The lingering unresolved issues with South Sudan continued to pose problems, despite international attempts to mediate between the two countries. The issue of how much money the Sudanese government should receive for the oil pumped in South Sudan but transported through Sudan’s pipelines and exported via Sudan’s infrastructure was particularly troublesome, and the failure to reach an agreement regarding those fees came to a head in December, when the Sudanese government began confiscating oil that South Sudan was transporting through Sudanese pipelines as compensation for the unpaid fees. In response, the South Sudanese government shut down oil production in January 2012 and made long-term plans to construct a new pipeline that would not travel through Sudan. In the short term, both countries were deprived of oil revenue, which was a vital component of their budgets.

In September 2012 the two countries signed a series of agreements regarding not only the contentious issue of oil fees but also border demarcation and other items, but the implementation of the agreements lagged for some time when both countries couldn’t agree upon how to proceed. Progress was made in March 2013, when Sudan and South Sudan committed to implementing the previous agreements, with specific time frames driving the terms of implementation. Oil production resumed in April, and the transport of the oil through Sudan soon followed.

Meanwhile, tensions between the two countries were further exacerbated by the Sudanese aerial bombardment beginning in late 2011 of what it held to be rebel areas near the border within South Sudan and border skirmishes between Sudanese and South Sudanese troops. One such notable incident was the conflict that began in March 2012 over the Heglig area along the border between the two countries. In the absence of final demarcation, the area was generally recognized as part of Sudan and was home to one of Sudan’s most-important oil fields. South Sudan, however, also laid clam to the area, and South Sudan occupied Heglig for several days in response to Sudan’s aerial bombardment and ground attacks in South Sudan and ostensibly to prevent additional assaults on its territory. After pressure from the AU and UN, which considered South Sudan’s occupation of Heglig to be illegal, the troops were withdrawn. Altercations in the vicinity persisted, however, as did Sudan’s aerial bombardments of South Sudan. Fighting spread to include the disputed Abyei region before eventually dwindling in May, when both countries began pulling their troops from the area.

In October 2013 the permanent residents in the disputed oil-bearing area of Abyei—the Dinka, who identified themselves as being aligned with the South Sudanese—unilaterally held a nonbinding referendum in which the overwhelming majority of them voted to join South Sudan. The vote was boycotted by the seasonal Abyei residents aligned with Sudan, the Misseriya. The referendum was not recognized by Sudan or South Sudan.

Domestic challenges and the 2015 general elections

In the years following the south’s secession, Sudan continued to be challenged by ongoing rebel activity in Darfur and the Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states. The government often used brutal campaigns to quell resistance, deploying air bombardment, tanks, and sophisticated weaponry. Bashir had vowed to defeat rebel opposition by 2015, but the national army did not possess the resources or the capability to do so, given the degree of public support for the rebels in their strongholds. The ongoing conflict led many Sudanese to flee from their homes, and by the end of 2014 about 650,000 people had sought refuge in Ethiopia, Chad, and Egypt while another 1,873,000 were internally displaced.

Meanwhile, the public increasingly voiced dissatisfaction with the ruling National Congress Party’s (NCP) policies, the lack of presidential and government transparency, and the worsening economic conditions, including rising inflation and a decline in the value of the Sudanese pound. Cuts in fuel and other subsidies triggered antigovernment protests, including occasional calls for regime change. In June 2012, weeklong protests in Khartoum spread from students to the general public and turned into clashes with police. The next year, in what was the worst period of unrest since the events leading up to the 1985 coup, violent protests occurred across the country beginning in late September. The government quickly took harsh steps to end the disturbances, arresting some 800 protesters and killing many; it also undertook unprecedented measures to silence local and international media coverage of the protests.

Bashir, who had been in power since 1989 and had promised to step down from office at the end of his current term, changed course in October 2014 when he accepted the NCP’s nomination as the party’s presidential candidate in the 2015 elections. Later that year he appeared to receive a temporary reprieve from the ICC, which had issued arrest warrants for him in 2009 and 2010 in regard to criminal action in Darfur, when in December the ICC prosecutor announced that she was suspending the investigation of the case because the United Nations Security Council was not taking any action to compel Bashir and other defendants to appear in court.

As the 2015 general elections approached, there were calls by opposition groups to postpone the polls because of the unresolved issues facing the country, such as the ongoing rebel activity and the need for constitutional reforms. In the absence of a postponement, they called for a boycott. Even with the boycott by much of the opposition, Bashir still faced more than a dozen candidates in the presidential race. The polls opened on April 13, 2015, and were expected to close on April 15, but general voting was extended for an extra day—allegedly because of low voter turnout as well as reported logistical problems. Bashir was reelected by a landslide, with the official results showing that he received about 94 percent of the vote in the presidential election. The NCP also did well in the legislative elections, winning some three-fourths of the seats in the National Assembly. The election results were dismissed by the opposition, which claimed the polls lacked credibility, and there was international criticism of Sudan for not providing a conducive environment for credible elections.