Sudan's North-South War Still Smolders

Once a thriving city on the north-south border, Abyei was destroyed during sectarian violence in May. (Evelyn Hockstein for The New York Times )

From The International Herald Tribune:

ABYEI, Sudan: This market town serves as kind of a fulcrum balancing perhaps the most important peace treaty in Africa.

Much rides on the stability of the nearly four-year-old agreement between the Arab Muslim government in Khartoum and the former rebel movement in the mostly Christian and animist southern Sudan: considerable oil wealth; the calm, such as it is, in Sudan and several neighboring states; the future of Darfur.

But Abyei, once a thriving town of 30,000, is now an empty, blackened wreck.

It is still smoldering from the first significant outburst of sectarian violence since the peace pact was signed, an eruption last May that destroyed the town and emphasized the delicate health of the treaty.

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My Comment: This conflict has been going on for decades, and it's original roots come from tribal/ethnic/religious differences between the groups. Arab Muslims in the north, Black Christians in the south. What complicates this conflict even more is the belief that massive oil deposits exists in the South, and the North now wants it.

From my point of view, there are no good endings in this war .... if anything this war is about to escalate.