Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete during the 8th EAC summit in Arusha. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Published: 20 Jan 2014 Filed: 20 January 2014
Africa: Ugandan army helping South Sudan fight rebels as UN warns of war crimes.
Americas: Federal troops battle with gangs and vigilantes for control over the Mexican state of Michoacán.
Asia and Pacific: Japan rebuts rumours that President Shinzo Abe is seeking to revise history textbooks.
Polar regions: New US Navy Arctic strategy calls for more icebreakers.
Africa
Ugandan army helping South Sudan fight rebels as UN warns of war crimes
Uganda has issued a statement about its forces assisting the South Sudanese Army in its fight against rebels. On 15 January, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni admitted for the first time helping South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir fight the rebels. Museveni stated that Ugandan soldiers helped defeat rebel forces outside of Juba on 13 January. On 16 January, Uganda’s military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Ankunda, announced that Ugandan troops were engaged in efforts to drive rebel forces from Bor, a strategically important town near the capital, Juba.
Border clashes and insecurity along the border between Western Bahr El Ghazal and South Darfur have affected thousands of people in Raja County, causing displacement and suffering, according to the county executive.
Most of the inhabitants of Radom and Sira Malaka bomas have moved toward Fireka Boma, south of Raja, where they are facing lack of health services and food.
Raja County Commissioner Rizik Dominic told Radio Tamazuj in a phone interview on Tuesday that more than 10 thousand people in Raja County are lacking basic services as a result of border clashes in May. He explained that the situation in Fireka is worsened by fear of attacks attributed to the Lord’s Resistance Army, which has driven a number of South Sudanese away from the western border.
He explained that the local services are not enough for such a large number of people. Additionally, a number of Darfuri refugees have been living in Raja County for many years.
The commissioner explained that the bad road conditions are not allowing aid to reach Fireka and other areas.
He added that the local government is trying to link up with NGOs in order to find other ways to support the citizens in these emergency situations
Mr. Dominic appealed to NGOs to provide helicopters to deliver humanitarian aid while he also called on the government to improve the road conditions.
The Commissioner further said that at the moment the situation at Raja County’s border is unpredictable and Khartoum is still flying more soldiers into the border areas.
Map of Western Bahr el Ghazal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By Claudio Gramizzi and Jérôme Tubiana, 11 July 2012
Amid claims of declining violence and wider regional transformations, the Darfur conflict has all but vanished from the international agenda since 2010. Virtually unnoticed by the international community, the conflict has moved into a new phase, in which the Government of Sudan has shifted away from using Arab proxy militias only to rely on newly formed (and newly armed) non-Arab proxies.
‘Forgotten Darfur‘ documents how this development has fundamentally changed the ethnic map of eastern Darfur, drawing on previously latent tensions between non-Arab groups over land, ethnicity, and local political dominance–and generating some of the most significant ethnically directed violence since the start of the conflict in 2003.
The ‘new’ war in eastern Darfur, which erupted in late 2010 and early 2011, has pitted non-Arab groups against other non-Arabs; specifically, government-backed militias drawn from small, previously marginalized non-Arab groups–including the Bergid, Berti, and Tunjur–deployed against Zaghawa rebel groups and communities.
‘Forgotten Darfur’ also reports how patterns of arms supplies to Sudanese government forces and proxy militias in Darfur have been almost entirely unimpeded by the international community, including the ineffectual UN arms embargo on Darfur. The Sudan Air Force has continued to move weapons into Darfur with complete impunity; it supported ground attacks with aerial bombardment in all of Darfur’s states during 2011 and in West and North Darfur during 2012, despite the UN Security Council’s prohibition on such offensive aerial operations since 2005.
The report also documents how transformations, regime change, and realignments in Chad, Libya, and South Sudan have not fully removed either the mechanisms of the motives for cross-border flows of arms, personnel, or political support to Darfur’s armed actors. In particular, ‘Forgotten Darfur’ explores relations between rebels and communities in western South Sudan and South Kordofan, and their potential to draw the Darfur conflict into much larger North-South confrontations. Increased linkages between Darfur’s rebel groups and the SPLM-N in South Kordofan, and the overlooked potential for conflict on the Darfur-Bahr al Ghazal border, are also highlighted.
Counter-terrorism: At the Security Council’s high-level debate on Counter-terrorism today, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moonsaid today he hoped Member States will decide to create the position of aUN Counter-Terrorism Coordinator to promote better coordination, collaboration and cooperation among all players.
Mr. Ban told the Security Council, during its debate on threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts, that terrorism is a significant threat to peace and security, prosperity and people, and the global community continues to pursue a robust and comprehensive response.
Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Councilsays international terrorism is increasingly motivated by intolerance and extremism and its perpetrators are increasingly resorting to kidnapping for ransom and coordinating acts with organized crime. A presidential statement approved by the council Friday also expressed concernat the growing use of the internet and new information and communications technologies by terroriststo recruit, incite, finance and prepare their illegal activities.
South Sudan: The United Nationsannounced today that U.N. High Commissioner for Human RightsNavi Pillay will visit South Sudan for four days starting Tuesday. Pillay is to meet with South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir and other top government and civil leaders beginning Tuesday. She’ll discuss the risk to civilians caught up in the hostilities between both countries.
