Sudan. 'Humanitarian nightmare' happening

 

Whilst the world is focused on the horrors in the major conflagrations presently taking place in the world which are affecting thousands of innocent children and adults, there are other ongoing frightful events taking place.

‘The armed conflict in Sudan between the military and rival paramilitary groups has killed up to 9,000 people and forced over 5.6 million others to flee their homes in the past six months, the UN said on 15 October.

“Half a year of war has plunged Sudan into one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history,” Martin Griffiths, UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said in a statement, adding that “25 million people are in need of aid.”

Intense fighting broke out in the African nation’s capital, Khartoum, on April 15 after months of tensions between Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) chief General Abdel-Fattah Burhan and the commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

The fighting has spread to other parts of the Sahel nation, including the already conflict-torn western Darfur region, where Governor Khamis Abdullah Abakar was assassinated in mid-June for allegedly accusing the RSF of genocide.

According to Griffiths, “civilians – particularly in Khartoum, Darfur, and Kordofan – have known no respite from bloodshed and terror for the past six months.”

“Horrific reports of rape and sexual violence continue to emerge, and clashes are increasingly taking place along ethnic lines, particularly in Darfur,” the UN humanitarian chief added.

Last month, the UN and the World Health Organization said that repeated attacks on hospitals and medical teams in Sudan had worsened disease outbreaks and fatalities.

They claimed that between mid-May and September, more than 1,200 children under the age of five died in refugee camps in Sudan’s White Nile state as a result of a lethal combination of a suspected measles outbreak and severe malnutrition. Health facilities have been overwhelmed due to a lack of staff, life-saving medicines, and critical equipment, the UN and WHO added.

On Sunday, Griffiths said at least 45 aid workers had been killed or detained since the conflict began, and that “almost all of them are national staff.”

The UN has urged Sudan’s warring factions to comply with international humanitarian law and to protect civilians, allow aid, and recommit to dialogue to end the conflict.

In August, RSF chief Dagalo expressed a desire to reach a long-term ceasefire agreement with Burhan as part of a strategy to end the conflict and build a “new Sudan.” The RSF proposal was rejected by the army chief, who stated that he would not “make deals with traitors.”’

Also see article in the Guardian 3 October.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/oct/03/sudan-conflict-like-planning-for-the-apocalypse-say-aid-workers

Is anyone seriously giving any thought to the question, won’t someone think of the children? Children all across the world are increasingly victims of conflicts and the capitalist system. How much longer are we all prepared to let that continue?

As the writer of the Socialist Standard article (below) articulates, this is insanity and ‘The real trouble for the people of the Sudan is the profit system, and the only future which can hold anything worth while for them—and for everyone else—is Socialism all over the world.’’

Children's deaths in the Sudan

‘More than 1,200 children under the age of five died in refugee camps in war-torn Sudan between mid-May and September as a result of a lethal combination of a suspected measles outbreak and severe malnutrition, the United Nations and the World Health Organization have said.

The deaths occurred in Sudan’s White Nile state, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and WHO said in a joint statement reiterating their concern about the “worsening” health situation in the African country as a result of fighting between rival army groups since April.

Over 3,100 suspected cases of measles and high malnutrition, as well as more than 500 suspected cases of cholera, have been reported in other parts of the country, according to the UNHCR teams.

Health facilities are overwhelmed because of shortages of staff, life-saving medicines, and critical equipment, the organizations said, adding that repeated attacks on hospitals and medical teams have exacerbated service delivery challenges, worsening disease outbreaks and fatalities.

“…dozens of children are dying every day – a result of this devastating conflict and a lack of global attention. We can prevent more deaths, but need money for the response, access to those in need, and above all, an end to the fighting,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said local health workers, with assistance from the WHO and its partners, are making every effort under “very difficult conditions” to prevent more fatalities and the escalation of outbreaks.

“They desperately need the support of the international community to prevent further deaths and the spread of outbreaks. We call on donors to be generous and on the warring parties to protect health workers and access to health for all those who need it,” Tedros insisted.

The conflict that erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on April 15 has killed more than 7,000 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

Last month, (August) aid agency Save the Children reported that at least 498 children in the North African country, including two dozen babies at a state orphanage, had died as a result of food shortages and the closure of nutrition centres caused by fighting.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva on Tuesday, the UN children’s agency (UNICEF) spokesman James Elder estimated that thousands of newborns will die across the war-torn country by the end of the year.

“Every month 55,000 children require treatment for the most lethal form of malnutrition, and yet in Khartoum less than one in 50 nutrition centres is functional,” Elder was quoted by AFP as saying.’

The Future of the Sudan

‘Commentary on the recent coup d'état in the Sudan has been curiously limited. It is true that the seizure of power in mid-November by a military council was accomplished in unspectacular bloodless fashion; nevertheless, the overthrow of a government in so close proximity to the centre of recent world troubles ought, one thinks, to have made bigger news. Even the serious informational papers had not much to say. The Observer provided only 26 column-inches about it in two issues and the Manchester Guardian, though it gave most of all, did so largely in reference to the northern cotton market.

The reason is not hard to see. Events are quickly told, but the commentary on them must depend chiefly on their consequences—and the consequences of the Sudan happening are not yet apparent. The new government is politically unrevealed so far, and what fresh relationship may arise between the Sudan and the western world is still unknown. General Abboud may take the stage as a second Nasser to be hissed for a foxy schemer from the galleries of the west, or contrariwise as the golden-haired lad bearing freedom’s banner. For that, we must wait and see.

What is much more to the point is to ask what has happened and why. Briefly to go over recent events, the coup was announced on November 17th. The coalition government of Abdullah Khalil was known to be on its way out. Its two factors, the People’s Democratic Party and the Umma party, were in disagreement over the Sudan’s relations with Egypt: mainly, it is said, over fresh Egyptian plans for the Aswan High Dam made in the light of the proferred Russian loan. The new régime, in which General Abboud holds supreme power, announced itself as working “in the interest of no party or group” but aiming at “the elimination of incompetence and corruption among politicians in general,” with a hint about knowing the way to good terms with Egypt (Manchester Guardian, 18th November, 1958).

This has come in the face not only of Egyptian pressure, however, but also of economic troubles. The Sudan is a cotton-producing country. Eighty per cent of its exports are of cotton (largely to Lancashire), and the present condition of the world’s cotton markets has meant a huge unsaleable surplus, stated by the Observer correspondent in Khartoum to include 48.000 tons left over from 1957. Under the Anglo-Egyptian regime big sums were invested in irrigation projects and plans for government-assisted peasant production to develop the cotton yield, so that the Sudan is dependent always on world prices for its staple crop. Before the war the Sudanese people were considered better-off than the natives of most other colonized parts of Africa; now the country’s economy is in a critical phase without much prospect of improvement.

