Clashes in South Sudan no longer inter-ethnic conflict

A devastating raid in the arid, sparse-populated Jonglei region of Sudan is turning the conventional wisdom long held as the path to pacifying Sudan onto its head.

At the height of raids two years ago, when nearly every state had an ongoing tribal raid, many saw dialogue and community talks after talks as the only means to ending the fights.

Calls to send in the military were largely scorned upon by the people, the analysts and the politicians.

When the Murle raided nearly every ethnic group, leaving mayhem in their wake and kidnapping scores of children and taking cattle, most aid agencies pushed the reconciliation route.

Child Protection International, one group that began a campaign to release abducted children at the time, issued a statement, saying a non violent response was what was needed.

Child abduction

Such a solution, the group said, should acknowledge the economic, health and security problems that underlie this pattern of child abduction.

When messy raids in Warrap, at the boundary with Abyei, left a trail of murders along the way, as Dinka Lou community went against the Apuuk, officials called for talks between the communities.

The same policy stayed even as the Jur fought the Dinka, and the Agaar and Jur-bel communities of Lakes State fought, displacing hundreds, and ferreting thousands of herd of cattle.

And , at the height of the Murle attacks, the UN Secretary-general, Mr Ban Ki-Moon, said the government had to find a peaceful way to end the raids.

There was almost always no talk of bringing the perpetrators to justice.

But as the dynamics of the fighting have changed – less widespread, basing on the number of states currently reporting raids compared to last year, for instance, but better executed, according to officials -- so have the thoughts of how to end the fights evolved.

Military strategy

After the latest attack, perception that the fights were solely ethnic-driven is fading, slowly giving way to fears of an invisible insurgency.

At talks around tables in pubs, offices and the streets, the tide has slowly turned from discussing how to bring the communities to talk to discussing the best military strategy to put out the flames.

By and large, people are beginning to see the attacks as not merely tribal, but as a result of a sinister political motive aimed at, as the leaders often say, presenting Southern Sudan as ungovernable.

Ask many a Southerner what troubles them, and some will say: A rebellion, not ethnic fights.

Ask what solution is best for ending the fights, and many would say a firm, a strong counter-insurgency by the government.

The doves are out. The hawks are in.

Signs of an insurgency began mid this year, when gunmen, calling themselves the White Army – the first known time that new groups arising after the peace agreement had crafted a name for themselves-- dismantled UN food supplies to Akobo, the scene of earlier tribal raids, and drowned boats calling displaced persons back home.

And, following the most recent attack on September 20, doubts are beginning to arise even over what was initially referred to as Murle attack.

Tension is rising in the run-up to the Sudan’s poll - the first national election since the end of the two-decade north-south conflict in 2005.

Mr Salva Kiir, the South Sudan President has accused northerners of stirring up recent ethnic violence in the south, which has left hundreds of people dead.

President Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP) has rejected the accusations.

The NCP and SPLM are in a shaky coalition at national level, with some SPLM officials feeling the former rebels are being marginalised.

“To us in the SPLM, unity is a noble cause, but not any unity,” Mr Kiir said, according to the AFP news agency.

“Unity that does not generate a value-added to the present status of South Sudan does not attract anybody.

“The two possibilities of unity and secession... are real. Consequently, wisdom dictates us that we prepare ourselves to both eventualities.”

At the conference in the southern Sudanese capital Juba, prominent Islamist politician Hassan al-Turabi repeated his calls for President Hassan al-Bashir to travel to The Hague to face ICC trial.

Mr Turabi has previously been arrested for making these calls.

Additional reporting by BBC online