South Sudan News Agency

By Eric Reeves

February 1, 2012 (SSNA) -- In March 2004 the U.N.'s IRIN news service reported on the events of the previous month near Tawila in North Darfur. It was a brutal episode, but there would be many hundreds more such:

"In an attack on 27 February 2004 in the Tawilah area of northern Darfur, 30 villages were burned to the ground, over 200 people killed and over 200 girls and women raped—some by up to 14 assailants and in front of their fathers who were later killed. A further 150 women and 200 children were abducted."

Eight years later, events of a rather different sort were transpiring. The man who had been presiding over the slaughter of civilians in the Tawila area, Janjaweed leader Musa Hilal, was now presiding over the wedding of his daughter to the Chadian President Idriss Déby (January 20, 2012). There were a number of ironies in this wedding, including the fact that Déby is a member of the non-Arab Zaghawa tribe, the same ethnic group that has been slaughtered in horrific fashion in places such as Tawila and elsewhere in Darfur.

But more than ironic, indeed deeply perverse, was the presence at this wedding party of the U.N./African Union Special Representative to the peacekeeping force in Darfur known as UNAMID: Nigeria's Ibrahim Gambari. Newswire photographs have appeared that show Gambari in attendance, indeed chatting it up with the leader of the Khartoum regime, President Omar al-Bashir. Al-Bashir's presence was both predictable and in its grim way appropriate: It was his regime that had released Hilal from prison (he was serving time for serious felony convictions) and put him to work[LH1] creating militias from his Um Jalal and other Arab tribal groups in North Darfur. The Khartoum regime provided him with weapons, logistics, intelligence, and most important, protection. His instructions were clear: destroy the non-Arab people of Darfur. The Janjaweed, now often recycled into other paramilitary or "police" forces, have continued their brutal predations, if now on a lesser scale; they also continue to enjoy complete impunity, total protection from international justice efforts.

So we know why Bashir was at the wedding. But why was Gambari there, photographed in animated conversation with Bashir? Why would he attend the wedding festivities for the daughter of a man linked in all credible human rights reporting on North Darfur with the very worst atrocity crimes—in fact, responsible for directing these crimes?

Perhaps it's appropriate to ask first how this question will be answered by Darfuris: already deeply mistrustful of UNAMID and Gambari in particular, they will see him now as colluding fully with the Khartoum regime. These photographs have rapidly spread on the Internet and we can be sure that a great many Darfuris, both in the diaspora and within the region itself, have seen them. They already see Gambari as responsible for the intolerable levels of insecurity that define displaced persons camps and most rural areas. And they already see him as the man who self-servingly insists that violence is down dramatically, even as more than a million Darfuris have been newly displaced since UNAMID took up its mandate on January 1, 2008. Some 400,000 have been displaced on Gambari's watch alone (he took office on January 1, 2010), including approximately 100,000 this past year.

Gambari clearly sees it as his main task to downplay the failure of UNAMID to protect Darfuris, to help obscure the deepening humanitarian crisis deriving from security restrictions imposed by Khartoum on international relief organizations, including those of the United Nations. And there are other silences. Gambari never mentions, for example, the continuing avalanche of rape throughout Darfur, even as Radio Dabanga provides almost daily accounts of one soul-destroying attack after another. Khartoum refuses even to acknowledge that rape has been an issue in Darfur, and Gambari is all too willing to accommodate the regime's sensibilities.

So what was the response of the U.N. to Gambari's morally grotesque decision to attend the wedding of Musa Hilal's daughter? Dogged reporting by Inner City Press finally compelled this response:

"The Department for Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) advises the following: JSR Gambari attended the wedding [of Musa Hilal's daughter] at the invitation of President Deby of Chad, who is an important regional partner in the peace process. JSR Gambari had no control over the guest list and it is contrary to basic diplomatic courtesy and African traditions to ignore greeting other invited guests."

But this disingenuous response ignores the fact Gambari certainly knew that Musa Hilal would be present at his own daughter's wedding: does the U.N. really believe that "basic diplomatic courtesy" or "African traditions" require that the chief representative of the protection force in Darfur be present at a social occasion hosted by the most notorious of Janjaweed leaders? A man who is subject to a U.N. travel ban and described by Human Rights Watch as "the poster child for Janjaweed atrocities in Darfur"?

This is not an explanation; this is the U.N. protecting its own, even one of its most incompetent.

UNAMID is all too representative of the U.N.'s failure, of many years, to provide anything approaching adequate protection for Sudanese civilians, despite extraordinary expenditures and bloated (if ill-conceived) budgets.  The lack of leadership is a main reason, and Gambari's profoundly ill-considered decision to attend the wedding of Musa Hilal's daughter is emblematic of this larger failure.

Eric Reeves is a professor at Smith College and has published extensively on Sudan, nationally and internationally, for more than a decade.

By: Justin Ambago Ramba

January 30, 2012 (SSNA) -- This is not in anyway an attempt to suggest that there do exist some conspiracy theories within South Sudan’s polity, but since  much rat can already be smelt in what is now the earliest steps in the long preparation to write the country’s so-called Permanent Constitution, such propositions become to hard to resist. Like many other fellow compatriots, we all had hopes that the heavy engagement of the international community in helping this nascent nation would help redeem and rectify all the evils that befall our leaders as a resulted of their wrong policies over the past seven years :- the wrong census, the flawed elections, undemocratic transitional constitution, the lack of broader participation in government, the sluggish decision taking process and worst still the rampant corruption and impunity that goes with it. Now sad though  nothing seemed to have  worked  and we are now faced with yet an alarming  situation where things are fast moving from bad to worst.

It can't be  over-stressed  that to date as our people remain galvanised and polarised, the insensitive SPLM leadership finds no shame in gerrymandering every bit of the post independence recovery process the countrywide. We know well  that it is their only way to cling to power as they desperately seek to survive in face of the mounting opposition to their ‘unchartered’ style of rule. Some may  argue  otherwise, but the proof to this can be seen, even by a no-brainer as  every rotten act that was committed in the transitional constitution’s draft process has unfortunately found its way back into the proceedings of the Permanent Constitution and with the same insensitivity, if not worse.

In the past few weeks many voices have come out condemning the exclusion of very important sections of the community who were denied representations on the  Permanent Constitution Review Commission, especially so  in the Permanent Membership of the National Constitution Review Commission [ political parties – women groups – civil societies – youth organisations etc …etc].  It is thus the author’s wish not to bore the reader with that version of the argument as it has already been dealt with elsewhere.

Nonetheless as obvious as it is,   this same leadership which is never ashamed to deny the true sons and daughters of this land a fair representation and participation proceeds to take comfort in what amounts to a gross adulteration of the free peoples’ national history. The weird move by the SPLM to appoint representatives from the all too known pan-Arabists and pan-Islamists in the Constitution Commission clearly embodies this trend. And it further goes on to highlight that the presidential decree that qualifies the memberships of the National Islamic Front [NIF] and its tributaries, the National Congress Party [NCP] and the Peoples’ Congress Party [PCP] of sheikh Hassan al Turabi to join the Permanent Constitution’s Commission is in its least evaluation an act of insult to our sense of independence from these bigots.

To put it mildly, one can only say that those who continue  to  display affection to or do business with these groups [Islamists & Unionists] who  undeniably  preach political Islam or any re-unification with the Arab Islamic ‘North’,  are undoubtedly  not only serving the interests of a foreign state  which recently claims  itself  as our  number one  real enemy of all times , but  are  indeed   obstacles that if not taken care of will for sure abort our  national efforts towards  de-colonisation, de-Arabisation, de-Arabicisation, and above all the de-radicalisation amongst the various  religious believers.  

In other words, the fact that a presidential decree has gone to recognise the different factions of the National Islamic Front [NIF] as an integral part of the sovereign state of South Sudan, then the true meaning of our five decades of struggle has grossly been compromised if not entirely defeated. This must be understood as such regardless of who issued that decree. It is for the people of  South Sudan  to know these things and whether it is a party's, a few individuals' or a single person’s  misjudgment  that would want to derail our hard won independence, they must be told in their face and further be  held to account.

As a secularist myself, one feels deeply offended by this new trend in events. However no one can tell us that the Islamic Charter of Hassan al Turabi that went on to become the National Islamic Front [NIF] and then the “Ingaz Military Rule”, then lately bifurcated into the National Congress Party [NIF] and the main stream People’s Congress Party [PCP] are NOT the same ideological bigots who are seeking by all means including force, terrorism and military coups to force political Islam through our throats.  This must clearly have no place in the post independence South Sudan.

The Sudanese Communist Party [SCP] on the other hand has it share of the blame to shoulder for historically it has opposed the struggles of the People of South Sudan for an independent state of their own. The so-called Sudanese Communists (northerners or southerners) waged ruthless wars both verbally and diplomatically against our Just struggle and it did much to distort our genuine cause. 

They(the communists) are on record for portraying South Sudanese freedom fighters as mere reactionaries and even tried to redefine the injustice that was imposed on us throw their own narrow literature to suite pedagogues in Moscow and beyond. Today we are an independent South Sudan Nation. We see all unionists with scepticism for reasons obvious and unless they come out clean and truly converted to support our irreversible sovereignty, our paths will never meet theirs.

Last but not least our message is a clear one and no authority how high it perceives itself shouldn’t be allowed a free hand to lure us into policies which only allow for the ‘breading, incubating and empowering’ “dangerous groups” which are more likely turn around and reverse our political and socio-economic divorce with fanatic Islamism, the international communism and the others. Nor should our people be silenced or blindfolded into "laying red carpets" to well known unionist groups who for their own inherent lack of pride into what is indigenous and African are forced to continue looking towards the Arab Islamic Middle East. Thus any attempt by the SPLM leadership to start the Permanent Constitutional Review process with these pro-North representatives on board only works to confirm our fears of the much unpopular ‘United New Sudan Vision’.  And thereafter it remains in the centre of our national sovereignty’s interest to block it – or go for a total boycott should the government not re-think its position! 

