Fragile peace may unravel in Southern Sudan

CNN Reports:

By David McKenzie and Ingrid Formanek, CNN
December 9, 2009 9:28 p.m. EST

WALGAK, Sudan (CNN) -- The children of this dusty village rarely see cars or trucks, but they fashion toy airplanes out of mud with paper propellers that turn in a hot, dry wind. It's what they know.

Here in one of the most isolated spots on Earth, cut off from the outside world and surrounded by increasing violence, the children of Walgak and hundreds of thousands of others in Southern Sudan depend on emergency air drops of food to survive.

This is not the peace they had hoped for.

A rare sense of optimism enveloped Walgak and other southern parts of Sudan after a 2005 treaty ended a 21-year-long north-south civil war that killed 2 million people and forced about 4 million others from their homes.

Yet high-ranking Western officials say an increase in tribal violence, pervasive hunger, lack of development and interference from the Khartoum central government in northern Sudan could cast autonomous Southern Sudan into free-fall even as southerners prepare to vote in January 2011 on whether to become an independent nation.

They say violent tribal rivalries could engulf the south and lingering tension with the north could trigger a resumption of the civil war.

The United Nations says more people have been killed in Southern Sudan this year than in the western region of Darfur, where a separate conflict drew international attention, prompted charges of genocide and led the International Criminal Court to indict the Sudanese president for war crimes.

Two attacks in the south in August and September killed more than 250, including 100 women and children. Ethnic violence has displaced nearly 400,000 people in a desolate region already saddled with hunger, disease and isolation.

"For us there is no life. There is fighting," said Rebecca Wal, a southerner who recently lost three of her four children to ethnic violence. "People don't care if we live or die."

Nine of 10 people in the southern parts of Sudan live on less than $1 a day, and one in seven women who become pregnant die from complications, said Lise Grande, the United Nations' humanitarian coordinator for Southern Sudan.

It's a place the size of Texas that has only 30 miles of paved roads, a region where 15-year-old girls are more likely to die in childbirth than finish school.

Just this year, famine has left a million southerners dependent on emergency air drops from the World Food Programme.

The misery comes after generations of war.

Complaints that northerners marginalized and oppressed southerners sparked a civil war that ravaged Sudan from 1955, just as British colonists were winding down their rule, to 1972.

Fighting that raged again from 1983 to 2005 pitted black Africans in the south who follow Christianity or traditional African religions against a northern government dominated by Arab Muslims.

Both sides signed a peace deal in January 2005 that ended the carnage of civil war and gave the south autonomy even as a separate spasm of killing and rape engulfed Darfur.

Yet that fragile peace may be unraveling.

Some southerners blame their former enemies in the north for instigating violence in Southern Sudan. As the south plans to participate in national elections in April, many southerners say the north has hindered access to registration materials, logistical support and voter education.

The north denies those charges, but they're among the reasons that analysts worry about an outbreak of north-south violence in a region already buckling under the weight of corruption, cattle rustling and revenge attacks.

That, coupled with the fragility of the 2005 peace agreement, is why many long-time Sudan watchers and experts fear the country may be slipping toward war.

"A third civil war is very possible," said David Gressley, the United Nations' regional coordinator for Southern Sudan, if the key issues of oil, credible elections and north-south border demarcation aren't resolved.

A recent study documented an "accelerating" flow of weapons to the military forces of both the north and south. The study was published by the Small Arms Survey, a research project at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

Disputes about oil fields and contested boundaries also could trigger conflict. In March 2008, for example, southern forces clashed with northern troops around the disputed oil-rich city of Abyei. That fighting "resulted in the destruction" of the town "and the displacement of between 30,000 and 50,000 people," the U.N. secretary-general said in a statement at the time.

Even if the south manages to avoid more violence between southern tribes or a resumption of war with the north, a vote in favor of independence in 2011 could pose profound problems.

Most southerners were too busy fighting or running for their lives for much of the past two decades to worry much about creating the institutions of a government necessary for a successful state, Grande said.

"We are literally looking at the construction of a state from the ground up," she said. "This is a project that takes decades."

Maj. Gen. Gier Chuang Aluong, the south's minister of internal affairs, acknowledged that the problems are daunting.

"We have been at war for 21 years. The focus was only to fight the war. We have not been focusing on management, leadership training so you can actually establish good governance" he said.

"Every country in the world has passed through this process," he said. "The corruption, the insecurity, it is the process that everyone must pass through -- especially coming from a war background."

