Under the terms of a peace agreement signed in 2005 between northern and southern Sudan, the latter is expected to vote for secession in a referendum in 2011. But the traditional competition between nomadic groups in the south for the best cattle and grazing land has developed into a serious ethnic conflict in recent months, so the region could be too unstable to hold either the elections due next year or the referendum.
The pressure on the Sudanese government to allow a UN peace force into western Darfur to set the basis for a political settlement – similar to southern Sudan’s right to secede after a referendum – is intensifying. The latest push comes from the UN and from a joint effort by Britain and France.
At the end of April, western human rights and charitable bodies organized a series of events to mark the fourth anniversary of the outbreak of fighting in the Darfur region of western Sudan. During this period, Darfur has become a by-word for human tragedy, with the Sudanese government of Omar Bashir being blamed for perpetrating a “genocide” against “African” tribes-people in the region, with the help of the notorious Janjaweed, described as militants belonging to “Arab” tribes, supported and equipped by the Sudanese government.
For some time Sudan has been under great pressure from the UN and the ‘international community’ (led by the US) to grant independence, not merely self-rule, to its constituent regions, such as Darfur. The pressure has already forced Khartoum to grant Southern Sudan self-rule and the right to choose between full independence and membership of an federal Sudanese state, and has induced the rebel groups in Darfur to abandon the peace agreements they signed with Khartoum
What do Sudan and Syria have in common apart from being two Muslim countries that are also members of the Arab League? Each is the victim of mounting and relentless pressure from the West and their Arab allies, the UN and the international media, over their internal and regional policies, which they are required to abandon in the interests of those targeting them...
Sudan is the largest country in Africa, its western region of Darfur alone being larger than France; the “Islamic and Arab” government of president Omar Hassan al-Bashir is financing and arming the Janjaweed– the “Arab” militia which is allegedly ethnically cleansing the “African” tribes in that region...
When Khartoum and the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) signed the Machakos peace deal on July 20, American officials said that they would exert pressure to make the deal stick.
The peace deal signed on July 21 by the Sudanese government and the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), the predominantly Christian rebel group that has been fighting Khartoum for 20 years...
Having bludgeoned the Sudanese government into cooperating with the “war on terrorism”, American officials now appear to believe that they can also bully it into accepting their plan to end the 19-year war between Khartoum and southern Sudanese rebels.
A Texan politician with oil interests and extensive links with both multinationals and Church groups in the US becomes president in Washington...