Author: Dr. Justin Ambago Ramba. Secretary General of United South Sudan Party [USSP]. He can be reached at:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  or  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

By: Peter Lokarlo Marsu

January 30, 2012 (SSNA) -- The new proposal advanced by the African Union High Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP), and designed for a feasible panacea to settle the oil dispute between the Republic of South Sudan and the government of Sudan does perceptibly make intriguing loci for deliberations. On the outset, it would seemingly be noteworthy to explore the gist of the draft proposals, as this could enable anyone to determine the substance of the entire proposal put forward by Mr. Thabo Mbeki, the chief mediator mandated by the African Union to reconcile the interpretations of the parties at dispute, namely the government of South Sudan and the government of Sudan in an attempt to construct a mutually-shared perception in a bid to affably resolve their oil dispute. The proposals submitted by AUHIP to the parties as stated in the next paragraph below visibly call for profound and painstaking scrutiny.

The African Union proposed that the government of South Sudan be allowed to export its oil without any portion of it being seized by the government of Sudan and that the Republic of South Sudan would then provide Sudan with 35,000 barrels of oil per day for Khartoum’s sole needs. This would next be followed by time-framed negotiations on the transit fees to be paid to the government of Sudan for the use of its pipelines. Apparently, this proposal appears to be quite fascinating in that it leads one to wonder whether the time frame recommended by the AUHIP’s mediators would emphatically see an end to the protracted wrangle between Juba and Khartoum without first cautioning Khartoum about its demand for the $32 in a barrel. I must first pose the following two questions:

1. What makes the AU mediators so confident that the two parties would make a swift rapprochement leading to constructive adjustments and consequently the resolution of the dispute, given the huge ambiance of mistrust between the two parties that emanated from half a Century of Khartoum’s ruthlessness on the people of South Sudan?

2. What if the parties don’t reach an agreement owing to largely Sudan government’s unmitigated lack of correct judgment faculty and fair-mindedness reflected in the country’s conduct that led it to demand from South Sudan the bizarre and unmatched price of $32 per barrel?

Apart from paying Khartoum for the refinery and pipeline rental, giving Khartoum 35,000 barrels per day does not make sense at all. South Sudan should not be made hostage to Khartoum and asked to treat Sudan preferentially. Khartoum had filched and still continuing to steal South Sudan oil. Why would the AU advise the government of South Sudan to offer Sudan 35,000 barrels per day in addition to the official fees to be agreed upon? This is where the AU mediators need to learn and value the art of evenhandedness. South Sudan, albeit a new nation on the globe, would never accede to being treated underhandedly. Has the AUHIP ever wondered as to why Khartoum insists on charging the Republic of South Sudan the most excessive and unparalleled price of $32 per barrel for transit fees. Again this is where the AU has to be in the dock for applying asymmetry or lopsidedness in its dealings, thus forming the main cause for some of its failures in addressing the continent’s problems.

Second, the fact that on countless occasions, various Sudanese governments and politicians had concluded numerous agreements with South Sudanese leaders and shortly thereafter abrogated them without the slightest prevision as to future implications, question both the credibility and practicability of the AU’s the proposals currently on the table in Addis Ababa.

It was nearly four decades ago when the African Union’s predecessor, the Organization of African Unity oversaw an accord that was to be short lived. This was the well publicised Addis Ababa Agreement of March 1972. While the peace Agreement between the government of Sudan and the South Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM) was acclaimed as a distinctive paradigm of a negotiated peace settlement in Africa and the third world in general, it was actually ephemeral, only to be consigned to the garbage bin of history eleven years later by the government of Sudan. It seems that an identical scenario is reemerging, involving almost the same players, but two of the actors slightly bear modified labels, namely: the government of the Republic of South Sudan (formerly SSLM, then the Southern Sudan regional government), the African Union (the Organisation of African Unity) and the government of Sudan. There is no way that the government of the Republic of South Sudan would consent to being pressed hard by the AUHIP to reach a pointless agreement with the government of Sudan, and only to be ditched in a short while.

Third, the government of South Sudan has inked an initial agreement or what might technically be described as a memorandum of understanding with the government of the Republic of Kenya, to the effect that an oil pipeline would be constructed from South Sudan to the port of Lamu in Kenya, which will certainly be in the best interest of the two countries. To demonstrate their serious intentions the South Sudanese authorities have shut down oil production in the entire country, protesting the theft of its oil by the government of Sudan and it is very unlikely that the oil would again be exported through Sudan. Now another question is: Where do the AU’s lopsided proposals fit in this highly charged political matrix?

Do the AU mediators intimate that South Sudan should retract its clear objective of shutting down the oil production in the Republic of South Sudan and allow once more the oil to flow to the international markets through Sudan’s pipelines? What guarantees do exist to ensure that Khartoum would not again resort to diverting millions of barrels of South Sudan oil to its secret underground storage facility? Apparently, such proposals by the AU mediators are seemingly skewwhiff and thus should be spurned by the government of South Sudan.

Forth, the same AU is advising the government of South Sudan to pay $4 billion to the government of Sudan to fix the latter’s pathetic fiscal gap. This notion definitely sounds ludicrous. In the first instance, it is not incumbent upon the government of South Sudan to salvage Sudan’s economy. The regime’s obsession with multiple wars and penchant for brutality are to blame for the status quo. Up to this moment, the government of Sudan is zealously bent on destabilizing the Republic of South Sudan. Khartoum has recently bombed South Sudan’s territory and the AU has not even raised a voice of condemnation of Sudan’s barbarity and its absolute absence of conventional norms. South Sudan should never pay Khartoum free money as maintained by the National Parliament of South Sudan. I would rather suggest that such considerable sums be spent on other expedient programs which could feasibly include purchasing of a credible and effective anti-aircraft defence systems such as the Russian S-300 currently in use by a number of countries including Brazil, and other relevant western systems for the South Sudan army in order to daunt Khartoum’s relentless aerial assaults on the people of South Sudan along the common border.

The AU must comprehend that giving Khartoum such staggering amount of money would actually:

i. Bolster the regime’s capacity for Killing its own citizens as well as the civilian population in the Republic of South Sudan;

ii. Enable the government of Sudan to revive its program of offering illimitable support to the Uganda’s notorious LRA rebels alongside other subversive groups operating in South Sudan to destabilize the latter as is the case at the moment;

iii. Encourage the regime in Khartoum to Fund and fan tribal wars in the Republic of South Sudan to demonstrate to the world its misgivings about granting independence for South Sudan.

Ultimately, filling the coffers of the adventurous regime in Khartoum is tantamount to funding the killing spree, the maiming, the extrajudicial slayings and the countless instances of rape in South Kordofan, the Blue Nile and Darfur regions. I hope the AU mediators would think twice and swiftly refrain from being a party to such a horrifying drawing by asking Juba to pay the $4 billion of free money to Khartoum.

Hence, it becomes a tricky business to grasp the philosophical wisdom involved in the AU thoughtless prescription and guidance. If anything, the African Union should consider a substantial and broad package of sanctions against the government of Sudan for being the source of instability in the region, and not the award of massive funds to the regime that is obsessed with administering and superintending killing theatres.

Additionally, the AU mediators must realize that it’s South Sudan’s destiny at stake and Juba would hardly afford to succumb to another stint of fiasco on the negotiation table as it did occur in Addis Ababa in 1972, this time by signing a detrimental oil agreement under the aegis of the pestering and less politically sensitive continental organisation. Furthermore, I piquantly stand by the government of South Sudan, firstly in its stupendous decision of stopping the oil production in the whole country, and secondly for unfalteringly declining to reach an agreement with the government of Sudan in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Alas, there is yet another worrying issue that Juba must prioritize and follow up to ensure that South Sudan’s oil is secured from being purloined by unknown banditti, and that is: to make regular and surprised inspections on the oil sites. Such vital tasks must be carried out by South Sudanese technicians so that those oil fraudulent companies are prevented from illegally pumping out the oil in collusion with Khartoum.

Furthermore these oil companies must be sternly warned of severe consequences if apprehended in the act of stealing. One is saddened to learn that Petrodar Oil Company still as of 27 January 2012 involved in pilfering the oil in Upper Nile state as disclosed by South Sudan’s minister of petroleum and mining Mr. Stephen Dhieu Dau and that 40,000 barrels per day were being illegally pumped by the company. This must immediately stop or else Petrodar or any other company involved in unauthorized acts risk being shown the door, as there are hundreds of oil companies waiting on the fence. As the oil wells remain closed, there would be no need for the company personnel including the engineers to reside at the premises, only South Sudan government soldiers should be permitted to guard the various sites until the companies are told what Juba has decided upon, as they take their orders from the government of South Sudan and no longer from Khartoum.

Finally, I implore the people of South Sudan particularly our national Parliament in Juba to stand firm and refuse to be swayed by anyone or submit to unwarranted pressure from any party, whether the AU, UN or Khartoum and whether through sheer brinkmanship in the case of Sudan or the application of undue pressure and cajoling by the other parties. I suggest that the National Parliament and the Council of state craft a bill and pass it speedily to the effect that the two Houses support the signing of the oil pipeline memorandum of understanding with the government of Kenya. This action could assist the government of South Sudan in transacting its business normally with other parties such as the AU or the government of Sudan as it is blessed with a mandate from Parliament. My country men and women, South Sudan is definitely destined to become a great nation on the African continent despite the grim portrait being displayed. Therefore all must work together with the leadership of the country in order to realize that impressive dream.