Iran: A group of independent UN experts today condemnedtheongoing arrests and harsh sentencing of human rights defenders in Iran, and urged the Government to ensure they are provided with adequate protection. Along with fellow experts, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, Ahmed Shaheed voiced particular concern about the situation of Nargess Mohammadi, whose state of health is reportedly extremely fragile.
DR Congo: The UN refugee agency is helpingmore than 20,000 people who have fled fighting between government forces and renegade troops in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in recent days and found shelter in areas near Goma, the capital of North Kivu province. According to UNHCR field staff, people are still heading toward Goma and its environs from their homes in the affected Masisi and Walikale territories, located west and north-west of Goma, but the flow has eased slightly. The refugee agency has registered 10,300 people at a spontaneous site 25 kilometres from Goma, and 9,000 in Mugunga III, one of 31 UNHCR-run settlements for IDPs in North Kivu.
UN Youth Forum: The creation of green jobs is essential to ensure a sustainable future, United Nations officials stressed today at a forum held at the Organization’s Headquarters in New York aimed at giving young people a platform to voice their concerns, experiences and ideas to tackle youth unemployment.
The forum, whose theme is “Empowering Youth with Better Job Opportunities,” brought together young delegates and entrepreneurs, students and representatives of youth NGOs. Participants took part in two interactive dialogues, the first one focusing on education and training, and the second on the creation of green jobs and the conditions needed to create them.
In her address to participants, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro stressed that youth are mobilizing like never before and that their ideas can help countries achieve their sustainable development objectives.
Right of Indigenous Peoples: A United Nations fact finder surveying conditions of Native Americans and Native Alaskans says he will recommend in his report that some of their lands are returned.
James Anaya has been meeting with tribal leaders, the administration and Senate members over 12 days to assess U.S. compliance with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He plans several suggestions in his report, likely due out this fall. Anaya says land restoration would help bring about reconciliation. He named the Black Hills of South Dakota as an example. The hills are public land but are considered sacred land by Native Americans.
Oil and Gas Concessions in Sudan and South Sudan – 2004 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
WASHINGTON – The United States called Monday on Sudan to agree to an emergency aid plan in its southern war zone as officials voiced growing alarm over imminent food shortages and a rising flow of refugees.
The United Nations, Arab League and African Union have proposed to Sudan a mission to deliver aid to its states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, where fighting broke out last year despite the independence of nearby South Sudan.
“We’ve pressed very, very hard for that,” Princeton Lyman, the US special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, said of the aid plan.
“There are ways to get food in — other ways — but they are not sufficient to the scope of the problem,” he told reporters on a conference call. “We think it’s vital and we think it’s a very high priority.”
The conflict made international headlines last month when actor George Clooney was arrested outside Sudan’s embassy in Washington as he demanded an end to the offensive. The US Senate last week passed a resolution calling on Sudan to allow immediate humanitarian access to the restive states.
Christa Capozzola, a senior official at the US Agency for International Development, said Monday that the situation was “very serious” with 200,000 to 250,000 people close to running short of food in South Kordofan and similar shortages expected by August in Blue Nile.
Some 140,000 refugees have fled the two states, mostly to South Sudan which is putting a major burden on the young and impoverished nation, said Catherine Wiesner, a State Department official.
Some 4.7 million people in South Sudan are already facing hunger this year of which at least one million are projected to be “severely food insecure,” Wiesner told the conference call.
“Humanitarian conditions are understood to be deteriorating in both conflict zones and so additional arrivals are expected in the coming months,” she said.
“With these numbers, obviously the (humanitarian) agencies remain in a race against time,” she said.
In South Sudan, more than fifty people, mostly women and children, were killed on Wednesday in continuing tit-for-tat attacks and cattle raids between the Lou Nuer and the Murle people in the state of Jonglei.
Aid agencies say more than 60,000 people have fled the violence and are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.
It is possible that Nigeria and Somalia will each be divided into multiple countries during this decade or the next. I could not be surprised if it happens sooner than later. Each country is in the midst of violence that was primarily perpetrated by terrorist groups. In each case the central government is ineffectual in managing security and delivering the needed services to the poorer districts. If we do witness the partitioning of these countries we will be well on our way to seeing the redrawing of many national boundaries on the continent.
Over the past sixty years African countries have struggled to gain independence from their colonial rulers. That process took close to fifty years. South Africa was the last to achieve such a righteous milestone. Yet, this independence was for countries who borders were set by the colonialists and looked very little like the kingdoms and ethnic domains recognized by Africans for centuries. The continent may well be on the verge of a redrawing of the demarcations of sovereign states to more accurately represent the realities of the continent. It could be said that the movement to throw off colonial borders may have begun with the division of Ethiopia, resulting in Ethiopia and Eritrea, followed by Sudan splitting into Sudan and South Sudan. These divisions were preceded by violent conflicts and referendums.
Al-Shabaab claims to be a jihadist group linked to al-Qaeda with the agenda of placing all of Somalia under Sheria. Few analysts would differ with that description. The ability of Al-Shabaab to take control and place all of present day Somalia under Sharia is questionable. In fact the current struggle in Somalia has spawned several ad-hock meetings of diaspora Somalians who have drawn up plans that would result in Somalia being divided into three countries separated primarily along ethnic or clan lines.
Boko Haram has its genesis and base of operation in the poor, Muslim north of Nigeria. They have bombed Christian houses of worship, government and United Nations instillations and recently demanded that government troops and southerns leave the north. Their terrorist operations have brought Nigeria to the brink of civil war. Read the rest of this entry »
The Roman Gate 