The Sudan Crisis: Obama’s Hypocrisy and Culpability

The Sudan Crisis: Obama’s Hypocrisy and Culpability

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

Among the many incoherencies of Obama’s foreign policy, none is more glaring and appalling than his stance toward one of the worst mass murderers of our time, Omar Al Bashir, the dictator of Sudan. Al Bashir and his totalitarian political Islamic regime have conducted two eliminationist campaigns—of mass murder, mass expulsion, and mass rapes—over 20 years, first in Southern Sudan and then in Darfur. This has earned him not one but two distinctive places in the annals of our time, the most murderous in human history: He has committed genocide for longer than any political leader aside from Stalin and Mao, and he has slaughtered more people than anyone except Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and the Japanese leadership before and during World War II, all of whom had continental-sized populations under their control.

By any standard, Al Bashir and his political Islamic cohort are the one leader and regime in the world that must absolutely and urgently go: because of the number of people murdered, on the order of 2.5 million; the millions more expelled from their homes and regions; the untold number of women systematically raped as part of a larger campaign of terror; the devastation government forces have wrought by razing and burning towns and villages, a scorched-earth policy implemented in the South and then in Darfur. Al Bashir and his regime have been at it for two decades, and predictably, taking no one who pays attention to Sudan by surprise, he has started up another deadly eliminationist campaign, this time against the Nuba people of central Sudan (after already seizing the Abyei region and expelling Ngok Dinka people from it), perhaps to preempt the south from forming its new country with its territory and oil reserves intact now that its independence day of July 9 is approaching. (An agreement was signed on Monday between the north and the south for the withdrawal of the northern Sudanese troops from Abyei, but we will have to wait to see if Khartoum abides by it.)

Obama has with words or deeds made it clear: Hosni Mubarak must go. Muammar Qaddafi must go. Osama Bin Laden, of course, had to go. But must Al Bashir go? Not according to Obama.

Mubarak, dictator and brute, was tame compared to Al Bashir. Yet Obama abandoned him, a longtime American ally and stabilizing force in the Middle East, in a blink of an eye after protestors, composing a small percentage of Egypt’s populace, occupied Cairo’s Tahrir Square and insisted on his ouster. Qaddafi, said by Obama to be readying mass murder because of the threatening phrase “rivers of blood” that Qaddafi’s son uttered, though the Libyan strongman had not actually committed mass murder against those recently protesting his dictatorship—certainly on nothing approaching a genocidal, Al Bashirian scale—was declared by Obama to have “lost legitimacy to rule.” Quickly, the U.S. and NATO began waging a now three-month-old war against Qaddafi and in support of inchoate rebels, representing no one knows exactly whom, seeking no one knows exactly what, except to get rid of Qaddafi.

Obama, self-styled champion of protecting the innocent, has passively stood by since he took office while Al Bashir continued his eliminationist and murderous assault on the people of Darfur, in what has been aptly called an ongoing genocide by attrition. To the Sudanese of the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan, of Southern Sudan, and of Darfur, Al Bashir is Hitler; and, like Hitler, he uses mass elimination and murder as a reflexive instrument of policy. But Obama has not unequivocally denounced the Hitlerian mass murderer Al Bashir. Obama, a generally outspoken devotee of international legality, has in effect not supported the International Criminal Court’s indictment, arrest warrant, or attempt to try Al Bashir for mass murder. Obama, the orator, has not resoundingly declared that Al Bashir has no legitimacy to rule, or publicly warned, let alone threatened, Al Bashir of any serious consequences for further renewing his mass elimination and murdering.

Instead, Obama and his administration have repeatedly soft-pedaled, negotiated with, even effectively lent support to Al Bashir and his totalitarian regime. By their actions and (mostly) inaction, Obama and his administration have helped set the stage for Al Bashir to commit this new assault on the largely defenseless people of the Nuba Mountains and of the South, including the Abyei region.

This, even though Southern Sudan, under a negotiated deal that Al Bashir agreed to, democratically, lawfully voted in January to secede with a 99 percent majority. Southern Sudan’s secession, and the likely desire of the people of Abyei to join it (the Ngok Dinka’s own self-determination referendum has yet to take place), constitutes a far bigger and more legitimate democratic movement than the ones in Egypt or Libya that so easily mobilized Obama to action on their behalf. Yet Obama now fails to draw a line in the Sudanese sand saying that the democratic movement’s and its country’s integrity must be defended, and, above all, that the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of innocent and defenseless civilians—children, women, and men—many of whom have already lost relatives and themselves been subjected to the eliminationist violence of Al Bashir, must be defended.

Instead, for the Sudanese, Obama expresses meaningless “deep concern.” The Obama administration tepidly whispers that Al Bashir’s eliminationist assault might undermine further normalization of Sudan’s relations with the US. How likely is that to stay the hand of a decades-long genocidal killer, seeking territory and oil and to rid a sizable area of Sudan of people he and his political Islamic regime deem threatening? Forget about threats of American or NATO airstrikes: Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, Princeton Lyman, just explained to Time—and therefore to Al Bashir—that the United States is not contemplating any serious intervention in Sudan even if the eliminationist assault intensifies.

All this (together with Obama’s self-delusional attempt of the last few years, including sending envoys to Khartoum, principally the feckless Scott Gration, to cajole the Sudanese Hitler to defang himself), has emboldened Al Bashir to attack and then intensify his attacks on the Nuba people, to try to conquer territory that he does not want to go to the South, and to restart his eliminationist campaign, which is now underway with selected killings, mass expulsions, and the destruction of homes and villages.

We should be clear, as it will help pressure Obama: If the administration continues standing by and doing nothing, Obama will have given a tacit new green light to a genocidal killer and will be morally, politically, and materially complicit in the unfolding devastation. This complicity will be a prominent stain in Obama’s future historical ledger. It is fair to say this because he and many in his administration have explicitly invoked U.S. inaction during the Rwandan genocide as something that must never again be repeated, and because, right next door to Al Bashir, against a far less monstrous Qaddafi (however monstrous he is), and next door to him, Mubarak, a comparative featherweight in human destruction, Obama has brazenly and with the ringing tones of democracy, of freedom, of protecting the innocent, done otherwise. In the case of Libya, Obama was shamed by the Europeans to intervene, so he and his administration invoked the US inaction in Rwanda as a reason to attack Qaddafi. But now, when something like the Rwandan genocide may actually happen in a country ruled by a totalitarian regime that has already perpetrated large-scale eliminationist assaults and genocides twice, and partly on Obama’s watch, the president has returned the U.S. to its cynical, decades-long, do-nothing stance. All the while, eliminationist killers assault their victims.

Obama must make it clear to Al Bashir and the northern Sudanese political and military leadership that, if they do not stop their eliminationist assault against the Nuba, respect an internationally recognized dividing line between north and south Sudan, and desist entirely, then their military forces will be targeted, and their personal homes will be hit by bombing sorties and drones. He must make it clear that, as in Iraq with Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Baathist leadership, the extremely effective U.S. Rewards for Justice program will offer millions of dollars to those giving information or themselves taking measures that lead to the death or capture of Al Bashir and his lieutenants. He must make it clear that the U.S. will seek to execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against Al Bashir, and that all manner of sanction will be placed on northern Sudan, its leaders, and their foreign accounts. He must make it clear to Al Bashir’s Chinese patrons—a principal reason the weak-kneed Obama plays nice with the Sudanese dictator—that, if Al Bashir doesn’t stop, the Sudanese oil they so prize will cease to flow.