END

The Author is a former Casual Lecturer in the Graduate School of Business and law (GSBL) at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He can be reached at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

By: Daniel Abushery Daniel (USA)

“Your life doesn't get better by chance, it gets better by change." Jim John.

January 30, 2012 (SSNA) -- I am pretty sure that there are many words that could be used to describe our life experiences. Most of all, I know that all of us have a thing or two that we can be proud of in our past, or what I always referred to as " Good old days."

Growing up in Nasir and other places in South Sudan, I remember quite vividly some of the old tales from elders about a one universal ethnic group in ancient times that; all human beings spoke the same language, then they decided to build a tower to reach the heaven connected with the Almighty God. The construction goes smoothly in the first few days until they reached a certain level of advancement, then God said; Human being is complex and disturbance.

Along the way, God Almighty, for reasons only known to Him, created different languages, while folks were in the middle of excitement to finish their tower. Unfortunately, things didn't go well, they couldn't understand one another, because the communication process was broken, which caused a whole hosts of disagreements and confusion among them, which eventually resulted in the cancellation of their task, and to the failure of the project. And that was the beginning of the different tongues and languages in the world.

The questions that I am asking our human race with are that: what can we do to speak with one universal language again like the way it used to be? And how can we eradicate and root out all forms of tribalism, sections and nepotism of our society?

You weigh in!

Thus, I'm truly blessed to have the opportunity to witness the greatness of the generation of my father, who carried themselves with respect, dignity and honour. For example: I have never ever heard my dad saying something negative about other community member including foreigners. We were constantly reminded to respect anybody that’s older than you. Today, what some of us do is diligently poisoning the minds and hearts of our children with negative adjectives about other tribes, such as: " Our tribe is better then the rest.", “we are the warriors”, “we are the liberators, and those are traitors." The list of negativity goes on and on.

To this very moment, I remember one of my dad's best friends, who happened to be from the Murle tribe, Ustaz David Arrani. He was at Malakal Teachers Institute. I thought that uncle David was my blood relative, until some years later when I grew up and met his son, John in Nasir.

Also, I will never forget my neighbours, Ustaz Manasseh, the father of my friends, Kuol and Malak, and the late uncle Nicodemous Arou, the father of the prestigious journalist, Ustaz Majok Arou. In addition to our school Head Master uncle Burnaby Anguuoi, and many more. Honestly speaking, we had lived like a one big family.

Thus “good old days " were truly and really golden in every way. They were just like when you want to find some information on something, which was called the Internet that has now become the daily basic needs, not to mention that fact that it is our dictionary that allows us to check out the difficult words, encyclopaedia, and every possible way to be updated.

Recently, I saw an ad of a kindle book that you can start reading anything on the new iphone, android phone, or blackberry phone etc.... accessing the information is about everything, and giving the universal access to a gold old book is another. It’s just like a review, survey, or contemplation of things in the past which we realize and say;

The old days will remain golden days.

Frankly speaking, what is now going in South Sudan is tragic. From the mass killing of helpless civilians, and lost of properties between different ethnic groups in our homeland, is simply obnoxious, disgusted and brutal, just to say the least. I lose sleep over it, and it's a fire in my bones, and I can't remain silent, something must be done now before it’s escalation like a wild fire to the other parts of our beloved country. The golden phrase says; “prevention is better than cure”.

Compatriots, what I am trying to address here is to appeal to President 1^st Let. General Salva Kiir Mayardit, the president of the republic of South Sudan to implement a decentrelization system, then,  consider a random appointment of counties commissioners, heads of the states and public service personnel from across the republic of South Sudan. Beyond a doubt, such policy will not only help in the reduction of tribal sensitivities that are happening today, but it can also subdue, and minimize corruption.  It’s time to go back to the old system that has proved to work diligently.

Can we all just say; enough is enough of these tribalism, sectionism, nepotism, and corruption and just focus on the goals that will unite us as one nation? Can we turn around to the good old days in our lives? Yes, we can.

This is my prospective.

The author is south Sudanese citizen, and can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

By Eric Reeves

January 29, 2012 (SSNA) -- A crisis that has been months, indeed years in the making has come to a head with the decision by the sovereign nation of the Republic of South Sudan to shut down all Southern oil production in the face of continuing extortion, theft, and misrepresentation of oil production and oil revenues by the Khartoum regime.  Predictably, the international response takes the form of urgent pleas for Khartoum and Juba to "compromise."  But this urgency should have been evident months ago, certainly when Khartoum first cleaved to a preposterous transport fee of $32 per barrel of crude oil (subsequently raised to $36 per barrel).  This is not a negotiating starting point; indeed, it is the opposite of negotiation: with such a demand Khartoum is creating such a vast gulf between a reasonable starting point and what might actually be negotiated as to make those negotiations impossible.

And yet, unilaterally, Khartoum has imposed this massive transit fee---without even a remote parallel anywhere else in the oil-transport world---and applied it retroactively to all oil that the South has shipped to the terminal at Port Sudan on the Red Sea.  Here it is important to recall that the regime's machinations have been multiple and complex: they include seven years of manipulating figures for oil revenues and production, costing the South hundreds of millions of dollars; over-pumping wells in the South in ways inconsistent with maximum lifetime production; drilling horizontally from northern wells into reserves in the South---and the list goes on.  Most recently Reuters reports that Khartoum is selling Southern crude at a steep $14 per barrel discount as a way of accelerating purchase.

Despite the clearly articulated declaration by Juba that it would be compelled to shut down Southern oil production if Khartoum insisted in "negotiation" by extortion and outright theft (a number the details of this theft have been confirmed by oil companies operating out of Port Sudan; see excerpts in Appendix below). In announcing formally the decision of his government to shut down production and commit to a new pipeline running south to the Kenyan coast, President Salva Kiir specified just what had occurred to prompt this final decision:

"I am here today to brief this august house about the current crisis in our oil industry. The crisis has reached a stage that is unacceptable. On the 6th of December 2011, the Minister of Finance of the Republic of Sudan informed our Minister of Petroleum that based on their Petroleum Transit and Service Fees Act of 2011, as from 25 December 2011, all shipments will be allowed to leave Port Sudan only after paying fees amounting to 32.2 dollars per barrel. Immediately following this warning, they proceeded to block four ships with 3.5 million barrels of Dar blend from sailing out of Port Sudan. They have further prevented four other ships from docking at Port Sudan. These ships have purchased 2.8 million barrels of Nile and Dar blends but are unable to collect their purchases. To date, these eight vessels remain under the control of the Government of Sudan with oil worth 630 million dollars."

"In addition to this, they have forcibly taken another 185 million dollars' worth of oil. In total, the revenue that the Government of Sudan has looted since December amounts to approximately 815 million dollars. Furthermore, they have completed constructing a tie-in pipeline designed to permanently divert 120,000 barrels per day of South Sudan oil [to refineries in the north] .... " (Statement to the National Legislature of South Sudan on the current oil crisis, January 23, 2012)

But while the move toward this decision has been in evidence for months, only now are the AU, the UN, and the U.S. responding---and predictably (certainly predictable for Khartoum) the pressure is almost equally on both countries.  And, in a despicable conflation of issues, both the UN Secretary-General and the U.S. special envoy Princeton Lyman are linking the humanitarian crises in Blue Nile and South Kordofan to resolution of the oil dispute:

"South Sudan and Sudan could face a 'major humanitarian crisis' if they fail to solve a running oil dispute, a top U.S. envoy [Princeton Lyman] said Sunday [January 29, 2012] as African heads of state converged on Ethiopia's capital for an African Union summit." (Associated Press [Addis Ababa], January 29, 2012)

This is simply outrageous: Khartoum militarily seized Abyei (and its Diffra oil production site) on May 21, 2011, immediately creating an urgent humanitarian crisis for the more than 100,000 Dinka Ngok who were forced to flee to the South.  On June 5 Khartoum began its assault on South Kordofan and the Nuba people, all in the name of suppressing the Sudan People's Liberation Army-North.  Atrocity crimes and violations of international law were rampant.  Ethnic slaughter, aerial bombardment of civilians and civilian agriculture, and the denial of virtually all humanitarian access have been the hallmarks of this brutal campaign.  The international reaction to both these military actions by Khartoum was feeble and disingenuous.  Predictably, Khartoum then launched yet another military assault, on Blue Nile, beginning September 1; this assault has followed the same pattern of massive civilian displacement, relentless aerial bombardment, and virtually total collapse of the critical fall sorghum harvest.  And again, all humanitarian access to civilian populations is being denied by Khartoum, even for assessment purposes.

This---not the failure of Juba to yield to an extortionate deal on oil revenues---is what has created the massive humanitarian crisis in the border regions.  These are the actions that have already taken a great many civilian lives, and will continue to take more lives as people begin to starve or die from malnutrition-related causes in ever greater numbers.

The scale of this rapidly growing humanitarian crisis has become steadily more apparent over the past half year; we know that many hundreds of thousands of civilians in Blue Nile and South Kordofan are in desperate need of food.  The Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS-Net) has since December been predicting famine-like conditions soon in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan and much of Blue Nile; in early October the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization declared that the harvest in Blue Nile would "largely fail."  And yet the reaction of the international community was slow, diffident, and unjustifiably skeptical of evidence that was rapidly accumulating.  Only now are some actors of consequence finally acknowledging what is at stake in civilian lives.

