Government and SPLA clash in Upper Nile

The rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) this week reported ongoing fighting between its forces and those of the Sudanese government in the disputed oil-rich regions of western and central Upper Nile, in south-central Sudan. The SPLM/A said this week that on Monday 14 January it had repulsed "a huge enemy force" of about 7,000 men, comprising regular Sudanese government soldiers and several tribal militias, supported by two helicopter gunships and an Antonov bomber, between Nhial Diu and Bentiu. In an earlier development, the SPLM/A had engaged a flotilla of government barges on the Bahr al-Zaraf river, sinking two of them, and a land convoy from Malakal town advancing on Ler, which it had repulsed and forced to withdraw, according to the rebel statement, released on Monday. "The National Islamic Front government has started its ritual dry-season offensive with military mobilisation and attacks on SPLA positions in oil-rich areas of western Upper Nile and central Upper Nile. These unprovoked attacks have been successfully been repulsed by SPLA units in both fronts," Samson Kwaje, the SPLM/A spokesman in Nairobi, said in the statement made available to IRIN. Responding to the statement, the Sudanese government said there was "nothing like a dry-season offensive" because the clashes around the oil-rich regions had begun "some months ago". Muhammad Ahmed Dirdiery, Charge d'Affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, told IRIN on Wednesday that western Upper Nile was "almost 100 percent" under government control with only "a few "pockets here and there" still occupied by the SPLA. "Skirmishes around these places are normal, and the government is always carrying out routine movements to protect oil companies operating in the region," he said. Oil drilling by the government of Sudan in western Upper Nile region has caused great concern within the SPLM/A and among human rights groups, who have argued that it involves the forcible displacement of local people from concession areas and that Khartoum is using oil revenues to purchase weapons which escalate the war in Sudan. In Monday's statement, Kwaje urged the oil companies operating in the region (notably Talisman Energy of Canada, Petronas of Malaysia, China National Petroleum Corporation, Lundin Petroleum of Sweden, OMV AG of Austria and Russia’s Slavneft, Rosneft and Tatneft) to "heed the voice of reason and prudence, and dissociate themselves from the genocidal policies" of the Khartoum government. "It is to be noted that oil development by GOS [the government of Sudan] in western Upper Nile has caused, and still is causing, severe hardships for the people who should have been the beneficiaries of this oil. Thousands of indigenous locals are displaced from their ancestral homes to make the area safe for foreign companies to explore and exploit the oil," said Kwaje. In October 2001, an independent fact-finding mission to Sudan said international oil companies were "knowingly or unknowingly" involved in a government counterinsurgency strategy in the country. The investigation, commissioned by a number of British and Canadian nongovernmental organisations, singled out Talisman as having failed to involve itself in constructive engagement in Sudan and having proved unable to exert a positive influence on the Sudanese government. The United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan, Gerhart Baum, in November 2001 presented a report to the UN General Assembly in which he stated that internally displaced persons in Sudan now living in camps had fled from oil regions of the country. However, in a rejoinder, the Sudanese ambassador to the UN, Elfatih Mohamed Ahmed Erwa, said his delegation regarded certain aspects of the report as fiction. He also considered that Baum's request for a breakdown of the government oil revenues spent on people in the south of the country "violates sovereignty and is an unacceptable interference in matters within the jurisdiction of the government". Erwa said "certain groups" were waging "hate campaigns" against the Sudanese government, alleging various human rights violations, including oil-related displacement. The root causes of human rights concerns expressed by Baum lay in the ongoing war, and the government was "ready to renew its acceptance of an immediate and comprehensive cease-fire" so as to end the war, he added.