Obama’s limited war against Libya, already unpopular among Congress and the public, in addition to the entanglements and fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan that he inherited, make acting forcefully in Sudan politically difficult. But no one should accept such difficulties as excuses or justifications for Obama’s current inaction. He chose to attack Qaddafi over far less, while treating the overtly genocidal Al Bashir with kid gloves. So Obama may not now plead that his hands are tied.

Going after Qaddafi and not Al Bashir is like going after Mussolini but not Hitler. Going after Mubarak and not Al Bashir is like going after António de Oliveira Salazar for his autocratic rule in Portugal (from 1932 to 1968) but not Hitler. Political leaders have shown again and again that, once they embark upon eliminationist politics, once they begin mass murdering, they tend to do it again, targeting new groups in new campaigns of destruction. Al Bashir has already done this twice. Now, he is starting up for a third time: According to United Nations estimates, he has already expelled 100,000 people from Abyei, and the former governor of South Kordofan put the number of Nuba expelled at half a million. And Al Bashir is massing his troops for much more.

Isn’t it time that Obama stops fooling around, stops pretending all the pretend things he and his predecessors have done, not done, or believed that have allowed Al Bashir to eliminate and exterminate people for two decades? Isn’t it time Obama does something to stop the Hitler of Sudan, the worst mass murderer in the Middle East, from eliminating and slaughtering perhaps hundreds of thousands more children, women, and men?

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is the author of Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity, which is the basis of a the PBS documentary of the same name. His work can be read at http://goldhagen.com/.

http://www.tnr.com/article/world/90458/south-sudan-genocide-omar-al-bashir?page=0,1

Citizen Newspaper: The AU, UN Have Been Too Hasty to Utter Their Positions

By Citizen Editorial

The conflict between the two armies of Sudan and its neighbour South Sudan has been a protracted one lasting nearly fifty years (1955-2005).

It began as a civil war fought intermittently for two long rounds with a lapse of relative peace of about ten years punctuated with puff of sporadic mutinies.

The current impasse between South Sudan and Sudan which largely the AU is addressing through the African Union High Implementation Panel headed by former South African President Thabo Mbeki and in which the UN is also having a stake is a continuation of that long conflict whose history although not yet comprehensively researched, written and circulated is at least known to the world.

The war in South Sudan began when the UN itself was barely 10 years old having been formed in 1945 in San Francisco, USA assuming the place of the League of Nations taking its present headquarters in Manhattan, New York.

In 1955 when the first bullet for liberation war of South Sudan was shot at Torit, in Equatoria Province the UN Secretary General was Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden who died in a plane crash in Zambia during the Congo crisis of early 1960s was at its climax.

The war in South Sudan became a full blown guerrilla warfare of hit and run when U Thant the Burmese diplomat was Secretary General of the United Nations with its agency UNHCR and later UNICEF getting involved in the affairs of the South Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia, Uganda, Congo Republic and Central African Republic.

The demand of South Sudanese was very clear from the very beginning, attainment of independence in a secure well demarcated border with its northern neighbour Sudan.

The British who had been the rulers of the Sudan first as mercenaries under the Turco-Egyptian administration when the Turks were the decision makers (1821-1885) and later as senior partners with the Egyptians as their juniors (1898-1956) are fully aware about the international boundaries between the Sudan and South Sudan.

Even as the latter was treated as a loose part of the former, the British were fully aware that the people of South Sudan would in the long run break away from the rest of the country they were holding together for their own interest because there were more characteristics and appeals of the South then known as the three southern provinces of Equatoria, Bahr El Ghazal and Upper Nile of becoming a country than remaining a part of the Sudan.

The borders formed themselves in several ways, the old divides which had naturally created them from which the colonialists beginning from the Turks and their Egyptian allies had formed the modern administrative control lines.

From here the lands of north Sudan end and those of South Sudan begin. These borders can only be modernized by not cutting parts of South Sudan and annexing them to north Sudan as former President Jaafar Mohammed Nimeiri had done in 1980 when oil was discovered in those parts of South Sudan. The Heglig which is hotly contested today plus several other parts of the South were cut and annexed to North Sudan for the sake of economic gains.

Even the state in which the war is on-going and where many of the oil wells are located was renamed from being Western Upper Nile District with capital at Bentiu to Unity province (Unity State) to treat it as a meeting point not for South and not for North so that it loses its real Southern origin.

The flare up of fighting for control of these areas provoked by Sudan which thinks because of being in possession of Cold War era obsolete jet fighters and Russian cargo planes turned bombers it has the upper advantage and can invade and occupy South Sudan.

They have forgotten that the people of this part of Africa had been the longest fighting people and if it were not for their attainment of independence which their forefathers had sacrificed their lives for Khartoum troops who had failed to subdue them for nearly a century cannot be a match for them today.

The South Sudanese could fight their ways right in the heart of Khartoum which used to be a slave market where Africans of Sudan including Southerners were paraded for sale for merchants coming as far away as Turkey and the Arabian peninsula.

The AU whose countries had learned the history of the slave trade in Africa must not be hasty like the South Korean diplomat Ban Ki-moon who lost his credibility by issuing an order to President Kiir as if the UN has become overnight an authoritarian organization to enforce its power on world leaders.

People in both AU and UN must take some time to read the history of South Sudan before rushing condemnation because in this case of taking the South as the wrongdoer they are placing themselves in the wrong side.

Spokesman for the Khartoum Government: “It would hurt national pride if Sudan did not take back Heglig by force.”

South Sudan-Sudan clashes spreading, officials say

KAMPALA, Uganda — Clashes have spread along the border of Sudan and South Sudan, officials said Monday, with Sudanese officials claiming to have seized an area sympathetic to South Sudan.

A South Sudanese military official said the clashes are a “terrible escalation” of the border conflict that stretches back before South Sudan broke away from Sudan last year.

Fighting along the north-south border has been near constant over the past two weeks.

Southern army spokesman Col. Philip Aguer said Monday that Sudan’s air force killed five civilians in aerial attacks over the disputed town of Heglig.

The Sudan Media Center also reported Monday that Sudan’s army took control of Mugum, a stronghold of the southern army in Blue Nile state, which is near South Sudan’s border.

The government news service quoted an “informed” source of the command of the 4th Division as saying the division raided Mugum on Sunday, killed 25 rebels and seized a large quantity of weapons and equipment.

Troops from South Sudan on Wednesday captured the oil-rich border town of Heglig, claimed by Sudan.

Aguer, the southern army official, said the aerial attacks over Heglig also seriously wounded nine people and hit oil wells. He also said that the town of Bentiu in South Sudan’s Unity State was hit and that the conflict has spread to several southern states bordering Sudan, including Western Bahr el Ghazal.

“There has been continued bombardment by Sudan Armed Forces,” Aguer said. “Our forces are now on maximum alert.”

Fighting erupted in the disputed region of Abyei in May of last year, just months before South Sudan formally declared independence.

Rabie Abdelaty, a spokesman for the Khartoum government, ruled out peace talks with the south, saying it would hurt national pride if Sudan did not take back Heglig by force. Sudan earlier this month pulled out of scheduled talks.

