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
Fata Borno camp is a bleak, sun-baked camp housing around 10000 IDPs (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.
The more popular faction of the SLA, led by Abdul Wahid Mohamed Nur, remains outside the agreement. So too does the Justice and Equality Movement, militarily powerless and lacking grassroots support in Darfur, but with a pan-Sudanese agenda and links to opposition forces in other regions of the country.
The Sudanese government of President Omar al-Bashir is more aware than most of the structural flaws in the agreement. It recently ordered a suspension of the work of the United Nations (UN) in Darfur after protesting that a dissident commander of Minawi’s SLA, Suleiman Jamous, was transported in a UN helicopter (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
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). (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
Mirage in Turkana, northern Kenya, Feb 06 (Simon Roughneen)
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.
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.”
But the downside of the much-needed rain can be seen elsewhere in northern Kenya. Move east towards Somalia, and flash-floods from the rains that have fallen there have displaced thousands, washed away roads, brought about water-borne diseases, and stalled aid efforts. (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.
Emaciated cattle in southern Oromo region in drought-affected Ethiopia, clse to Kenyan border (Simon Roughneen)
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
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.
And with livestock death and high rates of malnutrition visible among people, pre-famine conditions prevail in Ethiopia. And in northern Kenya and Somalia. (more…)
‘No water, no rain – we can’t feed the animals’ – Village
April 26th, 2006
Simon Roughneen in Moyale, Kenya-Ethiopia border.
At least five million people are chronically food-dependent in Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation. In the Somali and Oromo regions, failed rains mean failed water sources for animals and for people. Failed rains mean no pasture or foliage for the cattle, camels, donkeys and goats that people depend on for food and livelihoods.
Livestock death is regarded as a precursor of famine (Simon Roughneen, southern Ethiopia)
Prices for animals plummet, meaning that sale prices cannot do much to help people purchase food and other essential items. As animals die, people are left vulnerable. Mohamed Yusuf, a herder moving his animals on the Moyale-Yabelo road in southern Ethiopia, said: “This is dangerous for us. No water, no rain. We can’t feed the animals. Twenty one of my cattle have died. I have no other source of income. And now I can’t sell any animals. The price is one-fifth of the real value before the drought.”
And although a little rain has fallen on the parched land, it is just that: a little. And the rains due for the next two months will likely be insufficient in any case. But the rain brings its own problems. A poisoned chalice poured from the sky, rain makes animals and people, already weakened from malnutrition, prone to diseases such as measles. And when rivers and lakes are watered again, malaria becomes a serious threat, and what is left of northern Kenya’s infrastructure has been threatened by flash floods.
In Somalia – a non-existent state is prey to warlords and gangsters, making delivery of aid difficult at best and downright dangerous at worst. And recent weeks has seen dozens killed in cattle-raiding in northern Kenya, as resources are depleted and the stakes are raised for men with guns.
And with pre-famine conditions rife in the drought-affected region, there is not much time left if another full-scale famine hits Ethiopia, and across the horn of Africa. (more…)
Drought intensifies in Horn of Africa – RTÉ Morning Ireland
April 5th, 2006
http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0405/morningireland.html
Darfur: local conflict, international chaos – ISN
April 5th, 2006
Simon Roughneen in El-Fasher, Darfur
A senior Chadian general died in a battle with rebels near the Chad-Sudan border, close to the Darfur region, on 30 March. It was the latest sign that the three-year-old Darfur conflict is set to degenerate in the coming months, and could also lead to the destabilization of Chad and a Sudan-Chad war.
Since February 2003 – when Darfur rebels known as the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), joined later by the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), attacked government positions in the western region – between 200,000 and 400,000 people have died from conflict or related causes, and over two million others have been displaced into refugee camps in Chad or Darfur. (more…)
“Our Goats are our Gardens” – Evening Herald
March 24th, 2006
Ekiru Lotiayan walked for two days with his herd of 35 goats just to reach this dried-up river bed near Lokichar in northern Kenya’s Turkana district.
6 months previously, this whole area was a freshwater lake. Now locals have dig down into the bed to find water (Simon Roughneen, n.Kenya, March 2006)
He points to a mountain on the horizon,
“That is my home. My family wait there for me to come back”, he tells us.
We have been suffering with the hunger for many years. In Turkana, we have not had proper rains for two years. Our animals are dying. And we are suffering. We need our animals to live. We have no other way.”
This part of northern Kenya is home to 600,000 people, out of an estimated 11 million people across eastern Africa that are affected by drought and food shortages. 3.5 million of those are in Kenya, east Africa’s wealthiest country. Elsewhere, 2.6 million Ethiopians and 1.7 million Somalis are vulnerable.
The area where north-eastern Kenya, southern Somalia, and Ethiopia share borders is especially badly affected. Lack of infrastructure, remoteness, marginalisation, and insecurity combine to not only undermine local people’s ability to deal with the harsh landscape and arid conditions, but hinder whatever aid effort can be mounted.
Ekiru’s goats scrimmage around a freshly-dug pit in the riverbed. After cutting 7 feet into the surface, the underground water welled up. Now a 10 foot X 7 foot pool of brown stagnant water is lapped-up avidly by the thirsty animals.
He says, “there is only one borehole within twenty miles. I come here because there are too many people looking for water everywhere. Sometimes there is fighting.” (more…)