But to connect this vast, ongoing humanitarian crisis to the economic crisis created by Khartoum's intransigent, extortionate, and duplicitous negotiating behavior is an outrage.  Instead of condemning this identifiable theft and misappropriation (again, see excerpts below), the AU, UN, U.S. and UK have all put pressure on Juba to accommodate Khartoum's behavior, trying simply to compel a deal, whether fair or not.  This is diplomatic grotesquerie.  At the very time that Khartoum's military aircraft continue their deliberate attacks against civilians in northern Sudan, as well as refugee camps and refugee gathering points in South Sudan, the regime is being accorded an unencumbered negotiating position in Addis Ababa.  Indeed, there are some voices, even among journalists reporting from Addis, that would seek to make this a matter of Southern intransigence in refusing to accept an oil deal.

The leaders of the South see this international accommodation of Khartoum, and realize that there will never be any meaningful pressure on the regime to honor any agreement it might make about the future of oil revenues, transit fees, port fees, etc.  The leaders in the South and in the border states of northern Sudan see that even as Khartoum is creating a vast military encirclement of the Nuba Mountains, even as its artillery fire has blocked a choke-point for civilians fleeing South Kordofan, the world says nothing and does nothing to change the thinking within the regime.  How likely is it, they ask, that the same international community---now expediently pressuring them to avert war by making a conspicuously unfair deal---will serve as guarantor of the terms of any agreement reached?  To ask the question is to see all too clearly the answer.

To be sure, Khartoum has bowed to pressure from Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi and others, and has released three ships loaded with South Sudanese crude.  But this is a gesture---perhaps significant, perhaps not---that does not address the fundamental problem of Khartoum's attitude toward the issue of oil revenues through transit fees.  Nor does it rectify the losses incurred by the South, coming to many hundreds of millions of dollars beyond the cargo of these ships.  Presently, Khartoum continues to calculate, unilaterally, what it is "owed" by the South on the basis of a $32 per barrel transit fee.  And again, this figure is simply extortionate and serves no meaningful purpose in true negotiations of a reasonable transit fee.  Its only logic is that it would afford Khartoum the means to close the yawning gap in this year's national budget.

Diplomacy based on "moral equivalence" is doomed

The crises in Sudan cannot be addressed from a posture of "moral equivalence," one that sees the political, diplomatic, and moral equities of the two parties as somehow equal. And yet this continues to be the pattern---one reason that the north/south civil war lasted as long as it did.  A recent piece by AU advisor Alex de Waal in The New York Times (January 24, 2012) offers a glaring example of just such specious equivalence, focusing on the crisis in negotiations over oil, but with a tendentious elision of key facts.

In one sense, what we are seeing is a reprise of the international response to the dispute over Abyei, in which again an intransigent Khartoum first refused to allow the stipulated self-determination referendum in Abyei---this followed excessive high-level U.S. pressure on Juba to "compromise"---and then shortly before Southern independence, Khartoum simply ignored the terms of the Abyei Protocol and the findings of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA; The Hague, July 2009), and brought overwhelming military force to bear in seizing the region.  Abyei is deeply important to the South historically and a fertile region that, even as geographically attenuated by the PCA, is almost the size of the state of Connecticut.

Why should the South put any trust in those who betrayed them on Abyei, refused to respond to the well-documented atrocity crimes in South Kordofan, and have refused to compel Khartoum to allow humanitarian relief corridors for many hundreds of thousands of displaced and highly distressed civilians.  The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), which confirmed the recent (January 23) aerial attack on the refugee staging point of el-Fog (Upper Nile, South Sudan), and declared itself "alarmed," nonetheless can't even bring itself to name the attacking aircraft as belonging to Khartoum's Sudan Armed Forces---the only force in the area with offensive military aircraft.  Khartoum of course simply denies that it was responsible, and there the matter rests---except for those attacked.  Seeing itself so timidly accommodated, Khartoum has, unsurprisingly, been yet further emboldened.  Aerial attacks on the sovereign territory of South Sudan, going back to November 2010, now number twenty-nine (www.sudanbombing.org).  There were two attacks in Raja County, Western Bahr el Ghazal on December 28 - 29, 2011; a spokesman for the South reported that 40 people had been killed in these attacks.  There was another attack on Khor Yabous, which has received almost no news attention, except from the BBC (January 24, 2012):

"Upper Nile's Information Minister Peter Lam Both did accuse Sudan of carrying out another air raid in the state on Sunday [January 21, 2012]. He told the BBC that three people were killed and four wounded in Khor Yabous, near the border with Sudan. He also said South Sudan's army had fought off an attack by militias around this time."

Moral equivalency finds yet another form in the assertion that Juba and Khartoum are somehow equally responsible for proxy forces operating in one another's territory.  But while we have very substantial, indeed compelling evidence from the Small Arms Survey of weapons shipments by Khartoum to Southern renegade militia forces, there is no comparable evidence that Juba is doing the same in either South Kordofan or Blue Nile.  This is not to say that there is no such assistance, though the consensus of regional observers is that Juba's support is more of the moral than the material sort.  Rather, it is highly improbably that significant quantities of either men or materiel are moving from the South into the conflict regions.  Notably, there is no evidence that weapons captured by the SAF from the Sudan People's Liberation Army-North (SPLA-N) have their origin in the South, and we may be sure that if such evidence existed Khartoum, would immediately exploit it for maximum propaganda effect.  Sheer repetition of the charge of Southern assistance to northern rebels has translated into the view that something has actually been established.  This is misguided.

Moreover, while Khartoum has every incentive to arm and supply destabilizing militias such as the South Sudan Liberation Army, which targets mainly civilians, the opposite is the case with Juba, which has shown extraordinary restraint in the face of repeated, ongoing, confirmed military assaults, including aerial assaults on its sovereign territory and the seizure of Abyei.  Juba has done everything possible to avoid being provoked into renewed conflict, even as it senses that war is moving inexorably closer. 

It is in the context of Khartoum's unsupported charges of Southern support for the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army-North---and the explosive potential deriving from Khartoum's compelling of the shutdown of oil facilities in the  South---that we should read recent comments by the Second Vice-President of the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime:

"[Second Vice-President] Al-Haj Adam Youssef, has warned that his country's army could strike as far as South Sudan’s capital Juba in pursuit of hunting rebels operating in South Kordofan and Blue Nile.... Youssef vowed that SAF would pursue the rebels into South Sudan and as far as its capital Juba. 'If necessary, Juba is not far,' he told the [al-Sahafah] newspaper during celebrations of Sudan's independence in the central state of Al-Jazzirah." (Sudan Tribune, January 27, 2012)

These words are designed for the international community---a transparent effort to threaten war if Khartoum doesn't get its way in negotiations over oil.  And here the international community is deeply culpable, with its penchant for misguided accommodation of violence in Sudan and its susceptibility to Khartoum's threats.

What are Khartoum's calculations?

It seems still an open question as to why Khartoum would push the South to the extreme measure of shutting down oil production, which provides some 98 percent of Southern revenues.  There are two possibilities.

The first is that the regime overplayed its hand in a reckless game of brinksmanship, convinced that the South would never really shut down its revenue life-line---or believing that the international community would force the South to reverse such a decision if made.  The latter possibility is high, and has been made to seem more likely by events in Addis Ababa this week.  And after all, it's not really brinksmanship if you can drive over the "brink" and fall into the safety net of international support and coercive diplomacy.  But in fact the South has completed its shutdown of oil facilities, has properly cleaned and purged the pipelines, and has been exceedingly careful not to damage infrastructure.  Many felt they would not be able to accomplish even this task, or at least professed to believe the South incapable. 

If Juba refuses to accede to international pressure to make an unfair deal, then Khartoum's brinksmanship will have been proved a mistaken calculation---disastrously so.  The threat coming from having overplayed its hand would also explain Khartoum's decision to release three cargo ships carrying Southern crude from Port Sudan.

The other distinct possibility is that Khartoum has never wanted to make a deal about oil revenues with Juba, but rather to create a casus belli, by which it would seize the oil regions of the South and restore all oil revenues to a northern economy that continues in a politically dangerous tailspin.  The bellicose language of Vice-President Youssef is certainly consistent with such ambition.  So, too, are the repeated aerial attacks on territory of the South.  The extortionate figure of $32 per barrel as transit fee was preposterous to begin with; but to raise that figure gratuitously to $36 per barrel is evidence that there has never been any serious intent to reach a deal.  The unilateral appropriation of oil from the South, the diversion of oil from the South to northern refineries, the rapacious extraction techniques employed over many years, and the bad faith that extends back twenty-two years---all could serve as evidence that there has never been a real commitment to allowing the South to enjoy the benefits of its natural resources.

The threat of renewed war is underscored in an extraordinary dispatch by the Sudan Tribune (January 29/30, 2012), in which we learn that some 700 Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) officers recently confronted senior regime officials over the demand that the army prepare for renewed war with the South, an account that comes from numerous sources:

"The [officers'] message was delivered last week to [President Omar al-] Bashir and [Defense Minister, General Abdel-Rahim Mohamed] Hussein during their briefing sessions with SAF senior army officers who listened to the pair calling on them to prepare for the possibility of a full-scale war with South Sudan."

"But the sources said that the SAF officers at the briefing were all but appalled at the prospects of heading to war with Sudan's southern neighbor given the state of the military at this point. The officers called on Bashir and Hussein to urgently address the challenges faced by the SAF emphasizing that the army has been unable to decisively overcome the rebels in the border states of Blue Nile and South Kordofan."

This unprecedented account also reveals growing divisions in Khartoum following the "silent military coup" by senior generals last May:

"The SAF officers also implored on Bashir and Hussein to implement segregation between the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the army so that the latter does not shoulder the mistakes of the NCP and become vulnerable to volatility of the Sudanese politics. Furthermore, they said that is imperative that the system of government be reformed because the status quo jeopardizes the country's national security. One of the sources underscored that the current political climate in the form of tensions between the Islamists and the NCP has spread into the army but declined to provide details. He described Bashir and Hussein as 'rattled' by the officers' complaints."

