An international arbitration panel on Wednesday awarded the Sudanese government control over almost all major oil reserves in a disputed region of Sudan that erupted into violence last year between state forces and former southern rebels. The arbitration was a crucial test for a 2005 agreement that ended 20 years of warfare between the government and southern Sudanese insurgents. Both sides said they accepted the decision and southern officials called it a step toward permanent peace. “This decision clearly demonstrates that, even on the most difficult and sensitive of disputes, the parties can find a peaceful solution if they work together in good faith,” said Ashraf Qazi, head of the UN Mission in Sudan. The Abyei region, with oil reserves and grazing lands used by nomadic herders from both the north and south, has suffered flare-ups of violence since the peace deal. The northern government and semiautonomous south asked the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration to set the region's permanent borders after a May 2008 battle in which 22 northern soldiers were killed, most of the town of Abyei was burned to the ground and 50,000 residents were forced to flee. The five-member panel affirmed, in a four-one decision, the northern boundary as set by a 2005 commission but drew new lines in the east and west that placed the Heglig oil fields and the Nile oil pipeline under the control of the Khartoum government. In Khartoum, the government welcomed the decision, and in The Hague, northern delegation chief Dirdeiry Mohamed Ahmed called it a victory. Riek Machar Teny, deputy chairman of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, a southern group, called the ruling balanced. “I think this is going to consolidate peace in Sudan. It is a victory for the Sudanese people and a victory for peace,” he said. Fouad Hikmat of the International Crisis Group in Nairobi, Kenya, said gaining most of Abyei had symbolic importance for the southerners, even though the richest oil reserves fell outside their area. In a dissenting opinion, Jordanian judge Awn Al-Khasawneh chastened his tribunal colleagues for trying too hard to reach a compromise, putting the deal on legally shaky ground. After a scathing indictment of their methods, he said the award should be left “to the sand on which it has been built.” He also said he was concerned the decision could lead to future conflict because it deprived an important tribe, the Misseriya, of critical water sources.
