(Nyala - smc) - SOUTH Darfur government directed the Engineering Department in the State to start the preliminary survey in Bilail area and the southern areas of Nyala selected to be the alternative IDPs camp instead of Kalma camp.

South Darfur Deputy Governor, Dr. Abdul Karim told (smc) that Kalma IDPs camp will be transferred to the new site in agreement with UNAMID, UN, NGOs and the IDPS themselves.

He said that Kalma IDPs camp became one of the security threats, expressing their intension to construct two big camps with 25 – 30 thousands IDPS capacity provided with all basic services adding the area of each residence will be 150 – 200 square meters.

He pointed out that the machineries of the work were directed to the new sites to start implementation, adding that all the NGOs working in the humanitarian activities in the State visited the new sites and expressed satisfaction with.

He said that the government shouldered all the construction expenses, affirming the IDPs movement to the new sites will not start unless the construction work is completed.

It is to be noted that Kalma IDPs camp witnessed in the recent days violations from armed groups which brought arms to the camp a matter that agitated chaos inside the camp.

Security situation update
THE situation in Kalma Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in South Darfur remains tense. Intensified patrols by UNAMID forces have led to a significant decrease in cases of gunfire overnight. UNAMID Deputy Joint Special Representative Mohamed Yonis, Force Commander Patrick Nyamvumba and Acting Police Commissioner Adeyemi Ogunjemilusi today travelled to Nyala to confer with state authorities concerning recent developments.

The majority of Kalma’s sectors have reported improvements in security, with IDPs returning to their homes and resuming normal activities.

UNAMID, Government dig security trench around Nyala
Responding to the increase in incidence of kidnappings and carjackings in Nyala, South Darfur, targeting the international community in particular, UNAMID and the local government have agreed to work together to construct a security trench which will span the town’s perimeter.

UNAMID’s Chinese Engineering Company began work on Sunday on the Mission’s half of the trench. The measure is designed to reduce the high incidence of criminality by regulating travel to and from the town. While limiting entry and exit through small roads, the town will remain fully accessible through major roads and highways.

The trench, measuring 2 meters deep and 2 meters wide, will span approximately 40 kilometers long and is expected to be completed within 4 to 5 weeks. Local authorities will provide 24 hour protection for UNAMID equipment and personnel until the project’s completion.

UNAMID patrols
UNAMID military forces conducted 87 patrols including routine, short-range, long-range, night and humanitarian escort patrols covering 69 villages and IDP camps.

UNAMID police advisors conducted 164 patrols in villages and IDP camps.

IN southern Sudan, the blueprints are unveiled for regional cities shaped as animals and fruits.

At a cost of $10bn (£6.4bn) Juba will be designed in the shape of a rhinoceros. Wau will become a giraffe. Yambio will be shaped like a pineapple.

Juba is the capital of the region – plans are to make if the capital of the new state of South Sudan. Guess where the office of the regional president will be situated. At the back? Somewhere down between the legs? No, it’s where the rhinoceros’s eye should be.

Over in Wau, the sewage treatment plant is appropriately placed under the giraffe’s tail.

All good stuff. But cities have a habit to sprawl and the rhino might well develop a tumour or just spread until it resembles Lagos, which from space resembles a dog squatting on a huge toilet…

The plans were unveiled by the Undersecretary for Housing and Physical Planning, Daniel Wani. The plan is earmarked to cost over £10bn. Southern Sudan’s total annual budget this year is less than $2 billion.

He says:

“Juba, as an example, is a slum city. So our plan is to create a nuclear city outside Juba,” he said. “We have been given land 15 kilometers west of Juba by the state, and we met the community, they are excited to give us this land. We call it Rhino City. And equally also we have been given land in the other nine capitals.”

The thing soon starts to look like a PR stunt to draw interest to a region bereft of funds and ravaged by a civil war that ended in 2005…

(KHARTOUM) - Members of an Arab nomadic tribe are settling in a contested region straddling north and south Sudan, hoping to vote in referendum next year that will define its status, a Sudanese official said on Sunday.

Members of the Misseriya tribe, who are accused by southerners of being close to the Khartoum government, are said to be moving into parts of Abyei, the chief administrator of the region Deng Arop Kuol told reporters in the Sudanese capital.

"The issue that is concerning the people of Abyei and troubling them very much is the issue of settlement that is taking place within the boundaries of Abyei," Kuol said.

"It is the Misseriya who are settling in those areas. The target is to settle in 20 locations in the area north of Abyei and they already started to settle in those areas now," he said.

"We are getting information that they intend to settle 25,000 families in those areas and the number of people will go up to 75,000 in those areas. We believe it is something organised," Kuol added.

As south Sudan holds its referendum on independence in January, residents of the oil-rich Abyei region will simultaneously vote on whether they want to belong to north or south Sudan.

Abyei's referendum law gives the right of vote to members of the southern Dinka Ngok tribe and it is up to the referendum commission to decide which "other Sudanese" are considered residents of the region and can therefore vote.

The law has angered the Arab Misseriya -- a nomadic tribe that migrates each year to the Abyei region looking for pastures for their cattle -- because it does not guarantee them voting rights.

The referendum commission for Abyei has not yet been formed, because representatives of north and south Sudan have failed to agree on who will head it -- leaving the question of Misseriya eligibility still open.

"The Misseriya... are in no way meant to vote in the Abyei referendum because they are not residents. They are meant to be nomads," said Kuol.

Deadly clashes in May 2008 in Abyei had raised fears of a return to civil war between north and south Sudan. Both parties decided to take the matter of the sensitive border to arbitration in The Hague.

Last year, the Permanent Court of Arbitration based in The Hague refined the borders of Abyei, leaving the Heglig oil fileds out of the Abyei region, the heartland of the Dinka Ngok.

