As delighted southern Sudanese voted in a long-awaited referendum on independence, visitors to the north and south could be forgiven for thinking they were already two separate countries.

Far from the orange dusty landscape of Khartoum, newcomers landing at the airport in south Sudan’s capital Juba wander off the runway to be greeted by a smack of wet, humid heat driven by the surrounding lush tropical forests.

Beer adverts and often drunk soldiers adorn the few Tarmac roads in the would-be capital of what is likely to be the world’s newest nation state, a culture shock to anyone coming from the Islamic north where alcohol is banned.

Visitors enjoy Nile-side restaurants where they can sip a glass of wine and eat pork unavailable up north. The south’s population is mostly Christian or follows traditional religions.

African music blares throughout the town’s markets, run by Ugandan and Kenyan traders. Residents shout at each other in an Arabic dialect almost incomprehensible to northerners.

In the north, Arab music or Islamic verses are heard in the minibuses which hurtle around the capital.

But window dressing aside, south Sudan has effectively been operating as a separate nation since it was given a semi-autonomous government under a 2005 peace deal which ended the bitter north-south civil war — Africa’s longest.

Juba then set about creating what has become a state within a state.

“Is (the south) ready to govern itself? That’s what they’ve been doing for the last six years, doing just that,” David Gressly, the top U.N. official in the south, said.

It has its own constitution, a separate central government,  10 state governments all answering to Juba, its own parliament and even its own laws.

The two regions even have different banking systems – the north operates under Islamic sharia law while the south uses a conventional banking system. Few northern banks operate in the south, dominated by new southern Sudanese or East African banks.

Ministries which began in pre-fabricated buildings often with just a minister in a lonely office with a few tea ladies and cleaners for company have become fully functioning institutions, complete with staff.

“Frankly, the started with a president and a vice president and built everything from there,” Gressly said.

Khartoum’s foreign ministry was enraged when the south began opening “liaison offices” around the world which effectively functioned as embassies for the southern government.

And Khartoum complained that Juba was not transferring any of the money it was collecting from customs or immigration.

Juba in fact kept an entirely separate immigration system. Sudan visas, notoriously difficult to get, were bypassed by visitors who would get “Government of Southern Sudan” permits in Nairobi, travel to Juba and then get on a domestic flight to Khartoum.

One friend who entered the south overland across the Ugandan border got a “New Sudan” stamp on his passport from immigration. When Khartoum’s interior ministry saw the stamp, they panicked, fined him and stamped his passport with “British infiltrator”.

“This is crazy – we are supposed to be one country but we can’t coordinate our immigration!” One Khartoum official grumbled to me as yet another journalist arrived with papers issued in the south, but not recognised in the north.

One wonders what, other than perceptions, will actually change once the south becomes independent on July 9.

Bespectacled Mohamed Ibrahim Khalil, head of the south Sudan Referendum Commission, looks frail and sometimes walks with a stick. But he’s sharper than all of his younger colleagues, can run rings around journalists in Arabic, English and French and handles his own very busy mobile phone traffic.

“When he starts something he attacks it like he’s in his early twenties,” said one colleague.

Khalil, in his late eighties, was sworn in as head of the commission in July some three years later than he should have taken up the post. He then made his first trip to south Sudan.

But the delay left him and the other eight members of the commission with less than six months to organise the most significant vote in the history of Africa’s largest country.

One of his controversial first moves was actually to further stall much of the process by weeks.

He refused a majority vote by the five southern members in the commission that the key secretary-general role should go to a southerner.

Khalil had a perfect candidate in mind — a northern Sudanese who had for years worked with the United Nations on Western Sahara’s independence issue.

“I challenge anyone to find me someone who is better qualified for the job than him,” Khalil told me at the time, even threatening to resign if the principle of southern majority rule continued to dominate the commission.

It’s not the first time he has stuck to an unpopular principle no matter the cost. He made a similar stand in 1986, resigning from the opposition Umma Party and parliament, a contemporary said.

“He’s a very stubborn man,” a friend said. “He will stand for the right decision no matter if it’s against anyone — his party, even himself.”

