Tensions shot up last week when northern forces stormed into Abyei, a contested region that straddles the border and is claimed by both the northern and southern governments.
Now, according to a letter from the Sudanese military’s high command, the northern army, in the next few days, plans to take over Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan states, two disputed areas with a long history of conflict that are still bristling with arms.
Analysts, local leaders and Western diplomats fear that if the northern army carries through on its threat to push out or forcibly disarm the thousands of fighters allied to the south in these two areas, it could set off a much bigger clash between the northern and southern armies, who have been building up their arsenals for years in anticipation of war.
Malik Agar, Blue Nile’s governor, said Sunday night that northern forces had recently moved “dangerously close” to the bases of southern-allied fighters and that he didn’t think the southern-allied forces would surrender.
“It’s like putting a cat in a corner,” Mr. Agar said. “They will fight.”
Sudan’s border is a dizzyingly complex mosaic of ethnic groups and political loyalties. It is also home to the bulk of the country’s crude oil and some of the most fertile land in the country, making the question of how exactly to draw a line across Sudan one of the most explosive issues the nation confronts as it prepares to split in two.
Under peace agreements signed several years ago, joint forces were supposed to patrol some of these disputed areas. The two sides had agreed that Abyei would hold a referendum to decide if it were to join the north or south, a compromise that was essentially blotted out on May 21 when thousands of northern Sudanese soldiers marched into Abyei. Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile were supposed to conduct a less formal, vaguely defined “popular consultation” process that southerners say has not been completed.
Southern Sudan is just weeks away from attaining independence, a goal that has taken more than 50 years and millions of lives. The region, one of the poorest and least developed places on earth, where four out of five adults cannot read, defied expectations in January by holding an orderly, organized referendum on independence, in which nearly 99 percent voted to split off. In the past week, southern leaders have absorbed the loss of Abyei, complaining bitterly about it but deciding not to respond with military force, saying that could jeopardize all that they had sacrficied for.
On Sunday, southern leaders indicated that they would not fight over Blue Nile or Southern Kordofan either.
“It is not our priority now to get involved in a war,” said Barnaba Marial Benjamin, the information minister for the government of southern Sudan. He also said high-level negotiations were about to begin in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, over several of these border issues.
But what may be more dangerous this time is that there are many more southern-allied fighters stationed in Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan than there were in Abyei — possibily tens of thousands, compared with a few hundred in Abyei who quickly retreated last weekend when faced with a clearly superior northern Sudanese force.
“The move into the Nuba in particular will be explosive,” said Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College and one of the leading academic voices on Sudan. “The amount of weaponry and men under arms is tremendous.”
Nuba is a mountainous region of Southern Kordofan state that is technically part of northern Sudan but became one of the strongholds of the southern rebels during the civil war in the 1980s and 1990s.
Now, the southern-allied fighters there are in a more desperate situation than southern troops were in Abyei. These two states are rife with northern forces and northern-backed militia, and the Nuba Mountains are not even contiguous with the south. If the fighters in these areas give up their weapons, they will be at the mercy of the northern Sudanese forces whom they have fought for years.