“Our people are angry,” he said Monday. “This is not a time for diplomacy. This is a time for pushing them and letting them know that they are irresponsible.”

He added: “This is war. Our forces want to teach them a lesson.”

___

Associated Press writer Mohamed Saeed contributed to this report from Khartoum, Sudan.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501710_162-57414502/south-sudan-sudan-clashes-spreading-officials-say/

South Sudan Must Pursue Israeli’s Model to Survive Khartoum’s Aggression

Israel’s path of survivability is the safest model that South Sudan must pursue for its very survival is subject to annihilation by Sudan

By Martin Garang Aher

War of annihilation

To begin correctly, I would like to urge South Sudanese people that they are and will constantly be in the war of annihilation with the Republic of the Sudan. This must be taken in cognizance with an actuality of the current war at the borders and with all the seriousness for what our history of wars with the Sudan indicates. There are indications as to why this is not just a whimsical fantasia but also a reality to be given a considerable weight in order to guarantee survival.

The Juba government machinations must not allow Khartoum to go for annihilation of its people. We are at the mercy of Khartoum’s Islamists’ theocratic and dogmatic Christians and animists slayers. Their goal is probably to drag South Sudan down in wars of attrition as Sudan’s president recently expressed; or real wars of annihilation as we have always seen in the Sudan government’s strategy of targeting civilians rather than the military or armed rebels in events of armed conflicts.  History must teach us what to do when you have an enemy that wants to do away with your existence. We can see this in Israel and how the Jewish nation had defied all odds to forge their existence.

During the Second World War, the Jews were the victims of hate for the reasons that were not ordinary but illusory. Their survival was either in their hands and that of their God, or in the hands of anti-Semitic. As history proved, the Nazis were literally annihilating the Jewish nation. Nazi ideology was based on illusionary Nazi imagination, which purported an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world as opposed to the quest of the Aryan race. Even before the Devine could intervene, the Jewish race has, for all times to be remembered, suffered the most horrific tragedy in history in the hands of those who thought they were the right race to rule and inhabit the world.

When God, so be it, finally abetted their sudden extinction, and helped them achieved their independence and reclamation of their homeland, the loss of life among the Jewish people was in millions. In fact, evidence shows that about 6million Jews of the nine million that lived in Europe prior to holocaust perished by means of brutality.

Today, the world lives in sentient of the holocaust that befell the Israeli people. Israel as a nation went on to battle all the neighbouring countries, including Egypt and Sudan for her survival in the Holly Land. It is a common fact that all countries surrounding Israel are her enemies. They have proven this in the 1948, 1967 and 1974 Arab Israeli wars. In all cases, Israel, with the determination from the learned experience, has emerged victorious.

Presently, the tiniest Holy Land is one of the strongest among the nations of the world. However, its survival is still in their hands. And they have never failed to be vigilant on this potential and imposed end time on them. As a matter of survival, Israel remains the world’s number one vigilant nation. It has developed her capability and aligned it with the possibility of being targeted by their enemies anytime. They have even acquired nuclear weapons for this reason. Can South Sudan learn from this?

Destruction of human life

South Sudan has a lot to learn from the Israeli incidence, less they also face extermination scenario. To begin with, the Sudanese civil war had taken almost half a century ending in the time of South Sudan’s independence in 2011. Unlike Jews who have spent hundreds of years in exile, South Sudanese have realistic misfortunes to share with Jewish nation. Many South Sudanese have been forced away from home just like the Jewish people. The difference is in the lengths of time, but equally, the exile and suffering are our shared identity.

In Sudan, our suffering had spanned out to half a century, something few African nations had ever experienced. The convoluted wars in the Sudan were in the frequency of two periods, much to the detriment of South Sudan and in which many southerners lost millions of souls. Livelihood was destroyed beyond any comparison in human history in South Sudan than in the North. The Any Anya I war, known as the First Sudanese Civil War, took seventeen torturous years and claimed 500 000 lives. Of these deaths, 400 000 were civilians and 100 000 were men and women comrades in arms. In the War of New Sudan, mostly referred to as the Second Sudanese Civil War, twenty millions South Sudanese were killed. Analysts believe many of these were innocent women and children. Effectively, South Sudan had lost 2.5million people of its population of approximately ten million people. This could be more.

In the Nuba Mountain in 1990s,the government sealed off the area to the outside world and began an indiscriminate bombing of the area in order to annihilate the Nuba people. Death toll was immeasurably high, and so were the displaced people. The government ensured there was no rest for the people to embark on farm drudgery, and farms remained fallow all year round. The government of the people, so it seemed, intentionally imposed food shortages, death and malnutrition on its own people. Had it not been for the international humanitarian intervention, there would be no people called the Nuba in Sudan today.

Just recently in 2012, the governor of Southern Kordufan State was very well captured on the video left behind by a fleeing Sudanese army commander in which he was advising his soldiers to kill, eat clean and take no prisoners because they did not have room for them. The people he was referring to were both rebel soldiers and the civilians alike. Such was the command, cold-bloodedly aimed at annihilating the people leaving behind only the land. Sudan government is not interested in the people but the land. As seen in the events over the years, Sudan government would rather resettle foreigners of Arab origin in Sudan than improving the situation of the African owners of the land.

Recurringly, in 1990s, the government of Sudan was fortunate to have its national budget boosted by oil revenue. The sudden financial geyser enabled it to purchase very sophisticated weapons and embarked on the mission of annihilation of the people opposed to its values. First the SPLA soldiers were the first to be bombed with chemical bombs. There are people in South Sudan today who have been maimed and their health affected on a long-term basis by these weapons. Unlucky ones have died as a result of such unmerciful use of such lethal weapons. As usual, with government imposition of no fly zones, such atrocities have not been witnessed internationally.

Equally appalling in the 1980s, ‘90s and early in the first quarter of this decade, the same principle of annihilation was applied in South Sudan when government used the Arabs of South Darfur and the Baggara of South Kordufan to carry out scotched earth policy that left the entire regions of what are today the states of Northern Bahr el Ghazal, Warrap and Abyei in complete devastation and with high cost in human lives. The main aim had always been to kill all people and if some escape death from the bullet, then they are denied all means of survivability through destruction of property.

So, the wars that the government of Sudan fight with the areas that are marginalised are to the marginalised: wars to change the injustices and demanding the change of government in Khartoum and ushering in a responsible government that would take care and treat all people of the Sudan equally and humanely; and to the government of the Sudan, the are wars to terminate and annihilate the dissenting and unwanted peoples.

Such is the paradox that international peace makers often found it hard to bring the government of Sudan to the negotiations with the disenfranchised and disgruntled groups because the visions for peace are often parallel – the people that want to live and the government that wants to summarily annihilate them.  Circumstances of this nature could only mean – to the Sudan – government that peace with anyone is a serious delay in accomplishing its mission.

With the agendum of Sudan annihilation of the African people in mind, it would be unjustifiable to think that the war had ended between the two Sudans in 2005. Failure to recognize this anomaly calls attention to failure to see and find out the motives responsible for the sporadic continuation of violence in Darfur, Blue Nile, Eastern Sudan, and along the borders with the republic of South Sudan. The Sudans will never be peaceful in the short term. Sudanese government war adventure is a known element. Even where the justifications for war are not clear, Sudan government will, in the eleventh-hour, find a reason to fight with the country’s periphery. It is through violence that Sudan’s governments had been able to maintain power since independence; without which the populace would overthrow them out over gross misdirection of services through corruption.