The southerners eventually gave in and the commission began work in earnest.

Khalil also managed to annoy the north, refusing to go to the foreign ministry to sign a memorandum, insisting they should instead come to him. And he rubbished claims by the ruling northern National Congress Party of fraud during voter registration, prompting claims by them that he was biased towards the south.

His refusal to bend infuriated all. Two staff resigned from the commission saying they could not work under him.

Never afraid to speak his mind, he accused Western donors and the United Nations of treating the commission “like small children” by refusing to give them direct funding.

And he sparked fears of a further delay by insisting that U.N. procurement allow Sudanese companies a chance to bid to print ballot papers, accusing the world body of excluding local expertise from any part of the preparations.

For such a short term in office, Khalil produced endless controversy and provoked much frustration.

I don’t expect him to make south Sudan’s history books as a key figure in their fight for independence. But the determined man is the unlikely hero of the south, leading a team which defied the doom-sayers and got the job done.

But once Darfur’s conflict stalled the Naivasha talks to end Africa’s longest civil war, and reports of appalling atrocities in Sudan’s west began to seep into the public domain, Darfur became the only story. It overshadowed even the historic 2005 north-south peace deal named “comprehensive” because the negotiators said it would resolve all of Sudan’s problems.

Year after year Darfur dominated the diplomacy and headlines while many in Sudan kept warning – don’t forget the north-south problem – it will come back to haunt you.

After years of neglecting the north-south accord, much of which was either not fully implemented – or done only after threats and standoffs – here we are again at crisis point where Sudan is heading for an acrimonious split and again there is a battle to implement the final chapter – the referendum on southern secession.

And while all hands turn again to resolve the north-south standoff, Darfur is sliding back into crisis – largely unnoticed because of the hype about the likely split of Sudan.

In the past year, since the largest aid agencies working in Darfur were expelled and kidnappings forced others to withdraw to main towns, there is little information about a deteriorating humanitarian situation of 4 million aid recipients with even the United Nations too scared to speak out.

None of the main groups are negotiating with Khartoum in Qatar-based talks. The chief mediator’s only recent achievement was a tour of Darfur with no specific aim, and which sparked violence resulting in two Darfuris dying, nine injured and a major university being closed down.

In the past weeks, the 2006 Darfur peace deal was declared dead in the water by both sides and the only major rebel group to sign began to move its troops south, to join with other rebels still fighting Khartoum, a U.N. source said.

Khartoum who is chasing them, accuses the south of supporting the Darfur rebels, the same reason why the Naivasha peace talks stalled in 2003-4.

We seem to have come full circle.

But yet it still seems the international community over the past seven years has been unable to figure out how to multi-task Sudan’s conflicts.

Uniquely Sudan has two separate, massive and expensive U.N. peacekeeping missions, who are unable to coordinate operations while the Darfur and southern conflicts have become intertwined along the north-south border.

We have more high-level international envoys than any other country I know – former presidents, ministers and career diplomats galore jet in to hold endless meetings. 

The approach in Sudan has more often than not been one of crisis management rather than crisis prevention.

And the lack of a comprehensive, one-country approach to Sudan’s problems has helped us along the path to the looming split of the south and is now fuelling talks of secession for Darfur too. The collapse of the Sudanese state as we know it now seems almost inevitable as southerners demonstrate in support of secession in the southern capital Juba.

In the aftermath I wonder what lessons will be learned.

(Photo: Students shout as they surround an United Nations vehicle at a protest during the visit of U.N./AU negotiator and chief mediator. REUTERS/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah)

Kidnapping foreign workers in Sudan for ransom has become a dangerous business in Darfur in the past year with 10 separate cases and at least 22 expatriate victims.

These are not the al Qaeda kidnaps of West Africa. The Darfuri criminals have so far demanded only money and have not killed any of their victims. Some have threatened to sell their captives to al Qaeda-linked groups if they do not get paid.

The abductions have restricted the operations of those aid and U.N. agencies still working in Darfur, with foreigners mostly relocated to the main towns and rarely travelling into the rural areas where people are most in need of help.

But the question always debated by Sudan watchers is: “Is it that Khartoum can’t protect foreign workers in Darfur or that it won’t?”

