After the separation of South Sudan from its north in 2011, the Abyei area was left disputed and its belonging to either party — the South or the North — was not settled, whereas a referendum was supposed to take place in Abyei in 2011, concurrently with the South Sudan referendum, to determine the area's affiliation to the North or the South, but the referendum did not take place because of the two states' dispute over who has the right to vote in the referendum! The area is inhabited by tribes that belong to the South, namely the Dinka Ngok tribe, and others that belong to the North, namely the Misseriya tribe, and of course the Dinka will not accept to be separated from their tribal environment to be with the Northern state because they would be the weakest link in the State of Sudan, and likewise the Misseriya will not accept to be separated from their tribal environment to be with the Southern state because they too would be the weakest link in that state.

Then a short war broke out in the area in 2012, but it was settled by the establishment of the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA), and in November 2020 the UN Security Council held a meeting on the implementation of its Resolution No. 2046 relating to the outstanding bilateral issues between Sudan and South Sudan, and the situation in the states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, without coming out with a clear decision regarding Abyei.

Then the latest meeting was yesterday, Wednesday 5/11/2025, in which the American ambassador Michael Wathiz threatened both North and South Sudan that he would oppose the renewal of the mandate of the United Nations peacekeeping forces (UNISFA), which will expire on 15 November current, if the two parties do not commit to their obligations under the Peace Agreement by virtue of which South Sudan was separated.

We in Hizb ut Tahrir / Wilayah of Sudan had warned via a press statement on 21/5/2011 about the danger of the Naivasha Agreement, and we affirmed that the Abyei area would be “the Kashmir of Sudan”; a lingering border issue, and now more than 14 years have passed since our saying this, and the Abyei issue still remains in place. This is not strange of the colonial states, for there are disputed areas among the Muslim lands; especially the Arab region, which was divided in 1916 by the accursed Sykes-Picot Agreement, and the matter of the dispute over it was not resolved because it is deliberate for its own sake, and a good example of that is the dispute over Halayib and Shalateen between Egypt and Sudan.

These issues, which are originally within the borders of the Muslim lands, will not be resolved except by the establishment of the Khilafah (Caliphate) state, which will unite all the lands of the Muslims, where there will be no dispute over borders, for the land is Islamic land subject to kharaj or ushr, and this necessitates that the Ummah mobilize to establish it Rashidah (rightly guided Caliphate) on the Method of the Prophethood, to cut off the hand of the meddling colonial kafir (disbeliever) from our lands.