In the ongoing skirmishes in Panthou, questioned why the army has not been able to dislodge the South Sudanese armed forces in the area, the Sudanese army spokesman said they were simply annihilating the S. Sudan army after which they will enter the town. It is all about finishing the people off.

In the wake of the capture of Panthou by South Sudan armed forces, several voices in Khartoum, including that of the president, lamented and pre-empted the destruction of South Sudan. Top army generals and even president Bashir himself echoed and reiterated the voice of their annihilation that there would be destruction in the South. The aim here is not to solve the reason for which the South Sudanese army attacked the area, or the willingness to retake it; the annihilation strategy kicked in and the matter is thus, sealed in the destruction scorn. It beats logic why Sudan underrated South Sudan as a country capable of causing equal destruction to her enemies.

If we look at the Sudan governments’ fundamental reason for all the arrogance, reckless destruction of lives, continuous defiance to international peacemakers, it would be easy to understand that there is a surreptitious agendum that cannot be simply ascribed to resources, religion, or any kind of national layback on the political dispensation involving the periphery in the Sudan. It is much more. It is an annihilation scheme. Sudan’s Arab descendants want to rid Sudan of the black Africans in totality.

The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the subsequent independence of South Sudan in 2011 helped thwarted the tempo of the agendum of annihilation for Khartoum’s jihadist zealots. They have however got what they wanted today. International community and the UN, EU, AU have given Khartoum the ticket of annihilation by blaming South Sudan for taking measures of self defence and reclaimed its territory.

There has been a wrong attribution to the Sudanese state all along the way. Conflicts in the Sudan have been perceived rather incorrectly hence giving dictatorial regimes in Khartoum leverage to having a heavy hand on the people of the peripheries. Such perceptions had failed to correctly construe the theme of the Sudanese conflicts often orchestrated by North Sudan. The North Sudan simply sees the vast swath of land south of its borders as the potential resources hub; and the people there have to be annihilated and the resources put to good use. Therefore, South Sudanese should not ignore this potential scheme of disaster. Scholastically and internationally, this Arab scheme to extinguish African habitation of the Sudan and South Sudan had been given many misnomers even though the perpetrators of the descending Armageddon themselves, have voiced it out in a minatory tone for all to discern. Many scholars such as Francis Mading Deng, Amir H. Idris, Ali Mazrui and others have written about war syndrome in the Sudan in a more subtle academic leniency. They denote it as the conflict of identity, religion, resources and other attestations.

This misnomer stands in the way of providing the public and international community with the correct casus belli for the unending wars between the north and South Sudan. The status of the Sudanese state and the long-term ambition it has set itself to achieve is clearly wrapped in the attitude to annihilate the people with Africans ancestry from the country.  The Sudan government in continuing to be irksome and ruthless with the population is an indication of clandestine operation aimed at denying others an existence.

Future remedy for South Sudan and the peripheries

Just like Israel, the people and the government of South Sudan should invest very well in the defence materiel in order to safeguard their survivability as a nation, even if it means acquiring a nuclear capability. Sudan and South Sudan will only be safe from each other when they are sure of being in an equal MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) category. It is irrational in the eyes of many to think like this, but the Sudanese solution is closer to it.

http://martingarang.blogspot.com/2012/04/israels-path-of-survivability-is-safest_16.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MartinGarangAher+%28Martin+Garang+Aher%29

Tearz Ayuen: Why I Reject Foreign Religions

LETTER OF COMPLAINT TO NHIALIC

By Tears Ayuen

Nhialic, you know me very well. I don’t complain a lot. You created me. I appreciate who I am and what I have. I accept anything that comes my way just the way it is or I work out a few modifications at least to suit my taste, without bugging people close to me. I sometimes simply change my attitude whenever I find a problem too hard to cope with. That’s how I have been surviving this unforgiving world for the past twenty-something years. But now I am afraid, I have failed to tackle something, something that is increasingly attacking my originality.  And that’s why I am presenting it to you, as my creator, to look into it seriously. It is this thing called religion.

Remember I was born into a Dinka family. Dinka people are religious souls, naturally. They believe in two divine bodies; you, Nhialic and Jok. We believe in life after death. According to Dinka mythology, you are the creator of everything, including our cows. You are all-powerful and the controller of all events. You prohibit and condemn wrong-doings of any kind. You hate dishonesty, stealing, killing, adultery, lying, disobedience, name it. You encourage love peace and harmony amongst brothers and sisters. You also love good neighborliness. You, who normally appear to us through parents, write down your expectations in every Dinka fetus’ essence, of which the parents help instill into the child through upbringing.  That’s why Dinka parents beat their children thoroughly whenever they go astray. Frankly, you don’t have to be the parent to spank a Dinka brat. Anyone can beat the cream out of it provided that you caught the young rascal misbehaving.

Jok is more of your opposite. He is some greedy super being that talks to its followers through signs and sorcerers or magicians. He is in form of python, turtle, cobra or monitor lizard, depending which clan. He angrily violently reacts when annoyed. He demands for bulls to be slaughtered to appease him.

What one worships depends on a family or clan. For me, my great parents were followers of you, Nhialic, until some strange, pale-skinned, tall, aged creatures with bushy faces and long big knob-like noses showed up in my motherland about two hundred years ago. They settled and quickly began to preach the contents of a big black book that is white inside. The book, popularly known as Bible, condemns everything Dinka, you in particular. Those who believe in biblical teachings are called Christians. Christianity attacks your divinity, claiming you’re a false super being and places the white man’s first.  The bible calls him God. I have read the bible several times, cover to cover. It talks about the same things you planted in me- knowing right and wrong.

Bible was written by some crooked sneaky white people who, I feel, deleted and or added some valuable information. It is supposed to be a history book just like any other book that talks about the past. I don’t hold any grudge against Christians and their bible but the problem sets in when they consider my beliefs uncouth and unacceptable, and try by all means necessary to have me believe in theirs. There’s nothing they like about me. They want me to change the way I am; what I am called, way of life, what I believe in and so on. Whenever I introduce myself as Ayuen Panchol Anyieth Dhol, everyone rolls on the ground laughing. They suggest Jewish names like Jeroboam, Ecclesiastes, Ananias or Maccabees, of which I find unreasonable since they hold no substance to my lineage. They say my identity sucks.  They use the biblical passages to force me into accepting their ways. They talk about some place called hell. That if I don’t believe in their super being, I would go to hell. Where the hell is that?

One thing that makes it hard for me to believe them is the bible itself. Its contents do not refer to me as a Dinka in anyway. Take for example the first commandment in which their God threatens, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me.”  How the hell does that concern me? I am a Dinka, a cattle rustler by birth. Have the Dinka people ever been in Egypt? If yes, then they must have been the ones who enslaved God’s people, and not the ones told to worship one God.

Another reason why I reject their ways is that they don’t practice what they preach: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”  See? Their God prohibits them from making idols, a command they defiantly piss on by embracing this thing called cross which is worn on the neck. Some carry larger cumbersome wooden crosses. I heard that cross was used by romans to kill their holy ghost’s son. What if the son was shot between the eyes, would they be wearing bullets on their necks?