Many point to the timing as an indication — these abductions became a regular occurrence after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in March 2009.

Others speculate that the government, which has long had a hostile attitude to the international humanitarian agencies in Darfur, does not want them to get out and report on the worsening situation in the rural areas.

But the problem has escalated to a point where it negatively affects the government, making it look weak and unable to control even the region’s main towns.

Russia voiced rare criticism of its African ally after Russian aircrew were taken from Darfur’s largest town, Nyala, days after another Russian pilot was held by Arab militia loyal to the government.

Nyala was largely insulated from the brutal revolt and counter-insurgency campaign which has for seven years terrorised Darfur’s inhabitants. Now it is the epicentre of the abductions, with criminals taking foreigners from inside their guesthouses or in the town centre  in broad daylight.

Fuelling the kidnaps are constant reports of Khartoum paying money for many of the hostages, another reason why the government would want to end the crimes. Kidnappers told me hundreds of thousands of dollars had been paid out to abductors.

The government says it knows who these kidnappers are and threatens to arrest them.

But the threats appear empty. After the release of the longest-held hostage, Red Cross staffer Gauthier Lefevre, no action was taken to bring the kidnappers to justice.

Cue the abduction of Samaritan’s Purse Flavia Wagner two months after Lefevre’s release. She endured a 105-day ordeal alone in captivity with her kidnappers threatening to rape or kill her on numerous occasions. And new spate of shorter kidnaps also began.

Those who support the theory that the government is sanctioning the kidnaps ask why it has not apprehended any of the criminals.

But Khartoum is not in an easy position.

The kidnappers are usually young men from the tribes that Khartoum mobilised to help quash the Darfur rebels.

One government official told me that any attack on the young Arabs could provoke the entire tribe — already disillusioned by what they see as broken government promises on development and services.

Local government in Darfur is often run by those from the same tribes as the kidnappers, creating a reluctance to act against them. In remote regions far from Khartoum, the tribe provides and therefore rules.

But it seems that Khartoum’s interests are now clearly in line with the international community’s – to stop the kidnaps. Some officials in Khartoum are now convinced action must be taken to stop the crimes.

Khartoum now has an opportunity to apprehend the abductors. The world will be watching to see what it does.

It was a just another seminar on transparency in the oil sector. Seemingly banal.

But this was being held in Khartoum, involving live debates between northern and southern Sudanese officials, a minerals watchdog and the international media, who were allowed free access to publicly grill those who administer what has for years been an incredibly opaque oil industry.

What emerged was surprisingly positive and all walked away feeling that — at least until the Jan. 9, 2011 referendum on southern independence — this was the first step towards finally unpicking all the stitches that have sewn the sector tightly shut to outsiders.

We are “PR stupid” said the newly appointed Minister for Energy from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, Lual Deng, who instigated the forum.

He said this to explain the discrepancies in oil production and oil prices uncovered by Global Witness, a non-governmental organisation, whose report “Fuelling Mistrust — the need for transparency in Sudan’s oil sector” provoked the discussion.

These discrepancies include oil prices published by the ministry of finance web site with little clarification of how they had been calculated, even citing barrels of Sudanese oil selling for as little as 15 cents a barrel.

Global Witness also found discrepancies between China’s CNPC, which dominates a Sudanese oil sector dogged by U.S. sanctions, and Sudan’s energy ministry output figures. Those figures were easily explained as the difference between gross production and net of water, gas and solids on Wednesday.

But the fact an international giant like CNPC is publishing undefined production figures in an annual report provoked concern even from Sudanese officials.

And why did it require such an elaborate showcase to provide such a simple response?  ”PR stupid”, said Deng.

After months of chasing and waiting in vain for an explanation from the government or CNPC of the discrepancies in oil output, even having the phone hung up on them by the Chinese, Global Witness went ahead and published their work.

“Next time you should just call us to verify the figures,” was CNPC’s ironic response, with the presenter who had flown in from Beijing for the forum flashing on a PowerPoint screen the email and mobile number of CNPC’s country manager in Sudan.