Khartoum's military strategy in renewed war has long been obvious, if daunting: to attack and hold the largest possible horseshoe-shaped region of South Sudan, with one point of the horseshoe beginning as far west as Kiir Adem (Northern Bahr el Ghazal), going as far south as Bor (Jonglei) and finishing to the east of Malakal---or as much of this area as the generals are confident they can hold and protect militarily.  This region contains nearly all Southern oil production and known reserves. Of course securing this area would require creation of an enormous cordon sanitaire, one that will be exceedingly difficult to maintain and defend, given what would be fierce and relentless efforts by the Sudan People's Liberation Army to destroy any and all infrastructure contributing to sending oil revenues to Khartoum. 

Khartoum may also be calculating that if it successfully held this territory and hostilities were somehow scaled back, the regime would be able to negotiate an oil deal from a position of maximum strength.  And the international community, given previous behavior, would likely seize on just about any proposal for a cease-fire---much as it settled hastily for a peacekeeping mission in Abyei, only to see Khartoum abuse the agreement and maintain both its regular and militia forces in the region, a de facto annexation.

Moreover, one can all too easily imagine the way in which the regime officials will attempt to "sell" renewed war: "the South is supporting the rebels in Darfur, in Blue Nile, and in South Kordofan"; the decision by the South to shut down oil production amounts to "economic warfare" (ironically, of precisely the sort practiced by Khartoum for the past year), and the north must "fight back."  "The secession of the South is responsible for all the north's economic woes, and yet Juba refuses to accept some portion of 'our' massive external debt" (accrued by this and previous regimes, especially by means of self-enrichment and profligate military spending).  As both Abyei and South Kordofan proved quite clearly, the regime is not short of means to contrive a casus belli.

But the South will not be bullied, will not yield to expedient pleas for "compromise," and will not accept extortion and theft.  The shutdown of oil production sets a clock ticking; for the South will now move quickly on the construction of an alternate pipeline to the south.  Either the international community understands how misguided its diplomacy has been---in the very near term---or war becomes distinctly more likely with every tick of the clock  And in such a war we must expect not only that humanitarian access will be denied in Blue Nile and South Kordofan, but that the remaining humanitarian presence in Darfur will be expelled.

This is the real relationship between (1) the "humanitarian crises" already pervasive in Sudan and (2) oil negotiations between Khartoum and Juba. U.S. special envoy Princeton Lyman is expediently attempting to compel a deal by disingenuously conflating the two; but this only increases the chances that the latter will contribute to the former.

Appendix:

Khartoum sells South Sudan’s oil at discount as Juba vows to sue buyers (Sudan Tribune [Nairobi], January 27, 2012)

South Sudan has threatened litigation against those who purchase its oil from neighboring Sudan after Khartoum reportedly sold crude seized from the newly independent state at millions of dollars discount .... It was revealed on Friday that Sudan has sold a shipment loaded with 600,000 barrels of crude it seized from South Sudan to a north Asian trader at a discount as steep as $14, Reuters reported, citing anonymous sources. According to Reuters, this indicates an $8.4 million discount for the whole cargo versus the last official price charged by the South. The sold crude was loaded onto three tankers from January 13 - 20, according to South Sudan's justice ministry.

South Sudan says Sudan seized oil worth $815 million (Reuters [Juba], January 23, 2012)

"In total, the revenue that the government of Sudan has looted since December amounts to approximately $815 million," Kiir told parliament in Juba. He accused Khartoum of having built a tie-in pipeline to divert 120,000 barrels per day of southern production flowing through the north.

The justice ministry in Juba published a list of three vessels it said had been forced to load southern oil at Port Sudan on orders from Khartoum. The "MT Sea Sky" loaded 605,784 barrels on January 13/14, the "MT Al Nouf" around 750,000 barrels on January 16/17 and the "MT Ratna Shradha" another 600,000 barrels on Jan 19/20, the ministry said. Officials in Khartoum could not immediately be reached for comment. Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Karti told Reuters last week that Khartoum was entitled to seize oil to compensate for transit fees.

Khartoum charged with under-reporting oil production in South Sudan (Al-Jazeera, January 29, 2012; citing news agencies)

Separately, South Sudan said on Friday it had discovered new figures that it claimed showed the north had colluded with oil companies to provide lower production figures on paper than was actually being pumped from the ground. Stephen Dhieu Dau, the South's oil minister, said in some cases oil production was under-reported by as much as 15 per cent.

South Sudan says they won't restart oil production until Sudan agrees to demands over oil deal (Associated Press [Juba] January 29, 2012)

South Sudan's minister of petroleum and mining says the nation will not restart oil production unless Sudan accepts a list of demands. Stephen Dhieu Dau said Sunday that South Sudan was "committed to negotiations" but that Khartoum would have to accept their offer of paying $1 per barrel for using Sudan's pipelines for export and $2.4 billion dollar financial assistance package before South Sudan turns on production again. He also says Sudan must withdraw troops from the disputed border region of Abyei and stop funding rebel groups in South Sudan. He says South Sudan wants an international treaty guaranteed by "international superpowers" to guarantee the agreement. South Sudan shut down oil production Saturday after it accused Sudan of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil.

South Sudan Completes Oil Shutdown (Reuters [Juba], January 29, 2012)

Sudan has already sold at least one tankerload of seized South Sudanese crude, but said on Saturday it would free other tankers to help defuse the row. Dau said the four cargoes in question had not left the port yet, but that South Sudan's agent said it had been told to prepare documentation so it was possible that they would leave later on Sunday or on Monday. South Sudan was "committed to negotiations" but first Khartoum "must take some steps", he said. "First they must release the cargoes, and the stolen crude that was lifted by force must be returned to us, and any deal must be tied to the issues of the border and Abyei, and they must stop sponsoring militias in South Sudan," he said. "This deal must be overseen by the international community.

Khartoum's actions on Southern Oil

Sudan Tribune [Juba], January 24, 2012)

Khartoum unilaterally decided to take millions of barrels of oil belonging to South Sudan that passes through the 1,610km long pipeline from South Sudan to Port Sudan. It claims that South Sudan has not paid a number of fees amounting to a billion US dollars. However, South Sudan refuted the claims by Sudan, saying it has been paying fees for Khartoum's facilities such as central processing facility and marine terminal and that the action by Khartoum was "a pure theft."

The payment by Juba to Khartoum for usage of such facilities was confirmed by the international oil companies operating in the oil sector.

Sudan Plans to Seize More South Sudan Oil Until Accord Reached

January 18, 2012 (Bloomberg)

Sudan plans to seize more South Sudanese oil until a final agreement is reached on fees for their transit, amid signs that talks on the tariffs may be failing, said Sudanese Foreign Minister al-Obeid Murawih. South Sudan "doesn't seem to be serious or willing or cooperative" about the negotiations, Murawih told reporters today in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. "We will continue seizing oil until we reach a final settlement."

Khartoum orders foreign company to "steal" S. Sudan's oil (Sudan Tribune [Juba], January 14, 2012)

A foreign oil company on Saturday said it was ordered by the Government of Sudan (GoS) to load 650,000 barrels of South Sudan's crude oil onto a GOS Vessel MT Sea Sky, a revelation that seems to confirm earlier claims by Juba of its oil being 'stolen.' The oil loading process, according to Petrodar Operating Company (PDOC), was "required" by the Khartoum government, "non-negotiable" and overseen by the latter and its national security organisations. The current operator of the Petrodar pipeline in Sudan, which only transports oil from South Sudan territory (Block 3 and 7), PDOC is a consortium of national oil companies mainly from China, Malaysia and India. The company further operates the Al Jabalyn processing facility in Sudan as well as a marine terminal in Port Sudan.

Sudan Tribune (January 28, 2011): Petroleum Minister Stephen Dhieu Dau's timeline of events:

On the 24th Dec. 2011, Government of Sudan (GOS) prevented loading of
600,000 bbls of South Sudan-Nile blend;

On the 30th, Dec. 2011, GOS detained 100,000 bbls Dar blend sold to Vitol;

On the 31st, Dec. 2011, GOS prevented ships from loading 600,000 bbls of Republic of South Sudan (RSS) Nile blend;

On the 3rd, Jan. 2012, GOS detained vessels loaded with 600,000 bbls of Dar blend of RSS, which belongs to Petronile;

On the 8th, Jan. 2012, GOS detained Sinopec vessels loaded with 900,000bbls Dar blend of RSS;

On the 13th, Jan. 2012, GOS lifted 605,784 bbls Dar blend crude oil of RSS;

On the 16th, Jan. 2012, GOS lifted by force 618,712 bbls Dar blend crude oil of Republic of South Sudan.

Also on the same date, GOS instructed PDOC to transfer 120,000 bbls of Dar blend crude oil of RSS to be delivered to Khartoum refinery directly from the illegal pipeline tie into KRC which was partly constructed and operated by GOS;

On the 19th, Jan. 2012, GOS lifted by force 600,000 bbls of RSS' Nile blend crude oil. The two neighbours have to come to agreement on a host of post-secession issues including national debt, assets, border demarcation, the disputed oil producing region on Abyei and citizenship.