The growth and the varied outlooks of the Sudanese political parties have come partly through economic development and partly from the patterns set by the fifty-eight years of joint British and Egyptian rule which ended in 1956. The history of this companionate rule is in fact a series of quarrels over who should really rule a country which bordered the Suez canal and enclosed the upper Nile. The existence of pro-British and pro-Egyptian parties comes from this period, when each of the dual rulers tried to create its own body of support in the Sudan. The Umma is descended from the Mahdi’s followers who drove out Turco-Egyptian rule and is thus traditionally anti-Egyptian; the P.D.P., on the other hand, is an offshoot of the National Unity Party which has always seen advantage in alliance with Egypt.

As in all other colonial countries, a powerful vein of nationalism appeared with the vista of economic independence that the development schemes afforded. (It is an irony of imperialism that the leaders of nationalist movements are produced by the imperialists’ own needs for officials, technical assistants and the rest of the new “middle classes” which this stage of economic progress must turn out.) All the Sudanese parties, including the “Socialist” National Unity Party and the Anti-Imperialist Front (the Communists) are shot through with this strong desire for “national independence,” and the new military government lost no time in stating that it did not differ from them. The day after assuming power. General Abboud said his regime would “accept anything it considered in the interests of the country, but would reject anything which might harm its independence and sovereignty.”

The truth is, however, that the Sudan cannot be independent except in the nominal sense of not being any other nation’s colony. The change which has just taken place was forced by external conditions and happenings, and the policies of the Abboud government—even the vague ones which were immediately announced—are bound to be determined almost wholly from outside. The resuscitation of the limping Sudanese economy depends on, more than anything else at the present time, the government’s negotiations with Egypt and (a not-unconnected matter) its success in playing-off America and Russia to attract loans from either or both. On November 30th the Foreign Minister announced that “foreign capital without strings would be welcomed.” and that his government had already taken 15 million dollars' worth of foreign exchange from America (Manchester Guardian, 1st December. 1958).

The outstanding questions between Egypt and the Sudan are the Aswan Dam project and the frontiers. To the Egyptian government the Dam, with its promise of irrigation and electric power, is vital for maintaining the economy (with its already desperate population problem) and making the economy maintain the army. Now, with the promise of Russian aid. it appears within reach, but there must first be agreement with the government of Sudan. From Egypt’s point of view a compliant Sudan would be the answer; Mr. Khalil, indeed, alleged in London last September that there were forces working to this end within the Sudanese government. For the Sudan, on the other hand, agreement can only mean a share in the benefits of the Dam.

What of the Sudanese people? Here, when one asks this question, stands forth a remarkable example of the stupidity and cruelty of commercialism and nationalism. For the Sudanese people are desperately, pitifully poor. In nearly three years of “independence” they have been governed by the National Unity “Socialists,” a coalition, and now the military—and none has made a scrap of difference to their poverty. It is worth pointing out that the Egyptian people have had the same experience: they were poverty-stricken under fat Farouk, and are equally so under Nasser. What have the political pretensions of their government done for them?

Assuming, however, that the building of the new High Dam would lighten these peoples’ burdens, the approaches to it have been made entirely in terms of not those but the rulers’ interests. First, there has to be money—obvious enough, but in itself a condemnation of the entire modern world where the need is pressing, the materials and labour plentiful, yet the fulfilment must wait on the djinn of this idiotic Aladdin’s lamp. When it was offered to Egypt by the West, the offer was based and then foundered on considerations of political advantage in the cold war. Now it appears again from Russia, with similar considerations in view (while a team of “American aid experts ” descends on the Sudan).

Who, then, cares about the Sudanese people? It is not that this or the preceding governments, or the government of Egypt, is deliberately negligent; on the contrary, it would be to the rulers’ benefit to have the support of prosperous and satisfied populations. The Sudan, however, has been pulled into the whirlpool of Capitalist world politics. From a colony in the once-majestic scheme of British imperialism, developed to make its cotton contribution to British trade, it has become another nation forced to struggle for advantage in the pitiless dogfights of world markets and big politics.

The future of the Sudan is bound up in the future of the world. Economic development and political contact have opened the windows for this country on the amenities of modern civilization, hence the nationalism, the reformist politics, and the anxiety to benefit by “getting in” on the bigger powers’ calculated generosity. Ideally, the Sudanese people stand to gain in every way from contact and interchange—in a word, “progress.” But modern civilization is far from ideal. Whatever progress is made will be directed at furthering only the interests of the property-owners of the Sudan: the important thing to recognize about the Abboud regime is that, whatever is said about ending corruption and the rest, this is its prime aim. However good a proportion of the High Dam potentialities is obtained for the Sudan, the sad fact is that the Dam is really wanted as a source of power and profits for the commercial class.

There is no sanity in this. It is not only in the Sudan, but everywhere; this small flare-up illumines a little more of what is going on all over the world. Nationalism and the political game are impediments to genuine productive development, standing in the way of what could be done by man for man—but they are parts of the superstructure of Capitalist society, which limits human activity to what will yield the best profits. The real trouble for the people of the Sudan is the profit system, and the only future which can hold anything worth while for them—and for everyone else—is Socialism all over the world.’

Robert Barltrop

From the Socialist Standard January 1959

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/04/blog-post_36.html

Austerity in Sudan

A dramatic increase in the price of medication, fuel and electricity in Sudan has spurred discontent across the country. Over the past two weeks, protests and strikes have been calling for the government to reinstate subsidies, which were removed earlier this month. The cuts are reportedly part of wider austerity measures that have been implemented to address the country's foreign currency crisis and fiscal deficit. The Central Bank of Sudan (CBOS) stopped providing foreign currency for the import of medicine. Medication prices increased between 150 and 300 percent

"The new decision, which caused the increase, is a huge disaster," local pharmacist Hatim Aldaak told Al Jazeera. "This will affect many citizens, especially the poor, because, as you know, the percentage of the poor in Sudan is very large. You cannot imagine the reaction and emotional effect it has on us, when someone comes into the pharmacy to buy medicine and asks for the price and tells us they can't afford it and they then leave with the medicine still on the shelves," said Aldaak.

The end of subsidies was also implemented on fuel and electricity.

Amna Sayed, a 42-year-old mother and tea lady says she is struggling in every way. "It is not just the medications; I can barely send my two children to school. Transport alone is too expensive now and so is food. I sell tea, and even before these increases I hardly managed to get by."

