Sudan wars seem far from over – The Huffington Post

September 8th, 2011

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/simon-roughneen/sudan-wars-seem-far-from-_b_953395.html

After a murderous almost-six decade forced-marriage with what is now the (relative to before) the rump state of ‘northern’ Sudan, the Republic of South Sudan (RoSS) was founded on July 9 2011, six months after the Texas-sized region voted to secede from what was Africa’s largest state.

The death-toll (over 2 million) and destruction (total) wrought on what is now RoSS during the fighting has been well-documented – if obscured somewhat in the years since 2003 when the Darfur war began. With RoSS taking 3/4′s of what was the old Sudan’s oil with it, independence and its aftermath was always likely to be a fraught affair, even if secession was mandated by a 2005 peace agreement.

There was fighting along the border in January – in the still-disputed Abyei region – as the referendum took place. Both the Khartoum Government and the Juba (then-regional) administration distanced themselves from those skirmishes, putting them down to long-standing local disputes between farmers and herders over grazing and passage rights. (more…)

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Will Freedom of Expression Hold in southern Sudan? – PBS Mediashift

January 27th, 2011

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/01/will-freedom-of-expression-hold-in-southern-sudan026.html

JUBA, SUDAN — “If someone from southern Sudan trusts you, they will tell you enough to write a book,” said Sr. Cecilia Sierra Salcido, a Mexican nun and media entrepreneur who runs Radio Bakhita. “We broadcast a special history series, as so much here has not been written or recorded, and so many people have stories to tell.” (more…)

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Sudan: Blue Nile State Weighs its Future – Voice of America

January 18th, 2011

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/decapua-sudan-blue-nile-18jan11-114124159.html – see audio here.

Sudan’s Blue Nile State did not take part in the just completed independence referendum in Southern Sudan. Technically part of the north, its sympathies often sided with the south during the long civil war. Now, its residents are wondering what their relationship with the Khartoum government will be if the south breaks away.

Irish Journalist Simon Roughneen toured the region while the south voted on succession. (more…)

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Voting ends in southern Sudan referendum – Sunday Tribune

January 16th, 2011

As the south prepares for independence, the borderlands remain volatile and some  feel left out of the political changes taking place

http://www.tribune.ie/news/international/article/2011/jan/16/black-gold-bubbles-beneath-the-blood-red-soil/

Kyeli, Blue Nile State, Sudan – “Soon after we married, my husband was killed during the war”, says Hawa Abdul-Gadr.

Her eyes show a suppressed grief, but her demeanour is purposeful. That said, there is a perceptible sadness – long-kept under wraps but perhaps closer to the surface than she would care to admit.

Eschewing outward self-pity or sentimentalism, she chops her left hand down from her cheek, as if swatting away an invisible spectre. “I am happy now here, we have peace and I hope it stays.”

Hawa spent eleven years in a refugee camp in Ethiopia. The border is just fifty miles away from this village in southern Blue Nile state, but for those long years, home here in Kyeli seemed like a distant dream. “I came back in 2006, after the word spread about peace in the camps.” (more…)

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“I want my child to go to school here” – RTÉ World Report

January 16th, 2011

http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2011/0116/worldreport.html#&autoplay=true - audiostream

Five and six hundred yards long queues form either side of the entrance to polling stations – men on one side, women on the the other. They wait in excitement and euphoria on the first day of polling — here — in what would be the new capital of an independent southern Sudan. The scenes have been repeated all across the region in voting this week to decide whether the region should remain part of Sudan or form the world’s newest country. (more…)

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Suspense in Sudan: Letter from “the land of Cush” – National Catholic Register

January 11th, 2011

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/suspense-in-sudan/

Simon Roughneen in Juba, southern Sudan.

Apologising for delaying the liturgy, U.S. Senator John Kerry paid tribute to the people of southern Sudan, addressing a congregation at St.Teresa’s Cathedral in Juba, the region’s capital. Sen. Kerry is Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and has visited Sudan three times times in recent years on behalf of the Obama Administration. He sat next to Salva Kiir, President of the Government of South Sudan (GoSS) – as the regional authorities here are known. A U.S-backed 2005 peace deal, which ranked as President George W. Bush’s main foreign policy successes, gave the mainly Christian south a degree of self-Government after 22 years of war, causing 2 million deaths, with the Islamist-leaning Government in Khartoum.

