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GERARD PRUNIER

~ Gerard Prunier is an Independent Consultant on Eastern and Central African affairs and former Director of the French Center for Ethiopian Studies in Addis-Ababa.

GERARD PRUNIER

Tag Archives: SALVA KIR

Sudan : deeper into the sand

30 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by GERARD PRUNIER in Africa, History, International Affairs, Politics, The Horn Africa, War Studies

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KHARTOUM, NORTH KORDOFAN, SALVA KIR, SPLM, SUDAN

The attack on Umm Ruwaba on April 27th is a clear sign of the deepening seriousness of the Sudanese Government’s military situation . It is interesting to notice that this unprecedented attack on an important North Kordofan town came just in the wake of the failed conversations between that same SPLM-North and the Sudanese Government in Addis Ababa (see our last posting on April 24th) . Why did the conversation fail ? Yasser Arman and his delegation just wanted to reopen a channel for humanitarian aid to go to the combat zones. The NCP regime , which is getting more and more anxious by the day , wanted a global “security” discussion , particularly on the help it accuses Juba of providing to SPLM-North (probably true , even if this is not the choice of President Salva Kiir) . Yasser refused the global discussion , Khartoum refused the purely humanitarian one , everybody went home and the SPLM-North immediately attacked Umm Ruwaba , the smaller town of Abu Karchola and tried to reach the el-Obeid airport . This resulted in four days of battle (April 25th to 28th) the (temporary) cutting of the Khartoum–el-Obeid highway and a significant number of casualties (the figures are conflicting but it must have been a minimum of 100-120) . The “victory” of the FAS was only achieved through the use of air power , as it felt hard pressed to hold the ground . The lessons of this are several :

  • Conversations between the NCP and the SPLM-N are at a dead end and unlikely to restart in any meaningful fashion
  • The government finds it harder and harder to hold its ground facing the insurrections , all the way from Darfur to the Blue Nile .
  • The FAS are short of manpower and have to rely more and more on the Air Force
  • Poorly controlled panic is beginning to gain momentum in top NCP circles
  • The actual functional reopening of the oil pipeline to Port Sudan is beginning to look like a port of last hope . 

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