Starting Points: southern Sudan

Showing posts with label southern Sudan. Show all posts

Mar 31, 2010

Deal Making in Sudan | Enough

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Deal Making in Sudan | Enough

Mar 30, 2010

Southern Sudan prepares for freedom – and puts dream of skyscrapers on hold - The Guardian

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Southern Sudan prepares for freedom – and puts dream of skyscrapers on hold - The Guardian

Dec 25, 2009

U.S. aids Sudanese in independence bid

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Eli Lake

The United States is helping South Sudan prepare for independence after a 2011 referendum, according to a representative of the region in Washington.

Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, head of South Sudan's mission to the United States, told reporters and editors of The Washington Times on Thursday that a good chunk of the nearly $1 billion in annual U.S. aid to Sudan is going to build roads, train police and professionalize a separate army in the south.

"The United States government, one of their goals now, is to make sure southern Sudan in 2011 is a viable state," he said.

Under the terms of a 2005 agreement that ended a decades-long civil war between the mostly Muslim north and the Christian and animist south, southern Sudanese are to be allowed to vote on Jan. 9, 2011, whether to set up an independent state.

The vote is to be preceded by presidential and parliamentary elections in all of Sudan next year.

Mr. Gatkuoth accused the government of Sudanese President Omar Bashir of trying to prevent free and fair voting by arresting southern Sudanese leaders and interfering with legislation governing the elections.

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Mr. Gatkuoth said the coming 12 months would be crucial to determining the fate of the country.

"In 2010, we either make it or break it," he said. "An election can lead to war if you feel cheated."

On Monday, Sudan's parliament in Khartoum is scheduled to vote on a referendum law. The parliament voted earlier this week on the legislation, but removed compromise language between the Sudan People's Liberation Movement and the Bashir government that required voters to prove their southern Sudanese origin. The new vote was scheduled for Monday after U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly urged Lt. Gen. Bashir's government to "restore the agreed-upon language."

An administration official declined specific comment Thursday on Mr. Gatkuoth's remarks, apart from saying that "the United States continues to call on all parties to work together to ensure the upcoming elections and referenda are conducted in a credible manner."

The 2011 referendum could simultaneously divide Sudan into two countries and reignite a civil war.

Mr. Gatkuoth said that Gen. Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for his purported role in authorizing genocide in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, is determined to prevent the south from gaining independence.

Most of Sudan's oil is located in the south, as are the headwaters of the Nile River. The northern part of the country, however, includes the city of Port Sudan, from which the oil is exported, largely to China.

Mr. Gatkuoth said the U.S. was helping to prepare the south for independence and that the region's most critical needs involve agriculture and policing.

The International Crisis Group, a Belgium- and Washington-based organization that seeks to prevent conflict, criticized the southern Sudanese government in a report Wednesday for failing to provide security in the state of Jonglei.

"The South Sudan police service ... is of abysmal quality," the report said.

Mr. Gatkuoth conceded that the police are weak in South Sudan, but also accused the Khartoum government of exploiting tribal conflicts to provide an excuse to postpone the referendum.

He said Sudan's most important trading partner, China, had recognized the likelihood of southern Sudanese independence by establishing a consulate in Juba, the capital of the southern region. He said that there had already been discussions between the southern government and China's national oil company about arrangements after 2011.

The envoy said he was particularly worried that a national security law gives Sudan's intelligence service the authority to arrest the political opponents of Gen. Bashir and detain them for nine months without trial.

"If there is a free election, Bashir will not win," Mr. Gatkuoth said.

He also warned that demarcating the border between north and south and a border district known as Abyei would be contentious.

Mr. Gatkuoth said he was most worried that Khartoum would try to postpone the 2011 referendum.

"Even if you postpone that for one day, the people of southern Sudan will not accept it," he sa

Dec 18, 2009

Lord's Resistance Army and the Threat against Civilians in Southern Sudan

Author:

Ledio Cakaj

Dec 18, 2009

LRAThreatSouthernSudan.pdf

Enough experts expose the ongoing violence and turmoil caused by the Lord's Resistance Army in central Africa.

Conflict Minerals, Congo

^{Source: Enough / Ledio Cakaj}

Arrow Boys are local militia that have organized to defend communities against the LRA.

The cross-border nature of the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA—currently active in northeastern Congo, the Central African Republic, and southern Sudan—is a clear threat to international peace and security, but the United Nations Security Council has yet to take seriously its responsibility to protect civilians from the LRA and marshal the will and the resources to put in place an effective counterinsurgency strategy.