South Sudan sues Khartoum over confiscated oil

(Sudan Tribune [Juba] January 22, 2012)

South Sudan said on Sunday that it is taking the government of neighboring north Sudan to court over what Juba describes as the "stealing" of its oil. Stephen Dhieu Dau, the country's oil minister said in an interview with Sudan Tribune that his ministry has filed a lawsuit against Khartoum in "specialised international tribunals." "We are not leaving it just like that. The Sudanese government must return all they have stolen otherwise we are taking them to court," minister Dau said without elaborate on which tribunals. Minister Dau said that in December Khartoum started diverting more than 120,000 barrels per day of oil pumped from the new nation.

EXCLUSIVE: Sudan army officers warn Bashir & Hussein against rush to war with south

(Sudan Tribune [Khartoum] January 29/30)

January 29, 2012 (KHARTOUM) – A group of 700 military officers from Sudan’s Armed Forces (SAF) confronted president Omer Hassan al-Bashir and his defense minister Abdel-Rahim Mohamed Hussein with several demands that focused on military and political reforms, Sudan Tribune is told. Multiple army sources who all spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue said that the officers included those stationed in the Sudanese capital Khartoum and other parts of the country.

The message was delivered last week to Bashir and Hussein during their briefing sessions with SAF senior army officers who listened to the pair calling on them to prepare for the possibility of a full-scale war with South Sudan. But the sources said that the SAF officers at the briefing were all but appalled at the prospects of heading to war with Sudan's southern neighbor given the state of the military at this point. The officers called on Bashir and Hussein to urgently address the challenges faced by the SAF emphasizing that the army has been unable to decisively overcome the rebels in the border states of Blue Nile and South Kordofan.

The Sudanese army is battling rebels from the Sudan People Liberation Movement North (SPLM-N) in the two states since June 2011 in South Kordofan and September 2011 in Blue Nile. Khartoum persistently accuses Juba of providing aid to the rebels but South Sudan routinely denies the charge. This week the second Vice-President of Sudan, Al-Haj Adam Youssef was quoted by local media as threatening to go after SPLM-N rebels even if they had to go all the way to Juba.

"If necessary, Juba is not far," he told the paper during celebrations of Sudan's independence in the central state of Al-Jezira. SAF needs "tremendously huge efforts" in order to prepare for future dangers particularly at a time when there is talk about foreign intervention, Bashir and Hussein were told.

The officers also urged Bashir and Hussein combat "rampant" corruption within the army and gave an example of 200 battle tanks that were bought in early 2010 but most of it turned out to be defective and a large number had to be sent to neighboring countries for repairs. They noted that several senior officers objected to the "subpar deal" involving these tanks before they were bought which led to the sacking of Hussein's chief secretary Maj. General Al-Na'eem Khidir and other senior officers including Maj. General Ahmed Abdoon who headed the Nyala army division and Maj. General Al-Tayeb Mosbah of El-Fasher army division.

The SAF officers also implored on Bashir and Hussein to implement segregation between the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the army so that the latter does not shoulder the mistakes of the NCP and become vulnerable to volatility of the Sudanese politics.

Furthermore, they said that is imperative that the system of government be reformed because the status quo jeopardizes the country's national security.

One of the sources underscored that the current political climate in the form of tensions between the Islamists and the NCP has spread into the army but declined to provide details.

He described Bashir and Hussein as "rattled" by the officers' complaints. Eric Reeves, a researcher at Smith College who writes extensively on Sudan, believes oil is a major factor in this move. "This may well be a dismayed response to the clear possibility that Khartoum never wanted to make a deal about oil revenues with Juba. Rather, the goal was to create a casus belli, by which the army would seize the oil regions of the South and restore all oil revenues to a northern economy that continues in a politically dangerous tailspin" he said. This month a number of memos have surfaced allegedly sent by the Islamist base calling on the NCP to implement political reforms and fight corruption.

One of them was presented in late 2011 by Bashir's adviser Ghazi Salah al-Deen in his capacity as the leader of the NCP parliamentary bloc. The Sudanese president responded vaguely to some of the demands contained in Ghazi’s memo while saying that it is "premature" to address the others. Sudan is facing a growing economic crisis that was aggravated by the secession of the oil-rich south which took with it 75% of the country’s crude reserves. Since then, Sudan's oil revenues, which used to make up 90 percent of the country's exports and were the main source of hard currency inflows, have largely dried up. The government has already banned many imported items to preserve its foreign currency supply.

The Sudanese pound lost a significant amount of its value against the dollar as a result and the black market has flourished despite government warnings.

Khartoum is trying to walk the fine line between the need to cut government spending and cutting subsidies on basic goods and petroleum products which they fear might trigger social unrest. Last year the governor of Sudan’s central bank Mohamed Khair al-Zubeir said that fuel subsidies need to be removed because they are a huge burden on the economy. "Subsidies are a big burden for the state. The biggest subsidy is for fuel," al-Zubeir said, adding that a barrel of fuel was sold locally at $60 compared to a market price of $100. "So far we didn't notice the difference, subsidies were no problem because the country had oil ... [but] we cannot pay this anymore," he added.

The landlocked South Sudan has been in talks with Khartoum on the fair fee that should be assessed for using the north's refineries and pipelines. It has been reported that Sudan asked for $32 per barrel for the service, something which South Sudan vehemently rejected saying it is excessive compared to international norms. Sudan retaliated to the slow pace of talks and decided to seize part of South Sudan's oil as payment in kind for the exporting service. Juba responded by shutting down its oil production.

Eric Reeves is a professor at Smith College and has published extensively on Sudan, nationally and internationally, for more than a decade. He is author of A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide.

By: Gatkuoth Kedok De –Lew

January 27, 2012 (SSNA) -- First and foremost, I am more delighted to lauding the strategic efforts taken at the eleven hour by the political executive of the Republic of South Sudan to shutdown the wells in the oil-fields of Western and northern Upper Nile regions as well as discontinuity of refining our crude oil through Khartoum‘s rude refineries and/or piping it via port Sudan and subsequently  exporting it to international investors at Rea Sea coast as usual a procedure recently overshadowed by the shameless theft and robbery in the greater and broader daylight by Khartoum Government.

All in all, I am so sympathetic and up to my neck with my spiritual support towards this overdue strategic decision of shutting down the oil operation permanently till further solution or alternative be found.

It is a great dozens of dose of malarial tablets to be swallowed bitterly by Khartoumers with a lasting effect.

It would be wise indeed for us to remain rigid enough without relenting again to the exploitation of our own making.

We fought Khartoum without oil for a half of good century and we managed to procure some modern arms not with oil money. It is them the people in the ilk of Imam Omer Al Bashir and Uztaz Osman Taha who know how sweetest and most rewarding the oil money is because they have been enjoying innumerable goods at the expense of oil incomes and returns for donkey‘s years unabated.

Furthermore; if we had been surviving and thriving without oil for a half of decade and notwithstanding; were able to invariably secure all types of weapons, why not shutting down that profitless operation of oil till we build our own pipelines at both Port Lamu and Djibouti as proposed even if they last longer than two years which is not even a quarter of the years we had endured without oil and since the oil is not the only natural resource we have got. Besides oil there is gold, wildlife, agriculture, forestry and fishery etc all which we can do without oil as we don’t rely on one source of God-given resources yet.

In fact, the absent-minded clique in Khartoum have never realised the arrival of their long spelt curse as prophesied by the Prophet Ngundeng that the downtrodden natives of the black land literally meaning (Sudanese) namely Fur, Nuba, Funj and Jinubiin in the South all of whom having been found inhabiting the land by the Arabs merchants before they were politely resettling over the northern part and spread over the land through the mercantilism fashion as sheer traders,

“that  the  landlords aka (Fur, Nuba, Funj and Jinubiin or Southern Sudanese)  would one day emancipate themselves from the yokes of Arabism and Islamism imposed on them at the highest order and be free and mighty to rout the Arabs using the same route and direction which once they had used when infiltrating through business imperialism using donkey as a ferry and be it the same donkey they will be still re-riding  in their retreat no more where all resources they came and exacted in Sudan shall remain only be retrieved by the right owners of the land without single grain go missing lest Arab will pay dearly for it.”

Now the curse has come to surface only the mad and the deaf who might not know any climatic changes sensibly to be ignorant or insensitive although the mad will see the changes of various images in motion likewise the deaf will see a variety of signs marking tantamount coming of the end of ages in their own deformed conscience and the rest is history.

Such a historical decision is just the least all of evils which must inevitably unfold or a moderate wound in the heart of Khartoum and its sycophants that must be terminally worsened by tetanus to death and therefore must be supplemented with an ultimate coup de grãce such that Khartoum clique has to really corroborate their economical decay at the long last between the blue dawn and yellow dusk in the true history of mankind.

Without Bentiu oil explored, Khartoum would be still wretched as it was in the early 1989 when it was as sheer slum as old Meroe in Stone Age shape in the early Sudan history.

But with the exploration of qualitative petroleum in Bentiu Land this had made Arabs in Khartoum to be the shining stars in the eyes of international opportunists such as China and Russia which have been unwaveringly supplying NIF regimes with all types of high calibre of weapons with modernity speed and long range precision including helicopters gunship which rain with chemical devices of nails and other bladed instruments with brutal intention to wipe out the marginalised people in Sudan but to their unhistorical know – how who are the great sources of wealth in the Sudan. 

Moreover; to pour enough fuel in to the hottest and the most flammable fire, and indeed for Nif Regime to recognize our economic sovereignty or diversity and territorial integrity of our blessed country, owing to the fact that they thought our choice for our political emancipation was just a joke or nightmare, The oil- rich State situated at the Western Upper Nile bank bordering the sisterly embattled State of Southern Kordofan (Nuba Mountains) under captivity in the northern political map  as well as bordering the Contested but constitutionally southern territory of Dinka Ngok chiefdom of Abyei; once dubbed ironically by the parasites in the north as a “Unity State”, meaning it is neither South nor north should the country be divided as it has been the present day reality and thus should no longer be the same again after separation as A UNITY STATE intended by the NIF machinery suiting to their political calculus in terms of economic expansionism a wrong promise of building bridge even at where there is no river at all.

