CIAO DATE: 07/2013
June 2013
The war in the Blue Nile is part of a spreading war zone, often called the “new South”, extending from the border with Chad in the west to that with Ethiopia in the east. As Crisis Group noted in its first in this series of reports on the conflicts in Sudan, the roots of the violence are in the failure of multiple regional peace agreements to end chronic warfare: the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), Cairo Agreement, East Sudan Peace Agreement, Darfur Peac e Agreement and Doha Document for Peace in Darfur. The main cause of fighting between Sudan’s peripheries and the centre is “marginalisation”. Blue Nile is a case study in land grabbing and the exploitative policies that constitute a major cause of the chronic conflicts between Sudan’s centre and pe- ripheries. The discrepancies in development and services are striking and inhabitants of the peripheries often complain about the expropriation of their wealth, notably by taxes as well as exploitation of their land and resources (oil, minerals and water), without a legitimate share of the national budget being redistributed to their region. In addition, people from the peripheries ha ve historically been under-represented in the centre’s leadership power structures and administration.
Resource link: Sudan's Spreading Conflict (II): War in Blue Nile [PDF]