Deciding peace & justice in Northern Uganda – ISN
July 13th, 2006
Ugandan government and brutal LRA looking end a twenty-year conflict?
By Simon Roughneen in Nairobi
People made homeless by LRA attacks queue for NGO ration cards (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Two weeks ago, the reclusive leader of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) gave an unprecedented television interview from an undisclosed location in the Congolese jungle, close to the border with Sudan and Uganda. Joseph Kony denied charges leveled against him by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has indicted him and four other LRA members for crimes against humanity and war crimes, saying “How can I kill the eye of my brother?”
Kony’s budding openness to the outside world has had ramifications beyond media interviews. Even though they have been postponed, peace talks were set to begin 12 July between an LRA delegation and the Ugandan government in the southern Sudanese town of Juba. The talks, if they had happened, would have been hosted by the former Sudanese rebel group known as the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), under their current role as the lead member of the regional Government of South Sudan (GoSS).
Whatever the catalyst for the new-found willingness of both sides to attempt to forge a deal, the two-decade-long conflict has left a legacy of abduction, death, displacement and failed peacemaking attempts that will occlude the latest process. A simmering dispute between the ICC and the Ugandan government may also have an impact, with the ICC stating that the Ugandans cannot override the indictments with a contradictory amnesty and political process. The Ugandan government sees its legal and political decision-making as a prerogative of national sovereignty. (more…)
Ahern must now see what’s needed in Darfur – The Sunday Tribune
July 9th, 2006
With Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern in Darfur last week, his visit should convince him that a UN peacekeeping force is needed in Darfur. However he must now persuade Sudanese allies at the UN, writes Simon Roughneen
Children peer out behind camp-fence (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
In Darfur, everything: life, livelihoods, political progress, security, even humanitarian access for aidworkers – is on edge right now. GOAL cannot now reach some of the clinics and feeding centres established in outlying areas, serving some the 2 million Darfurians displaced by conflict and Janjaweed depredations. For aidworkers too, work remains balanced on a fine edge for now, weeks after the peace agreement. (more…)
The Dying Darfur Peace Agreement – ISN
June 29th, 2006
El-Fasher, Darfur - Despite the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) by the Sudanese government and one rebel faction on 5 May, tensions remain high in the vast and remote western region. Two rebel factions have not signed the agreement, and fragmentation among signatories and refuseniks alike is affecting security on the ground.
Meanwhile, a diplomatic row over a planned UN takeover of the Darfur peacekeeping duties from the African Union (AU) hangs over the 1-2 July AU Summit in Banjul, where AU states and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will seek to persuade Khartoum to accept a UN force.
Darfur's camps stretch out across the hot, dusty Sahel (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
It has been almost two months since the signing of the DPA in Abuja, Nigeria. The peace deal was controversial from the outset, with then-US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick present to move the negotiations along by exerting much pressure on all sides to sign the agreemen
Lack of security on the ground undermines aid agency efforts to reach people in camps with vital food, health, water, health and sanitation provisions, while the looming rainy season will worsen the already diminished humanitarian access to Darfur’s three million conflict affected. (more…)
Despite peace accord, Darfur lacks security -VoA
June 27th, 2006
listen to the interview courtesy of voanews.com
Security continues to worsen in Darfur despite a peace accord on May 5th. As a result, many people in need are not receiving humanitarian aid. From the town of Kutum, Simon Roughneen spoke to VOA English to Africa reporter Joe De Capua about the lack of security there.
“Security has always been pretty precarious in our part of Darfur as it is for most of the region. But since the signing of the Darfur peace agreement conditions have actually worsened on the ground. As you know, the peace agreement was just signed by one rebel faction. There were two. There are now three.” Two factions have refused to sign. (more…)
Refugees dream remains out of reach – Business Day/Opendemocracy
June 26th, 2006
http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-africa_democracy/darfur_peace_3677.jsp
at FATA BORNO CAMP IN NORTHERN DARFUR
Life in Darfur's camps is rudimentary. Cooking is done over a fire, but gathering firewood puts women at risk (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
HARIAN, a mother of five, smiles and chats as nutrition staff from the Dublin-based charity Goal wrap a measuring tape around 14-month-old Insaf’s arm. Harian takes the indicator cards entitling her family to supplementary feeding at the nearby clinic at the Fata Borno camp for conflict-displaced people in north Darfur. Insaf is underweight and the whole family is technically malnourished. This camp has been their home for two-and-a-half years.
On May 5 this year, the Darfur Peace Agreement was signed between the Sudanese government and one faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLA), led by Minni Minawi. That faction is militarily more potent than the rest of the SLA, but is itself splintering in the wake of the peace agreement. (more…)
High Stakes in Somalia – ISN
June 20th, 2006
By Simon Roughneen in Nairobi for ISN Security Watch
Somalia Islamist militia members rest next to a truck carrying an anti aircraft gun that they have seized from the warlords. Photograph: Mohamed Sheikh Nor/AP
With allegations and denials abounding that Ethiopian army regulars crossed into Somalia on 17 June, the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) -Islamic Court Union (ICU) talks scheduled for Yemen this week will take on added bite.
And with a UN official suggesting that arms are flowing into Somalia in contravention of an embargo, security in Somalia and in the Horn of Africa region could be set to deteriorate in the coming days and weeks.
Militias loyal to the ICU wrested control of Mogadishu on 5 June from secular warlords widely viewed as backed by Washington, after a three-month battle that cost upward of 300 lives. The US sees the ICU as being a potential seedbed for Islamic terrorism.