Just five minutes earlier that same manager had declined my request for a meeting or to share his contact details “in the interests of transparency.” One of dozens of attempts I have made over the years to extract any information from the state-owned firm.

I wonder how long he will keep that phone  number.

But if you sifted through the barbed comments by Sudanese officials directed at the Global Witness reps and the attempts by CNPC to ridicule the figures, important progress was made.

Sudan said it would commit to the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, to which CNPC gave its support. It also agreed to a full audit back to 2005 and the ministry said it would publish daily production figures. French oil giant Total was also given a public guarantee that whether or not the south votes to secede in just five months, its oil concession contract on southern soil would be honoured.

If all this happens, it will be a massive step towards opening up Sudan’s taboo oil sector which could convince those elusive big European companies that left during Sudan during the civil war to come back and invest.

After violence left five people dead in the highly volatile Kalma Camp, six refugees sought sanctuary in the UNAMID force’s police base there. They are thought to be rebel sympathisers and the government accuses them of instigating the camp clashes, demanding that UNAMID hand them over.

Kalma, just outside Darfur’s largest town Nyala, has long been a problem for the Khartoum government, whose offices in the camp were burned down by angry refugees. Rebel supporters in the camp have obtained arms and there have been clashes with government police in the area.

Now if the six are responsible for the violence, which was between refugees who support rebel leader Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur and those who took part in peace talks which Nur rejects, then it is Sudan’s right to try them in a court of law.

However the government is headed by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, a man wanted by the International Criminal Court for presiding over genocide and war crimes against these same Darfuris, which is why they are in the refugee camps in the first place.

Repeated reports during the seven-year conflict of the torture of Darfuri detainees give a pretty good indication that they are unlikely to get a fair trial if UNAMID hands them over.

So what to do?

This is the stuff of nightmares for U.N. peacekeeping officials.

If they hand them over they lose the trust of the 2 million Darfuri refugees they were sent to protect and could be subject to attacks by rebel forces, who would see them as an enemy. But if they don’t hand them over, they are stuck in a standoff with Khartoum.

The force relies on cooperation with the government for its own security. The government also allocates visas for staff, allows equipment in through customs and gives travel permits. And the government has shown it is ready to use these powers against any foreign organisation that annoys it.

According to U.N. sources, the instruction came from New York not to hand over the six refugees without a bona fide arrest warrant based on real proof they had committed a crime and guarantees they would get a fair trial, which UNAMID would need to follow very closely and publicly.

As one UNAMID staff member told me, “If we can’t even do that we may as well go home.”

Catch-22.

Should UNAMID hand them over?

Can UNAMID guarantee them a fair trial?

Can UNAMID continue to defy the government request?

It’s well-known that peace talks can cause fighting. I remember before every round of doomed negotiations on Darfur since 2003, either the govenment or the rebels would start a military campaign to gain ground ahead of any potential settlement.

But the violence in the past week in the camps that are home for two million Darfuris displaced by conflict is different.

It would be easy to blame the mediators who convinced more than 400 members of civil society groups to join a peace talks in Qatar which the two main rebel groups are not presently attending.

Some Darfuris, after seven years in the camps, decided the rebel leaders were unable to represent the interests of their people and went to make sure their voices were heard.

It was their return to the rebel-dominated Kalma Camp in South Darfur and the camps around Zalingei in West Darfur that caused fighting that claimed at least eight lives, injured dozens and drove thousands to flee the camps they had sought refuge in years ago.

But to blame only the mediators would ignore the problems they inherited — which pretty much amount to a mission impossible.

Rebel commanders have for years been forming factions by the dozen. They were disillusioned with their leaders, most of whom were young and inexperienced before being propelled into the international limelight as Darfur’s conflict went global.

Those factions are now drowning in a sea of personal conflicts and individuals’ desire for power, while the people they went to war to protect are arguably worse off than before the revolt. Darfur has descended into a chaotic, anarchic, violent mess that neither Khartoum nor the rebel leaders are able to clean up.

International intervention has also worsened divisions. Diplomats say U.S. envoy Scott Gration wanted to find a way to break  Sudan Liberation Army leader Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur’s hold over the refugee camps.