Homosexuality issue is another thing that makes me question the reality and trueness of their religion. Leviticus chapter 18 verse 22-23 says “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.” yet the world’s largest church, catholic, supports it. A 2011 report compiled by the Washington DC-based Public Religion Research Institute, using past polls and studies showed that nearly three-quarters of Catholics favor either allowing gay and lesbian people to marry (43%) or allowing them to form civil unions (31%). Only 22% of Catholics say there should be no legal recognition of a gay couple’s relationship. Recently, the UK Prime Minister in an interview with BBC was said to have threatened to cut aid to anti-gay countries, stating that countries receiving UK support should adhere to proper human rights. What human rights? If human rights give criminals absolute immunity to punishment, what do you expect murderers to say? Form their associations that would present their issues in the parliament? Where is the credibility of what they believe in? Do I really need to believe them?

A number of big church elders indulge in a lot of bad practices. They sleep around with married female members of the congregations. Somewhere in my current location in 2010, a married pastor was caught red-handed, making love to a policeman’s woman. Community members offered him neither mercy nor grace, especially because he was heard preaching against adultery in a crusade the day before. They beat them both, stripped them naked and forced them to kiss in public. See? And how many cases of that kind go unnoticed? Thousands!

Wait, there is more.  In July, 2007, A Zimbabwe’s state-controlled television broadcast photographs showing Archbishop X in bed with a married woman. The woman’s husband later filed a lawsuit that sought about $80,000. How about this thing called “vow of celibacy?” what happens to it?

Somewhere in the bible, the whole mankind traces its way back to two first beings; Adam and Eve. Where did their sons, Cain and Abel, find girls they got married to? How did that happen? Bible does not say.

These people called believers never cease to make me smile. They do things just to show off superiority. A bunch of those who are tired of doing big bad things spent months, begging and kissing another arrogant group to not launch a dangerous missile into the orbit. They defiantly held their middle fingers up high and launched the rocket, but failed due to some unknown reasons. Maybe you were behind their failure. Weren’t you, Nhialic?

They manufacture guns and distribute them to hostile communities who attack the peaceful ones for fun. My people no longer defend our livestock and ourselves from the unfriendly neighbors who now use sophisticated weapons like RPGs and rocket launchers to attack and drive away the cattle you gave us. And quickly go on radio and television, condemning the act. Thanks to their gods.

They nicknamed me pagan, atheist, non-believer, infidel and so on. There is another religion whose male believers tie white turban around the head and they keep long tidy beards. One of their celebrated men was shot down by a tall black guy in 2011. They are also trying harder to talk me into becoming one of their own. My female workmate provocatively calls me kafir, meaning an unbeliever. She dresses up like a ninja. I hardly see her face. I fight back by telling her that her face is either too ugly to show or she has a big wound on her head or she can’t afford to pay a hairdresser.

Now, why are they telling me to leave you and worship theirs? Is it because I am black? Or are you inferior to their gods? They have managed to convert my brothers and sisters though, particularly the older ones. I call them religious slaves because they got cheated or misled. They go to church Monday to Monday, when they should be working, farming. The book of Titus says “Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good, in order that they may provide for daily necessities and not live unproductive lives.” The owners of the religion they abandoned theirs for work hard and go to club every day and go to church maybe once a year. Do you feel me, Nhialic?

In my third-eye perspective, since bible scriptures directly refer to Israelis, then it was meant to be the national constitution for Israelis, and holy Koran for Iraqis. I have my own laws outlined in a book called National Transitional Constitution of South Sudan. The constitution adds nothing other than annotates the moral grammar you wired into my neural circuits by evolution. It is evident that Africa is the place where world super powers show off their influences. During the past centuries, they greedily scrambled and partitioned it with intent to suck her resources dry, of which they did. That was an economical competition. A religious one followed. Old men preached word of their gods which condemned African ways, while their sons pleasurably enslaved, raped, killed and sold Africans. Nothing much has changed today; same song, different verse.  These people are so hypocritical. They condemn corrupt and thieving African politicians but on the other hand help them hide the stolen billions of dollars in their banks, leaving the ordinary man with nothing but protruding ribs. Others grant asylum to African butchers, the committers of genocidal actions. What’s biblical about that? Nothing! So, why do they speak against wrong-doing in their big black books but offer first class protection mechanisms to the wrong-doers? Whose beliefs are worth rebuking? And who should abandon his and adore the others’? Who is better off?

That’s it. I have rejected their ways and their gods. Keep an eye on me lest their pastors, priests, imams, bishops and converts confront me in any way.  And remember to base your judgment on my deeds, not beliefs, when I ceremoniously die of old age like my grandfather Anyieth Dhol, in about 80 years to come.

Africa’s Free Press Problem

By MOHAMED KEITA

AS Africa’s economies grow, an insidious attack on press freedom is under way. Independent African journalists covering the continent’s development are now frequently persecuted for critical reporting on the misuse of public finances, corruption and the activities of foreign investors.

Why this disturbing trend? In the West, cynicism about African democracy has led governments to narrow their development priorities to poverty reduction and stability; individual liberties like press freedom have dropped off the agenda, making it easier for authoritarian rulers to go after journalists more aggressively. In the 1990s, leaders like Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia were praised by the West as political and social reformers. Today, the West extols these men for achieving growth and maintaining stability, which they do largely with a nearly absolute grip over all national institutions and the press.

Then there’s the influence of China, which surpassed the West as Africa’s largest trading partner in 2009. Ever since, China has been deepening technical and media ties with African governments to counter the kind of critical press coverage that both parties demonize as neocolonialist.

In January, Beijing issued a white paper calling for accelerated expansion of China’s news media abroad and the deployment of a press corps of 100,000 around the world, particularly in priority regions like Africa. In the last few months alone, China established its first TV news hub in Kenya and a print publication in South Africa. The state-run Xinhua news agency already operates more than 20 bureaus in Africa. More than 200 African government press officers received Chinese training between 2004 and 2011 in order to produce what the Communist Party propaganda chief, Li Changchun, called “truthful” coverage of development fueled by China’s activities.

China and African governments tend to agree that the press should focus on collective achievements and mobilize public support for the state, rather than report on divisive issues or so-called negative news.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Ethiopia, which remains one of the West’s foremost recipients of development assistance and whose largest trading partner and main source of foreign investment is China. The prisons in Ethiopia, like those in China, are now filled with journalists and dissidents, and critical Web sites are blocked.

This is particularly troubling in Ethiopia, a country where investigative journalism once saved countless lives. In the 1980s, the tyrannical president Mengistu Haile Mariam denied that a famine was happening in Ethiopia, even as it deepened. The world did not move to assist millions of starving Ethiopians until international journalists broke the dictator’s stranglehold on information.

Nearly three decades later, Ethiopia is still mired in a cycle of humanitarian crises and conflicts. But today, journalists are denied independent access to sensitive areas and risk up to 20 years in prison if they report about opposition groups designated by the government as terrorists. “We are not supposed to take pictures of obviously malnourished kids,” an Ethiopia-based reporter recently told me. “We are effectively prevented from going to areas and health facilities where severely malnourished kids are, or are being treated.”