Both north and south authorities had accepted the ruling, which was criticised by the Misseriya.

The Hague decision was not "fair" and "definitive" and has not enabled both parties to resolve their differences, said Salah Cos, adviser to President Omar al-Bashir for security matters, in a statement over the weekend.

Sudan produces 500,000 barrels of oil per day and has reserves estimated at six billion barrels.

Most of it lies on the border between north and south.

Northern Sudan has been accused of settling Arab nomadic tribes in oil-rich Abeyi region where votes are required to influence whether or not the oil-rich Abyei would belong to North or South Sudan, ahead of a January 2011 referendum.

The chief administrator of the disputed oil-rich Abyei region, Deng Arop Kuol told reporters in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, that members of the Khartoum-backed Arab Misseriya tribe were moving into parts of Abyei, in order to vote in next year’s referendum that will define the status of the oil-rich region.

“The issue that is concerning the people of Abyei and troubling them very much is the issue of settlement that is taking place within the boundaries of Abyei. It is the Misseriya who are settling in those areas. The target is to settle in 20 locations in the area north of Abyei and they already started to settle in those areas now," Kuol was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.

The oil-rich Abyei region overlaps between North and South Sudan. And the January referendum on independence in South Sudan would require residents of the oil-rich Abyei region to simultaneously vote on whether they want to belong to north or south Sudan.

"We are getting information that they intend to settle 25,000 families in those areas and the number of people will go up to 75,000 in those areas. We believe it is something organized," Kuol said.

According to reports, Abyei’s referendum law, however, does not guarantee voting rights to the Arab Misseriya — a nomadic tribe that migrates each year to the Abyei region looking for pastures for their cattle.

Even though the settling Arab Misseriya tribe are not allowed to vote according to the referendum law, South Sudan authorities remain suspicious of their influx to Abyei, a region responsible for most of Sudan’s 500,000 barrels of oil production per day.

With an estimated six billion barrels of oil in the region, the economies of either North Sudan or an independent South Sudan would be affected by the outcome of votes in Abyei come January 2011. "The Misseriya... are in no way meant to vote in the Abyei referendum because they are not residents. They are meant to be nomads," Kuol adds.

Last year, the Permanent Court of Arbitration based in The Hague refined the borders of Abyei, leaving the Heglig oil fileds out of the Abyei region, and both the North and South authorities had accepted the ruling.

Deadly clashes in May 2008 in Abyei had raised fears of a return to civil war between North and South Sudan. And while both authorities decided to take the matter of the sensitive border to arbitration in The Hague, a forthcoming referendum for secession is threatening the fragile peace that has existed over the oil-rich region.

With the issue of Arab Misseriya’s voting eligibility still unresolved, and the referendum commission for Abyei not yet established, because Sudan’s Northern and Southern authorities have failed to agree on who should head it, questions of a peaceful and smooth separation of Sudan remains unanswered.

The ruling party in Sudan has sought to play down concerns about potential violence after talks between officials from the north and the south stalled over a referendum in the disputed oil-producing Abyei region.

A senior member of the National Congress Party (NCP) told Al Jazeera on Monday that there was no reason that the collapsed talks should escalate into a new conflict.

"I think the Abyei problem will be solved and I don't think there is any war to be expected," Rabie Abdul Atti said.

As South Sudan holds a referendum on a possible return to independence in January, Abyei will simultaneously vote on whether the region should belong to the north or the south.

But the NCP and Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), which governs the south, cannot agree on who will be eligible to vote.

"The issue of the Abyei referendum has come to a standstill," Deng Arop, a SPLM representative who heads Abyei's administration, told reporters on Sunday.

"This has the potential to ... cause a regional and international conflict."

More than two decades of bitter war between north and south Sudan left an estimated two million people dead. A peace deal signed in 2005 created a federal unity government that shared power between the north's ruling party and the former southern rebels.

Tribe controversy

Abyei's referendum law gives the right of vote to members of the southern Dinka Ngok tribe and it is up to the referendum commission to decide which "other Sudanese" are considered residents of the region and therefore eligible to vote.

The ruling NCP says the Misseriya, a big pro-unity nomadic tribe which grazes its cattle in the south during the dry season, should also vote.

The SPLM says the tribe as a bloc should not be allowed to vote, but that individuals with long-term residence in the region should be able to do so.

"The Misseriya ... are in no way meant to vote in the Abyei referendum because they are not residents. They are meant to be nomads," Arop said.

He said Misseriya had begun to settle 75,000 people in the north of Abyei to change the demographic of the region and influence the vote.

Arop estimated there were about 100,000 original Abyei residents excluding the Missiriya.

He called on the NCP to stop the settlements.

"If the government is not supporting this then it should take action to stop it," he said.

Abyei has been a contentious issue between the SPLM and the NCP both before and after the 2005 peace deal.

Border arbitration

Deadly clashes between the Sudanese army and the SPLM in Abyei in May 2008 raised fears of a return to war between north and south Sudan. Both parties decided to take the matter of the sensitive border to arbitration in The Hague.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration refined the borders, leaving the Heglig oil fields in the north, out of the Abyei region.

Both north and south authorities have accepted the ruling, but it was criticised by the Misseriya tribe.

Douglas Johnson. a former former member of the Abyei Boundaries Commission, told Al Jazeera that the threat of renewed violence in Abyei is "very serious".

"There have been clashes on the border, there have been clashes within Abyei, and this latest report of movement in large scale of Misseriya into northern areas of is very worrying," he said.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Q&A: Sudan's Abyei dispute



Grazing and land rights are key issues for those who live in Abyei [EPA]

Abyei tribes fear losing land



Both the African Dinka and Arab Misseriya tribes say Abyei belongs to them [EPA]