He began to help smaller factions, hoping to cut off  Nur’s support, the diplomats said. The camp violence is just one manifestation of that policy. In another, Nur’s stronghold in Jabel Marra descended into infighting that killed dozens and forced tens of thousands more to flee this year.

Talks in Qatar are now focused on a new rebel coalition of tiny factions with few forces on the ground, albeit with an impressive figure — former U.N. Economic Commission for Africa staffer Al-Tijani Sese —  brought in to lead them this year.

Sese, from a leading family in the Fur tribe, has garnered some positive reaction in the camps, sowing the seeds of dissent against Nur which manifested itself into the violent confrontations in Kalma and Zalingei in July.

While the mediators’ idea that Sese would help bring Darfuris on board with the peace process was based on good faith, the reality alienated the two main Darfur rebel groups and divided the camps.

Further impacting the mediators’ efforts is the government’s continued military action, which prompted the JEM rebel group to walk out of the talks, and Khartoum’s clear disregard for the only rebel leader who did sign a 2006 peace deal in Abuja, Minni Arcua Minnawi.

Darfur’s peace process has disintegrated into a mess of conflicting personalities and interests which appears to have lost sight of the goal of achieving a sustainable peace so those in the camps can go home.

But Sudanese have a trait often confusing to outsiders. They can be sworn enemies, fighting to the death one minute. But the next day they will breakfast together, cracking jokes over foul (beans). But right now Khartoum, the rebels and the Darfuri victims could not be further apart.

First Vice President Salva Kiir has offered to help mediate and his involvement could give the talks the impetus they need.

After seven years of negotiation that has yielded little progress, maybe the international mediators should forget protocol and let the Sudanese  approach the talks as only Sudanese can.

Britain’s new coalition government made its priorities on Sudan very clear as Henry Bellingham, the minister for Africa, used 90 percent of his opening remarks at his first press conference in Khartoum to outline how Britain could increase trade with Sudan.

The other 10 percent dealing with the run-up to the south’s referendum on secession, which is likely to create Africa’s newest nation state, and the International Criminal Court arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for genocide all seemed like just an afterthought.

At first glance many would say Britain was selling out — engaging economically with a government whose head is a wanted man would destroy the global divestment campaign’s years of efforts to make investing in Sudan a poisoned chalice and to pressure Khartoum to stop rights abuses and allow democratic freedoms.

Many Darfuris and rights activists who have been victims of torture and harassment will be dismayed by the move, which clearly extends a hand of friendship to Khartoum, virtually a pariah since the ICC warrant for Bashir last year.

Is Britain selling out?

In fact many ordinary Sudanese say no. They say U.S. sanctions since 1997 have had little effect on the government, which took control in a bloodless coup in 1989 and was elected in disputed elections in April this year.

The economy has grown on average eight percent a year, Khartoum extracted the oil found on its territiry pretty much without Western companies, built hundreds of miles of tarmac roads, and erected high-rise government buildings which sparkle nicely in the sun, visible from the heavily secured U.S. embassy compound.

But sanctions have made life almost impossible for any normal Sudanese to do business abroad or at home. It’s those struggling to become an emerging middle class who welcome Bellingham’s suggestions to use the 35,000 Sudanese living in the UK to help small and medium sized businesses invest in Sudan, bringing much-desired jobs and training with them.

Britain is the former colonial power and many families have close links with the country. They would welcome British products instead of the often poorer quality Chinese goods flooding the market here in Khartoum. It would certainly lessen their excess baggage bills between London and Khartoum.

But Bellingham went one step further, saying British companies were lagging behind Chinese companies and missing out on great investment returns in Sudan as it emerges from decades of civil war. He also mentioned the unmentionable. Oil.

Most Western oil companies pulled out of Sudan, citing rights abuses during the north-south civil war which ended in 2005 with a shaky peace deal. Some firms were even implicated by activists in those rights abuses.

So is Britain cashing in?

Only if they can make it happen.

Western oil companies have been reluctant to enter to a post-war Sudan. Oil exploration is a long-term and costly venture and the stability of the country is far from guaranteed.

