On Monday U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration announced its new Sudan policy after months of speculation and lobbying from those opposed to any positive overtures to Khartoum and those who said further isolating Sudan would derail years of peace efforts.

U.S.-Sudanese relations have seen many ups and down in recent years. U.S. sanctions were imposed in 1997 and the United States bombed a Sudanese pharmaceuticals factory in 1998. There was praise for a 2005 north-south peace deal ending more than two decades of civil war, but it was overshadowed by outrage over atrocities in the 2003 Darfur uprising where Washington accused Khartoum of genocide.

The new policy outlined broad engagement, although no direct talks with President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur. Khartoum was offered unspecified incentives for tangible progress towards ending the Darfur crisis and implementing the 2005 north-south peace deal. But the government was warned of penalties for any stalling tactics.

Most analysts agreed the strategy was middle of the road with something in there to please everyone. The reaction from most sides of Sudan’s multiple conflicts was one of cautious welcome indicating that, at least for now, it was a good compromise.

And after a fierce battle between anti-Khartoum lobbyists and those advocating engagement in the United States, Obama’s envoy Scott Gration seemed to come out on top, with the U.S. President expressing open support for his work, snubbing calls for him to be removed from his post.

Washington said it had learned past lessons including that the focus on Sudan could not just be on either the ongoing hostilities in Darfur or on the democratic transformation outlined in the north-south deal known as the CPA. Rather it acknowledged a more comprehensive approach to Sudan was necessary to ensure long-term peace.

Once the dust had settled it became apparent that the ball had been left in Khartoum’s court. Washington will scrutinise concrete moves towards breaking a deadlock on talks on how to hold the first multi-party elections in 24 years due in less than six months and a southern referendum on secession in 2011.

Do you think this marks a real change in U.S. policy in Sudan? Or has Obama’s administration just openly declared a policy that former President George W.  Bush was already following behind the scenes?

Do you think peace in Sudan can be achieved through the “carrot and stick” approach?

Should the international community be so involved in Sudan or should it just leave the Sudanese to solve their own problems?

Six Ethiopian opposition parties have joined forces to go up against the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in next year’s parliamentary elections, but their chances of bringing change look slim at best and they complain of heavy-handed tactics by the ruling party.
 
The foremost opposition figure in Africa’s second most populous country, Birtukan Mideksa, a 34-year-old former judge, has been in solitary confinement since December. She was jailed after the first democratic poll in 2005, which ended in rioting that was bloodily suppressed, was pardoned in 2007 and rearrested last year after renouncing the terms of her pardon.
 
Bekele Jirata, a top official from another party, recently spent four months in prison after being accused of working with rebels from the Oromo region. He is now out on bail.
 
The government dismisses opposition accusations that political activity is restricted as baseless. “The political space is continually widening,” Bereket Simon, the government’s head of information, told me recently.
 
Meles points to achievements such as a reduction in infant mortality to 123 deaths for every 1,000 births from 166 in just five years. A programme to help seven million Ethiopians who regularly suffer from food shortages is meant to ensure the catastrophic famine of the mid-1980s is never repeated. Meles is a key regional friend of Washington and sent forces into Somalia to fight Islamists in late 2006, only withdrawing this year.
 
But Western allies and donors are frustrated by what they see as the restrictions on democracy. Human rights groups have cried foul over a new law that restricts groups that get outside funding from working on issues of democracy, human rights or criminal justice. The government says only Ethiopians should be involved in Ethiopian politics.
 
So is the ruling party restricting its rivals unfairly to ensure it keeps power or trying to protect an emerging democracy in a volatile part of the world?

Picture: Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi speaks to Reuters in 2007. Andrew Heavens/Reuters

A multinational offensive aimed at wiping out Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels - and planned and equipped with U.S. support during the dying days of the Bush administration - has scattered fighters who have unleashed a wave of massacres on Congolese villages.
 
LRA fighters have killed nearly 900 people in reprisal attacks in northeast Congo since Ugandan troops, together with Sudanese and Congolese soldiers, launched a military operation in December against fugitive rebel leader Joseph Kony, whose two-decade insurgency has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 2 million. (See Alertnet briefing for more)
 
Reuters reported on the U.S. involvement in December. The New York Times said recently that the Pentagon’s new Africa Command (Africom) had contributed intelligence, advice and $1 million in fuel. The Washington Post argues the operation has been so unsuccessful it amounts to little more than “throwing a rock at a hive of bees”.
 
Foreign Policy magazine said that the LRA, who failed to sign a planned peace deal in April, would be hard to stamp out and that the operation was putting the Pentagon’s reputation at risk.
 
There are sceptical voices in the blogosphere too.
 
“One of the first publicly acknowledged Africom operations has turned into a general debacle, resulting in the death of nearly a thousand civilians and sending untold numbers of children into sex slavery and military servitude,” Dave Donelson says on his Heart of Diamonds blog.
 
