[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 62 (Friday, April 27, 2012)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E689]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  THE NORTH-SOUTH SUDAN CONFLICT 2012

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, April 27, 2012

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, I chaired a hearing 
of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights that 
examined the current conflict between the Republic of the Sudan and the 
Republic of South Sudan and the policy options for forestalling a full-
blown war that are available to the United States and the rest of the 
international community. As we met yesterday, the two countries move 
ever closer to all-out war, and some strategy to avert this eventuality 
must be devised soon if it is not created already. Our hearing should 
reveal what such a strategy is or will be.
  The United States is one of the guarantors of the peace process that 
ended the second North-South civil war in 2005, but it is not our 
responsibility alone to prevent what everyone believes would be 
disaster for two nations and their populations and likely for the 
welfare of their neighbors. The United Nations and the African Union 
certainly bear some responsibility for working to restore peace. 
However, no lasting peace will be likely if other interested parties 
fail to play a positive role in this crisis.
  The Khartoum government is now talking about ``the spirit of jihad'' 
rising in the North. Jihad is often interpreted as a call for all true 
believers to help in the fight against one's enemy. Sudan reportedly 
reached out to the Arab League to initiate discussions on the current 
crisis, and the Arab League might be able to convince Sudan's leaders 
to calm down their rhetoric and help them see the negative end result 
of their warmongering. If Arab nations can support a workable plan to 
fulfill the provisions of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, CPA, that 
ended the second Sudan civil war, then they will have helped a nation 
led by people who consider themselves Arabs to create a sustainable 
future with peace and security.
  China imports five percent of its oil from Sudan currently, and 
according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, that total could 
rise soon to 10 percent due to regional tensions in the Persian Gulf. 
Oil shipments from Sudan depend on both the southern supply and the 
northern pipelines. War between the two would have a significant impact 
on China's ability to continue importing Sudanese oil, and as a result, 
Beijing has been trying to mediate the current dispute. South Sudan 
President Salva Kiir Mayardit has been in Beijing this week for 
discussions on ending the dispute between the two countries.
  But while all nations must join in the effort to end the Sudan-South 
Sudan conflict, the difficulty of achieving a lasting peace is evident 
from the long history of North-South enmity, mistrust and war. During 
colonial times, the northerners and southerners were treated 
differently, and when independence finally came in 1956, the continuing 
estrangement of Muslim northerners and Christian and animist 
southerners was established.
  The first civil war that began in 1955 was the result of an Arab-led 
government in Khartoum that broke promises of inclusion and 
marginalized southerners. The massacre of northerners in the South only 
exacerbated the growing hatred between them. After 11 years of relative 
peace, the second civil war broke out in 1983 when the Sudan People's 
Liberation Army fought for the independence of the South. The CPA not 
only ended the second civil war, it set the South on the road to 
independence, which was finally achieved in 2011.
  Unfortunately, the peace agreement which laid out the path to a 
sustainable peace, was never fully implemented. The genocide in Darfur 
distracted the international community from fulfilling the CPA, and 
nearly a year after South Sudan became a nation, there is no agreed-
upon border, the Abyei region remains in dispute, citizenship remains 
in dispute for those in border areas and there is no agreement on how 
oil revenues are to be divided. With all these unresolved issues, 
significant tensions, and even some form of conflict was inevitable, 
especially between antagonists with a long history of mistrust.
  The animosity between leaders from both sides does not bode well for 
peace talks or a peace accord that will be sustainable. Both sides have 
taken actions that have made the situation we now face more difficult 
to resolve, but a false equivalency will not help us achieve a lasting 
peace. Whatever the international community thinks of the South's 
capture of the oil junction town of Heglig, no nation will allow an 
antagonist to use a location as a staging ground for repeated attacks 
without retaliation. Sudan's government has been brutally oppressing 
Darfur, and more recently has relentlessly attacked Southern Kordofan 
and Blue Nile states for months. We have held multiple hearings on the 
destruction in Sudan since last August. To equate months of vicious 
attacks that have killed or displaced thousands with the short-term 
occupation of a strategic town will neither placate the North into 
ending its cruelty against its own citizens nor shame the South into 
withdrawing from the staging ground for assaults against it.
  I have met both Sudan President Omar Bashir and South Sudan President 
Kiir. I found President Bashir to be obstinate and uncaring about the 
destruction his armed forces have unleashed on his own citizens. 
President Kiir has been single-minded in pursuing independence over 
Sudanese unity since he assumed leadership of South Sudan in 2005. 
There have been numerous cease-fires and peace accords between the 
North and South over the years--none of them enduring. If we cannot 
devise a means of achieving a lasting peace, we may gain a brief halt 
in the fighting, but the war will inevitably resume at some point.
  Our witnesses yesterday provided Congress an update on what is 
happening on the ground in Sudan and South Sudan and help us understand 
more fully the situation we now face.

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