Thursday, August 29, 2013 11:54:40 PM
South Sudan secedes amid tensions
By Mary Beth Sheridan and Rebecca Hamilton,July 07, 2011
View Photo Gallery - Southern Sudan gaining independence:?The map of Africa will be redrawn…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/southern-sudan-gaining-independence/2011/07/07/gIQAWZrn2H_gallery.html
The map of Africa will be redrawn Saturday, as southern Sudan becomes an independent nation through a peace process championed by successive U.S. presidents but still beset by lingering tensions from years of war.
President George W. Bush put Sudan at the center of his foreign policy in Africa, helping broker a 2005 peace agreement that ended a conflict that had claimed more than 2 million lives. President Obama has rallied international pressure to rescue that accord as it risked unraveling.
U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice, who is scheduled to lead the U.S. delegation at the independence ceremony, said in a telephone interview this week that this was “a fraught and fragile moment, but a remarkable one nonetheless.”
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is expected to attend Saturday’s ceremony. He has promised to accept the oil-rich south’s secession .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/11/AR2011021106252.html , after initially balking at losing a Texas-size region that had provided much of his government’s revenue.
But the north and south are divided over key issues that were supposed to be resolved by now under the peace accord. They include how to fully demarcate the border, divide oil revenue and determine which side will control the disputed region of Abyei .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/sudans-seizure-of-abyei-raises-war-fears/2011/05/26/AG8ywpCH_story.html .
And northern Sudan is still riven with conflicts. Peace in the Darfur region remains elusive. A month ago, the Sudanese began bombing Southern Kordofan, an oil-producing state that will also remain part of Sudan. Anti-government fighters in the area mostly belong to the Nuba, a non-Arab group made up of northerners who sided with the southern rebels during the 21-year war.
Violence in Darfur, Abyei and now Southern Kordofan has complicated the Obama administration’s strategy of offering financial and diplomatic incentives to Sudan in return for its completing the north-south peace agreement and resolving the conflict in Darfur.
“I don’t think either side wants to go back to full-scale war. I really don’t,” Princeton Lyman, the U.S. special envoy to Sudan, said in an interview. But a recent flare-up in Abyei showed how tense the border remains. Sudanese government troops occupied the region in May after clashes with southern police.
“That set everything back a long way. We spent weeks working on plans for having the Sudanese withdraw from Abyei,” Lyman said.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton helped negotiate an agreement .. http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2011/06/166572.htm .. that allowed 4,200 Ethiopian peacekeepers to move into Abyei last month under a U.N. mandate. But the situation remains “extremely volatile,” Rice said in a State Department briefing Thursday.
Abyei has been called “Sudan’s Jerusalem” because of both sides’ claims of historic ties to the region. Residents were supposed to vote in January on whether to to join the north or south, but the sides couldn’t agree on who was eligible to vote.
Jon Temin, a Sudan expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace, noted that the south had been restrained in responding to the north’s military moves. “The question is, after secession, after they gain that cherished independence, will the southern strategy change at all? Will they become more aggressive militarily in response to provocations from Khartoum?” he said.
The Sudanese government has promised that it will continue participating in negotiations led by the African Union on outstanding issues in the peace process after southern Sudan’s secession.
Rice told reporters at the State Department on Thursday that if Abyei and the other issues weren’t resolved soon, it could “swiftly destabilize the future relationship between these two states. So for our part, the United States will continue to be extremely active in supporting the implementation” of the peace accord.
The 2005 peace accord .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60373-2005Jan9.html .. ended a grinding war between the largely Arab, Islamic northerners and the southerners, who are mainly Christian and animist and had long complained of discrimination. The plan provided for limited autonomy for the south until a January referendum on secession.
Over the years, an influential coalition of U.S. lawmakers, religious groups and grass-roots organizations has coalesced around ending the north-south war and the fighting in Darfur, where more than 300,000 people died as militias backed by Sudan’s ruling party brutally put down a rebellion. Bashir was subsequently charged with genocide by the International Criminal Court.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-07-07/world/35236647_1_abyei-south-sudan-southern-kordofan
=====
U.S. Pushes for Global Eye on South Sudan Conflict
Camille Lepage/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
After fighting, a member of the Lou Nuer tribe returned home to a village in Jonglei State in South Sudan. Feuding with the Murle people is a perennial issue there.
By MARK LANDLER
Published: July 29, 2013
WASHINGTON — When the National Security Council .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_security_council/index.html?inline=nyt-org , the most buttoned-up part of a buttoned-up Obama administration, is aggressively trying to get the word out about a violent, murky conflict in a distant land, it’s worth listening to. It’s also worth asking, why single out this crisis?
