Africa News blog

Dancing to the last beats of a united Sudan

Half way through the evening you felt this is what a united Sudan could have been like.

It was an engagement party thrown by a beaming, white-robed Khartoum patriarch with pulsing music provided by Orupaap, a group of mostly southern musicians and dancers.

The band was barely into its third song when the northern, southern and foreign guests swarmed on to the stage raising their arms and clicking their fingers in one of the few African dances easily mastered by awkward middle class Englishmen.

“Where is the band from,” I shouted at the host above the amplified music. “I think the musicians are Shilluk,” he replied, referring to a group with its heartlands around the southern city of Malakal. “They’re from here in Khartoum.”

Northerners and southerners have lived and fought and traded together for centuries — and over the last five and a half years they have been experimenting with an even closer form of cohabitation.

In 2005 they ended decades of civil war and signed a peace deal that set up a joint north-south government.

Southerners moved up to Khartoum to take up government positions and politicians made speeches about making unity “attractive” to both sides.

Multi-tasking Sudan’s conflicts

When I first began to cover Darfur in 2003 – nobody was interested. The story was all about the north-south peace talks in Naivasha. “Where’s Darfur again – is that in the south?” I would often hear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Driving Sudan towards paradise

Back in1978, Sudanese statesman Abel Alier decided he had had enough of negotiating with troublesome locals over a controversial development project. Exasperated at the endless obstacles, he vowed to force it through without an agreement.

“If we have to drive our people to paradise with sticks we will do so for their own good and the good of those who come after us,” he infamously said.

Something similar must have been going through the minds of mediators in recent weeks as they tried to push for an agreement between Sudan’s intractable northern and southern politicians.

Sudan is now just 48 days away from the scheduled start of two referendums — the first on whether the oil-producing south should declare independence, the second on whether the disputed central Abyei region should join north or south.

Time is running out but both sides remain at loggerheads on a list of basic issues. To date, they haven’t even been able to agree on the membership of a commission to organise the Abyei vote — most privately agree it will have to be postponed or canceled.

There were signs of some progress a week ago, on the eve of the Islamic Eid al-Adha holiday, when African Union mediators said both sides reached a framework deal, at least agreeing the form of future negotiations. But politicians returned from their break this weekend, refreshed and ready to restart their war of words.

The “framework agreement” was unsigned and only in principle, they said. Both sides called press conferences accusing each other of breaking peace deals, and intimidating voters. One step forward and several steps back.

from Global News Journal:

George Clooney, UN Security Council descend on Sudan

George Clooney has been roughing it recently, on the latest of his trips to Sudan to highlight the problems there. 

The Hollywood superstar and U.N. Goodwill Ambassador was touring semi-autonomous south Sudan ahead of a planned January 2011 referendum on whether southerners in Africa's biggest country should secede from the Khartoum-led north. Tensions are high because of fears the plebiscite could be delayed, sparking a new war between the predominantly Muslim north and the heavily animist and Christian south.

The U.N. Security Council delegation I traveled to Sudan with was in Juba, the scruffy capital of south Sudan, at the same time as Clooney. But we reporters never saw him. The  journalists covering the Security Council's African trip were barred from the party that Clooney, council diplomats and U.N. officials attended. According to several of those present, Clooney and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, had a long huddle to discuss the problems of Sudan, including the referendum and the 7-year-old conflict in Sudan's remote western Darfur region. Of course Sudan was not the only interesting thing about the evening -- one U.N. official boasted of having seven pictures of her and Clooney on her digital camera.

Leaving south Sudan was not so easy. Our plane had engine trouble and we were all marched to a Russian peacekeeper base. Four local Sudanese reporters with us were told by U.N. officials that there no sandwiches for them and initially ordered to remain on the press bus.

When the delegation boarded a different plane, it was discovered that there was one too many passengers on the aircraft. A U.N. security officer decided that a Sudanese Reuters photographer would have to leave the plane, even though he had been invited to join the delegation and had all his permits in order. The Reuters photographer protested but was told he would be ejected forcibly if he didn't comply. When I asked why he was being singled out, the answer was: "He was the last one on." The Reuters photographer realized that the only way to avoid an ugly confrontation was to retreat, so he did. The three other local Sudanese reporters -- one of whom was a Reuters cameraman -- joined him out of solidarity.   One diplomat noted that while all the other envoys went alone or with a single advisor, the U.S. ambassador brought two advisors and two security personnel. If her entourage had been smaller, the diplomat said, there wouldn't have been a problem with space. (Others, however, suggested that the strict security policies of the U.S. government might have made a smaller entourage impossible.)

Because of the tight schedule and security concerns, the council had far less time for internally displaced persons (IDPs) at the Abu Shouk refugee camp near El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, than they had for George Clooney back in Juba.  

They spent around 15 minutes on the ground talking with refugees, who complained of hunger, unemployment and poor security in the camp. 

Sudan rearranges furniture as independence vote looms

The shiny new headquarters of Sudan’s referendum commission was buzzing with activity on Monday, less than four months ahead of the scheduled start of a seismic vote on whether the country’s oil-producing south should declare independence.

Unfortunately, officials were not all busy putting the final touches to voting registration lists or preparing publicity materials for the region’s inexperienced electorate.

First they had to set up the office — staff, who only moved in around a week ago, bustled around rearranging furniture as they waited for deliveries of everything from computers to curtains.

Today, with just with 115 days, or 81 weekdays, to go until the plebiscite, Sudan remains startlingly unprepared for the vote, promised under a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war between north and south Sudan.

The stakes are high. Analysts fear any delay, or messy outcome to the vote, could spark a return to civil war, with dire consequences for the surrounding region.

Southerners are widely expected to choose independence, and would react angrily to any perceived interference from Khartoum (bent, they say, on keeping control of the region’s oil), or any irregularities that might question the validity of the vote’s outcome.

The members of the commission, who are supposed to organise the referendum, were only appointed in late June, after months of wrangling between northern and southern leaders. The commission’s secretary general Mohamed Osman al-Nujoomi was nominated on Sept. 2, and approved by the president on Wednesday.

Can’t do or won’t do? Ending Darfur’s kidnap business

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breaking down the walls – Sudan’s oil transparency push

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damned if they do, damned if they don’t

Darfur’s joint U.N.-African Union peacekeepers face a dilemma in Darfur which could shape the future of the world’s largest U.N.-funded force.

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

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

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

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

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

So what to do?

Darfur – when peace talks cause conflict

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Britain on Sudan: Selling out or cashing in?

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

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

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

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

Is Britain selling out?

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

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