Writing in Uganda’s Monitor, Grace Matsiko said the offensive was proving a real test for officers of Uganda’s army (UPDF).
 
“Uganda should brace itself for a protracted war, should Kony and his top lieutenants continue to evade the UPDF dragnet,” the journalist wrote.
 
Meanwhile, aid agency MSF has accused the United Nations force in Congo, the world’s biggest, of failing to protect civilians from Ugandan rebel attacks – accusations the world body has rejected as totally unfounded. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has also accused U.N. peacekeepers of inactivity and of living alongside the LRA for three years and doing nothing about the guerrillas.
 
While expressing his horror at the what he called ‘catastrophic’ consequences for civilians from the offensive, U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes has said the joint force still needs to see the operation through.
 
Should the offensive continue or is it time to halt it? If so, what should be done about the rebels? How big an impact should the conduct of this operation have for the U.S. Africa Command’s future role?

How times change. Somalia’s new Islamist president has been feted in Ethiopia, whose army drove him from power two years ago - with Washington’s backing - when he headed a sharia courts movement.

Sheikh Sharif Ahmed was greeted with a standing ovation from African Union leaders at a summit in Ethiopia, which pulled the last of its troops out of Somalia last month, leaving the government in control of little beyond parts of Mogadishu. The hardline Islamist al Shabaab militia control much of the rest of southern Somalia.

Somalia was far from being a prominent front in former President George W. Bush’s “War on Terror”, but the reverse Washington suffered there appears to be among its most dramatic. Meanwhile, the past two years have brought at least another 17,400 civilian dead in Somalia and more anarchy that has fuelled a wave of piracy.

Ahmed’s former administration was marked out by both the United States and Ethiopia as being little different to Afghanistan’s Taliban. Hardline members of the group were accused of links to al Qaeda. Now he is widely described by the international community as a “moderate” and he himself has welcomed the new U.S. stance as positive.

“One can say that the U.S. position towards Somalia has become honest,” he told the Egyptian newspaper el-Shorouk. “In the framework of the Djibouti negotiations, America has become a force which supports peace.”

But Somalia’s new president, chosen by parliamentary vote at the weekend, must now face the al Shabaab militia who grew out of the armed wing of the sharia courts
movement but later split with him. Al Shabaab have vowed to fight and highlighted his support from “non-believers”.

To try to bolster Ahmed, Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete, the African Union chairman, called for U.N. troops to join the 3,500-strong AU peacekeeping force in Somalia. Right now, they cannot do much more than to try to defend themselves.

But some analysts and Ahmed’s aides believe that creating a U.N. force would be counterproductive because it could be seen as Western interference and encourage those who fought the invading Ethiopian troops to pursue their struggle.

Getting Somalia’s clans behind the government will be another big task, a challenge previous leaders have failed to meet during 18 years of conflict.

What is the chance that Ahmed’s election as president will be able to bring peace to Somalia? What should Africa and the rest of the world do to try to make sure that happens? What do you think?

The new U.S. command for Africa began independent operations on Wednesday, after being carved out of three other Pentagon units previously responsible for the continent. President George W. Bush originally wanted Africom to be based in Africa, and Liberia has offered to host it. But the plan met with considerable hostility on the continent, especially from big powers South Africa and Nigeria and oil giants Algeria and Libya. Many ordinary Africans were also cynical, believing Africom would be a cover for Washington to counter growing Chinese influence and control vital oil supplies from West Africa — expected to provide 25 percent of U.S. needs by 2015.

The hostility forced Washington to rethink its plans and Africom, expected to reach its full complement of 1,300 by the end of next year, began work from Stuttgart, home of the existing European command, although officials clearly expect to open a base in Africa sometime in the future. It also pushed U.S. officials to emphasise that there was no hidden agenda, that Africom would not threaten the sovereignty of any nations and that a base would not be built in Africa without the full agreement of potential host nations. They also said half of Africom’s leadership would be composed of civilian agencies including the State Department. Africom’s stated aim is to help African countries face everything from natural disasters to terrorism and its targets will including drug trafficking, arms smuggling and the kind of piracy now plaguing the waters off Somalia. Experts say U.S. forces have been cooperating quietly for years with African armies, particularly in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel where rebel and al Qaeda-affiliated groups operate. They say Africom got a bad press initially because it was associated with heavy-handed U.S. policy in Somalia and as part of the U.S.-led ”War on Terror”, but now Pentagon officials are treading more carefully, realising how sensitive Africans are about suggestions Washington is trying to dominate.

Do you believe U.S. assurances about Africom or is it the thin end of the wedge, a precursor to a boosted American military presence on the continent that could attract rather than deter terrorist attacks and infringe on the sovereignty and independence of African nations?