However, for those in Khartoum to be proved wrong for the third time in the history, so that the effect of such proof be beyond reasonable doubt, the economically politicised name known as Unity State should be dropped away and be replaced by the followings of which only one to be chosen based on its historical commonality in line with the presently adopted political culture reflecting the collective will of and approval by the entire stakeholders of that state as follows:-

1. To be a Western Upper Nile State.

2. To be a Liech State

3. To be a Bentiu State

4. To be a Bahr El Naam state

And so on and so forth but it should be one of the above mentioned suggestions which is all-encompassing and where every one or individual feels recognised or defined by it in spirit or letter.

The motive of renaming that strategic location of western Nuer to be “Unity State” by Khartoum ‘s successive Regimes by then, was based not on geographical proximity owing to any kind of its centrality or commonality to Sudanese history but because God Almighty has ever since blessed it with a great lake of expensive oil which outshines the rest of oil sales in the international market thus it did pain and does pain the NIF to relent it without lame excuses for a pure economic reasons which should not hold any water forever.

Finally, the Unity State should be either homogeneously renamed as Western Upper Nile State as it is geographically located or Liech State as it is historically remembered in order to alienate Khartoum dreams far more useless and out of reach for future risk - evading probability or precaution as far as for the sake of reversing our orthodox history in to its most flawless form from Aden to date is concerned.

I am humbly and deliberately calling upon the people of presently robbed Unity State, the state government as well as national statesmen at the RSS level, to stand up and address the issue of giving A Unity State a new and physically fit name which shall have got no political implications in the years to come.

In Christ ‘s name, Arabs are as friendless as snakes and therefore should not be spared anything they have been camouflaging in the southern territory to the maximum of their ingrained political trickery and double dealing.

Let us go back eating using our traditional wooden spoon and renaming ourselves after our ancestral names not the ones have Arabism and Islamism impact and blackmailing.

The Author: is a Devoted South Sudanese residing in South Sudan Capital Juba and can be reached through This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

By Eric Reeves

January 27, 2012 (SSNA) -- What is the role of ignorance in allowing evil to thrive? Can ignorance be a form of acquiescence? When does ignorance of evil become culpable in itself? These are large questions, but ones worth asking of public intellectuals who presume to speak about the nature of evil, and on this basis particular instances of evil.

In his much-reviewed new book Political Evil, political scientist Alan Wolfe attempts to diagnose various forms of political naïveté among those attempting to respond to political evil (as opposed to the evil of individuals). If evil will always be with us, and will always be in some sense incomprehensible, Wolfe wants to argue---in the tradition of Orwell, Arendt, Niebuhr, and others---that we can speak seriously about the meaning of political evil, and work to halt the use of evil for political or ideological gain. He is contemptuous of those who look to international courts of justice or to misguided liberal human rights agendas, and of those who indulge in "indiscriminate" characterizations of atrocity crimes. He is particularly contemptuous of American-led advocacy efforts to respond to large-scale human destruction in Darfur. Indeed, Darfur is his test case for a principled realism, which allows us to diagnose and respond to events in maximally effective fashion.

At the heart of Wolfe's claims is the argument that what occurred in Darfur beginning in early 2003 was not genocide but civil war, an insurgency that prompted a predictable counter-insurgency by the Khartoum regime. Wolfe acknowledged in a roundtable discussion at the New Republic  (March 2009)---in which I and others participated---that he "was not an expert on Darfur," but this confession has not prevented him from picking and choosing among historical and sociological facts and opinions in order to make the case that genocide had not occurred. Comparisons to Rwanda are wholly inappropriate, Wolfe argues in his new book and elsewhere, and responses of the sort required in Rwanda are correspondingly ill-considered when it comes to Darfur.

Wolfe gives no evidence of understanding in any meaningful detail the history of Darfur, or the regime in Khartoum that responded so brutally to the insurgency that had long been in the making. He gives no sense of understanding the nature of the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party, which seized power by military coup in 1989---deliberately aborting the most promising chance for a negotiated peace to end the civil war that raged for twenty-two years, from 1983 - 2005.

This longest civil conflict on the African continent resulted in the deaths of more than two million people, overwhelmingly African civilians in the South and in border regions, and disproportionately women and children. A signature feature of the NIF/NCP conduct during the war was the denial of humanitarian aid to huge conflict areas, including all the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan (in what is now North Sudan). Virtually all students of Sudan agree that this aid embargo in the 1990s, along with a campaign of displacement and extermination against the Nuba people, was genocide. I can think of no authoritative voice arguing otherwise. In his discussion of the question of genocide in Darfur, and the regime that orchestrated the violence there (including widespread, indiscriminate aerial bombardment of civilian targets), Wolfe neglects to mention this clear precedent for genocidal destruction directed against African ethnic groups.

Wolfe also dismisses as simplistic foolishness the distinction between Arab and non-Arab, or "African," tribes in Darfur. The distinction between the two broad groupings is not always clear, for reasons of history, intermarriage, as well as political and economic circumstances. But to deny that there are people who identify primarily as Fur, or Massalit, or  Zaghawa---and specifically as non-Arabs---is to reveal a deep ignorance of the Darfur region, as well as eastern Chad. Moreover, since Arab tribal groups have long been favored by the Khartoum regime (as a tactic for retaining power), the rift between Arab and non-Arab ethnic groups had been growing more intense, especially since what is generally known as the Fur-Arab war of 1987–89. Ethnic animosities were deliberately stoked by Khartoum, and as a result non-Arabs increasingly identified themselves as "African"---and were identified as such by Arab militias. Yet Wolfe has written that "the conflict [in Darfur] has never taken the form of Arabs killing Africans and has not been accompanied by the hate speech associated with Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia.”"Every single human rights investigation of Darfur, whatever its ultimate conclusions about genocide, has found massive evidence of "Arabs killing Africans," and the widespread use of racial hate speech has been continually and authoritatively reported for more than eight years.

Wolfe acknowledges almost none of these well-established facts, nor does he seem aware of the sheer number of organizations that have declared the realities of Darfur to be genocidal: Physicians for Human Rights, Human Rights First, Justice Africa, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Conscience, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, and even the U.S. Congress in 2004. Scores of genocide scholars, international human right lawyers, and other researchers, along with the last two U.S. presidents, have made the same designation. (Although the two largest human rights groups---Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International---have hesitated to use the word “genocide,” opinion has been fiercely divided over the issue within these organizations. Jennifer Trahan, a lawyer formerly with Human Rights Watch, has written masterfully on why the very evidence that HRW itself has assembled constitutes overwhelming evidence of genocide.)

Wolfe contends that the conflict in Darfur was a civil war. The conflict indeed began in civil war, and after the ill-conceived Darfur Peace Agreement of May 2006 violence did not always fall along Arab-African lines. But April 2003 was a turning point. That month, a string of rebel victories in western Sudan culminated with a successful attack on el-Fasher air base in North Darfur, the most important military installation in all of Darfur. Following this humiliating loss---of equipment, of aircraft destroyed on the ground, and the capture of the commanding air force general---the NIF/NCP regime unleashed an avalanche of violence, by its regular and Arab militia forces.

This violence was not directed against the rebels, but rather against the essentially defenseless African civilians and villages (primarily those of the Massalit, Fur, and Zaghawa) that were perceived as the rebels' base of support. Ultimately, hundreds of thousands were killed or died as a result of violence. Millions more were violently displaced---an estimated 2.7 million people, according to the biggest figure offered by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. This figure did not include the almost 300,000 who have fled to eastern Chad, or those displaced but not in refugee camps.  Wolfe nowhere mentions this, nor that Khartoum denied humanitarian assistance to these acutely needy civilians.

The scale of destruction is also a critical issue for Wolfe, yet he is uninformed about the number of civilian dead in Darfur. He cites without qualification, for example, a figure that had been proffered by Alex de  Waal---150 dead per month---and concludes that this scale of human destruction cannot possibly constitute genocide. But that figure of 150 dead per month was based solely on the violent deaths physically confirmed---at the time (2009)---by the incompetent and enormously constrained UN/African Union Mission in Darfur, which had very little access to where fighting was actually occurring. The number does not include those who died from causes directly related to violence, or deaths from disease and malnutrition consequent upon violent displacement in this harsh land. It is a worthless figure.

Wolfe gives no evidence whatsoever of having confronted the vast body of evidence and literature that addresses the question of human mortality to date in Darfur. The minimum credible figure, which omits a great deal of early deaths from violence, comes from a study published two years ago by researchers from Belgium's Center for Research in the Epidemiology of Disasters (The Lancet, January 2010): approximately 300,000. My own assessment, based on a survey of all extant evidence, suggests that the figure is closer to 500,000. Either figure suggests that it cannot be on the basis of numbers that we discount the possibility that genocide has occurred in Darfur.

Beyond arguing that genocide did not occur in Darfur, Wolfe attacks the Darfur advocacy movement---as inconsistent, ignorant, unrealistic, and simply wrong in its conclusions. He argues that it was actually counterproductive insofar as it encouraged the rebel groups to continue fighting in the hopes of Western intervention. Wolfe offers no evidence for this conclusion, because there is none. By the time of the Darfur Peace Agreement the rebels realized that the West would offer nothing more than expedient, deadline-driven diplomacy.

