Analysts fear north-south Sudan military build-up

JUBA, Sudan - Inside the sprawling compound headquarters of the ex-rebel army of south Sudan, a military flag snaps in the dusty wind.

"Victory is certain," reads the motto of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), above a Kalashnikov automatic rifle crossed with a spear.

Three years since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) ended 21 years of north-south civil war, the former bush fighters parade in smart-cut uniforms and polished boots.

"We are turning ourselves from a guerrilla force to a regular army with discipline," said Major General Peter Parnyang Daniel, director of "political and moral orientation" at the SPLA.

"It's a long road and a major challenge," he said.

The US State Department funds training to help transform the SPLA from a rebel army into a "professional military".

But analysts fear Sudan's two former enemies are also stockpiling weapons which could see the south of Africa's largest nation separate from the north.

"There is no doubt that both sides are rearming," long-time Sudan analyst John Ashworth said.

The CPA gave the political wing of the SPLA and the National Congress Party (NCP) in the north a power-sharing central government. But despite three years of political cohabitation, distrust characterises the relationship on both sides.

Fighting between the SPLA and northern Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) last May in the contested border area of Abyei, which has oil wealth estimated at half a billion dollars, was seen as the biggest threat yet to the 2005 peace deal.

Most of Sudan's proven oil reserves, the country's primary source of revenue, are in the landlocked south which lacks its own export pipeline.

"I don't believe they want to fight, but a strong SPLA is a deterrent which people hope will give the NCP pause for thought if they are planning to use military force to negate the CPA," said Ashworth.

A World Bank report forecasting north-south relations before the referendum warned in July of "excessive militarisation and brinkmanship."

Both sides are anxious to deny this.

The CPA, in which the fates of the SPLM and the NCP are bound, bans rearming without permission from a joint defence board between north and south.

"It's the politicians who have to respond to these questions. It's none of our business," said a SAF spokesman when asked about rearming in the south.

"Our number one mission now is to support it: if the CPA is destroyed then it will be our people who will suffer," said Daniel.

A 430-million-dollar UN demobilisation campaign is supposed to reintegrate around 180,000 soldiers into civilian life, but many of those due to be processed are wounded and disabled, and core forces are unlikely to reduce.

The south denies ordering a shipment of 33 tanks, seized by Somali pirates in September.

The London-based Jane's Information Group has reportedly said that southern Sudan may have imported as many as 100 tanks through the Kenyan port of Mombasa over the past year.

The south has rejected northern accusations that it received illegal arms shipments from Ethiopia during a weapons trade fair in Juba.

Daniel said the SPLA has been equipped in line with the peace deal, waving at a line of army trucks that he said were imported from Ukraine.

But costs are rising for the SPLA, estimated by one Western diplomat as one of Africa's largest armed forces at 170,000 strong.

Last month southern lawmakers approved a whopping 980-million-dollar top-up to the army's already hefty 1.5-billon-dollar annual budget.

Some emphasise that the immediate challenges facing north and south are political.

"An arms race and a reversion to war are not yet the likeliest outcomes of the tensions surrounding the CPA's implementation," the Economist Intelligence Unit wrote in October.

"The greatest immediate challenges facing both the SPLM and the NCP are political... none of which is amenable to a military solution," it added.

But many fear rearming compounds the risk of grievances triggering conflict.

"When lots of armed men are facing each other, any small incident could spark an unintended war at any time," Ashworth warned.