By Michael Logan Sep 2, 2009, 13:37 GMT
Nairobi/Juba - A fragile peace has held between north and south Sudan since the end of a 21-year civil war in 2005, but a recent upsurge in deadly tribal clashes in the south has raised fears of a return to large-scale conflict.
Tribal disputes, mainly over cattle, have long been common in the autonomous Southern Sudan, but easy access to weapons left over from the civil war between the Muslim north and Christian and animist south has helped ramp up the body count.
More than 1,000 people have died as a result of tribal violence this year. The latest deaths came Friday when over 40 people perished in a clash between the Dinka Bor and Lou Nuer tribes.
Sudanese have been shocked by a shift in the pattern to the violence, which has begun to claim the lives of more women and children.
'Usually we see traditional cattle rustling, where cattle are targeted and men are the ones injured,' Jonathan Whittall, the head of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Southern Sudan, told the German Press Agency dpa.
'What we see this year is a lot more women and children being killed and deaths outnumbering the wounded,' he added. 'The intention is to go into villages ... with the clear goal to kill as many people as possible.'
MSF has counted 1057 deaths and 259 injuries in the six major incidents it has responded to this year. The United Nations says around 1200 have died in total.
Whittall said that MSF was unsure of the reasons behind the new violence, but Southern Sudanese officials have accused the north of engineering the troubles in order to undermine already delayed elections in Southern Sudan.
The north denies the charges.
The aggressors in the latest round of violence were reportedly wearing military uniforms and carrying brand new automatic weapons. Some see this as evidence that all is not what it seems.
'Consequently, in the view of the Church, this was not a tribal conflict as commonly reported, but a deliberately organized attack on civilians by those that are against the peace,' Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul Yak, head of the Episcopal Church of Sudan, said in a statement.
'It is a crime against the peace of the Sudan and if left unchecked will do great damage to the smooth implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA),' he added.
2005's CPA laid out a roadmap that included elections in Southern Sudan by this year and a referendum on independence in 2011.
Southern Sudan's ruling party and Sudanese President Omar al- Bashir's National Congress Party are expected to contest the elections.
However, the UN is warning that if the violence continues, it will be difficult to organize the crucial ballot in the south.
Whittall sees no sign of the clashes ending.
'If we base it on what we have seen so far this year, clashes have been increasing in intensity and frequency,' he said. 'There is nothing to indicate they will calm down. At the moment the pattern is attack and counter attack.'
The tribal tensions are just the latest threat to the CPA. Clashes between northern and southern forces in the disputed oil-rich Abyei region last year threatened to bring the two sides back to war.
Both sides have said they will abide by a ruling setting the boundaries around Abyei, issued in July by an arbitration court in The Hague. In late August, they also agreed to implement neglected elements of the peace deal.
But despite the apparent progress, few are convinced peace is on the cards.
In Southern Sudan's capital Juba, a bustling town bursting with aid workers, it is almost impossible to find someone who believes that Southern Sudan will be allowed to peacefully secede from the north.
'War is very likely ... it will be fought along the border,' a pilot with a small company, who wished to remain anonymous, told dpa. 'I will fight for Southern Sudan.'
Both the north and the south have been accused of building up their forces in preparation for possible conflict.
The south was earlier this year forced to issue a denial after the manifest of ship seized by Somali pirates appeared to show it was carrying tanks and other military equipment for the Southern Sudanese government.
The north has been snapping up arms - most of which are used in the restive Darfur province - from China, which buys huge amounts of the north's oil.
Should the fragile peace fall apart, be it before the upcoming elections or after the referendum in 2011, analysts say that it would spell disaster for both north and south.
'A breakdown in the CPA would have devastating effects for all Sudan,' UK-based think tank Chatham House warned in January. 'Many decades of mismanaged and unequal development have left this country facing a serious risk of fragmentation.'
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