The Sudan Tribune claims that the Dajo people were located in the region of Abyei prior to the seventeenth century, before being displaced by new migrants.[5] From at least the eighteenth century Abyei was inhabited by the agro-pastoralist Ngok Dinka, a sub-group of the Dinka of Southern Sudan. The Messiria, a nomadic Arab people, who spend most of the year around their base at Muglad in northern South Kordofan, would graze their cattle south to the Bahr river basin in Abyei during the dry season.[6][7][8] At the establishment of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, the Messiria were predominantly located in the province of Kordofan (considered “northern”), while the Ngok Dinka were located in Bahr el Ghazal (considered “southern”). In 1905, after continued raids by the Messiria into Ngok Dinka territory, the British redistricted the nine Ngok Dinka chiefdoms into Kordofan. The reason was threefold: to protect the Ngok Dinka from raids by the Messiria and thus pacify the area; to demonstrate that a new sovereign power was in control; and to bring the two feuding tribes under common administration.[9] The two peoples began to take separate paths with the onset of the First Sudanese Civil War (1956–1972), in particular the 1965 massacre of 72 Ngok Dinka in the Misseriya town of Babanusa. The Ngok Dinka were thus drawn to the Anyanya, while the Messiria were favored by the Khartoum-based government and became firmly associated with the north. The 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement that ended the war included a clause that provided for a referendum allowing Abyei to choose to remain in the north or join the autonomous South. This referendum was never held and continued attacks against Ngok Dinka led to the creation of Ngok Dinka unit in the small Anyanya II rebellion, which began in Upper Nile in 1975. The discovery of oil in the area, among other north-south border regions, led President Gaafar Nimeiry to try the first of many initiatives to redistrict oil rich areas into northern administration.[7] The Ngok Dinka unit of Anyanya II formed one of the foundations of the rebel movement at the beginning of the Second Civil War in 1983. Many Ngok Dinka joined the rebels upon the outbreak of hostilities. Partially as a result of their early entry into the war, many Ngok Dinka rose to leadership positions in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), becoming closely associated with John Garang. In contrast, the Messiria joined the hostilities on the side of the government in the mid-1980s. They formed frontline units as well as Murahleen, mounted raiders that attacked southern villages to loot valuables and slaves.[10] By the end of the war the intense fighting had displaced most Ngok Dinka out of Abyei, which the Misseriya state as justification for ownership of the area.[6]
Posted on: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 15:03:52 +0000
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