This silencing in turn frustrates the ability of aid groups to quickly mobilize funds when help is needed. And with civil society, the political opposition and the press severely restricted, there is hardly any domestic scrutiny over how the government uses billions of dollars of international assistance from Western governments.

Rwanda is another worrisome case. The volume of trade between Rwanda and China increased fivefold between 2005 and 2009. During the same period, the government has eviscerated virtually all critical press and opposition and has begun filtering Rwandan dissident news Web sites based abroad.

As powerful political and economic interests tied to China’s investments seek to stamp out independent reporting, a free African press is needed more than ever, as a key institution of development, a consumer watchdog and a way for the public to contextualize official statistics about joblessness, inflation and other social and economic concerns. But support for the press, in order to be effective, will have to mean more than just supporting journalism training and publishing capacity; if such efforts are to succeed, they must be integrated into a wider strategy of political and media reforms.

Mohamed Keita is the Africa advocacy coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/opinion/africas-free-press-problem.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

China: A Strategic Partner of the New Nation of South Sudan

By Luka Biong Deng

The Republic of South Sudan, the newest member state of the UN, has entered into a world that is stratified into the top billion people who are prosperous, middle four billion of people who are developing and on track to be prosperous and bottom billion of people who are struck at the bottom with appalling living conditions.

Also the people living in the countries of the bottom billion have been in one or another of the four traps: conflict trap, natural resource trap, land-locked and bad neighbours trap and bad governance in a small country trap. It would certainly not require much efforts of where to position the newest member of the United Nation in the current economic and political stratification of the world. South Sudan falls not only in the bottom billion but it is at the bottom of the bottom billion and is virtually exposed to all the four traps experienced by the bottom billion. The real challenge for the leadership of the newest nation is how to remove South Sudan from the appalling conditions of the bottom billion and to put it on a path of economic growth to realize the aspirations of its people who have been deprived so long and suffered a great deal.

Certainly this task is to be championed by the people of South Sudan but also to be complemented by the support of the international community. In the light of global financial crisis that is threatening the western economies, China is emerging as a real economic power and a last resort to the countries of the bottom billion to put their economy on growth path. Its economy is the fastest growing economy and it has not only bypassed Japan but it is certain that it will soon bypass the USA. Building good relation with China is becoming not only economic necessity but it is also strategic national interest for most of the developing countries and even the rest of the world.

My first personal experience of being wrongly identified as Chinese was in the early 1980s, when I went for postgraduate studies in Belgium. An official received me at the airport holding a paper with my family name, ‘Deng’, written on it. He was shocked to see me, a black African, approaching him, as he had assumed the name ‘Deng’ meant that I would be Chinese. Many years later, in 2007, during President Salva Kiir’s first official visit to China as President of South Sudan, we were touring Beijing with Ambassador Majok Guandong and others from our delegation, and we were stunned to come across a sign for ‘Guandong Bank’. Many South Sudanese ponder the significance of these common names and what they may mean in terms of our cultural and historic ties to China; what is certain is that China is a key economic and political player in the drama currently unfolding between Sudan and South Sudan.

President Kiir is scheduled to return to China in April for his first visit since South Sudan declared independence in July 2011. For South Sudan, building good relations with China is not only an economic necessity, but also of strategic national interest. The success of the visit will hinge on our government’s ability to diplomatically handle the host of pressing issues that now confront South Sudan.

In the aftermath of its bold decision to stop oil production, South Sudan is under considerable financial stress. It is struggling to find funding for its huge deficit, meet the basic needs of its people, and build an alternative pipeline for its crude oil. The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that most of South Sudan’s traditional allies have been reluctant to support the decision to stop oil production, and may have difficulty convincing their taxpayers to increase or maintain their level of assistance to South Sudan while it is sitting on oil resources that it is unable to market.

Access to concessional loans is also limited, as South Sudan is not yet a full member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Even if found, the loans would likely carry an exorbitant cost that would create a huge debt overhang for future generations—a common burden for other African countries but one to which South Sudan is not yet subjected by virtue of its newfound independence.

This leaves South Sudan with few sources of funding other than commercial loans or concessional loans from China. It is therefore a matter of strategic national interest for South Sudan to strengthen its diplomatic relations with China, and to push China to exert more diplomatic pressure on Sudan to find rational solutions for the post-secession issues that are currently pending between Sudan and South Sudan.

To build a more positive relationship, South Sudan and China must overcome a number of diplomatic hurdles. During the civil war, oil development in South Sudan became associated with human suffering, massive displacement, and gross human rights abuses carried out by the Government of Sudan. Oil companies were perceived as culprits in these atrocities, particularly those that took place in the areas around oilfields. Given China’s role in the oil sector, most South Sudanese believe that China not only sided with Khartoum during the civil war, but that its oil companies aided and abetted the Government of Sudan in committing human rights abuses. Certainly, these perceptions will continue to affect future relations between China and South Sudan and will pose a real diplomatic challenge in transforming the relationship between the two states.

The recent wrangling between Khartoum and Juba over oil also affected diplomatic relations between South Sudan and China. Shortly after the oil shutdown, the PETRODAR operating company, particularly the Chinese component, China National Petroleum Company (CNPC), was accused of complicity in the concealment of a number of oil wells. Although it is impossible at this point to know conclusively the validity of the information concerning the undeclared oil wells, the way that the information was managed did not help in promoting South Sudan’s relations with China. It also remains unclear how our government was not aware about the number of oil wells in South Sudan, given that the Ministry of Energy was established in 2005 with a considerable budget to monitor oil production. We have cried out about how much we have been cheated by

Sudan, but we have not yet answered why we were not capable of counting our own oil wells.

Furthermore, although the Government of South Sudan might have had compelling reasons to expel the President of PETRODAR, the way the decision was taken and managed did not help in promoting our diplomatic relations with China. Our local media’s portrayal of China during the saga left out some of the facts and served to mobilize public opinion against China. In fact, the companies that were involved in marketing the stolen crude oil were not even Chinese companies but were rather the very companies that have become so close to our government during the interim period, despite their historical record of working with the Government of Sudan in its oil sector.

Nonetheless, there is reason for optimism concerning the relationship between South Sudan and China. Chinese foreign policy is based on principles of non-interference, mutual interest and mutual benefits, and China has no special interest in Sudan except for their national strategic interest. South Sudan is in far better position to ensure that strategic interest, given the fact that most oil and agricultural potential is in the South. In fact, of the 5 percent of China’s oil needs that are met by exports from Sudan and South Sudan, the crude oil export of South Sudan alone meets about 4.5 percent of it.

There are five basic goals that the Government of South Sudan could seek to accomplish during President Salva Kiir’s visit to China. First, the visit could be used to reposition South Sudan as strategic partner to China not only in terms of South Sudan’s economic potentials, but also in terms of its position in the region. Second, the visit could assure China of South Sudan’s commitment to maintaining good relations with Sudan, including exporting its crude oil through the pipelines in Sudan if Khartoum is willing to settle for internationally accepted fees.

Third, the visit could serve to articulate the strategic importance that South Sudan ascribes to the diversification of its pipelines and the need for China to assist not only in the feasibility studies and impact assessments associated with the alternative pipeline but also in its funding.