Calls for Western humanitarian intervention had indeed been made, though much earlier than Wolfe acknowledges, and at a time when countless thousands of lives might have been saved. On February 25, 2004 in the Washington Post, I concluded a piece by arguing:

"The international community has been slow to react to Darfur's catastrophe and has yet to move with sufficient urgency and commitment. A credible peace forum must be rapidly created. Immediate plans for humanitarian intervention should begin. The alternative is to allow tens of thousands of civilians to die in the weeks and months ahead in what will be continuing genocidal destruction."

There was no such humanitarian intervention, and over the past eight years several hundreds of thousands have died. The dying continues, but we don't know the full extent of it because mortality and malnutrition data and reports are suppressed by the UN at the behest of the Khartoum regime.

Wolfe would have us believe that by incorrectly characterizing a "civil war" as a genocide, the U.S. human rights advocacy community made appropriate action impossible. Wolfe cites in his New Republic piece comments by Alex de Waal---certainly a Darfur expert---as authority for denying that genocide exists. While true of de Waal’s professed beliefs now, de Waal himself has offered no cogent explanation of why he abandoned his politically unconstrained assessment of Darfur from August 2004:

"This [counter-insurgency campaign in Darfur by Khartoum] is not the genocidal campaign of a government at the height of its ideological hubris, as the 1992 jihad against the Nuba Mountains was, or coldly determined to secure natural resources, as when it sought to clear the oilfields of southern Sudan of their troublesome inhabitants. This is the routine cruelty of a security cabal, its humanity withered by years in power: it is genocide by force of habit."

Furthermore, de Waal and his coauthor Julie Flint found compelling evidence of genocidal intent in their 2005 book, Darfur: A Short History of a Long War:

"The ultimate objective in Darfur is spelled out in an August 2004 directive from [Janjaweed paramount leader Musa] Hilal's headquarters: 'change the demography' of Darfur and 'empty it of African tribes.' Confirming the control of [Khartoum's] Military Intelligence over the Darfur file, the directive is addressed to no fewer than three intelligence services---the Intelligence and Security Department, Military Intelligence and National Security, and the ultra-secret 'Constructive Security,' or Amn al Ijabi."

Hilal, the most notorious of the Arab militia leaders, would be as good as his word, and was present at many "demography-changing" attacks. Here is one as described by the UN's Integrated Regional Information Networks in early 2004:

"In an attack on 27 February 2004 in the Tawilah area of northern Darfur, 30 villages were burned to the ground, over 200 people killed and over 200 girls and women raped---some by up to 14 assailants and in front of their fathers who were later killed. A further 150 women and 200 children were abducted."

All the attackers were Arabs; all the victims were non-Arab or Africans. This attack occurred two days after my warning in the Post. It is one of thousands of examples.

It seems pointless to create a greater compendium of Wolfe's ignorance, his dismaying factual errors, and his finally superficial pronouncements about one of the greatest mass atrocities of the past century---and one that continues to this day in the form of a grim "genocide by attrition." Well over two million Darfuris---overwhelmingly Africans---remain displaced, and humanitarian conditions are extremely precarious. At least one highly informed UN official believes that international humanitarian organizations are permitted to operate only because their potential expulsion offers leverage to the regime, particularly in forestalling international action in the border regions of Blue Nile and South Kordofan, where many hundreds of thousands of people have been recently displaced---and denied all humanitarian assistance by Khartoum. Again, virtually all the victims are Africans.

In a recent interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Wolfe spoke of my writings, in this space and elsewhere, as "arrogant to the point of contempt." I won't presume to characterize my passion in writing about Darfur, but I certainly feel contempt for Wolfe's facile and destructive claims about Darfur. Whatever power his analytic framework in Political Evil has is vitiated by the ignorance demonstrated in his account of Darfur.

Wolfe declares sententiously that "When confronted with political evil, we are better off responding to the 'political' rather than to the 'evil.'" Whatever one thinks of this peculiar bifurcation, it implies our obligation to accept that "moral precision is a precondition for political precision," as one reviewer has remarked.

It is precisely this moral precision that escapes Wolfe. For if what has occurred in Darfur is not genocide but "only" massive crimes against humanity---as all human rights organizations and inquiries of consequence agree---then Wolfe believes an entirely different response is required. A genocide occurred in Rwanda, and thus intervention was warranted, and genocide has not occurred in Darfur, and thus intervention is not warranted. This logic avoids the discriminating political assessment Wolfe believes is necessary in guiding an international response to political evil. One reason that Human Rights Watch has hesitated to describe the Darfur conflict as genocide is precisely that it resists the crude notion that genocide is the only appropriate threshold for robust international action. Wolfe, in a grim irony, ends up personifying the ignorance that prevents appropriate political responses to evil.

Eric Reeves has worked as a Sudan researcher, analyst, and advocate for more than thirteen years. He is author of A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide (2007)

By Hannibal Travis and Samuel Totten

January 27, 2012 (SSNA) -- This week, President Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, Princeton Lyman, warned reporters in South Africa that half a million people risk famine on the border between Sudan and newly-independent South Sudan.  An anonymous State Department official told Canada’s The National that the United States would not watch passively while “100,000 people starve to death.”

After fleeing their homes and villages due to an all-out aerial and ground assault by the Government of Sudan this summer and early fall, approximately 200,000 people in the Nuba Mountains region of Sudan are without adequate food. Starvation is setting in and claiming innocent lives.

The attacks against the Nuba Mountains have wrought extraordinary destruction and hardship on the civilian population, including routine aerial bombing and many executions without trials.  It appears that the government’s intention is to starve civilians to death by denying them food.

Humanitarian officials in the Aida Refugee Camp in South Sudan, which contains some 23,000 people who have fled from the Nuba Mountains, report that 12 percent of the refugees straggling in are suffering from malnutrition. The percentage of malnutrition will only increase as the people of the Nuba Mountains are forced to remain without food.

The people of the Nuba Mountains, disproportionately non-Arabs and Christians in a country insistent on Arabization, were the victims of forced starvation (genocide by attrition) in the early 1990s at the hands of the very same regime in Khartoum that is making them suffer once again, headed by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. President al-Bashir, in fact, is already wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide for the atrocities perpetrated in Darfur, again largely against non-Arabs and “infidels.”

Just as the international community knows that the people of the Nuba Mountains have little to no food reserves, it knows that Khartoum is deliberately preventing humanitarian aid from reaching the Nuba Mountains. And yet, it has done little to ameliorate the situation.

As the people of the Nuba Mountains are forcibly excluded from their lowland villages and farms, their crops are wilting and dying. Even if the people of the Nuba Mountains venture out of the mountains at a later date, they will continue to face life without adequate amounts of food.

Khartoum’s relatively recent attack on the Blue Nile region has resulted in another 100,000 refugees. Those civilians are also facing dire straits. 

Unlike other demands being made by activist organizations, we are not calling on the international community to establish a no -zone at this point; rather, we are advocating a humanitarian mission to prevent the starvation of hundreds of thousands in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile region -- nothing more and nothing less.

The obstruction of humanitarian aid to extremely impoverished and dying civilians is a grave violation of international human rights and humanitarian law.  The international community must not accept such violations.

Given the extraordinary risk to such a vast and vulnerable population, we urge all governments in Africa, as well as the continent's non-governmental organizations, to put more pressure the Government of Sudan to protect the lives of its own citizens.  The African Union, as well as the United States, the European Union, , and the United Nations, should demand that full and unimpeded humanitarian access be granted to civilians in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile State.  To this end, the U.N. Security Council should pass a resolution invoking Chapter VII of the UN Charter to authorize a United Nations mission to protect UN personnel and humanitarian workers, including in particular the 13 organizations banned from much of Sudan in March 2009, such as Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam GB, CARE, Mercy Corps, and the International Rescue Committee.

Sincerely,

Hannibal Travis, Florida International University College of Law And Samuel Totten, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Hannibal Travis is an Associate Professor of Law at the Florida International University College of Law in Miami, Florida.  He teaches and conducts research in the fields of international law and Internet law, and wrote the first comprehensive legal and political history of genocide in the Middle East and North Africa, entitled Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan (Carolina Academic, 2010).

Samuel Totten, a genocide scholar at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, has conducted research in the Nuba Mountains. His latest book, Genocide by Attrition: The Nuba Mountains, Sudan is due out in 2012 (New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers).

The substance of this op-ed has been endorsed by numerous scholars of genocide studies, including: Dr. John Hubbel Weiss, Department of History, Cornell University; Professor Linda Melvern. University of Aberystwyth,Wales; Dr. Dominik J. Schaller, Research Fellow, Karman Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Bern, Switzerland; Dr. Herb Hirsch, Department of Political Science, Virginia Commonwealth University;Dr. Roger W. Smith, Professor Emeritus of Government, College of William and Mary; Dr. Ervin Staub, Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Hon. David Kilgour, Former Canadian Minister of State for Africa; Dr. Edward Kissi, Department of Africana Studies, University of South Florida; Dr. Michiel Leezenberg, Department of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam; Dr. Israel W. Charny, Executive Director, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem, Israel; Dr.Colin Tatz, Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia;

Dr. Issam Mohamed, Professor of Economics (retired), Alneelain University, Khartoum,Sudan; Paul Slovic, Department of Psychology, University of Oregon; Aram Suren Hamparian, Executive Director, Armenian National Committee of America; Rebecca Tinsley, Chair, Waging Peace, London, England; Dr. Greg Stanton, Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University; and Dr. Selma Leydesdorff,  Faculty of Humanities, Department of Arts, Religion and Cultural Sciences, University of Amsterdam; Henry Theriault, Department of Philosophy, Worcester State College, Worcester, MA; Matthias Bjornlund, Historian, Danish Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark;  and Irving Louis Horowitz, Department of Sociology, Rutgers University;

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