Many southerners say they favor independence. They speak of creating a "new Sudan" as a solution to what they describe as a history of being marginalized and oppressed. Unity with the northern-based government remains an option, though Aluong has suspicions about it.

"Unity is never attractive, but at the end of the day, it will not be the leadership -- it will not be the government -- that will determine whether the Southern Sudanese will vote for unity or vote for separation," he said. "It will be a decision that is going to be taken by individual Southern Sudanese."

If you would like to view some of their many videos about this issue, you will them here. That is, if CNN doesn't move their article again.

CNN. I will stop posting the whole article when you decide to leave it where you first posted it. I'm tired of linking to you only to find out that the post has been moved. If the information was important enough to be printed in the first place, it is still important for those who were unaware and wish to be educated on the subject. Thanks.

May you walk with the LORD always, and when you cannot take another step, may He carry you the rest of the way until you can walk along side Him again. Digg!

Indo-Pak arms race

This does not look good, and the place talking about it is CNN [link no longer good]. They were talking of peace a while back, and they still may be. This is not going to help that. No, not at all. Especially since OBL may live in Pakistan.

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Report warns of nuclear arms race by Pakistan, India.

Source: CNN.
June 21, 2007.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Satellite images show that Pakistan is building a nuclear reactor that can produce weapons-grade plutonium, an American watchdog group said Thursday, warning that it could contribute to an atomic arms race with archrival India.

A picture taken June 3 shows work progressing rapidly on the reactor at the Khushab nuclear site, 100 miles southwest of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, the Institute of Science for International Security said.

The development of the reactor and other nuclear-related activities "imply" that Pakistan has decided to "increase significantly its production of plutonium for nuclear weapons," the Washington-based institute said in a report analyzing the images.

A senior official at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Authority said the country was "extending our infrastructure," but declined to address the details of the report.

"We are a declared nuclear state and we are pursuing our nuclear program for peaceful purposes," said the official, who asked that he not be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject. "We are doing it for our national interests."

Pakistan has stated repeatedly that it will develop its secretive nuclear program and maintain an atomic arsenal to deter India, its more powerful neighbor, despite past leaks of sensitive technology to countries including Iran.

The report, co-authored by former U.N. inspector David Albright, said Pakistan may have decided to produce more plutonium for lighter warheads for cruise missiles, or to upgrade weapons aimed at Indian cities.

Most Pakistani nuclear weapons use highly enriched uranium, it noted.

Albright said the work on the reactor shows that the country is trying to improve its nuclear capabilities with a "new generation" of plutonium-based weapons.

Plutonium-based weapons pack more explosive power into smaller, lighter packages than those made with uranium, which Pakistan has been using for years, according to Albright.

"The work on these reactors reflects a Pakistani decision to create a new generation of nuclear weapons. By going plutonium ... we have to interpret that as an attempt to make smaller, more powerful weapons that are going to be more destructive in India," Albright said in a telephone interview.

The Pakistani official declined to comment on what Pakistan might do with extra plutonium.

The report said that, with India also trying to expand its ability to enrich uranium, Pakistan's activities "should be viewed as a sign of an accelerated nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan."

It also accused the U.S. government of soft-pedaling the risk to avoid endangering Islamabad's cooperation against terrorism and a proposed nuclear pact with New Delhi.

"The bottom line for us is that the U.S. isn't doing enough to stop these countries from expanding their nuclear arsenals. They're turning a blind eye," said Albright.

The institute said it used commercially available satellite imagery to conclude that Pakistan was building a third nuclear reactor at Khushab.

A first reactor entered service in 1998, and a second one begun between 2000 and 2002 was still under construction earlier this month, it said in the report. The third and newest reactor has sprung up rapidly just a few hundred yards away, it said.

The images also purportedly show work progressing on a plutonium reprocessing facility at Chashma, 50 miles to the west.

A report by the same institute about the second reactor at Khushab saying it could eventually produce enough fissile material for 50 atomic bombs a year prompted the U.S. government last July to urge Pakistan not to expand its nuclear weapons program.

Pakistan conducted its only nuclear tests in May 1998 after Indian tests earlier that month. India detonated its first nuclear bomb in 1974.

The two countries came close to open conflict in 2002, fueling fear of the world's first nuclear exchange, after terrorists attacked India's Parliament. New Delhi accused Islamabad-backed militants of carrying out the attack, but Pakistan denied the claims. Both countries have since embarked on a stop-start peace process.