Fourth, the visit could make it clear to China that if not resolved, the unfinished business of the CPA in terms of popular consultation for the people of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states, the referendum for the people of Abyei area, and demarcation of the North-South border will continue to haunt the relationship between the two states. China is uniquely positioned to exert diplomatic pressure on Khartoum to resolve these pending issues.

Fifth, the visit could ensure access to concessional loans for development of infrastructure (telecommunication, roads, power generation and sports) and for agricultural ‘green revolution’.

China is a huge country and shifting its policy to include a focus on an independent South Sudan is a mammoth task. But with hard work and patience, our mutual interests align enough to remain hopeful for a strong relationship in the years to come.

Luka Biong is a senior member of South Sudan’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and is currently the Co-Chair of the Abyei Joint Oversight Committee.

http://www.sudantribune.com/China-A-Strategic-Partner-of-the,42274#tabs-1

Sudanese warplanes bomb UN camp in South Sudan

Sudan parliament brands Juba government ‘enemy’

By Abdelmoneim Abu Edris Ali | AFP News – 

• View PhotoMap of Sudan and South Sudan locating main oil blocks, pipeline and oil towns of Heglig and Bentiu

Sudan’s parliament voted unanimously on Monday to brand the government of South Sudan an enemy, after southern troops invaded the north’s main oilfield.

The vote came as South Sudan accused Khartoum of fresh airstrikes that killed 10 civilians and also hit a United Nations peacekeeping camp, on the seventh day of the most severe border fighting since South Sudan separated last July with hope for a peaceful future.

“The government of South Sudan is an enemy and all Sudanese state agencies have to treat her accordingly,” the parliament’s resolution said.

After the vote, parliamentary speaker Ahmed Ibrahim El-Tahir called in the legislature for the overthrow of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) which rules the South.

“We announce that we will clash with SPLM until we end her government of South Sudan,” he said.

Fighting broke out last month between the rival armies of Khartoum and Juba around Sudan’s main oilfield, called Heglig.

The clashes escalated last week with waves of aerial bombardment hitting the South, whose troops on Tuesday seized Heglig from Khartoum’s army.

Although South Sudan disputes that Heglig belongs to Sudan, the area is not among the roughly 20 percent of the border officially contested.

In the Southern capital Juba, Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin said the vote by Sudan’s parliament was “unfortunate”.

“We have never been their enemy — our position is that we don’t consider them as our enemy,” he told reporters.

Fresh bombing raids on Sunday killed 10 civilians in South Sudan’s Unity border state, said the area’s information minister, Gideon Gatpan.

Bombs were dropped near the oil-producing state’s capital Bentiu, as well as in the village of Mayom, some 60 kilometres (40 miles) to the west, he said.

“In Mayom… it killed seven civilians and wounded 14, two bombs fell inside the UN camp in Mayom and destroyed a generator and a radio,” Gatpan said, adding that three people were also killed in villages around Bentiu.

UN peacekeeping mission spokesman Kouider Zerrouk confirmed the attack but said there were no casualties and it was unlikely the UN was targeted, as the Antonov aircraft used by Sudan are notoriously inaccurate.

Sudan’s army spokesman was not answering telephone calls for a second day.

Aid workers said the fighting is worsening an already grim humanitarian situation.

In South Sudan’s Yida refugee camp — one of several along the border — around 400 refugees are arriving every day, up from an average of 50 a day last week, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) aid agency said.

Those refugees are fleeing civil war and hunger in the Nuba mountains of Sudan’s South Kordofan state, an area close to where Sudan and South Sudan have been fighting.

In South Kordofan, Sudan has for months been battling ethnic insurgents formerly allied with the rebels now ruling in South Sudan.

Nineteen South Sudanese soldiers have been killed since Tuesday, while 240 Sudanese troops have lost their lives, Juba’s army said in figures impossible to verify.

“It’s a war,” a foreign diplomat said, but there is a logistical imbalance between the combatants since South Sudan has no warplanes, meaning “they are obliged to respond on the ground.”

Questions are being raised in Khartoum over how easily Southern forces managed to seize Sudan’s main oilfield, worsening an economy mired in crisis.

“This is something unacceptable,” Samia Habani, a Khartoum MP, said in parliament.

The Sudanese military is already severely stretched, in the face of the major insurgency in South Kordofan, a smaller uprising in Blue Nile, and ongoing fighting in the war-ravaged Darfur region.

“How can you open three or four fronts at one time?” asked Al-Tayib Z. Al-Abdin, a professor at the University of Khartoum.

China said on Monday that South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir will visit from April 23 to 28 for talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Beijing is an ally of the Sudanese government and the largest buyer of South Sudan’s oil. Last week it called on both sides to enact a ceasefire and return to the diplomacy table.

Other world powers have also called for restraint and voiced deep concern at the escalating violence.

Khartoum seeks the South’s unconditional withdrawal from Heglig.

But Juba has said it will not pull back unless Khartoum removes its troops from the contested Abyei region nearby, among other conditions.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/sudanese-warplanes-bomb-un-camp-south-sudan-103138168.html

Sudan intensifies bombing of disputed town
WRIC
US Ambassador Susan Rice, the current president of the Security Council, said a bombardment in South Sudan also hit a UN facility but that no UN personnel are thought to be hurt. Two Sudanese warplanes dropped “many bombs” Monday on the oil-rich city …

South Sudan Says Sudan Bombs Hit 2 Towns, UN Camp BusinessWeek By Jared Ferrie and Salma El Wardany on April 16, 2012 South Sudan said Sudan bombed two towns in Unity state, killing at least four civilians and wounding 21. A camp of United Nations peacekeepers and oil fields in the region of Heglig were bombed, …

Syria; North Korea; Sudan/South Sudan; World Bank; and more UN Dispatch Sudan/S. Sudan: The UN Mission in South Sudan(UNMISS) reported three separate incidents of air strikes this weekend in Unity state. Two were in Bentiu and another in Mayom, where UNMISS premises withstood material damage after being hit by two bombs.

South Sudan Yet to Realize Much at Stake over Higlig Attack: Nafie Sudan Vision Addressing agriculturalists and pastoralists conference, Nafie said Higlig is not the target; the Government of South Sudan is seeking to capture South Kordofan and then proceed to Khartoum, warning a powerful retaliation should South Sudan refuse to …

Sudan parliament calls South an “enemy” APA Sudan’s parliament branded South Sudan an “enemy” on Monday and called for a swift recapture of a disputed oil-producing region, as rising border tensions pushed the old civil war foes closer to another full-blown conflict, APA reports quoting Reuters.

South Sudan: Prospects for Peace and Development Sudan Tribune China: A Strategic Partner of the New Nation of South Sudan 2012-04-16 14:24:47 By Luka Biong Deng The Republic of South Sudan, the newest member state of the UN, has entered into a world that is stratified into the top billion people who are …

South Sudan-Sudan clashes spreading, officials say KTAR.com By RODNEY MUHUMUZA AP KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) – Clashes have spread along the border of Sudan and South Sudan, officials said Monday, with Sudanese officials claiming to have seized an area sympathetic to South Sudan. A South Sudanese military official …

Sudanese warplanes bomb UN camp in South Sudan The West Australian JUBA (AFP) – Sudanese warplanes bombed a UN peacekeepers’ base, damaging it but causing no casualties in the first such attack since a recent escalation of fighting with South Sudan, officials said Monday. Bombing raids on Sunday also killed nine …

MPs in Khartoum Declares South Sudan an ‘enemy’ state

MPs in Khartoum brand South Sudan ‘enemy’ state

Sudanese MPs have voted unanimously to brand South Sudan “an enemy”.