Shop owners, such as Mohammed al-Amin, are similarly struggling. "A 50kg of sugar went up from 510 Sudanese pounds [$78] to 580 [$89], and a 10kg packet of flour went up from 65 Sudanese pounds [$10] to 85 [$13]. Most notably, 100kg of beans went up from 1700 Sudanese pounds [$262] to 2100 [$324], beans – which is the most consumed meal,"

Sudanese citizens responded to a call for three-days of civil disobedience. Some neighbourhoods in the capital saw limited movement of vehicles and pedestrians. Universities and schools were largely effected by the strike, as the majority of students stayed home, forcing some schools to cancel the school day.

Since 2011, following the split of South Sudan, Sudan has been struggling to recover from the loss of three-quarters of the country's oil exports. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommended that the Sudanese government gradually introduce such measures to address its crippling economy.  Prior to the split, Sudan experienced substantial economic growth driven by oil exports and foreign direct investment, with nominal gross domestic product (GDP) per capita more than quadrupling between 1999 and 2010. But Sudan's growth was too heavily reliant on oil. When oil export revenues dropped and austerity measures introduced, the country entered a depression, losing more than 15 percent of its GDP in 18 months.

Sudan's Hungry

For more than five years, the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army-North (SPLA-N) and government forces have fought each other to a standstill in the border states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile. Neither side has attained a significant military advantage. The fighting in South Kordofan generally takes place from November to June, before the region’s rainy season muddies all access points to the rebel strongholds in the Nuba Mountains, making many roads impassable. Normally, government troops retreat before the rainy season begins in earnest, fearing their supply lines and exit points will be cut off. But this year, their forces appear set to remain in key positions, displacing the residents indefinitely and preventing planting.

Destruction to farmlands and damage to markets has brought dire consequences for civilians. Attacks by al-Bashir’s forces and his warplanes have routinely killed civilians for years. What has changed now is that they are accused of waging a systematic war of attrition designed to squeeze civilians out of rebel-held areas by destroying farmland and markets, and blocking planting by civilians during the rainy season.

“This year, the Sudan government has used a new tactic of war – explicitly targeting food supplies,” said Osman Tola, executive director of the rebel agriculture ministry. “President Omar al-Bashir has tried through land offensives that have so far failed, so he is now trying to get people to move to government areas of control.”

According to the head of one aid organization, one of only a handful operating in the Nuba Mountains, Sudanese forces spent an entire week in late March-early April destroying all the farmland and water points in an area called Karkaria, which acts as a fertile greenbelt and water-flow area for the region.

“It’s done purposely,” said Ali Abdelrahman, director of the Nuba Mountains Relief, Rehabilitation and Development Organisation (NRRDO), a community-based support group. “To set fire to people’s homes, to drive away livestock – purposely to get them hungry. Once you get into that situation, you either die or join government-controlled territories whereby youth are recruited against their own people.”

On 18 June, al-Bashir declared a four-month unilateral ceasefire between the government and rebels in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states; a largely moot gesture since the ceasefire aligns with the rainy season, when fighting naturally subsides. The declaration came too late in the planting season for staple crops, leaving a devastating food gap for next year. Meanwhile, restricted access due to conflict areas and reduced supplies of commodities and currency is driving up market prices, further aggravating civilians’ hunger.

“Prices are going higher and higher every day,” trader Gasim Kuku told IRIN. Civilians in South Kordofan can’t rely on the South Sudanese pound, since it fluctuates wildly, and few have access to Khartoum’s more stable Sudanese pound. “Since you can’t get Khartoum money [Sudanese pounds], you buy goods via dollars, meaning you have to exchange the money, adding cost,” Kuku explained. Traders in the rebel-controlled capital Kauda say the rebel government attempted to control prices but this only led to them stopping sales since they couldn’t make a profit. The price of staples such as sorghum has doubled and may even triple in the months ahead. Traders are even beginning to stockpile the crop for fearing of running out of supplies altogether.   

The net result of all these factors is severe hunger during the ‘lean season’ through August this year, and potential famine in 2017. For some areas, the conflict has already brought a deadly food crisis. In February, the UN said 242 people, including 24 children, had died of hunger-related illness in eight villages over a six-month period in isolated Kau-Nyaro and Werni counties. “I’m so worried,” Benjamin Kuku, executive director of the New Sudan Council of Churches, a faith-based humanitarian organisation, told IRIN. “When 242 people die in eight villages alone, then it makes me worried. I don’t know where people are going to get food in the months ahead.”

The Blue Nile

In the southeastern corner of Sudan a little-known struggle has succeeded in depopulating an entire region. Blue Nile sits on the southern frontier of Sudan, where war has raged for more than 60 years. The fight is a continuation of the struggle that birthed the world's newest nation, an independent South Sudan, in 2011. Blue Nile holds great promise. It sits on a literal gold mine and the land is the most fertile in the country. But a lifetime of war has bought nothing but suffering. There is not yet a path to peace – all attempts have fizzled.

 It’s also a humanitarian crisis that has been compounded by the evacuation of all international aid organisations. A spluttering peace process, is denying people desperately needed food aid; and explains how the economic lifeline of locally mined gold and gum arabic is smuggled north, to profit a government trying to crush the rebellion.

The notorious Janjaweed militia are being redeployed to Blue Nile as a paramilitary wing of the regular army.

http://www.irinnews.org/special-report/2016/06/21/forgotten-conflicts-blue-nile

Fleeing Eritrea

Leaving Eritrea without permission is a criminal offense. There has also been a noticeable increase in controls on the Eritrean side of the Sudan-Eritrea border in the last two months. People are being intercepted and sent back. Eritrean soldiers are instructed to shoot at anyone they discover trying to leave the country illegally, a policy that hasn’t prevented thousands from fleeing across the border every month. Eritrea’s stepped up border controls may be partly related to security concerns as it celebrates 25 years of independence, but that they were also about “trying to make themselves look like a good partner” to the EU. While the majority of Eritreans remain in camps in Sudan and Ethiopia, over 70,000 applied for asylum in Europe during 2014 and 2015, according to EuroStat figures.

Authorities in Sudan have launched a crackdown on Eritrean migrants - arresting those living in the capital, Khartoum, and intercepting hundreds travelling north through the country towards Libya, the launching point for smugglers’ boats heading for Europe.

Reports that 900 Eritreans were rounded up in Khartoum on Monday and that a further 400 arrested en route to Libya have been deported to Eritrea, come amid recent revelations in the British and German media that the EU is planning to deepen its cooperation with a number of African countries, including Sudan and Eritrea, to stem migration towards Europe.