In February 2004, Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered to be the father of Pakistan's atomic program, confessed to giving nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf pardoned Khan and U.S. officials regularly praise Islamabad's role in helping prevent nuclear smuggling.

Originally posted @ Love America First-2 because CNN has a bad habit of moving their links. Apparently I was correct to do this.
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Let us hope this does not heat up again.

'A Chance' says PM Olmert

I just got through with a conference with Miri Eisin, Foreign Press Spokeswoman for Israeli PM Ehud Olmert' office, and I have more question than answers, I'm sorry to say. I could not hear the questions being asked of her after her initial press conference, so it may just be a misunderstanding.

There was a meeting yesterday with President Mubarak, PM Abbas, King (or President) Abdullah from Jordan and PM Olmert in the efforts of taking an opportunity out of this madness (the civil war in the Gaza Strip) and turning it into a chance to move forward with the 2 state solution. She kept repeating that PM Olmert, she and the others were not going to allow the terrorists to define them, but that the moderates were going to take control and define themselves and their destiny.

They were going to move forward-cautiously of course-with diplomacy. It is going to be a process with a vision of peace at the end of the rainbow. What happened in Gaza was horrific, but this opens the door to opportunity and they are going to walk through it.

There are three main articles that came up. They are:

1. Abbas fired Hamas' elected officials from the government, and now Abbas is working with an emergency government.

2. There will be 250 Arab prisoners, some will be Fatah, released from Israels prisons. The criteria for their release will be that they must not have blood on their hands and they must admit that Israel is NOT the cause of the suffering for the Arabs in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. They had brought it on by themselves by their own actions, their own choices, their own doing (or lack thereof).

3. Abbas has said to the Arabic world, in Arabic (very important because they sometimes say one thing in English and another in Arabic) that he renounced the violence of Hamas, he believed in a 2 state solution living side by side with Israel in peace, and he recognizes Israel. (I'm not sure of the last one. I can hardly read my notes!)

She also talked about the atmosphere produced so the talks could move forward. She stated that it would be a good idea to widen the scope of the dialogue. They are going to meet again next month, since the new emergency government is only around 10 days old.

Then the questions started. I could not hear the questions, but I could hear the answers. Maybe that is where the confusion comes. The first answer was indeed unique. For the first time, there were no, "Yes, BUT's" in their conversation.

Then she said they would give access to the West Bank! This way they could have freedom of movement. (Do you know who else could have freedom of movement, dear?) They also recognize the emergency government as the ruling government. (How long have we been called occupiers, although the government is in Iraq is elected?) However, access and free movement are very important to human beings. (I just pray it is not a mistake.)

There shall never be a compromise with terrorists such as Hamas and others. As to the money that has been held back due to the Hamas government, that shall be released just as soon as they can both agree on a way that is best for the people's humanitarian needs. There are dozens of truckloads per day being delivered everyday, but the Left press will not write about this. (It bothers me that facts are not disclosed, no matter what the situation.) Also, they both want to make sure the money goes to the moderates and not to the terrorists.

Later in the questioning period, they declared there would not be any benchmarks, ultimatums, or the such. This is what people looking in from the outside do not understand. You cannot do such a thing, especially with a government that is only 10 days old!

At the meeting yesterday, Mubarrak said that what Hamas did was create 'a coup'. Abbas agreed, basically, because he said the same thing at a later date. Abbas also declared it was totally unacceptable. However, it is too soon to expect any elections in the West Bank.

There were questions about trust (many questions). The answer was rather usual. Trust must be built, even if it is with your enemies of old. What alternative is there? (Fight back?)

Iran was mentioned, Syria was mentioned, Russia was mentioned, and I have no answers for you. My fault. I was writing as fast as I could! I did happen to catch one comment. Israel has an economy that surpasses that of the EU! I wish I knew those numbers. Now that's something new I could really sink my teeth into.

Let us pray for Israel and her neighbors countrymen and women. (Notice I did not say governments?) Pray for peace, understanding, forgiveness and readiness.Let us also pray that Israel realizes that the more the give, the more the Arabs will consider this weakness. I know most of the Israelis have hearts of peace, and they want the war to stop. Sometimes you have to have take other paths, sometimes you don't. Let us pray this is one of those times you don't, but if it is? Let us pray they have the chutzpah! (Yes, I am an Israel supporter. You can't even sue me! Hahaha.)

H/t: Israel Project.