Focus - Increasing conflict sparks fears of humanitarian crisis

A major humanitarian crisis is feared in areas of southern Sudan, where heavy fighting has been underway for the past few weeks, despite ongoing peace talks in Kenya. Southern Sudan has been the scene of fierce fighting between the government in Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) since 1983. However, fighting in recent months, had reached its "deadliest phase", the Brussels-based think tank, International Crisis Group (ICG), warned on 28 June. Media reports said a government aircraft bombed the town of Kapoeta, a key southern garrison, which the SPLA captured from government forces on 9 June, killing seven civilians. The reports come barely a week after the Catholic church reported that a government military aircraft bombed a church compound in Ikotos town, in eastern Equatoria, southern Sudan. On Sunday, the Sudanese media in Khartoum reported that the army had re-captured Gogrial town, in Bahr El Ghazal province, from the SPLA. However, Samson Kwaje, the SPLM/A spokesperson in Nairobi, said the rebels withdrew from Gogrial for "tactical reasons". In a hard-hitting report, the ICG said oil revenues had enabled the Sudanese government to purchase more weapons and adopt "more brutal tactics" in driving civilians out of oil-rich areas. Meanwhile, the SPLM/A had acquired additional quantities of sophisticated weapons, enabling it to engage government troops in "more intensive conventional" battles, it said. HUMANITARIAN ACCESS COULD BE IMPEDED This escalation could further impede humanitarian access to the region, in addition to frequent relief flight denials by the warring parties to vast areas of the disputed regions in the south, humanitarian sources warned. The parties to the peace talks - under the auspices of the regional body, Intergovernmental Authority on Drought (IGAD) - have declined to comment on the situation. Muhammad Ahmad Dirdery, the charge d'affaires at the Sudan Embassy in Nairobi, told IRIN on Wednesday he was not in a position to comment either on the escalation of conflict in the south, nor the progress of the ongoing peace talks. "I am unable to comment on this matter at this time," Dirdery stressed. Walter Kensteiner, the US assistant secretary of state for Africa, who has been travelling in the region, has however expressed confidence that the talks may yield results on some of the tough issues such as self determination for the south, as well as the separation of religion and state, which are at the heart of the 19-year old conflict. The Sudanese government has already agreed to extend for a month an agreement that allowed humanitarian access to victims of the war in southern Sudan, following a meeting this week between Kensteiner and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. But the recent escalation of the conflict continues to raise humanitarian concerns for thousands of affected civilians. Kensteiner's visit this week is broadly seen as an effort to raise the profile of the peace talks and set the pace for negotiating humanitarian access to disputed regions, particularly the western Upper Nile region, ahead of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's planned visit to Sudan this month. Humanitarian agencies - which last week carried out a five-day "stop-gap intervention" in western Upper Nile - warned that a serious humanitarian crisis was in the offing in this region if fighting continued and the aid community could not secure access. A joint meeting of Sudan donors and aid agencies in early June strongly suggested that access to such key locations should be maintained for enough time to allow "meaningful interventions", and not just "hit-and-run activities". However, agencies are stuck for the moment with what access they can secure, humanitarian sources told IRIN. BASHIR OPTIMISTIC The Sudanese government - which has insisted on a comprehensive ceasefire throughout the country before negotiating a final settlement to the conflict - has, during the course of the peace talks, indicated a growing optimism over the prospects for peace. In an address to the nation on 30 June, Bashir said he believed some "headway" was being made at the peace talks. "Indeed, peace is definitely coming since the people have realised, after a painful experience, that the war has lost meaning and logic," he said in a speech broadcast live on Sudanese television. "It [the war] means nothing to the people except killing destruction, hunger, homelessness, and backwardness," he added.