A spokesperson with UNHCR’s office in Khartoum confirmed that a number of migrants, including Eritreans, had been intercepted in northern Sudan heading towards the Libyan border. Sudan has a prior record of deporting Eritreans without allowing them access to asylum procedures, a practice that UNHCR has condemned in the past as amounting to refoulement.

The EU has increasingly sought the cooperation of African states to control the flows of migrants headed for its shores by using the promise of aid and trade agreements. Critics argue that such policies have contributed to states viewing migrants as bargaining chips to be leveraged for maximum political capital with disastrous results for their safety and human rights. Der Spiegel and the New Statesman reported on a leaked plan to increase cooperation with African countries of origin and transit for migrants. The articles alleged that the EU plans to use funding from the recently launched Emergency Trust Fund for Africa to send equipment and vehicles to help Sudan police its border with Eritrea and to assist with the construction of two closed reception centres in Gadaref and Kassala. Eritrea would be given assistance to develop or implement human trafficking regulations. Europe’s engagement with Sudan and Eritrea, and other countries along the Horn of Africa to Europe migration route, dates back to the Khartoum Process, launched in November 2014. The Khartoum process risks legitimizing the governments of Sudan and Eritrea by treating them as partners in tackling irregular migration, when in fact those countries’ own policies are a major factor in driving migration and fuelling migrant smuggling and trafficking. Sudanese officials have repeatedly been accused of colluding with or turning a blind eye to traffickers who kidnap Eritrean refugees and hold them for ransom.

http://www.irinnews.org/news/2016/05/25/sudan-and-eritrea-crackdown-migrants-amid-reports-eu-incentives

Sudan's ethnic cleansing

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) have forcibly relocated more than 25,000 Ingessana people from the Bao region in Blue Nile between April and July. The relocations to other parts of the state are part of a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing designed to weaken opposition to the SAF’s armed offensive in the region. Blue Nile in Sudan’s south, along with neighbouring state South Kordofan, has been subjected to a concerted SAF aerial and ground assault since 2011.

The latest campaign of forced relocations began when soldiers stormed Medyam Eljebel village on April 10, chasing residents from their huts. Soldiers looted homes and burned the village to the ground. The army then went from village to village, telling families to evacuate to areas where they have no links or support networks. Similar incidents took place throughout May and June. On July 2, SAF and NISS units forced residents of Banat village onto trucks before dumping them in Abu Ramad, in Damazin locality.

Anyone who refuses to leave their village is deemed to be a member of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) and faces arrest. SPLM-N chairperson Malik Agar originates from the Ingessana Hills and the entire Ingessana ethnic group are branded by the regime as rebel supporters. In 2011-12, the Ingessana community was subjected to a targeted campaign of bombing, scorched villages and large-scale arbitrary arrests. The Sudan Democracy First Group (SDFG) says the new offensive is being rolled out in stages to avoid scrutiny. It says the offensive reflects Sudan’s institutionalised military practice of “meting out different forms of collective punishment upon particular ethnic groups”.

The government is seeking to deny the SPLM-N public support in areas where the rebels have made military gains. The Sudan People's Liberation Army-North (the armed wing of the SPLM-N) has made big advances into government-held territory. This brings it closer to key areas containing mineral wealth, hydroelectric power and large-scale agricultural projects. The abundant resources in the region have long been a source of conflict. Khartoum controls the wealth generated by these resources while denying local investment in basic development and infrastructure. The SDFG says the whole state is in darkness at night aside from a few urban areas, despite the Roseris dam hydro power plant in Blue Nile contributing 20% of Sudan’s national electricity grid. The regime’s desperate need to maintain its grip on the resource-rich area amid deepening economic crisis was a key factor in launching its war on Blue Nile in 2011.

https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/59799

Forgotten conflicts – Our silence is a shame to humanity

As you read this, there are more than 40 conflicts unfolding in countries around the world. Many of them don’t get the media or policy attention. Tales of war from places like Syria and Iraq are never far from the headlines but the toll of decades-long conflicts – from Colombia to the Ogaden, from Kashmir to Western Sahara – is just as devastating for the people who live there.

In South Kordofan journalists are banned by the Sudanese government from entering the rebel-held region, where civilians have taken to living in caves to survive the endless bombing. South Kordofan's death toll of 4,500 may seem insignificant compared with many other conflicts, but the rebels and the people of the Nuba Mountains fear Khartoum won't stop until they are all driven out. There are almost a 200,000 refugees and almost half a million are in need of immediate humanitarian aid.

Nagwa Konda, director of the Nuba Relief, Rehabilitation and Development Organisation (NRRDO) – a local NGO that struggles to cater for the desperate needs of the Nuba – said hope in her region was fading.  “There is a catastrophic humanitarian situation going on right now in the Nuba Mountains. Children in the Nuba Mountains are suffering from daily aerial bombardment, from hunger, dying from preventable diseases.” 

Omar al-Bashir and his Khartoum-based regime say they are fighting a rebellion in South Kordofan driven by vested interests and Western plotters that want to overthrow his government. The Nuba say they are fighting for their own survival. The Nuba, numbering between one and two million, are a collection of distinct peoples of black African origin who speak an array of different languages. Many are now Muslim, but there are Christian and animist Nuba too.  Along with a few Arab pastoralist tribes, they have the geographical misfortune of living on the fault line between Sudan’s largely Arab and Islamic north and its predominantly Christian, animist and black African south.  The origins of their oppression date back to the colonial era when the British segregated them, declaring the Nuba Mountains region a special “Closed District.” The Nuba were not allowed to stray northwards without a special permit and schooling was left up to missionaries. When Sudan emerged from British rule in 1956, the Nuba were already politically, economically and socially marginalised and lacked any educational system.

South Kordofan had been under the governorship since 2009 of Bashir’s trusted lieutenant Ahmed Haroun – like him indicted by the International Criminal Court for allegedly orchestrating atrocities in Darfur. By 2013, Bashir had deployed between 40,000 and 70,000 troops to South Kordofan. Local Arab tribes, the Misseriya, were coopted by Khartoum to fight their black African rivals. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) pulled out of South Kordofan in January after its clinic was bombed for a second time, leaving Doctor Tom Catena at the Mother of Mercy Hospital as the last surgeon in the Nuba Mountains, performing around 1,000 surgeries a year.

"You  want to ask me why I fight?” Thayr Urwa Hamdan Said, a new rebel recruit, exclaimed.  “After the separation of the South, Omar al-Bashir  said that Sudan is now an Islamic Arab country that would be governed by Islamic sharia laws. They have to recognise and bear in mind that there are other people living with them in this geographical area called Sudan. That is why if we do not overthrow this government we would be second-class citizens in our own country.”

