Sudan may face Civil War again.

Khartoum's Islamist government the northern National Congress Party and SLPA,  in January 2005,  signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement after years of talks brokered by the U.S. and a bloc of East African countries.

The Islamist north and the country's animist and Christian south are approaching war again, the two sides were at war almost continuously from 1955 to 2005.   Between 1983 and 2005, war killed an estimated 2 million civilians—more than six times the number thought to have been killed in Darfur over the past six years.

The 2005 peace agreement that stopped north and south fighting is now on the brink of collapse, and both sides are rearming in advance of an independence referendum in southern Sudan scheduled for January 2011.

If the referendum does fail to take place, the war will almost certainly begin again as the South trys:
-to break free of economic and political domination by the north and
- to get control of Sudan's vast oil resources, much of which lie in the south.

The two sides signed a deal meant to do two things:
- promote democratic reforms and the creation of a unity government over a period of six years—during which time the two sides would split revenues from the south's oilfields.
- at the end of the period, the southerners would be allowed to vote on whether they wanted formal independence.

There's mounting evidence that Khartoum in the north has been cheating the south out of oil revenues while arming rival ethnic groups to foment chaos in the south ahead of the independence referendum.

Khartoum is openly seeking to undermine the referendum, for example, demanding a 50 percent share of the south's oil for 50 years. These underhanded tactics by the north may lead the south unilaterally to declare independence leading to war again.

The U.S.-backed Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA)  has been unable to deliver schools, clinics, or even stability to many parts of the region under its control. Widespread corruption and the failure of the former rebel army to govern effectively has helped Khartoum sell the idea that southern Sudan will morph into a lawless state like Somalia if allowed to separate.

Sudan's civilians are now caught between a heavily armed northern government bent on maintaining control and an angry southern rebel army because petrodollars over the past five years have financed defense spending on both sides.

Getting Khartoum to carry out its obligations under the 2005 deal is probably the only way to stop war but time is running out. Analysts say that, without a breakthrough from the Obama administration and new pressure from Sudan's African neighbors, military action will begin.

Source: Jason McLure

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