Related
Born in Unity, South Sudan Is Torn Again (January 13, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/world/africa/south-sudan-massacres-follow-independence.html?ref=us
Andreea Campeanu/Reuters
Men from the Luo Nuer tribe cooked over a fire in Yuai Uror county, South Sudan, last week.
The men said they are looking for children they allege were abducted by the rival Murle tribe.
Andreea Campeanu/Reuters
A member of the Luo Nuer tribe in Yuai Uror county, South Sudan.
Such is the case with the ethnic and tribal clashes that are rippling through a remote, sprawling part of South Sudan .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/south-sudan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo .. known as Jonglei State. Administration officials say they are deeply concerned about the violence, all the more so because there is so little reliable information coming out of a region that is inaccessible in the best of times.
Rather than monitor events quietly from their offices in the Old Executive Office Building, as they do with more widely publicized conflicts like the one in Syria, senior N.S.C. officials have invited in humanitarian and advocacy groups for briefings. They have written blog items. And they have discussed their fears with American and foreign journalists.
“More than 100,000 people have been displaced,” said Grant T. Harris, senior director for African Affairs at the council. “The international community doesn’t know where these people are.”
Officials describe a desperate situation in which tens of thousands of people are hiding in swamps, without food, water or medicine — fearful of returning to their villages because of attacks by rival tribes or even soldiers who are supposed to be protecting them.
“We’ve got all the ingredients for a conflict that could get much worse very quickly,” said Gayle Smith, the senior director for global development and humanitarian issues at the N.S.C.
Their immediate goal, officials say, is to put an obscure conflict on the world’s radar screen before it mutates into a humanitarian tragedy. But they are also working to preserve one of the Obama administration’s few undisputed achievements in Africa: the 2011 referendum that split South Sudan off from Sudan and created a new nation.
The violence in Jonglei, South Sudan’s largest and most populous state, threatens to destabilize the country and tatter the credibility of its fledgling, American-backed government.
In addition to the perennial feuding between two tribes, the Lou Nuer and the Murle, there are reports of attacks on civilians by troops from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, which began as a guerrilla force fighting for South Sudan’s independence and is now the country’s army.
Jonglei, Ms. Smith said, “has all the characteristics of the rest of South Sudan. The problem now is you have tribal tension, a lot of history of bad blood, and a rebellion on top of it.”
The United States and other Western nations have poured billions of dollars into South Sudan, before and after the referendum, to try to turn a destitute land, with oil reserves but a long history of violence and little in the way of institutions, into a viable country.
The administration has strongly supported the South Sudan government, which is led by Salva Kiir, a leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. But now President Kiir is himself a problem: last week, he dismissed his vice president, who had threatened to challenge him for his party’s leadership before elections in 2015, and his entire cabinet.
On Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/john_kerry/index.html?inline=nyt-per .. telephoned Mr. Kiir to deliver what amounted to a rap on the knuckles. He warned the president that he should form a new government quickly, stop the ethnic clashes in Jonglei and crack down on soldiers in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army who are found guilty of human rights abuses.
Noting that he had traveled to Sudan to witness the referendum, Mr. Kerry said in a statement: “Too much sacrifice has been made to see that effort go backward. The world is watching to see if South Sudan pursues the path of peace and prosperity, or the tragic path of violence and conflict that has characterized much of its past.”
The National Security Council has held regular deputy-level meetings to determine how the United States should respond, both to the escalating violence in Jonglei and the governance problems. President Obama .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per , they said, has been briefed about the crisis.
In the short term, officials are focused on trying to get relief supplies to the displaced people. Jonglei, which is the size of Bangladesh, has few roads and those are impassable after heavy rains. That means emergency aid must be airlifted into the region. The United Nations’ .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org .. World Food Program is seeking $20 million to lease helicopters.
Another major obstacle is that United Nations peacekeepers in South Sudan are reluctant to go to Jonglei because in April, five United Nations employees and five Indian peacekeepers were killed there in an ambush by armed men the South Sudanese described as antigovernment rebels. Five months before that, the South Sudanese military shot down a United Nations helicopter — by accident, according to local officials.
As a big provider of financial assistance, the United States has considerable leverage over the South Sudanese government. It also has sway over how the World Bank and International Monetary Fund treat the country. But having labored for years to nurture democracy in South Sudan, the White House is loath to turn against it.
“They’re very worried that they’re going to have to do a major policy shift,” said Sarah Margon, the acting Washington director of Human Rights Watch. “They’re trying to figure out how to balance a very tricky situation in a way that doesn’t end up being a major fail for them.”