Atrocities in nearby Liberia and Sierra Leone have stolen the regional headlines over the years, but the separatist struggle in Casamance is West Africa’s longest-running civil conflict. Three decades of on-and-off separatist conflict in Senegal's southern region of Casamance have killed thousands of people, displaced tens of thousands more, crippled the rural-based economy and turned large tracts of territory into no-go zones due to landmines. A ceasefire was declared last year by an important rebel leader, but even if it holds, grievances and resentment linger and underlying socio-economic problems threaten to consign another generation of Casamançais to living like second-class citizens in one of Africa's supposed beacons of democracy. The rebellion was born out of the resentment of the southern Diola people for Senegal’s dominant Wolof group in the decades following independence from France in 1960. The Diola, who represent only 3.7 percent of the population but 60 percent of people in the Ziguinchor region, have traditional beliefs that set them apart from other Senegalese groups. According to the Association for the Development of the District of Nysassia (APRAN), a local NGO that has been working to help the displaced return home, 78 villages in Lower Casamance were completely destroyed during the fighting and more than 150,000 people lost their homes. Thousands of civilians remain internally displaced by the conflict, including some 6,000 in Ziguinchor, and at least another 10,000 refugees are split between The Gambia or Guinea-Bissau, many still harbouring deep resentment for Senegalese authority. Demba Keita, secretary general of APRAN, told IRIN that many people want to return home but feel conditions are not right to allow them to do so.

“Their villages were wiped out and now they have no means for reconstruction," he said. "The state of Senegal does nothing to help them. We cannot convince donors to engage in reconstruction, because they feel the peace process does not move forward.”

For the most part, the separatist struggle in Casamance has been fought in a media vacuum. International attention has focused on other, more immediately troubling conflicts with bigger bombs, larger death tolls, and more terrible atrocities. Amnesty International, however, did draw attention to the extrajudicial killings, disappearances and flagrant human rights abuses in an influential February 1998 report.

“Hundreds of NGOs have worked for the development of Casamance. But if you drive through Casamance, you don’t see any development,” said Abdou Elinkine Diatta, who fought with Atika in the 1980s and 1990s before becoming a rebel spokesman. “Maybe it has helped develop Dakar. But there has been no development in Casamance."

Robert Piper, then UN humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel, admitted last year that the situation in Casamance presents a real “dilemma” for the international aid community.

“On the one hand, there are very real needs here, particularly food insecurity. On the other hand, we also need to recognise that this is a well-endowed part of Senegal that should not have a humanitarian operation.”

Press Censorship In Sudan

(from Feb. 19th)

Sudan is undergoing a disturbing wave of censorship, with the confiscation of a total of 19 newspaper issues in the past three days. The seizures not only constitute a grave violation of media pluralism but also inflict major financial losses on publications that are already fighting for economic survival.

In a spectacular series of raids in the capital on 16 February, members of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) seized a total of 13 issues as they came off the presses, including almost all of Khartoum’s dailies and two magazines.

The publications affected were Al-Tayar, Al-Rai al-Aam, Al-Intibaha, Akhir Lahza, Al-Ahram al-Youm, Awal al-Nahar, Al-Watan, Al-Sudani, Alwan, Al-Saiha and Al-Mijhar al-Siyasi, and the two magazines, Al-Dar and Hikayat.

Five other newspaper issues were seized yesterday, those of Al Sudani, Al Intibaha, Al Sahafa, Al Mighur and Al Taghier.

“These massive and indiscriminate seizures constitute an unacceptable act of censorship,” said Cléa Kahn-Sriber, the head of the Reporters Without Borders Africa desk.

“The people we contacted in Khartoum have no idea what exactly the government did not like in these issues. But, given the general elections scheduled for April, such actions are likely to recur in the weeks and months ahead. The government seems to want to suppress any reporting that could give rise to a debate.”

This is by no means the first time that the NISS has carried out such raids. Reporters Without Borders calculates that it seized a total of 35 newspaper issues in 2014. Its operatives always act in the same way – waiting until issues are printed and then seizing all copies to prevent their sale. No grounds are ever given and owners have no legal recourse. 

“These repeated seizures represent a significant loss of income for newspaper owners,” Kahn-Sriber added. “The government is clearly aware of this and uses it as part of its strategy for throttling independent print media.”

The harassment does not stop there. The well-known journalist Madeeha Abdallah is facing trial on criminal charges of complicity, undermining constitutional order and publishing false information. It was the NISS that brought these charges against her.

Her case has attracted a great deal of attention, but dozens of other journalists have been harassed, arrested, interrogated for several hours or days and then released without any explanation being given. The harassment is completely “legal” inasmuch as a 2010 national security law grants the NISS complete immunity.

Sudan is ranked 174th out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.

from here

IMF, Neoliberal Powerhouse, Ransacks Sudan

Many in the international community see the International Monetary Fund as a necessary entity that provides countries with much-needed aid. However, for many activists within Sudan and its diaspora, the IMF is a neoliberal powerhouse, implementing exploitative policies that extract land, resources and wealth from developing countries in exchange for money that goes to the governing elite.
 On February 15, 2014, a week of talks between the International Monetary Fund's deputy director of Middle East and Africa and government officials in Sudan ended. The finance minister, petroleum minister and governor of Central Bank discussed debt relief and economic reforms. The IMF promised "to provide the requested technical assistance and support to the productive sectors" to encourage investment, declaring that the success of the program would directly "tackle Sudan's external debt issue."
Sudanese activist Muzan Alneel describes the IMF policies as a "systematic and well-studied approach to keep Sudan as well as other developing countries from rising to their potentials." For the past few years, the IMF has been pushing Sudan to discontinue its fuel subsidies. When the Sudan government did that last September, protests that left over 200 civilians dead spread exponentially. Muhammad Osman, who participated in those protests, says, "the more the IMF and Sudan treat democratic and economic reforms as separate agendas, the more we are likely to witness a greater civil unrest in the near future."

Full article here

Land-grabbing and Sex Inequality

Land scarcity and volatility of food prices on the world market have led richer countries that are dependent on food imports to acquire large amounts of land elsewhere to produce food for their domestic needs. Access to land is critical for small-scale food producers. Lack of it defines ‘landless farm workers’. Losing it and becoming landless is feared by many smallholders, as it will mean losing food security and opportunities for development. It is the most marginalised groups in society who are most susceptible to land grabbing – which makes preventing it a crucial issue for poverty reduction and human rights.

The new wave of land deals is not the new investment agriculture that millions had been waiting for. The poorest people are being hardest hit as competition for land intensifies. Oxfam's research has revealed that residents regularly lose out to local elites and domestic or foreign investors because they lack power to claim their rights effectively and to defend and advance their interests.

