The Contending Claim Over Abyei by Sudan and South Sudan: Challenges Ahead

This article focuses on examining entangled factors that complicate the claim over Abyei and have thereby hindered any peaceful settlement of the dispute on the county. Many works of literature that presented the conflict in Abyei as natural resource conflict or identity-driven within a broader picture of conflicts in Sudan are factually flawed and poorly explained the nature and causes of the conflict. This paper contends that multiplicity of factors has reinforced each other, thus these factors in unison created a stalemate and continuing claim over Abyei. In examining these interwoven factors, the paper employed a qualitative approach to conduct the study. Both primary and secondary data sources were used adequately. Various academic pieces of literature, researches, and conference reports have been used as secondary data sources. Key informant interviews were used to gather primary data to test secondary sources. Hence, the study comes up with three basic findings. First, claim over Abyei has been sustained by the elites’ manipulation of identity for their political and economic goals that hinder peaceful co-existence among communities in Abyei. Second, the competition over resources chiefly oil and locally, pasture and water complicated already fragile and tense relation by alluring national actors that even more protracted conflict on the ground to control these resources. Finally, the double standard in U.S. policy towards Abyei, by and large, helps Khartoum to continue its obstruction tactics to maintain the status quo.