A version of this article appeared in print on July 30, 2013, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Pushes for Global Eye on Obscure Conflict in South Sudan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/us/us-pushes-for-global-eye-on-south-sudan-conflict.html
By Mary Beth Sheridan and Rebecca Hamilton,July 07, 2011
View Photo Gallery - Southern Sudan gaining independence:?The map of Africa will be redrawn…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/southern-sudan-gaining-independence/2011/07/07/gIQAWZrn2H_gallery.html
The map of Africa will be redrawn Saturday, as southern Sudan becomes an independent nation through a peace process championed by successive U.S. presidents but still beset by lingering tensions from years of war.
President George W. Bush put Sudan at the center of his foreign policy in Africa, helping broker a 2005 peace agreement that ended a conflict that had claimed more than 2 million lives. President Obama has rallied international pressure to rescue that accord as it risked unraveling.
U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice, who is scheduled to lead the U.S. delegation at the independence ceremony, said in a telephone interview this week that this was “a fraught and fragile moment, but a remarkable one nonetheless.”
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is expected to attend Saturday’s ceremony. He has promised to accept the oil-rich south’s secession .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/11/AR2011021106252.html , after initially balking at losing a Texas-size region that had provided much of his government’s revenue.
But the north and south are divided over key issues that were supposed to be resolved by now under the peace accord. They include how to fully demarcate the border, divide oil revenue and determine which side will control the disputed region of Abyei .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/sudans-seizure-of-abyei-raises-war-fears/2011/05/26/AG8ywpCH_story.html .
And northern Sudan is still riven with conflicts. Peace in the Darfur region remains elusive. A month ago, the Sudanese began bombing Southern Kordofan, an oil-producing state that will also remain part of Sudan. Anti-government fighters in the area mostly belong to the Nuba, a non-Arab group made up of northerners who sided with the southern rebels during the 21-year war.
Violence in Darfur, Abyei and now Southern Kordofan has complicated the Obama administration’s strategy of offering financial and diplomatic incentives to Sudan in return for its completing the north-south peace agreement and resolving the conflict in Darfur.
“I don’t think either side wants to go back to full-scale war. I really don’t,” Princeton Lyman, the U.S. special envoy to Sudan, said in an interview. But a recent flare-up in Abyei showed how tense the border remains. Sudanese government troops occupied the region in May after clashes with southern police.
“That set everything back a long way. We spent weeks working on plans for having the Sudanese withdraw from Abyei,” Lyman said.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton helped negotiate an agreement .. http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2011/06/166572.htm .. that allowed 4,200 Ethiopian peacekeepers to move into Abyei last month under a U.N. mandate. But the situation remains “extremely volatile,” Rice said in a State Department briefing Thursday.
Abyei has been called “Sudan’s Jerusalem” because of both sides’ claims of historic ties to the region. Residents were supposed to vote in January on whether to to join the north or south, but the sides couldn’t agree on who was eligible to vote.
Jon Temin, a Sudan expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace, noted that the south had been restrained in responding to the north’s military moves. “The question is, after secession, after they gain that cherished independence, will the southern strategy change at all? Will they become more aggressive militarily in response to provocations from Khartoum?” he said.
The Sudanese government has promised that it will continue participating in negotiations led by the African Union on outstanding issues in the peace process after southern Sudan’s secession.
Rice told reporters at the State Department on Thursday that if Abyei and the other issues weren’t resolved soon, it could “swiftly destabilize the future relationship between these two states. So for our part, the United States will continue to be extremely active in supporting the implementation” of the peace accord.
The 2005 peace accord .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60373-2005Jan9.html .. ended a grinding war between the largely Arab, Islamic northerners and the southerners, who are mainly Christian and animist and had long complained of discrimination. The plan provided for limited autonomy for the south until a January referendum on secession.
Over the years, an influential coalition of U.S. lawmakers, religious groups and grass-roots organizations has coalesced around ending the north-south war and the fighting in Darfur, where more than 300,000 people died as militias backed by Sudan’s ruling party brutally put down a rebellion. Bashir was subsequently charged with genocide by the International Criminal Court.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-07-07/world/35236647_1_abyei-south-sudan-southern-kordofan
=====
U.S. Pushes for Global Eye on South Sudan Conflict
Camille Lepage/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
After fighting, a member of the Lou Nuer tribe returned home to a village in Jonglei State in South Sudan. Feuding with the Murle people is a perennial issue there.
By MARK LANDLER
Published: July 29, 2013
WASHINGTON — When the National Security Council .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_security_council/index.html?inline=nyt-org , the most buttoned-up part of a buttoned-up Obama administration, is aggressively trying to get the word out about a violent, murky conflict in a distant land, it’s worth listening to. It’s also worth asking, why single out this crisis?