While some investors might claim to have experience in agricultural production, many may only be purchasing land for speculative purposes, anticipating price increases in the coming years (known as ‘land banking’). World Bank analysis in 2011 of 56 million hectares of large-scale deals concluded that nothing had yet been done with 80 per cent of the land involved, suggesting a significant amount of land banking.

All of the above is happening while the global share of land available for agriculture has peaked. It is, in fact, reducing, as the world loses agricultural land to urbanisation and soil degradation. Land is not just an important productive asset. Even for families who have stopped living directly off the land, it often serves as an important safety net to fall back on when other economic ventures fail or when the economy fails to provide opportunities. Land has multiple other (so-called) secondary uses as well, which are vital to family livelihood security. It can provide fodder, nuts, fruits, roots, medicinal and kitchen herbs, dyes, rope, timber, and roofing and fencing materials. Many of these resources are available on common lands, and are often especially important for women. Land also provides a space for social, cultural, spiritual, and ceremonial events, and as such is essential for sustaining the identity and well-being of a community and its members.

Many researchers have shown that secure access to or ownership of land is associated with significant reductions in hunger and poverty. For women all over the world, lack of access to and control over land is a major determinant (and outcome) of gender inequality. . In rural areas, lack of access to land forces many women to sell their labour on cash-crop producing farms, where they are paid less than men. Women farm workers may also suffer sexual violence and harassment, discrimination, and devaluation of their work. Rural women often end up with a double burden of providing for and managing the household when men migrate in search of work – another consequence of land shortages. Women also fare disproportionately in conflicts over land, where they face a number of challenges. Discriminatory legislation is compounded by the sexism of those implementing the laws, and women often have little opportunity to participate in decision-making processes regarding new legislation, projects, or contracts. Compounding this, gender-based violence is often a common feature in conflicts over land.

Evidence from research on land grabs in Africa suggests that women are getting a raw deal. To begin with, women’s land rights are less secure and more easily targeted. They also depend more on secondary uses of land, which tend to be ignored in large-scale acquisitions. Furthermore, although women comprise the majority of farmers, men effectively control the land and the income derived from it, even if it is the fruit of women’s labour. In practice, a new commercial opportunity often means that men assume control of the land at the expense of women’s access. Thus, new sources of income from the land are likely to burden women and benefit men. The new competition for land between biofuels and food crops, leading to less availability of food and higher prices, is also likely to affect women more than men, as women tend to take responsibility for feeding the family.

From here 

A Tangled Web For Resource Control In Sudan

No apologies for posting the whole of this article from a Tanzanian freelance journalist and writer. Each section is inseparably linked and important for grasping the intricacies of the situation. JS

from Countercurrents.org

Sources say the peacekeepers are struggling with equipment problems, poor training of some contingents and the reluctance by some governments to send their soldiers into combat zones. When seven Tanzanian peacekeepers in Darfur, western Sudan, were killed and 17 seriously wounded in an ambush by gunmen, the incident sent shockwaves throughout the country. For the first time public was made aware that all was not well with their men and women deployed in the war-torn Sudan as part of the UN peacekeeping forces. The deadly attack on 13 July this year occurred when the soldiers were in a convoy searching for their vehicles that were reportedly stolen by a rebel group. The Tanzanian soldiers sustained heavy fire from machine guns and possibly rocket-propelled grenades. Among the wounded were two female police officers. No group immediately claimed responsibility. But a UN report in February said that some armed opposition groups are angry about the presence of peacekeepers and have called the force ‘a legitimate target.’

In the Tanzanian official circles scanty information was released, but some local journalists contacted the peace-keepers in Darfur. One of them said, on condition of anonymity, that a week ago unknown assailants attacked members of the army and disappeared with four vehicles. ‘It is really traumatising here; I can tell you the rebels are fully armed with sophisticated weapons,’ he lamented.

Immediately, questions were raised about the United Nations African Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) whose task is to maintain peace and protect civilians from insurgents. Some asked if there was any peace to maintain in the first place.

The Tanzanian contingent of 875 military and police personnel has been stationed in Darfur for some five years as part of the UNAMID, which has strength of 16,500 troops and military observers plus 5,000 international police. Yet the latest casualty was not an isolated encounter by the solders on peace mission in Darfur.

Peacekeepers have been targeted at various times since the international force began its work in the region in 2008. In April this year gunmen shot and killed a Nigerian peacekeeper. Prior to the July attack, 150 people associated with the UN mission in Darfur had been killed while on duty in the region, according to the force's website. Following the latest attack, Tanzania is now seeking a stronger mandate for peacekeepers in the Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region, so as to ‘deal with the current condition.’ The demand is to equip the peacekeepers with heavy weapons such as APC, artillery and helicopters. Army spokesman Colonel Mgawe said, ‘We want our troops to have more capacity to defend themselves against insurgents’. He said currently their rules of engagement, under Chapter 6, forbid the use of ‘excessive’ force. Now they are going to negotiate with UN for Chapter 7 so as to give the troops more fire-power to defend themselves. That means use of heavy weapons as is the case with Tanzanian forces in DRC. In fact some Tanzanians have questioned why give them heavy weapons in DRC and not in Darfur. Whether, with such armaments, they have succeeded in wiping out M23 is another question. 

The pertinent question for Darfur, however, is whether the peacekeepers there are now going to pursue the rebels and fight them on their turf or are they going to fight back when attacked. If it is the former then actually it means there is no peace to maintain and so stationing peace-keepers there is paradoxical

It has been suggested that the better solution for stopping the attack on peacekeepers would be to cut off the supply line of heavy weaponry to the rebels, especially if the supply comes from outside the Sudan.

Meanwhile, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete has asked President Omar al-Bashir to investigate the latest incident and ensure that the perpetrators are apprehended and brought to justice.The question is whether Bashir has the ability to take any action, since he himself has been under attack by the rebels. After having negotiated and signed peace treaty with them, not all have joined the cease-fire. And so his troops have been under attack from time to time. Hence he is hardly in control of the situation in Darfur, which has been described as a civil war. Darfur has over 35 tribes and ethnic groups. Half the people are small subsistence farmers, the other half being nomadic herders. For centuries the nomadic people have been grazing their cattle and camels over sprawling grass lands, sharing water sources. 

