Abdul Wahid loyalists have made similar claims to others, but have no details of their claims. The list is said to include several SLA leaders in the Ain Siro area—including Ali Haroun, a law graduate of Khartoum University and responsible for justice in the SLA, and Suleiman Sakerey, the highest military commander in Ain Siro. Both met the AU High-Level Panel on Darfur in June last year.

Ain Siro has been untouched by the factional fighting and serious human rights abuses that have cast such a cloud over some rebel-controlled areas. But it has a history of problems with the SLA leadership in Jebel Marra. A number of commanders from Ain Siro were ‘arrested’ and taken to Jebel Marra, Abdul Wahid’s headquarters, late in 2007 as they gave voice to growing popular demand from the field for reform of the movement that Abdul Wahid leads from the diaspora. A confidential UN report said the Ain Siro group were accused of ‘attempting to divide the movement’. During the group’s detention in Jebel Marra, a university companion of Ali Haroun, Abdalla Mohamed, was kidnapped with his bodyguard, Hamadi, by masked men from the centre of Deribat, the SLA stronghold where the Ain Siro group was being held. (Abdalla’s body was later found three months later, hanged, in a village in Jebel Marra. Hamadi’s body was found in the same village, shot in the back.) I personally went to Paris to ask Abdul Wahid for guarantees for the safety of the Ain Siro group. He assured me they would come to no harm, and they were indeed released—albeit many months later. Abdul Wahid claimed that Abdalla Mohamed had been seized, from the market in Deribat, by ‘janjaweed’. I do not know Deribat. I leave it to those who do to judge whether ‘janjaweed’ could have got into the centre of the town, and out again, without a fight.

On 5 January this year, a senior SLA commander critical of Abdul Wahid and supportive of the peace process, Abdalla Abaker, was shot dead by Abdul Wahid loyalists at a checkpoint in Jebel Marra. Abdalla’s supporters subsequently attacked and looted the homes of a number of commanders considered to be Abdul Wahid loyalists, setting in motion a chain of attack and counter-attack that will continue until the root causes of the problem are resolved—most importantly the lack of structures, and accountability, in Jebel Marra.

The people of Darfur—those stuck in wretched camps and those still clinging to the countryside so utterly devastated by Khartoum’s criminal counter-insurgency—deserve better leadership than this. I have many reports of, and testimony to, the latest clashes and killings. It is a pity that none of this reaches the ‘ordinary’ people of Darfur, to enable them to judge for themselves who they want to represent them and speak on their behalf. A little naming and shaming, with dispassionate, detailed reporting of what exactly is going on—and why—might help Darfurians to find a voice of their own that is informed by fact rather than internet rumour and propaganda.

Click here to read comments.
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Book by Julie Flint & Alex de Waal - Darfur: A New History of a Long War (African Arguments) - Revised and Updated



Julie Flint is a journalist and Sudan researcher. She has co-authored two books on Darfur with Alex de Waal—most recently, Darfur: A New History of a Long War—and acted as a consultant for a range of international organizations and human rights groups on the Darfur conflict and the Inter-Sudanese Peace Talks in Abuja, attending four sessions of the talks over two years. (Photo credit: us.macmillan.com)



Photo credit: Amazon.co.uk

Further reading

Nov 29, 2008, Sudan Watch - Qatari Peace Bid: UN, EU, AU, AL, UK, US & France support the joint Arab-African peace initiative for Darfur led by Qatar & Sudan People's Forum (SPF)

Oct 26, 2009, Sudan Watch - Sudan in 2012: Asking New Questions (Alex de Waal)

FULL TEXT: FINAL REPORT OF THE AFRICAN UNION HIGH‐LEVEL PANEL ON DARFUR (AUPD) OCTOBER 2009

Click here for AUPD Report in English

Click here for AUPD Report in Arabic

Southern Sudan is awash in arms - The 2008 South Sudan Civilian Disarmament Campaign

From John Prendergast's Enough Project.org
This Is What "Awash In Arms" Looks Like
By Maggie Fick, December 4, 2009:

Photo:  Boy greets us on the road in Panyagor. (Enough/Maggie Fick)

(BOR, Southern Sudan) – This is my first time working and living in a “post-conflict setting,” but sadly, southern Sudan also has the feeling of being in a period of potential “pre-conflict,” threatening to return to widespread violence.

As an Enough researcher in Washington for the past year, I regularly read reports about civilian disarmament, small arms flows in southern Sudan, or about proxy militias moving into and out of the southern Sudanese army as alliances shift. These reports are intellectually engaging and the analysis is useful, but now that I’m here in southern Sudan, I am personally tempted not to join the chorus of analysis on complex issues such as disarmament, but to try to make the simple point that is still glossed over: “Southern Sudan is awash in arms.” You may have heard this sound bite before, but what it means practically is that most people I encountered while traveling by road in Jonglei state for roughly 400 kilometers, from the capital Bor to the town of Duk Padiet, are carrying weapons. Some of these people were wearing SPLA military uniforms, others were wearing deconstructed camouflage shirts, a mainstay of the clothes found in the markets I have visited thus far in the South, but many of these people were ordinary civilians—teenage boys riding bicycles, men walking with their wives, young Dinka cattle keepers taking their herd of cattle to water on the Nile river. To be honest, at first I wasn’t sure how to interact with the many well-armed people I encountered on a walk around Panyagor, a town along the road up to Duk Padiet. But then I realized that people just wanted to say hello, regardless of what kind of weapon they had slung over their shoulder.