In Western Equatoria State in Southern Sudan, where LRA attacks in recent months have killed at least 135 people and driven 67,000 from their homes, the Government of Southern Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, or SPLA, have been unable and in some cases unwilling to protect southern Sudanese civilians. Unfortunately, U.N. peacekeepers deployed to support implementation of Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement have not risen to the direct challenge to peace posed by the LRA. The Government of Southern Sudan and the United Nations must do better, but improved civilian protection is only one element of a comprehensive strategy to address the LRA threat. Civilians in the affected region will not be safe so long as the LRA continues to operate as a transnational terrorist group.

The U.N. Security Council must authorize and member states must resource a comprehensive strategy to protect civilians in LRA-affected areas, identify and sever external lines of support, increase opportunities for rank-and-file fighters to defect, and end the insurgency once and for all through more effective military pressure on LRA leader Joseph Kony and his high command.

_______________________________________

John Prendergast speaks to activists about the LRA at the How It Ends lobby days event, organized by the Enough Project, Invisible Children, and Resolve Uganda.

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Nov 2, 2009

BBC - South Sudan leader urges split

Image by Vít Hassan via Flickr

Southern Sudan leader Salva Kiir has made his strongest call for full independence when the region's status is decided at a referendum due in 2011.

He said voting for unity with northern Sudan would make southerners "second class citizens" in their own land.

A referendum in the now semi-autonomous oil-rich south was part of the 2005 deal that ended decades of civil war.

A BBC correspondent in Sudan says Mr Kiir's comments are likely to add to tensions between the north and south.

Previously officials have been careful in public to at least promote the unity between north and south, as the peace deal stipulates, says the BBC's Peter Martell in the South Sudan capital Juba.

'Respecting choice'

Salva Kiir was speaking at a special church service to pray for peace, timed to mark the start of voter registration for multi-party elections due in April 2010.

"When you reach your ballot boxes the choice is yours. You want to vote for unity, so that you become a second-class [citizen] in your own country, that is your choice," he told the congregation at St Teresa's Catholic Cathedral in Juba.

"You would want to vote for independence, so that you are a free person, in your independent state, that will be your own choice. And we will respect the choice of the people."

In October, South Sudan said it had achieved a breakthrough in talks with the north over terms for the referendum.

Vice-President Riek Machar said the vote would require a simple majority as long as two-thirds of those eligible took part.

In the past, the Khartoum government had insisted that 75% of voters must agree to independence.

Mr Machar said all southerners would be allowed to vote, including those in Khartoum and those outside Sudan.

Oct 20, 2009

North-south conflict to be emphasis of new U.S. policy on Sudan - washingtonpost.com

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Focus on restoring accord seen as helping resolve Darfur situation

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The Obama administration's new policy toward Sudan, formally announced Monday, turns the spotlight back on where the troubled nation's problems first began: the split between the Islamic north and the largely animist and Christian south.

Although the world's attention has been focused on the tragedy in the Darfur region of western Sudan, administration officials argued Monday that a faltering peace accord that ended Africa's longest-running conflict is under increasing strain and needs to be repaired. If that deal -- brokered by the Bush administration in 2005 -- collapses, officials and analysts say, then hope will be lost for a solution to Darfur. The two-decade conflict between north and south led to the deaths of 2 million people.

Alex de Waal, a Sudan analyst with the Social Science Research Council, said the emphasis on the north-south conflict is significant.

"What this document is saying is, it was a mistake to lose that focus [on the peace agreement]. And we must get our priorities right," he said. "Darfur is part of Sudan, and if the rest of Sudan falls apart, you're never going to solve Darfur."

Still, many analysts think the Darfur conflict spiraled out of control in 2003 because the United States was so focused on resolving the north-south civil war that it ignored signs that the government in Khartoum was secretly behind brutal clashes in Darfur that ultimately led to the deaths of more than 300,000 people. Now the Obama administration hopes to avoid making the same mistake.

A senior administration official, briefing reporters under ground rules of anonymity, said that "for quite some time, policy has been understandably focused on the urgent crisis in Darfur, and [north-south peace agreement] implementation fell behind."

The official added: "We're dealing with a different timeline in this administration. There are a set of fundamentally different dynamics that have to be addressed in a very short period of time."

During last year's presidential campaign, Obama campaigned on the promise of getting tough with the Sudanese government, particularly over Darfur. But activists and lawmakers complained that his administration has offered conflicting signals in recent months. On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a policy that will feature rewards and punishments for Sudanese leaders based on whether they meet benchmarks in three areas: Darfur, the north-south agreement and counterterrorism.

The policy appeared less accommodating toward the Sudanese government than the approach suggested by the U.S. envoy, retired Air Force Major Gen. J. Scott Gration, who has pushed for normalizing relations. However, the new strategy adopted his emphasis on the north-south agreement and on engaging, rather than isolating, the government, analysts said. The policy document also emphasized that Gration will play the "leading role in pursuing our Sudan strategy," despite calls from some humanitarian groups for his replacement.