“The government of South Sudan is an enemy and all Sudanese state agencies have to treat her accordingly,” the resolution said.

A Khartoum information ministry official told the BBC the move was linked to South Sudan’s seizure last week of the Heglig oil field.

South Sudan had accused Sudan of launching attacks on its territory from the frontier oil field.

The country seceded from Sudan in July last year following a civil war which ended in 2005.

But a number of major disputes remain, including over oil and the official demarcation of the international border, and there have been a number of clashes since.

UN camp bombed

The BBC’s James Copnall in Khartoum says the full ramifications of the parliamentary vote are not clear, but it is evident that both countries are close to a full war.

The speaker of parliament, Ahmed Ibrahim al-Tahir, called for Sudan to overthrow the South Sudanese government, the AFP news agency reports.

Dr Khalid Al Mubarak, London’s Sudan embassy spokesperson, told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme that South Sudan has made itself an enemy by crossing the border and occupying Sudan’s land.

Who owns Heglig oil field?

• Until 8th April, Heglig was firmly under Khartoum’s control and the oil field provided more than half of Sudan’s oil
• A 2009 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling had removed it from the disputed Abyei region and placed it in South Kordofan in Sudan – according to the north-south border set in 1956 at independence
• However, analysts say the court’s decision cannot be interpreted as the right for Sudan to own Heglig as the official demarcation of the international border is yet to be agreed following South Sudan’s secession last July
• Several international bodies have condemned South Sudan for taking control of Heglig – the African Union’s Peace and Security Council called it an “illegal occupation”, suggesting it is accepted fairly widely internationally that Heglig is part of Sudan

“It is not the people of the south but the government that is the real enemy and we know how to confront them,” Rabbie Abd al-Attie, a senior adviser to Sudan’s information minister, told the BBC.

Khartoum has vowed to use “all means” to recapture Heglig – but Sudanese officials deny Monday’s vote amounts to a declaration of war, adding that Sudan does not want an all-out war but simply needs to regain its territories.

Heglig, which used to provide more than half of Sudan’s oil, is internationally accepted to be part of Sudanese territory – although the border area is yet to be demarcated.

The parliamentary vote in Khartoum came as a UN spokesman confirmed that Sudanese planes had bombed a UN peacekeepers’ camp in South Sudan’s border area on Sunday.

No-one was hurt during the attack on the small UN base in Mayom village in Unity state, Kouider Zerrouk said.

But at least 15 people have been killed in other bombing raids in South Sudan over the weekend, eyewitnesses told the BBC.

The African Union has demanded South Sudan’s unconditional withdrawal from Heglig, calling its occupation “illegal and unacceptable”, but also condemned Sudan for carrying out aerial bombardments of South Sudan.

Sudan has denied being behind the air raids.

On Thursday, the UN Security Council called for an “immediate” ceasefire and expressed “deep and growing alarm at the escalating conflict”.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17727624

Puberty Changes Life in South Sudan KFYR-TV Many young girls in South Sudan face a bleak reality when they reach puberty. They stop going to school because they don`t have underwear and feminine hygiene products. African Soul, American Heart, a non-profit organization based in North Dakota, …

Nation Committed to Resolve the Remaining Issue Peacefully AllAfrica.com Juba — The Republic of South Sudan is committed to resolve the outstanding issues and maintain peace and stability with Sudan, the minister for Information and Broadcasting Dr. Barnaba Marial Benjamin has said. The minister made this statement last …

South Sudan-Sudan clashes spreading, officials say, as planes bomb disputed … Washington Post KAMPALA, Uganda — Clashes have spread along the border of Sudan and South Sudan, officials said Monday, with Sudanese officials claiming to have seized an area sympathetic to South Sudan. A South Sudanese military official said the clashes are a …

Today and Thursday – last local opportunities to get update on SOUTH SUDAN Janesville Gazette (blog) By JOHN EYSTER Monday, April 16, 2012 – 6:26 am ANITA HENDERLIGHT, Executive Director of AfricaELI working in the REPUBLIC of SOUTH SUDAN will be speaking to our award-winning JANESVILLE ACADEMY FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES at 9 am TODAY (April 16) in the …

ENERGY MARKETS REPORT INCLUDING: South Sudan have accused Sudan of bombing a … Proactive Investors UK South Sudan have accused Sudan of bombing a disputed major oil field “to rubble” on Sunday, but Sudan have denied the claims. • Rosneft is expected to finalise a groundbreaking joint venture with ExxonMobil today that will grant the US oil major access …

SAF/ S. Sudan Rebels Battle With SPLA in Upper Nile State AllAfrica.com Juba — The Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the South Sudan army (SPLA) clashed in northern Upper Nile state, eyewitnesses told Sudan Tribune on Sunday morning. However, an anonymous rebel source claims the SPLA was engaged only by rebel forces led by …

Khartoum denies South Sudan’s claim on bombing Heglig’s oil facilities Sudan Tribune April 15, 2012 (KHARTOUM/JUBA) –Sudan has denied claims by South Sudan that its air forces bombed “to rubble” oil infrastructure in Heglig, warning that Juba will be held responsible for any damage done in the disputed area. South Sudan’s information …

Analysis – Buckling economies key in Sudan’s “war of attrition” swissinfo.ch By Alexander Dziadosz and Ulf Laessing (Reuters) – The outcome of the dramatically escalating border fighting between Sudan and South Sudan is more likely to be determined by which of the two faltering economies collapses first than by relative …

Iran Urges South Sudan to Respect Sovereignty of Northern Neighbor Fars News Agency We want the South Sudanese forces to withdraw to the demarked borders and respecting Northern Sudan’s sovereignty,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast said on Sunday. Mehman-Parast called on both countries to maintain their …

SAF Air Raid Kills Five in Bentiu, Extends Bombing to Warrap State AllAfrica.com By Mary Ajith Goch, 15 April 2012 He explained that on Saturday Sudan committed atrocities in different parts of South Sudan which included the bombing its planes Mig Fighter 29 carried out in Bentiu Market killing five people and wounding six others, …

South Sudan: Prospects for Peace and Development Sudan Tribune China: A Strategic Partner of the New Nation of South Sudan 2012-04-16 14:24:47 By Luka Biong Deng The Republic of South Sudan, the newest member state of the UN, has entered into a world that is stratified into the top billion people who are …

South Sudan-Sudan clashes spreading, officials say KTAR.com By RODNEY MUHUMUZA AP KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) – Clashes have spread along the border of Sudan and South Sudan, officials said Monday, with Sudanese officials claiming to have seized an area sympathetic to South Sudan. A South Sudanese military official …

Sudanese warplanes bomb UN camp in South Sudan The West Australian JUBA (AFP) – Sudanese warplanes bombed a UN peacekeepers’ base, damaging it but causing no casualties in the first such attack since a recent escalation of fighting withSouth Sudan, officials said Monday. Bombing raids on Sunday also killed nine …