It is hard to comprehend what “civilian disarmament” means in a place like Jonglei state, where weapons are simply a part of everyday life. The challenge of this process was evident in two disastrous attempts at disarmament conducted by the Government of Southern Sudan and the SPLA in 2006 and 2008—see these two reports, here [Anatomy of Civilian Disarmament in Jonglei State] and here [Shots in the Dark: The 2008 South Sudan Civilian Disarmament Campaign], by the Small Arms Survey for more information. With another state-by-state civilian disarmament campaign on the horizon, an urgent assessment is needed of how and whether these efforts will yield improve peace and security for the people of southern Sudan.

The role of Arab tribes in Darfur - Small Arms Survey: “Beyond Janjaweed: Understanding the Militias of Darfur”

Many Arab tribes remained neutral during the escalation of the war in Darfur in 2003-04. In order to understand the rapidly evolving situation in Darfur, there is a need to better understand Arab communities.

Humanitarian organizations, for example, could do more to encourage the employment of representatives of local Arab tribes, who are currently under-represented among local staff. Moreover, international mediators should promote the inclusion of the concerns of Arab tribes in the Darfur peace process.

Source: swisspeace by David Lanz, September 15, 2009:
Sudan roundtable discusses the role of Arabs in Darfur

Role of Arabs in Darfur

On September 15 the biannual KOFF Sudan roundtable took place at swisspeace. The topic under discussion was the role of Arab tribes in Darfur.  The common narrative of the Darfur conflict describes Arab groups as perpetrators of a genocide spearheaded by the infamous Janjaweed militia and supported by the Sudanese government in Khartoum.   This narrative is problematic insofar as it brushes over the fact that many Arab tribes remained neutral during the escalation of the war in Darfur in 2003-04, and it also ignores the historic marginalization of Arab tribes in Darfur that made them vulnerable to government manipulation. Today, as the intensity of the Darfur conflict has diminished, some Arab militias have joined the rebellion, and an increasing number of intra-Arab clashes with considerable casualties are taking place in Darfur.

It was highlighted during the discussion that in order to understand the rapidly evolving situation in Darfur, there is a need to better understand Arab communities. A number of recommendations emerged in order to address the exclusion of Arab groups from international assistance and engagement in Darfur. Humanitarian organizations, for example, could do more to encourage the employment of representatives of local Arab tribes, who are currently under-represented among local staff. Moreover, international mediators should promote the inclusion of the concerns of Arab tribes in the Darfur peace process.

Sudan Platform

In order to consolidate the different activities of swisspeace on Sudan and to provide a more useful resource base for peacebuilding organizations in Sudan, swisspeace created the Sudan Platform. The Platform features a comprehensive compilation of books, articles, reports and news on Sudan as well as an updated list of Swiss actors in Sudan.

Links:

Sudan Platform www.swisspeace.ch/sudan

Since the Roundtable followed Chatham House Rule there are no references to specific organizations or speakers. http://www.gcsp.ch/e/about/CHRule.htm

Small Arms Survey:
“Beyond Janjaweed: Understanding the Militias of Darfur” http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/files/portal/spotlight/sudan/Sudan_pdf/SWP-17-Beyond-Janjaweed.pdf

Sudanese President Bashir tells parliament "I invite all the parties to a dialogue"

In a report published last week, Geneva-based Small Arms Survey said that north and south Sudan have been engaged in an arms race for the past four years.

"With ongoing violence in southern Sudan and Darfur, and mounting tensions between northern and southern governments, persisting arms flows should be a cause for great concern in the international community," said Eric Berman, Small Arms Survey Managing Director.

The president confirmed this weekend that he will stand in the April elections.

"We wish to have general elections without violence. I invite all the parties to a dialogue... in order to reach a positive climate to hold elections," Bashir told parliament.

Source: Report from Khartoum by Guillaume Lavallee (AFP), 5 October 2009:
Sudan's Beshir invites opposition for dialogue

Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir on Monday invited the country's opposition for talks aimed at avoiding clashes in next year's general election, a week after they threatened to boycott it.

"We wish to have general elections without violence. I invite all the parties to a dialogue... in order to reach a positive climate to hold elections," Beshir told parliament.

Africa's largest country is to hold presidential, parliamentary and local elections in April 2010, its first general election since 1986.

After Beshir's coup in 1989, subsequent votes were slammed as a sham by the country's opposition.

Southern former rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), who now share a unity government with Beshir's National Congress Party, joined other opposition parties last week in threatening to boycott elections if the laws guaranteeing basic freedoms are not passed by November 30.

After its decades-long north-south civil war, Sudan adopted an interim constitution guaranteeing freedoms but the text clashed with old laws that remain in place.

"We will receive the laws and harmonise them with the constitution," Beshir said, adding that a new national commission for human rights will also be formed.

"This parliamentary session comes at a crucial moment," said Beshir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity in the war-torn western region of Darfur.

The president confirmed this weekend that he will stand in the April elections.

Analysts say the SPLM and opposition parties are considering fielding a candidate jointly but no announcement has yet been made.

Insecurity in Darfur and increasing violence in south Sudan where 2,000 people have died in ethnic clashes since the beginning of the year, could also threaten the elections, analysts say.

Southern leaders have accused Beshir of arming ethnic militias in order to destabilise the south ahead of elections and a key referendum scheduled for 2011 on independence for the resource-rich but impoverished region.

"We want to find a solution to tensions in the south and we are prepared to help create an appropriate climate for the elections and the referendum," Beshir said.

In a report published last week, Geneva-based Small Arms Survey said that north and south Sudan have been engaged in an arms race for the past four years.

"With ongoing violence in southern Sudan and Darfur, and mounting tensions between northern and southern governments, persisting arms flows should be a cause for great concern in the international community," said Eric Berman, Small Arms Survey Managing Director.