Sudan's spreading conflict (I)

The war in Blue Nile state has had a horrible impact, with about a third of the state's population in need of humanitarian assistance, including some 150,000 refugees in South Sudan and Ethiopia and approximately 200,000 displaced or severely affected within the state. It resumed in September 2011 because the root causes -- mainly the concentration of power and resources in Sudan's centre at the expense of its peripheries -- had not been resolved by the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The war pits against each other old enemies, the long-ruling National Congress Party (NCP) regime in Khartoum and the northern branch of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) that won South Sudan's independence, but was not able to achieve as much autonomy as it had hoped in Blue Nile. The conflict's local and national dimensions are more intermingled than ever, and it will not end conclusively without a truly comprehensive national dialogue between the regime and both armed and unarmed oppositions.