JUBA (Reuters) – South Sudan’s citizens who paid in blood for their independence in a long liberation war are being told freedom carries its own price – in hardship.

An oil shutdown from January by the former bush rebels who now run the world’s newest nation has strangled the flow of dollars into an economy that produces almost nothing else, and sent the South Sudanese pound tumbling against the greenback.

This has hiked the costs of everything from fuel to cooking oil, rice, charcoal and bananas. It is forcing the government to cut education and health spending in a state whose development indicators were already near the foot of world rankings.

“We don’t know what will happen. We only know everything will be very hard. We are going to suffer,” said Hamza Salim, 22, at a charcoal stand in Juba’s Konyo-Konyo market. Citizens say prices have tripled since the start of the year.

When it became the world’s newest nation in July 2011, South Sudan inherited three-quarters of the previously unified Sudan’s oil output. Oil is the lifeblood of north and south.

The abrupt oil shutdown – made by the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in the heat of a dispute with northern neighbor Sudan over oil export transit fees and border demarcation – closed off 98 percent of South Sudan’s revenues, jolted both economies and stunned foreign donors.

It was followed in April by border fighting. The African Union and United Nations scrambled to halt a slide into all-out war.

JUBA, May 28 (Reuters) – South Sudan’s citizens who paid in blood for their independence in a long liberation war are being told freedom carries its own price – in hardship.

An oil shutdown from January by the former bush rebels who now run the world’s newest nation has strangled the flow of dollars into an economy that produces almost nothing else, and sent the South Sudanese pound tumbling against the greenback.

This has hiked the costs of everything from fuel to cooking oil, rice, charcoal and bananas. It is forcing the government to cut education and health spending in a state whose development indicators were already near the foot of world rankings.

“We don’t know what will happen. We only know everything will be very hard. We are going to suffer,” said Hamza Salim, 22, at a charcoal stand in Juba’s Konyo-Konyo market. Citizens say prices have tripled since the start of the year.

When it became the world’s newest nation in July 2011, South Sudan inherited three-quarters of the previously unified Sudan’s oil output. Oil is the lifeblood of north and south.

The abrupt oil shutdown – made by the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in the heat of a dispute with northern neighbour Sudan over oil export transit fees and border demarcation – closed off 98 percent of South Sudan’s revenues, jolted both economies and stunned foreign donors.

It was followed in April by border fighting. The African Union and United Nations scrambled to halt a slide into all-out war.

JUBA (Reuters) – South Sudan’s independence last July was forged through years of hard-fought rebellion in the bush, so it seems fitting that the world’s newest nation still keeps much of its history in a tent.

The weather-beaten brown tent in a roadside government compound in the capital Juba goes unnoticed by most passing drivers and pedestrians. Musty papers, files, books and photos, some honeycombed with termites, litter its stifling interior.

But this unassuming collection of paper, which would probably not qualify for a jumble sale in the West, holds part of the historical memory of Africa’s most recent state, straddling the White Nile and its vast Sudd swamp.

Piled higgledy-piggledy on the grimy concrete floor and on old tables, or bursting out of sacks, the documents in the tent are a treasure trove of records dating back to the early 1900s, when Sudan and its remote South was under Anglo-Egyptian rule.

The collection of civil service files and official reports tracks the southern territory’s history through unified Sudan’s independence in 1956 and the years that followed which saw back-to- back civil wars fought by African rebels – now South Sudan’s rulers – against governments in the largely Muslim North.

The papers, languishing under canvass for several years since a 2005 North-South peace deal, have survived fire, war and the elements. They are the core of what will be South Sudan’s National Archives – that is, once they are rescued and housed in a new building promised as an independence gift by Norway.

“There is no nation without history,” said Youssef Fulgensio Onyalla, 48, senior inspector for Museums and Monuments at South Sudan’s Ministry of Culture and Heritage which is racing against time – and the termites – to recover and preserve the archives.

JUBA (Reuters) – The United Nations should impose sanctions on Sudan for failing to obey a Security Council resolution calling for an end to hostilities and renewed negotiations with South Sudan over oil and border disputes, South Sudan’s negotiator said on Friday.

