Situation Report: The South Sudan Defence Force (SSDF): A Challenge to the Sudan Peace Process

As this article is being written the oilfields of Sudan, or at least the areas adjacent to them, are burning. This was the ultimate fear of the Government of Sudan (GoS) during the height of the civil war with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). It is ironic that this fear is being realised at a time peace has been proclaimed, and the Sudanese public and the international community have been assured that a final agreement is only days away from being signed. But these assurances will mean little to the primarily Nuer people of the Western Upper Nile (WUN) region of Sudan, which forms the centre of the oil industry. From January to March 2004 the area has been torn by fighting within a GoS militia that has led to the destruction of schools and hospitals, dozens of deaths and injuries, looting, abductions, and the dislocation of thousands of civilians. In late 2002 a similar division in another government supported militia in the Shilluk area of central Upper Nile produced comparable levels of destruction that has continued to the time of writing
(late March 2004).