The crisis is reportedly rooted in intertribal feuds over increasingly scarce water and grazing grounds in the area hit hard by years of climate change, drought and growing famine, coupled with the encroaching Sahara Desert. The matter became worse when local tribes took up arms in 2003 against the government in Khartoum, which they accuse of marginalising them. Meanwhile, more insurgencies were launched from Darfur. Factions allied with or against neighbouring countries operated from bases inside Darfur, which became a regular landing ground for foreign military transport planes. Thus, Chad’s Idriss Deby launched a military bombardment from the neighbouring Darfur and overthrew President Hissan Habre. French and U.S. forces were then involved in funding, training and equipping Deby, a military ruler, who supported the rebel groups in Darfur. At the same time there were reports of Israelis providing military training to Darfur rebels from bases in Eritrea, while strengthening ties with the regime in Chad, from where more weapons and troops penetrated Darfur. Refugee camps were thus militarized. 

 Darfur was further militarised when the regime of Ange-Félix Patassé collapsed in the Central African Republic and his soldiers fled to Darfur with their military hardware. The situation was not made better when, in August 1998, US President Bill Clinton ordered missile attack on the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. It was producing cheap medications for malaria and tuberculosis, supplying most of the medicine in Sudan. The plant was completely smashed by 19 cruise missiles, for no logical reason. And so Darfur became the hub of international geopolitical scramble for Africa’s resources. The region has the third largest copper and the fourth largest high quality uranium deposits in the world. It produces two-thirds of the world’s best quality gum Arabic, which is major ingredient in cold drinks, pharmaceuticals and candies. Sudan exports 80% of the world’s supply of this commodity.

The country, the largest in Africa in terms of area, is strategically located on the Red Sea, immediately south of Egypt, and borders on seven other African countries. It is situated opposite Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, among the main suppliers of oil. Sudan also has abundance of natural gas and oil, much of it in Darfur. The problem for the West is that it is the Chinese who are pumping the oil. U.S. companies controlling the pipelines in Chad and Uganda are looking for the ways to displace China through the US military alliance with states such as Uganda, Chad and Ethiopia, which are not too friendly with Sudan. Darfur, a western region of Sudan, borders on Libya and Chad, with their own vast oil resources. So it is a likely pipeline route. 

The West is thus pushing for ‘peacekeeping’ mission in Darfur in order to pursue its own agenda. That is why in the end the whole exercise may result into another Iraq or Afghanistan. This is because the United States and its allies look for conflicts, or even provoke conflicts, which they use as pretext to intervene in other countries, militarily or otherwise, directly or through proxies (including the UN). The aim is to exploit and control these countries economically and politically through puppet governments. This way they facilitate, promote and protect the investments of their corporations. This is how the United States and other western powers are working towards political domination in Africa and elsewhere, in order to exploit their resources. 

These are the sentiments that were possibly expressed by chairman of Tanzania’s National League for Democracy (NLD), Dr. Emmanuel Makaidi, when he called upon the government to withdraw Tanzanian peace-keeping troops from Sudan as their presence there is ‘not in the country’s national interest. It is not worth sacrificing our seven soldiers who lost their lives in an ambush laid by insurgents,’ he swiped, adding that Tanzania has an ill-advised foreign policy.

Nizar Visram is a Tanzanian freelance journalist and writer on political and socio-economic issues. He can be contacted at nizar1941@gmail.com

Not all that glitters is gold

60,000 people mine for gold in South Sudan, many driven to it by hunger. They hunt for gold in deep, claustrophobic mines with no safety equipment. The holes are so narrow, they can barely turn around. Wearing no safety jackets or helmets, the miners have just a headlamp to guide them in the bleak darkness.

Gold mining is big business in Sudan, particularly in the south. The land is endowed with many resources, many of which are undiscovered.  As well as gold, there is also believed to be copper, uranium and marble.

Many use their bare hands which they once used to harvest crops. The back-breaking labour is even carried out by women, children and elderly people who are driven to work because of widespread hunger.

Source

Sudan's Spring Arrives

Protesters blocked roads in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital,  on Saturday, the eighth day of widening unrest sparked by rising prices. Inflation has risen each month, hitting 30.4 percent in May, before Finance Minister Ali Mahmud al-Rasul on Wednesday announced the scrapping of fuel subsidies, causing an immediate jump in the price of petrol. Bankrupt Sudan has lost billions of dollars in oil receipts since South Sudan gained independence last July leaving the north struggling for revenue, plagued by inflation, and with a severe shortage of dollars to pay for imports. The country's poverty rate is 46.5 percent, the United Nations says

Witnesses reported five separate demonstrations across the city after nightfall despite a police order to stamp out the unrest. Throughout the city, shouts against high food prices mixed with calls for freedom and an end to the 33-year regime of President Omar al-Bashir. The people are "fed up," said a taxi driver coping with a government-imposed fuel price increase of about 50 percent which took effect this week. Police and plain-clothed state intelligence agents have adopted a zero-tolerance policy, using tear gas, batons and whips against protesters.

The demonstrations symbolise "mass rejection of the regime's oppressive policies and its failure in governing this country," said Sudan Change Now, an activist youth movement. "The government must immediately retract the austerity measures it has adopted which reflect the distortion in its expenditure which continues to prioritise defence and security at the expense of social services,"

In Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman, an AFP reporter saw separate groups of about 100 protesters scattering when police arrived firing tear gas or wielding batons. Witnesses in the eastern city of Gedaref said that about 200 people gathered in the main market where they denounced the high cost of food before police dispersed them with batons. "We will not be governed by a dictatorship!" they shouted, the witnesses said. Poverty is endemic in Gedaref and the two other eastern states of Kassala and Red Sea.

Sudan - look the other way

This week will mark a year since Sudan began its brutal counterinsurgency campaign in the Nuba Mountains, intended to crush a rebel force. Sudan bars outsiders. Sudan has expelled aid workers, blocked food shipments and humanitarian aid, and dropped bombs haphazardly — and almost daily — on its own citizens. Hundreds of thousands of people here have no food and are reduced to eating leaves and insects, as Sudan’s government starves and bombs its own people. Many Nuba will starve to death in the coming months.

Unlike Syria world leaders are mostly turning a blind eye.

Why Are Sudans at War?

Formerly a single country, Sudan has split in to two states.

It all looked so good just over a year ago. the Republic of Sudan's President, Omar el-Beshir, had visited South Sudan's capital Juba and promised to welcome and recognise a vote for secession, if this was, "the price of peace." Indeed, Bashir kept his promise and attended the independence celebrations and was the first to recognize the new state of South Sudan.

Today, however, the two countries are at war, in the border area of Heglig, as well as by proxy in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile, and increasingly in the borderlands of South Sudan as well. Heglig oil wells may account for as much as 80,000 barrels per day of Sudan's 120,000-130,000 bpd output. Khartoum cannot afford to lose this. It simply does not have the foreign currency reserves to keep importing fuel to make up the gap, and there are fears the prices of basic good could rise.