Pagan Amum told Reuters Khartoum had not complied with the May 2 resolution giving neighbours Sudan and South Sudan, under threat of sanctions, two weeks to resume talks over their differences, which boiled over into border clashes last month.

He said while South Sudan, which became the world’s newest independent nation last year, had signalled its readiness to restart talks immediately, its neighbour had carried out air attacks after May 2 and had not moved to resume negotiations.

“They have violated the timeline,” Amum, Secretary-General of South Sudan’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), said in an interview in the South Sudanese capital Juba.

He urged the U.N. Security Council to “impose sanctions now and take measures against Khartoum”.

A spokesman for Sudan’s Foreign Ministry said Amum’s remarks were “unfortunate” and accused the south of violating the Security Council resolution by continuing its “aggression” in Sudan’s territory.

While insisting the South wanted to live in peace with Sudan, Amum criticised both the United Nations and the African Union for failing to deal firmly with Sudan, which he said routinely defied the international community.

JUBA/KHARTOUM (Reuters) – South Sudan said on Thursday it was ready to reopen negotiations “any time” on a range of disputes with its northern neighbor Sudan after a spasm of fighting, but Khartoum said there could be no such talks unless the two sides settled security issues.

The two countries have been at loggerheads over oil, security and frontier disputes that ignited border clashes last month and for a while raised fears of full-blown war in one of Africa’s most significant oil regions.

South Sudan Minister of Cabinet Affairs Deng Alor told reporters that his country, which became independent from Sudan last year, was committed to complying with a U.N. Security Council resolution last week that called on both countries to negotiate their differences peacefully or face sanctions.

“We are ready to go for negotiations any time … I expect negotiations to resume any time from now,” Alor told a news conference in the South Sudanese capital Juba.

The May 2 Security Council resolution endorsed an African Union plan demanding that Khartoum and Juba cease hostilities, withdraw troops from disputed areas and resume talks within two weeks on all outstanding disputes. It gave them three months to resolve the issues under threat of sanctions.

But the north’s president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who accuses South Sudan of supporting rebel militia along the disputed border, said there would be no talks unless the civil war foes resolved their security issues.

“In the coming negotiations, if we don’t solve the security problems … there will be no talk over any other clause – not oil, not trade, not citizenship, not Abyei, or any other file,” Bashir told a group of oil and mining workers on Thursday.

By Pascal Fletcher

(Reuters) – South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir, who spent much of his life as a rebel commander fighting in one of Africa’s longest and deadliest civil wars, says it will take another lifetime to make his newborn country prosperous, secure and self-sufficient.

For now it is locked in fighting with its arch foe Sudan, the worst violence since South Sudan became independent under a 2005 peace agreement with Khartoum.

“Building a nation will take our lifetimes,” the guerrilla fighter turned president told leaders of his ruling Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM) last month, listing huge challenges in infrastructure, education and healthcare.

While other members of the southern elite boast academic credentials obtained in the West, Kiir is seen as a no-nonsense army man, most comfortable in the field. He joined the south’s first insurgency (1955-1972) at 17 and later became a major in the Sudanese intelligence services.

In a tough speech to parliament interrupted by clapping, Kiir asked his people in April to prepare for war after his troops made a surprise grab of the disputed Heglig oilfield.

He admonished U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon for asking him to leave Heglig, which is key to Sudan’s economy. “I told him you don’t need to order me because I am not under your command,” Kiir said.

By Pascal Fletcher

(Reuters) – Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir likes to wave a stick when he speaks in public, and he does not speak softly.

Whether rallying his armed forces against internal rebels and the army of newly-independent South Sudan, or defying a war crimes arrest warrant from The Hague, the leader of mostly Muslim Sudan projects a career soldier’s voice of command.

Sending his military this month to recapture a disputed border oil region seized by South Sudan, the former paratroop commander unleashed a barrage of belligerent rhetoric against the ex-rebels who now rule his independent southern neighbour.

