Khartoum cuts southern aid route to oil regions

The Sudanese government on Wednesday agreed to a resumption of aid flows into the highly contested area of western Upper Nile, southern Sudan, but on the condition that relief flights pass through the north, according to humanitarian sources and Sudanese media reports.

Khartoum said aid agencies would be permitted to fly relief to the oil-rich region for the first time in over two months, but on condition that the aid originated in government territory in north Sudan, principally from the town of El Obeid (Al-Ubayyid), Northern Kordofan, humanitarian officials told IRIN.

UN sources said government representatives had demanded that access to western Upper Nile (also known as Wahdah, or Unity State) would only be allowed through government-controlled territory in the north for security reasons. However, no official agreement had been signed, and no written proposals had been put forward by the government negotiators, they added.

Aid agencies, many operating under the UN-led humanitarian operation Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) have, for years, flown relief supplies directly into southern Sudan from the town of Lokichoggio, northwestern Kenya.

OLS, the umbrella operation for UN agencies and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) operating in Sudan, submits a routine request at the start of each month to the government of Sudan and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) for humanitarian flight access to a number of locations in southern Sudan.

On average, Sudanese government authorities deny OLS access to 25 locations in southern Sudan each month, or about 10 percent of the requests, according to the UN.

At the start of April, however, some 40 locations, were listed as being denied both flight access and general humanitarian access, according to relief officials. This effectively cut off humanitarian supply lines into parts of western Upper Nile, Eastern Equatoria and Bahr al-Ghazal, according to a statement issued by the UN Executive Committee on Humanitarian Affairs (ECHA).

On 16 May, the Khartoum administration further increased restrictions on humanitarian access by announcing a flight ban for the entire area of Unity State (encompassing western Upper Nile), according to a recent statement from nine major aid agencies.

Freedom of access to vulnerable populations - an international humanitarian principle - is guaranteed under a beneficiary protocol of OLS, which established principles for the protection and provision of aid to war-affected populations in Sudan.

During negotiations with senior UN officials over humanitarian access on Tuesday and Wednesday, Sudanese First Vice-President Ali Uthman Muhammad Taha had said the government would terminate all OLS operations out of Lokichoggio, the Sudanese News Agency (Suna) reported.

"The deal struck may, or may not, buy a limited amount of time for food delivery into western Upper Nile by avoiding a political confrontation with Khartoum," humanitarian sources told IRIN.

After a press conference in Khartoum on Wednesday, Suna quoted Sudanese Minister for International Cooperation, Karam al-Din Abd al-Mawla, as saying that relief materials would be transported into 43 areas in Wahdah/Unity State from the airport at El Obeid. The new arrangement would be reviewed after an initial one month period, he added.

It seemed highly unlikely the SPLM/A would degree to the terms of the deal, which, according to humanitarian sources, "compromises the basic terms of the OLS agreement" signed by the Sudanese government, the SPLM/A and the UN.

Recent months have seen an upsurge in fighting in Unity State/western Upper Nile between Sudanese government and aligned militia forces, on the one hand, and the rebel SPLM/A, on the other, essentially over control of the area's rich oil resources.

Despite attempts by government forces to increase their control over the oil rich areas, often using new military technology paid for with oil revenues, rebel forces had held their ground and continued to restrict government oil extraction to the area north of the town of Bentiu, John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group (ICG) told IRIN on Thursday.

The SPLM/A had consolidated its control over western Upper Nile south of Bentiu, where the bulk of Sudan's oil resources were located, having gained significant military support following a merger with the formerly government-aligned Sudan People's Defence Forces of the Nuer leader, Riek Machar, Prendergast said.

Local people in the area had been "re-energised" by the merger, which had ended over a decade of enmity between the two rebel groups, he added.

Villages in western Upper Nile under government control, as well as those held by the rebels, had been placed on the denied locations list, according to Prendergast. This was possibly to hide the large number of casualties the government had suffered and also to prevent aid agencies from witnessing the resupply of government forces in Bentiu, the main government-held town in the area, he said.

Despite repeated calls for unrestricted access, and agreements by the warring parties to assure this, military operations, insecurity, flight bans and the government's alleged depopulation of oil-rich areas to secure them for production have displaced and/or precluded access to hundreds of thousands of civilians.

An estimated 80,000 people had been displaced from Ruweng County and another 50,000 from Unity State/western Upper Nile in a pattern of depopulation of oil areas by government forces and aligned militias, the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan reported earlier this month.

However, Khartoum denies it is targeting civilian populations in oil areas, and has blamed the SPLM/A for escalating military operations and causing the deterioration of humanitarian conditions in Unity/western Upper Nile.

Senior UN officials on 25 April called on all parties to the conflict in Sudan to lift all bans on humanitarian aid flights, and to grant full access to people in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.

"We are appealing to both sides to give us access so we can get food and non-food items to people who need it," said Ambassador Tom Vraalsen, the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Humanitarian Affairs in Sudan.