Many are waiting to see what will happen after the southern referendum on independence in five months time because the oil lies mainly in the south. They worry contracts signed with a united Sudan may not be honoured post secession by a new nation fighting to survive as a country in its own right.

British banks in the past five years all but stopped transactions with Sudan, no matter what the currency and no matter who the recipient.

Sudanese abroad had their bank accounts closed down regardless of who they were, foreigners working in Sudan received similar treatment and mortgage companies turned down anyone whose work brought them to the war-torn nation.

Lloyds TSB, which also owns Halifax and Bank of Scotland, last year paid a massive $350 million fine to the United States for fraudulent transactions to U.S.-sanctioned Sudan, Libya and Iran.

So how will Whitehall convince them it’s a good idea to facilitate investment in an opaque Sudanese economy dominated by companies hijacked by government organs or ruling party officials?

The jury is not only out on the moral implications of Britain’s new policy but also on whether London can convince UK businesses and banks to invest in a country which regularly ranks in the top five of failed states indices.

The soccer fan fest sounded like a wild party with the vuvuzela horns booming through the empty streets of Polokwane town, one of the smallest of 10 venues for the first World Cup on African soil.

Everyone must be there, we thought as there was little happening on a Saturday night in the northern South African town centre.

But on closer inspection the soccer fan fest — loud as it was — was also pretty deserted. Soccer fever had yet to reach Polokwane.

A sleepy town of just 500,000 people, it was hard to imagine Polokwane, which means place of safety, would host its first World Cup soccer match in less than 24 hours. In Johannesburg or Cape Town you could definitely “feel it”. Here we weren’t so sure.

Driving through the town’s eerily deserted streets searching for a restaurant where we could eat and watch the soccer, we discovered that was not an easy find. Even the local Nandos restaurant on the main street shut by 8 p.m.

It was also hard to imagine what long-term benefit the town would see from being a host city. While for the four matches to be played in Polokwane the few hotels on offer for tourists were full, otherwise there were plenty of rooms at the inn.

No team was staying there which would bring with it the adoring fans or news-hungry media and the associated business. Those playing were flown in for pre-match training, again the day of the match and ferried back straight after.

Police closed down the roads near the stadium on the edge of town the night before the first match. But those fearing traffic similar to the four-hour long queues witnessed in Johannesburg trying to get to Soocer City need not have bothered.

The streets were empty, the car parks empty and — just 30 minutes before kick-off — the stadium was half empty.

By the second half, the stands were just about three-quarters full, though the blasts of the vuvuzelas compensated for the missing supporters.

On the second match day, Mexican fans brought a blip of excitement for one night after their win against France, taking locals by surprise.  But the next day sleepy Polokwane was once again empty.

The Peter Mokaba stadium almost looked like they hadn’t had time to finish painting it, with the stark grey concrete of the outer wall contrasting with Soccer City in Johannesburg’s brightly coloured exterior.

The inside was still coated in construction dust and most of the refreshment stands remained shuttered and closed during the match. Just two hours after the players left we found ourselves the lone figures in a dark stadium struggling to see the keyboard as we tapped out the finishing touches to our stories.

The name of the stadium was controversial. Mokaba was the African National Congress (ANC)’s youth league leader who regularly used the phrase the “Kill The Boer,” one which strikes fear into the white Afrikaner minority and which was more recently taken up by current ANC youth leader Julius Malema to outrage from his opponents.

When the Cup has gone, there is no guarantee a local soccer team will even use the pitch.  Residents said the Rai Stars disbanded long ago and the nearby promising Black Leopards team are based more than 150 kilometres away in a less than World Cup standard stadium.

The Dynamos train 100 kilometres away. Neither team play in the country’s top league.

“You can’t help thinking this huge stadium will just be derelict and empty in a few years time,” said one hotel worker.

And the NCP can release the ailing Turabi and journalists and follow (preferably daylight), fair and transparent legal proceedings against those it feels have erred. Darfur’s peace talks can restart, the army can stop its bombardment and JEM can haltits redeployment.