Calling South Sudan’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) “insects” – a play in words on their Arabic name – Bashir vowed to “liberate” the southern state that became the world’s newest independent nation in July last year. Its secession meant Sudan is no longer Africa’s largest country.

The South’s government would only learn from “disciplining with a stick”, Bashir shouted, flailing the air with his own trademark stick for emphasis. He warned that any who raised their hand in an attack against Sudan, would have it “cut off”.

South Sudan said on Friday it would withdraw its troops from the contested Heglig oil region, raising hopes the neighbours had pulled back from the brink of all-out war.

By Pascal Fletcher

(Reuters) – South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir, who spent much of his life as a rebel commander fighting in one of Africa’s longest and deadliest civil wars, says it will take another lifetime to make his newborn country prosperous, secure and self-sufficient.

For now it is locked in fighting with its arch foe Sudan, the worst violence since South Sudan became independent under a 2005 peace agreement with Khartoum.

“Building a nation will take our lifetimes,” the guerrilla fighter turned president told leaders of his ruling Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM) last month, listing huge challenges in infrastructure, education and healthcare.

While other members of the southern elite boast academic credentials obtained in the West, Kiir is seen as a no-nonsense army man, most comfortable in the field. He joined the south’s first insurgency (1955-1972) at 17 and later became a major in the Sudanese intelligence services.

In a tough speech to parliament interrupted by clapping, Kiir asked his people in April to prepare for war after his troops made a surprise grab of the disputed Heglig oilfield.

He admonished U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon for asking him to leave Heglig, which is key to Sudan’s economy. “I told him you don’t need to order me because I am not under your command,” Kiir said.

By Pascal Fletcher

(Reuters) – Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir likes to wave a stick when he speaks in public, and he does not speak softly.

Whether rallying his armed forces against internal rebels and the army of newly-independent South Sudan, or defying a war crimes arrest warrant from The Hague, the leader of mostly Muslim Sudan projects a career soldier’s voice of command.

Sending his military this month to recapture a disputed border oil region seized by South Sudan, the former paratroop commander unleashed a barrage of belligerent rhetoric against the ex-rebels who now rule his independent southern neighbor.

Calling South Sudan’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) “insects” – a play in words on their Arabic name – Bashir vowed to “liberate” the southern state that became the world’s newest independent nation in July last year. Its secession meant Sudan is no longer Africa’s largest country.

The South’s government would only learn from “disciplining with a stick”, Bashir shouted, flailing the air with his own trademark stick for emphasis. He warned that any who raised their hand in an attack against Sudan, would have it “cut off”.

South Sudan said on Friday it would withdraw its troops from the contested Heglig oil region, raising hopes the neighbors had pulled back from the brink of all-out war.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Malian scholars, librarians and ordinary citizens in the rebel-occupied city of Timbuktu are hiding away priceless ancient manuscripts to prevent them from being damaged or looted, a South African academic in contact with them said.

Cape Town University’s Professor Shamil Jeppie said he was in daily contact with curators and private owners safeguarding tens of thousands of historic texts in Timbuktu, the fabled desert trading town and seat of Islamic learning overrun by Tuareg-led rebels on April 1.

Jeppie, involved in an internationally-funded initiative to preserve Timbuktu’s “treasure of learning”, told Reuters there had been no major losses so far to the main state and private manuscript collections, but he feared for the future.

“We hope it stays like this,” he said, adding that Timbuktu was occupied by two main rival rebel groups: the “nationalists’ of the MNLA movement who have declared an independent Tuareg homeland in northern Mali and are holding the city’s airport, and the Islamists of the Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith) group who had occupied the main military barracks.

“I have no faith in the rebels. They may have an educated leadership, but they are sending in footsoldiers who are illiterate and if they want something they will take it … They won’t have any respect for paper culture,” Jeppie said.

He said that since the April 1 rebel occupation, armed fighters had stolen vehicles from the Ahmed Baba Institute, the Malian state library named after a Timbuktu-born contemporary of William Shakespeare that houses more than 20,000 ancient scholarly manuscripts.

But the gun-toting fighters did not enter the rooms and underground vaults where the priceless texts were stored at the library’s new South African-funded building.