For the Pulitzer Center, Khartoum, Sudan
Published on July 29, 2010
Edward Lino, an SPLM member from Abyei, was sent to administer to the disputed area shortly before the May 2008 fighting which displaced some 50,000 people. He is now based in Khartoum, where I interviewed him last week. Although the interview was about Abyei, perhaps the most telling part of the interview was with respect to an area that the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague has said (and the parties have agreed) is not in Abyei – – the Heglig oilfields.
Lino is adamant that they are in Unity state (what the Government of South Sudan calls Western Upper Nile) and therefore belong to the south. The NCP view, equally adamant, is that they are in Southern Kordofan and therefore belong to the north (this is what the PCA’s final award map indicates also). Interestingly, another southerner – who now holds the position of the Minister of Oil – assured me just last week that Heglig was indeed in the south, while his assistant (not a southerner) told me it straddles the border.
People in Khartoum can – and do – argue this issue ad nauseum, and it seems to me that where you think Heglig is basically comes down to whether you are a northerner or a southerner. But at Heglig itself, there is a border that will need to be demarcated if the referendum comes out in favor of secession. And in this context, there was a part of the Lino interview that made me smile, especially in the context of the struggle I am having to get a travel permit to Darfur. I asked Lino why it was that border demarcation was not yet finished. “The NCP does not want it. But they do not tell you they don’t want it. They just delay, delay, delay . . . They think it can be consumed by time.”
In the case of my travel permit to Darfur, it can be consumed by time. I cannot afford to wait in Khartoum forever – quite apart from the cost, the Sudanese government only gives visiting journalists a visa for one month at a time. But if the south does become a new nation next year, a decision will have to be made regarding who profits from the Heglig fields.
Speak Your Mind