The United Nations Security Council on Monday approved a resolution that would allow for the deployment of more than 4,200 Ethiopian peacekeeping troops to the disputed Abyei region in Sudan.
Abyei, which lies on the border between the north and the future country of Southerns Sudan, has been the site of heavy fighting. The troops are being sent in an effort to alleviate tensions before Southern Sudan becomes officially independent in less than two weeks.
The 15-member council voted unanimously to monitor the withdrawal of northern Sudanese troops from the region, who began their occupation of Abyei on May 21. Since then, around 100,000 locals have fled the area.
The south is set to secede from the north on July 9, but the future status of oil-rich Abyei is heavily contested with both sides blaming the other for starting the fighting.
Popular consultations have to decide whether the region will stay in the north or not, says Plooijer. “But nobody knows when these popular consultations will take place and if they will at all. So there is an expectation that people living in Blue Nile and South Kordofan will not agree to remain under the north,” he said.
“If these conflicts are not resolved in a peaceful way, these people will go back to war.”
The oil-rich town Abyei is seeing increasing violence that could break out into a full-scale war. Both Khartoum and Juba are blaming the other side for the violence.
The resolution would allow for the deployment of the troops for an initial six-month period to ensure that northern troops have withdrawn. The African Union brokered a deal on June 20 between the north and the south to demilitarize the area.
The Council made the decision after “recognizing that the current situation in Abyei demands an urgent response and constitutes a threat to international peace and security,” according to a statement from the U.N.
U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kyung-wha Kang, after recently taking a tour through the region, said that “all the civilians are gone” from the region, adding that many homes were razed and looted.
“The utter devastation I saw in Abyei was a chilling warning of what might become of the border area,” she added. Speaking with reporters in Khartoum, she called for a thorough human rights investigation into the Abyei and the province on South Kordofan.
Members of the council gave the U.N. troops in Sudan, which are being called the United Nations Interim Security Force, the mandate to take “necessary actions,” which include using military force to protect civilians in the region.
North and south Sudan engaged in a decades-long civil war that killed more than 2 million people, and displaced several million more. In 2005, the two sides signed a peace accord to end the conflict and pave the way to separation.
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