Ruling On Oil-Rich Area of Abyei Sets Stage for Next Contest

South Sudan - In the aftermath of the ruling on Sudan's oil-rich area of Abyei, things are beginning to feel more like the proverbial elephant as felt by the blind men. Each of the men reckons they know the shape of the elephant, depending on which part their fingers are holding.

So it was, hours after the ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

"The verdict is out," the Government of Southern Sudan minister for SPLA Affairs, Nhial Deng Nhial, declared to cheers at a public gathering to pray for Abyei, "and we have won the case."

On the other hand, the agent for the Government of National Unity, Dirdiri Mohammed was saying they were ready to go to the Constitutional Court if SPLM so wished as to drag them there.

Inference: You lost. We won. Appeal if you may. With those analogous reactions, it became hard to know what constitutes a win. Or, even, a loss.

Does defining Abyei as the area of the Ngok Dinka Chiefdoms, as the 2005 peace agreement did, to the exclusion of the Misseriya, constitute a win? Does going away with tiny slice of the area, but which contains huge oil deposits, constitute a win?

It's hard to say, but as some would say, even a loss is more relief - only the degree matters. For instance, within the intervening hours, at press conference, First Vice President of the Sudan, and Chairman of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, Salva Kiir, would sound more relieved than jubilant, asking the Dinka Ngok to accept a ruling that reduced the area they say they claim.

The ruling, Kiir said, more or less upholds the report of the Abyei Boundary Commission, which was issued in 2006.

"In my capacity as Chairman of the SPLM and President of the Government of Southern Sudan, I hereby declare to the people of Abyei, the entire membership of the SPLM, the people of Southern Sudan, the entire Sudanese nation and the International Community that the SPLM accepts the ruling that was handed down today at he Hague by the Tribunal on Abyei," Kiir said. Yet, Kiir said, it was not a complete win.

Rare public address"This is not to say that the decision has come wholly in favour of the SPLM," Kiir said. "Far from it; indeed there are aspects of the decision that will be received with disappointment by the people of Abyei area, particularly when the full details begin to be absorbed. But we had given our word and by our word we will stand."

It's not a simple loss he's talking about.

For instance, Heglig and Nyama were placed outside Abyei. Mention Heglig anywhere and oil comes to mind.

At least, the ruling brought to an end four years of ping-pong, sleepless nights, quarrels, and uncertainty over what would follow the area's delimitation.

Sometime at the start of 2007, Douglas Johnson, one of the experts for the Abyei Boundaries Commission made a rare public press statement at the Government of Southern Sudan secretariat in Juba.

At the time, Johnson said he was searching the archives in Juba for any document he could lay his hand on to justify his case. Documents were scanty - thanks to war, termites and heat. Maps did not exist.

The Commission had already presented its report to the Presidency. The National Congress Party still refused to implement the report. And the NCP was not, officially, saying why. It would take President Omar al Bashir, during a rare public stand-off against First Vice President Salva Kiir, to say why: The experts, al Bashir said, overshot their mandate. Instead, of going back to 1905, when Dinka Ngok chiefdoms voted to be annexed to the north, the experts went back to 1956.

Even after the report was presented, Johnson continued with the work. His frustration spoke to the challenges of delimiting a delimiting a boundary that never officially existed in the first place.

Two-and-half years later, the Permanent Court of Arbitration's ruling on Abyei, has also delimited the boundaries of the area.

Under the new ruling, the Abyei area has been shortened by 70 km to the east and by 10 km to the west. And the area was slightly reduced downwards.As with many court judgments, the devil in this case is in the dissent. A dissent is usually a critic of the majority.

As Charles Hughes, a one-time US Supreme Court Chief Justice, is often quoted saying, dissenting opinions constitute an appeal to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of a future day, when a later decision may possibly correct the error into which the dissenting judge believes the court to have been betrayed.

And in this case, reading the court's sole dissent, it becomes apparent that for the judges, as with the experts before them, and the Dinka and Misseriya at a peace conference in 1966, the Abyei boundaries were never going to be easy to demarcate.

Verdict is bindingFor instance, the ABC drew the northern line in an area that was not settled by anyone, the Goz. While demarcating the northern boundary, the experts based on clues from administrative officials and human geography.

The Court rejected that boundary, instead lowering it to 10'10 North. It was at that latitude that the experts found evidence of Dinka Ngok presence, at least, around 1905. Court ruled that this is the "best defensible" line in the circumstances. And so it now is. The verdict is binding and final.

Yet, the dissenting judge accused Court of having "a lax and novel standard for drawing boundary lines [which] no government can or should accept it." The ruling, he said, has been built on "sand".

"To construct straight lines on the basis of approximate evidence and rough areas is an affront to the science of delimitation and no country should accept such delimitation," said Al-Khawsneh.

Source: The Nation -Nairobi