Abyei was once a thriving market town. But it is also the capital of a region that straddles the bloody fault-line in Sudan between the Muslim Arab tribes of the north of the country and the African, mainly Christian and animist, tribes of the south. In May heavy fighting broke out in Abyei between the northern government’s army and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which are supposed to have stopped fighting each other since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed in 2005, ostensibly ended more than 40 years of north-south war.
WITH his outstretched arms shaking in gestures of anger and bewilderment, John stands in the charred remains of his little family compound in the central Sudanese town of Abyei. The four tukuls, or traditional huts, that used to house his wife and nine children have been incinerated. His pickup truck, too, has been overturned and burned. The attack happened only five months ago, but already the weeds and brush of the surrounding swampland are covering the last traces of a happy family life.
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