Related
Born in Unity, South Sudan Is Torn Again (January 13, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/world/africa/south-sudan-massacres-follow-independence.html?ref=us
Andreea Campeanu/Reuters
Men from the Luo Nuer tribe cooked over a fire in Yuai Uror county, South Sudan, last week.
The men said they are looking for children they allege were abducted by the rival Murle tribe.
Andreea Campeanu/Reuters
A member of the Luo Nuer tribe in Yuai Uror county, South Sudan.
Such is the case with the ethnic and tribal clashes that are rippling through a remote, sprawling part of South Sudan .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/south-sudan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo .. known as Jonglei State. Administration officials say they are deeply concerned about the violence, all the more so because there is so little reliable information coming out of a region that is inaccessible in the best of times.
Rather than monitor events quietly from their offices in the Old Executive Office Building, as they do with more widely publicized conflicts like the one in Syria, senior N.S.C. officials have invited in humanitarian and advocacy groups for briefings. They have written blog items. And they have discussed their fears with American and foreign journalists.
“More than 100,000 people have been displaced,” said Grant T. Harris, senior director for African Affairs at the council. “The international community doesn’t know where these people are.”
Officials describe a desperate situation in which tens of thousands of people are hiding in swamps, without food, water or medicine — fearful of returning to their villages because of attacks by rival tribes or even soldiers who are supposed to be protecting them.
“We’ve got all the ingredients for a conflict that could get much worse very quickly,” said Gayle Smith, the senior director for global development and humanitarian issues at the N.S.C.
Their immediate goal, officials say, is to put an obscure conflict on the world’s radar screen before it mutates into a humanitarian tragedy. But they are also working to preserve one of the Obama administration’s few undisputed achievements in Africa: the 2011 referendum that split South Sudan off from Sudan and created a new nation.
The violence in Jonglei, South Sudan’s largest and most populous state, threatens to destabilize the country and tatter the credibility of its fledgling, American-backed government.
In addition to the perennial feuding between two tribes, the Lou Nuer and the Murle, there are reports of attacks on civilians by troops from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, which began as a guerrilla force fighting for South Sudan’s independence and is now the country’s army.
Jonglei, Ms. Smith said, “has all the characteristics of the rest of South Sudan. The problem now is you have tribal tension, a lot of history of bad blood, and a rebellion on top of it.”
The United States and other Western nations have poured billions of dollars into South Sudan, before and after the referendum, to try to turn a destitute land, with oil reserves but a long history of violence and little in the way of institutions, into a viable country.
The administration has strongly supported the South Sudan government, which is led by Salva Kiir, a leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. But now President Kiir is himself a problem: last week, he dismissed his vice president, who had threatened to challenge him for his party’s leadership before elections in 2015, and his entire cabinet.
On Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/john_kerry/index.html?inline=nyt-per .. telephoned Mr. Kiir to deliver what amounted to a rap on the knuckles. He warned the president that he should form a new government quickly, stop the ethnic clashes in Jonglei and crack down on soldiers in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army who are found guilty of human rights abuses.
Noting that he had traveled to Sudan to witness the referendum, Mr. Kerry said in a statement: “Too much sacrifice has been made to see that effort go backward. The world is watching to see if South Sudan pursues the path of peace and prosperity, or the tragic path of violence and conflict that has characterized much of its past.”
The National Security Council has held regular deputy-level meetings to determine how the United States should respond, both to the escalating violence in Jonglei and the governance problems. President Obama .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per , they said, has been briefed about the crisis.
In the short term, officials are focused on trying to get relief supplies to the displaced people. Jonglei, which is the size of Bangladesh, has few roads and those are impassable after heavy rains. That means emergency aid must be airlifted into the region. The United Nations’ .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org .. World Food Program is seeking $20 million to lease helicopters.
Another major obstacle is that United Nations peacekeepers in South Sudan are reluctant to go to Jonglei because in April, five United Nations employees and five Indian peacekeepers were killed there in an ambush by armed men the South Sudanese described as antigovernment rebels. Five months before that, the South Sudanese military shot down a United Nations helicopter — by accident, according to local officials.
As a big provider of financial assistance, the United States has considerable leverage over the South Sudanese government. It also has sway over how the World Bank and International Monetary Fund treat the country. But having labored for years to nurture democracy in South Sudan, the White House is loath to turn against it.
“They’re very worried that they’re going to have to do a major policy shift,” said Sarah Margon, the acting Washington director of Human Rights Watch. “They’re trying to figure out how to balance a very tricky situation in a way that doesn’t end up being a major fail for them.”
A version of this article appeared in print on July 30, 2013, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Pushes for Global Eye on Obscure Conflict in South Sudan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/us/us-pushes-for-global-eye-on-south-sudan-conflict.html
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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