The 2005 peace agreement gave southerners religious and political autonomy and a role in a unity government until 2011, when a referendum is supposed to be held in the south on whether it will secede. The accord also called for national elections next year.

But activists and officials say the Sudanese government, loath to lose the oil-rich south, has dragged its feet on preparations for the votes. Inter-tribal fighting has increased in the south, and some observers say it is abetted by the government.

Among the benchmarks Sudan will be expected to achieve are progress on election preparations, passage of a law to hold the 2011 referendum and finalizing the boundary between north and south, officials said.

Officials did not describe the punishments or rewards in store for Sudan, saying they were in a classified document. But Sudan has been seeking normalization of relations with the U.S. government, an end to economic sanctions and removal from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Officials said the U.S. government will continue to refuse to deal with Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who has been indicted on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court in the Darfur killings. Instead, it has held talks with one of his senior advisers and other officials in his government.

U.S. officials emphasized that Sudan would not be rewarded if it simply made progress in one area, such as counterterrorism, but would have to show advances across the board.

The policy got a positive reception from many Sudan advocates and members of Congress.

"We now have a Sudan-wide policy . . . instead of shifting back and forth and allowing Khartoum to play the south off against Darfur," said John Prendergast, head of the Enough anti-genocide project at the Center for American Progress.

The emphasis on the north-south agreement "is very important, because the south was beginning to feel abandoned," said Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), a leading force in Congress on Sudan.

Even the Khartoum government seemed relieved to see a policy in place, although some of its officials criticized the continued emphasis on sanctions.

"We hope that this will end the debate among U.S. officials, and we hope that now they will think with one mind and speak with one tongue," Ghazi Salah Eddin Atabani, a senior adviser to the Sudanese government, told Sudanese television, according to the Associated Press.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Jul 31, 2009

U.S. Diplomat Urges Revised Sudan Policy

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 31, 2009

President Obama's top Sudan envoy said Thursday that there was no basis for keeping Sudan on the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism and that it was only a matter of time before the United States would have to "unwind" economic sanctions against the Khartoum government.

Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration's remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee represented the most forceful critique yet by a U.S. official of the long-standing American effort to put economic and political pressure on Sudan's Islamic government. Sudan, which has harbored members of al-Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden, was designated a terrorism sponsor in 1993.

Gration's comments Thursday raised concerns among activists and Sudan's critics in Congress that the administration is offering to reward Sudan without securing assurances that the government will take steps to end conflict in the Darfur region and in the south.

The president's national security advisers have been locked in dispute over the right mix of rewards and penalties to persuade the Khartoum government to pursue peace in those regions. Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has been pressing for a tougher approach, citing Khartoum's history of violating agreements.

The interagency feud became public last month, when Gration told reporters that Sudan's government was no longer engaging in a "coordinated" campaign of mass murder against Darfurian civilians. Two days earlier, Rice had said that Sudan was engaged in a campaign of genocide in Darfur.

"There is a significant difference between what happened in 2003, which we characterized as genocide, and what is happening today," Gration said Thursday.

Gration came under fire from human rights activists, who accused him of saying too little to the committee about the brutality of the Sudanese government, whose leader, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, stands accused of war crimes in Darfur.

Also Thursday, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, in partnership with Google Earth, released a State Department analysis of U.S. satellite imagery showing that more than 3,300 Darfurian villages were damaged or destroyed between 2003 and 2005, more than twice previous estimates. The images also showed that most of the destruction in Darfur occurred before 2006, with only a small number of villages apparently destroyed since then.

Gration told the Senate committee that the administration would "roll out" a new, comprehensive strategy on Darfur in the next few weeks that would include "both incentives and pressure" for Khartoum. The administration's priorities, he said, include negotiating a durable political solution in Darfur and averting a collapse of a U.S.-brokered 2005 peace accord ending a war between Khartoum and southern-backed rebels.

But Gration hinted at the tensions over strategy, noting that the State Department had rejected a proposal to fund more U.S. diplomats or private contractors to help support American mediation efforts in Sudan. He said he would raise the issue at a higher level.

Gration said U.S. economic sanctions had undermined American efforts to help implement the 2005 accord, barring the delivery of heavy equipment needed for road and rail projects in southern Sudan. He said the provision of such assistance would be vital in ensuring that southerners can establish a viable government if, as expected, they vote to secede from Sudan in a 2011 referendum.

"We're going to have to unwind some of these sanctions so that we can do the very things we need to do to ensure a peaceful transition to a state that is viable in the south, if they choose to do that," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/30/AR2009073004123.html