Reports suggest that the Islamist militias are debating an attack on the TFG outpost of Baidoa, torpedoing the talks scheduled for Yemen and foreshadowing an ICU take-over of Somalia.
The terror threat: overblown or mishandled?
Somali Islam has historically been a Sufi-mystical variant, with scant regard for politicization or militancy. Somali society is renowned for its openness and oral culture, which makes the sort of foreign or ill-fitting extremism that wahhabist or al-Qaida operatives promote difficult to conceal.
However, terrorist attacks have emanated from Somali soil. (more…)
No peace in Sudan – ISN
June 8th, 2006
Since the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) on 5 May, there has been some optimism that real peace could return to Sudan’s Darfur region, but that optimism is fading fast, and it now appears that the UN peacekeeping force due to take over from African Union (AU) peacekeepers in October will not be allowed into the country
Men awaiting their turn to see doctor at IDP camp (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
After meeting on Tuesday with a UN delegation in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir argued vigorously against any UN force.
With Russia and China providing powerful patronage at the UN Security Council, the prospect of an effective UN mission in Darfur is slim. There are already 10,000 UN peacekeepers in southern Sudan, deployed after the January 2005 peace deal between the Sudanese government and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).
Now the SPLM/A is in a Government of National Unity with its erstwhile opponents, the governing Arab-dominated National Congress Party (NCP). However, Sudan’s foreign minister, the SPLM/A’s Lam Akol, has been unable to persuade al-Bashir that a UN force is needed in Darfur – where between 200,000 and 400,000 people have been killed since a local uprising was met with a crushing counter-insurgency campaign by the Sudanese Armed Forces, and a deadlier scorched earth campaign targeting Darfurian civilians by Arab nomad militias called the Janjaweed.
This latest diplomatic failure comes after the one apparent success in Darfur’s recent troubles. On 5 May, the Darfur Peace Agreement was signed by the Sudanese government and a faction of the Darfur-based Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) led by Minni Minawi. (more…)
Influence Anxiety: China in Africa – ISN
May 15th, 2006
By Simon Roughneen in Nairobi for ISN Security Watch (15/05/06)
Chinese investment in Africa, 2005 (risingpowers.foreignpolicyblogs.com)
“Business is business. We try to separate politics from business. Secondly I think the internal situation in the Sudan is an internal affair, and we are not in a position to impose upon them,” Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong said in an interview with the New York Times on 22 August 2005.
In the Mao era, China dealt with Africa as part of a show of solidarity with countries that shared some of China’s experience of Western oppression. However, these links were fostered in an ideologically charged time, when China sought to display affinity with other socialist countries and to demonstrate an almost nihilistic aversion to the institutions and norms of international relations. Although it joined the UN in 1971, any real alteration of China’s foreign policy did not come until the Deng-initiated reforms post-1979.
Even then reform was piecemeal and cautious, predicated on careful changes to China’s domestic political economy, which allowed for marketization of the economy while retaining a totalitarian state. According to Christopher Alden, senior lecturer in International Relations at the London School of Economics, in an article for YaleGlobal magazine, China’s foreign policy changed in 1993 when it shifted from being an oil exporter to being an oil importer. (more…)
Hard to believe your eyes: drought in Kenya and Ethiopia – OpenDemocracy
May 15th, 2006
http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-africa_democracy/drought_3542.jsp
Driving through northern Kenya’s drought-affected famine district as the midday sun lifts temperatures to over 40 degrees centigrade, pools of water shimmer in the distance, laying between dessicated trees and shrubs, with the mountains of Turkana peering through the haze.
Mirage in Turkana, northern Kenya (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
But these aren’t pools. There is no water here. By a cruel irony, this parched land taunts its thirsty and hungry people with distant images – mirages – of glistening oases in the distance. There hasn’t been rainfall since 2004, according to Akwari Nubukwi, an elder in the village of Kanigipur in the southern Turkana district. “We use the water from the riverbed, where we dig to find it. But it is just a little water, and even the goats and dogs drink from it”, he told me.
The locals who are now suffering without water, whose animals – their main food and livelihood source – are dying, know better to be caught out by the illusion of water. Akwari adds: “Many animals have died. We haven’t had rain for a year. People are losing their animals. We are hungry now.” (more…)
Cattle dying, people next? – HeraldAM
May 2nd, 2006
Leaning on his walking stick, Shamsidin Mohamed flicks his fingers up and down in turn, alternating between whispering and counting out loud in his native Somali.
By the time he has finished, he tots-up 23 cattle dead out of a herd of 70. It is a catastrophic loss. These herders are dependent on their animals for food and income. No agriculture is possible in such a barren, rock-strewn, sun-dried place, more lunar than earthly in appearance.
“This is very dangerous here. Just a little rain, but no pasture for the animals. Most people can’t count the dead animals. We have to move many kilometres every day looking for pasture, water. The animals are weak, they die in the bush, sometimes people don’t know when and where
Emaciated cattle in southern Oromo region in drought-affected Ethiopia, clse to Kenyan border (Simon Roughneen)
The vital winter rains failed across southern Ethiopia, northern Kenya and much of Somalia, leaving Shamsidin and 8 million others in this vast desolate region balancing precariously between subsistence and destitution.
Here, with people utterly dependent on herding animals for food and income, destitution means potential starvation. With their skin stretched taut over protruding ribcages and calvicles, the cattle are emaciated, shuffling along with their heads bowed, as if lacking the strength to see where the herder is taking them. (more…)