One of the few positives of Sudan’s elections, dubbed to be the first open vote in 24 years but marred by opposition boycotts and accusations of fraud, was a tiny opening of democratic freedom in Africa’s largest country.

Direct press censorship was lifted from Sudan’s papers and opposition politicians were given an albeit limited platform to address the population through state media.

Still, it seemed for the biggest international observer missions, such as the Carter Center and the European Union, the best they could say about the elections was 1): That they happened and 2): That people were not killing each other for once in this nation devastated by decades of multiple civil wars. (At least not because of the vote anyway).

They all agreed that the crack of democracy opened during the polls must be allowed to continue. And more progressive members of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s ruling party agreed. Presidential Adviser Ghazi Salaheddin told me he did not think they could go back on the democratic gains.

But it seems just one month after the vote, Sudan is sliding back to its old ways.

In Darfur, where Bashir is accused by the International Criminal Court of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the Sudanese army took control of West Darfur’s Jabel Moun – which has been a key rebel stronghold pretty much since the conflict began in 2003.

It’s an impressive range of hills making it an ideal base to defend against attack. It’s also an area where the U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission (UNAMID) has enjoyed little access because of almost constant military clashes and bombing.

The army said it killed 108 soldiers from the insurgent Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which the rebels deny. JEM, largely boxed in by a Chadian-Sudanese rapprochement and complaining of constant aerial bombardment, redeployed many troops from Jabel Moun leaving them stretched too thin and allowing the army to take advantage.

JEM’s  ”mobile units” as they call them also clashed with the army in North and South Darfur as they edged towards the oil-producing South Kordofan state.

The lull in Darfur’s fighting during the elections did not last long.

And then a late-night raid on Saturday on Bashir’s former close ally turned bitter enemy Islamist Hassan al-Turabi’s home, arresting him, closing his opposition party’s paper, seizing its assets and detaining three of its senior editors.

A myriad of reasons were given by different NCP and security officials for his arrest ranging from unspecified “security reasons” to accusing him of helping JEM, to his al-Rai al-Shaab paper publishing articles damaging to national security.

Editors-in-chiefs of newspapers were “invited” for a meeting at the headquarters of the feared intelligence services on Monday. Many journalists worry what happened to Turabi’s paper was a less than veiled warning of what could happen if they did not self censor.

The Ajras al-Huriya paper is a shining example of what can happen if they don’t toe the line. It says it has five court cases pending against it (three raised by the intelligence services) for publishing false news among other charges, which could result in up to six months in jail for the acting editor-in-chief.

The paper is pretty much the mouthpiece of the former southern rebel turned NCP partner in government after a landmark 2005 peace deal, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). So no midnight raids on them – just long, drawn out legal battles.

Whatever happens, many of Sudan’s independent dailies, already heavily dependent on government company advertising for the bulk of their revenue, are likely to write cautiously from now on.

In the south, which will vote on whether to become Africa’s newest nation state in just eight months, one journalist was arrested for 13 days after trying to take pictures of electoral violence in the oil-rich Unity state. Another said he was detained and beaten by southern security forces, even though he had an i.d. card saying he worked for the SPLM, which dominates the region’s semi-autonomous government.

A senior general revolted and is threatening a main town after he accused the SPLM of fraud in the southern elections. George Athor said he mutinied after authorities ordered his arrest and that he has wide support, although there is little that can be independently confirmed in the remote, swampy Jonglei state.

He had said he wanted to negotiate but that attacks by south Sudan’s army, sent to surround his troops, have left little room for talks.

There’s still time to salvage the political scene in the north and south ahead of the southern referendum on secession which, if mishandled, could destabilise the entire Horn of Africa.

The SPLM could engage those who left the party to stand as independents in the elections like renegade Athor, not exclude them.

And the NCP can release ailing Turabi and the journalists and follow fair and transparent legal proceedings against those it feels have erred. Darfur’s peace talks can restart, the army can stop its bombardment and JEM can halt its redeployment.

But that would require high-level pressure from the international community who, despite two massive U.N.-funded peacekeeping missions in the country, have shown little ability to engage effectively in the war-torn country.

I had written a blog “one step forward, how many back? a month ago. I hope this isn’t the final answer.