Sudan: Keep an Eye on Abyei

Because reports are raising fears of imminent violence:

Satellite images indicate a major deployment of military hardware by the [North] Sudanese army, including helicopter gunships and tanks, near the flashpoint Abyei border region, a monitoring group said on Thursday.

The Satellite Sentinel Project said that, according to the newly acquired images, the introduction of two attack helicopters and at least nine battle tanks within the range of Abyei constituted a major escalation in the military capacity of the northern army (SAF) in the disputed area.

Last month, at least 70 people were killed in Abyei and two villages razed in two days of clashes between fighters from the Misseriya tribe, which supports the Khartoum government, and the Ngok Dinka people, who back the south.

The rhetoric from the North is worrying too:

A senior figure in North Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) has asserted that his party will not offer any compromise over the issue of Abyei whether to the U.S government or South Sudan with which it contests the oil-producing region.

Speaking at a rally inaugurating the NCP’s election campaign in the country’s flashpoint state of south Kordofan on Monday, NCP’s deputy chairman Nafie Ali Nafie said that Abyei would not “be paid as a price to satisfy America or [south Sudan’s ruling] SPLM.”

Reuters has more.