Kiir attends Mass here every Sunday, when he is in town, so his presence is no big deal to locals. However Sunday January 9 saw the start of a week-long referendum, with southern Sudanese voting whether to remain part of Sudan, or secede and form their own country (more…)

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Independence – and challenges – loom for southern Sudan – Irish Examiner

January 10th, 2011

http://examiner.ie/world/independence-for-south-sudan-to-present-challenges-141639.html

JUBA , Sudan. The dateline here and now says ‘Sudan’, but later this year it will likely read ‘South Sudan’ or ‘Nile Republic’. Biblical references such as  ’Cushitia’ or ‘Azania’ are also being touted as names for the what will be world’s newest country. Four million voters in southern Sudan are likely to vote to leave Africa’s largest state in a referendum that started early on Sunday.

Just before 8am, I spoke to Charles Juma-Seyis at the end of a 500 yard long queue at Konyo-Konyo polling station in central Juba, the usually low-key and ramshackle would-be capital.  “I don’t mind waiting to vote, we have been waiting more than fifty years for this day”, he said. (more…)

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Election parallels between Sudan and Burma? – The Irrawaddy

April 23rd, 2010

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=18303&Submit=Submit

BANGKOK—Since Gen. Omar al-Bashir’s 1989 coup, Sudan has been run as by a military dictatorship, but not quite as long as Burma, which has been under army rule since 1962.

Still, there are many parallels between the two countries: both are multi-ethnic, poly-religious populations oppressed by a violent elite. Both are prey to a vast state security apparatus funded by natural resource revenues, in turn abetted by close links with China and Russia.

Beijing shields both countries from criticism and action at the UN Security Council, and its investment helps undermine the Western sanctions in place against both regimes. Both regimes stand accused of large-scale human rights abuses and violence against their own citizens, and a Harvard Law School report published in May 2009 drew a direct parallel between violence in western Sudan’s Darfur region and that in eastern Burma. (more…)

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Bad cops, mean streets – Sunday Tribune/VoA/RTÉ World Report

December 13th, 2009

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/africa/west/decapua-sierra-leone-kids-7dec09-78673062.html

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/1213/worldreport.html

http://www.tribune.ie/news/international/article/2009/dec/13/picking-up-the-pieces-of-civil-war-in-sierra-leone/

FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE – “The police stop us all the time. Sometimes they try to take money from us, sometimes they threaten to arrest us. But the usual trick is to check our handbags. They plant some drugs, then tell us to come with them to the station. The only way to get out is have sex with the policeman, otherwise we go to jail.”

Just 20 years old, Maryama* has lived on the ramshackle streets of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, for eight years.

Her father died when she was 10 – possibly from HIV-AIDS, although nobody knows for sure – leaving her mother unable to bring up their three children. This was at the height of Sierra Leone’s civil war, infamous for anti-government rebels who hacked off arms and hands to deter civilians from voting in elections.

Government-allied militias believed that their magic rendered them invisible and invulnerable in battle against the rebels who funded their war with “blood diamonds” smuggled out of the country and sold on at profit. The mainstream diamond industry and its customers turned a blind eye to the suffering caused by the fighting.

Now the country is peaceful and the diamond trade better regulated. The 2007 elections saw an orderly transfer of control to the winning party, and the economy is growing at around 5% a year. War seems a distant memory, brought to mind only by the sight of war amputees on Freetown’s bustling streets. Their arm (and sometimes leg) stumps are a physical testament to what was a notoriously vicious war, fought at close quarters with AK-47s and sharp blades. Around 50,000 people were killed, mostly non-combatants. (more…)

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For Now, Peace in Sierra Leone – ISN

December 11th, 2009

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=110478

Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war is a receding memory, but corruption and poverty need addressing to avoid any relapse

By Simon Roughneen in Freetown for ISN Security Watch

The civil war in Sierra Leone was one of the most violent anywhere in the late 20th century. A death toll of around 50,000 did not tell the full story of a conflict where much of the fighting was carried out at close quarters.

Rebels were funded by diamond exports and supported by Liberian warlord-later-president Charles Taylor – who is now standing trial in The Hague at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Machetes were used to lop off hands and arms as a deterrent against voting; child soldiers were forced to kill family members; women were abducted and raped; cannibalism was a war ritual among some combatants; and foreign mercenaries dotted the land.

Then-president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah declared the war officially over in 2002, after the British Army intervened in 2000 to end eight years of carnage in its former colony. At one stage, despite being only around the same size as Ireland, the country hosted the world’s largest UN peacekeeping mission, with 18,000 blue berets in place.

Today, the country is at peace. A 2007 election saw a peaceful transfer of power from Kabbah’s Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) to the party that was in power back when the war started – the All Peoples Congress (APC), led by Ernest Bai Koroma.

The president was in London recently, where he was joined by former UK prime minister Tony Blair in touting the resource-rich West African state as an investment location. Blair was made an honorary paramount chief by Freetown in acknowledgement of the UK’s intervention, which was decisive in ending the war. (more…)

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