Sudan's government has ordered its civil servants to donate part of their salaries to support the army, according to the official state news agency. Sudan's finance minister Ali Mahmud al-Rasul has also cut the petrol rations of government departments by 50%. Analysts say the measures are a sign that Sudan's economy has been badly hit, both by the loss of revenue from when South Sudan became independent last year, and by the recent clashes between the two nations.

While the decision by South Sudan to shut down oil production in January - 98% of government revenue - after Sudan impounded South Sudan's oil shipments amid a dispute over transit fees - its effects are being felt. There is the beginnings of a fuel crisis in Juba, and infrastructure projects and development are on hold.

 An all-out war would create great misery for all peoples, as all wars always do.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17853074

Another land grab

A prominent Saudi businessman announced last week that the Sudanese government agreed to give his country two million acres of land as a farming investment that would allow the Arab Gulf state to ensure safe and steady food supply.

The chairman of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce Saleh Kamel told the Saudi-based al-Sharq newspaper that the project, if successful, may allow Riyadh to achieve a food surplus that can be exported elsewhere. Kamel disclosed that the Khartoum will make the farmland a free zone that is not subject to any form of taxation or duties and is not covered by Sudanese laws.

"The return [on investment] of agriculture in Sudan will reach 15% of the capital in the first year, a return that is more than good and better than investing in any another business sector" he said.

Sudan's Ethnic Cleansing

Hundreds of thousands of Southern Sudanese who have spent most of their lives in the north now find themselves their lives upended when the country split in half. In July South Sudan broke off from Sudan and formed its own nation. But for southerners living north of the border the south’s independence compounded their misery. There will not be any dual citizenship for southerners living in the north. And it is not clear what the status will be for northerners living in the south. The Sudanese government says it is going to strip all southerners of their citizenship starting in April. If they want to remain in Sudan, they must apply for a visa, work permit, residency papers and the like, all of which will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get for impoverished, illiterate people who often have no documents showing when or where they were born. Even if someone was born in the north the restrictions are the same. If the person belongs to an ethnic group that is from the south then that person is considered a southerner.

More than 350,000 southerners have recently relocated, by bus and by barge, from the north to the south.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/world/africa/for-south-sudan-woman-misery-on-both-sides-of-the-border.html

Free at Last?

The Republic of South Sudan was declared an independent nation in the capital, Juba. The new national flag was raised, the church bells rang out and the countdown clock flashed "free at last."

Almost the size of the state of Texas or of France it has only 100 miles of paved roads. Oil-rich South Sudan has an adult illiteracy rate of 85 percent, and about half of its 8 million people live on less than $1 a day. Nearly one in five people are chronically hungry. Only about a third of the population has access to safe drinking water. As many as nine militia groups operate in active rebellion against th new state. Military tensions with the north have heightened in recent weeks with clashes in the northern border state of Southern Kordofan between Sudan's army and troops loyal to South Sudan's army forcing more than 73,000 people to flee their homes since June 5. Sudan's army seized the main town in the disputed border area of Abyei on May 21, driving more than 100,000 members of the Ngok Dinka ethnic group, who consider themselves southerners, from their homes.

Nhial Bol, owner and editor of the Citizen, a daily newspaper with the motto "Fighting Corruption and Dictatorship Everyday," believes the leadership of South Sudan wasn't prepared for independence when voters overwhelmingly approved it in January. What used to unite the men now running the country was their battle against the north, he said, "but they don't have one vision for the nation."

Independence is unlikely to bring great dividends to most.

Africa is a vast continent comprised of nations which because of their colonial past have different histories, just as they have variegated geographical landmarks that distinguish them. Thus African nations do not share many things in common except the forcible grouping together of tribes regardless of the interaction that existed before colonialisation. In the attempt to create nations, different ethnic groups have been split between boundaries and the expression of nationalism has therefore not been through the medium of cultural or ethnic identity. What is called nationalism comes to emphasise political allegiance to the state. Political states in Africa were mapped out by European imperialist nations under the guise of economic interests and military influence. Thus African kingdoms and empires were brutally decimated and different ethnic groups were forcibly integrated into colonial states and protectorates. Such a situation in which countries find themselves has made nation building and African unity a difficult task.

In the past when Africa didn't have artificial boundaries such as there are today, wars and hatred were not as rife. Making up nations have taken a great deal of building. There is almost no nation-state that has not had its boundaries drawn in blood. America was built on the bodies of the native population. It is a process that continues today in Africa. The effort, though, has to be ongoing. States have required the use of an education system, to standardise learning, spread a national history and a sense of shared culture. Culture resides in sets of ideas, values and practices that set out a sense of precedent, self and future possibility. Nationalism imposes the idea of the nation, complete with its inherent notions of territorial ownership and property, upon a culture, on the very self-image of the people within that culture. The idea of "the nation" functions as supreme good, beyond the physical and mechanical functionings of the state, to which any cause may appeal. It is a fantasy which can be used to cover up for problems and contradictions in the practice of the state's daily life. Its function is to legitimise both the state and class rule, and sustain a large quantity of support, through workers who identify with the ideas of nationhood and believe themselves to be the same as, and have the same interests as, their masters.

Workers of course, do not share a common interest with their masters. It does not follow that if the "national wealth" increases, or if trade increases, or even if profit increases, that higher wages will be gained by workers. It might appear that workers and employers share a common interest. In fact the interest of workers is conditioned by the interest of the employer, in exactly the same manner as hostages held by a kidnapper: unless the kidnapper/employer, demands are met, they will not allow the hostage/workers to have what they need to live. The fact that the majority of population owns little but its ability to work is evidence the working class has no common interest with the minority ruling class. When we are robbed and the robbers fight over the booty, that fight is none of our business. Wealth and power under capitalism can only be realised through legalised exploitation of some people by others. This is a complete contradiction of socialism that envisages a future society in which economic and political privileges will not exist because goods will be produced for consumption and not or sale – while racial and ethnic taboos will not prevail because there wouldn’t be political leaders nor class interests to defend.

Socialist Banner see little to celebrate in the creation of a new capitalist state.

Horn of Africa or Horn of Cornucopia

Some 60 babies are dying each day in one camp. Every 24 hours, more than 3,000 malnourished people arrive at camps already too crowded to accommodate them. The lives of half a million children are at imminent risk. And, in total, no fewer than 12 million people are fighting for their very survival. In Somalia, a quarter of whose 7.5 million people are now either internally displaced or living outside the country as refugees, according to the UN. In Southern Sudan, the world's newest country, children make up nearly half the population, and one in nine die before the age of five. For a population of around eight million, there are only 100 trained midwives, and fewer than 500 doctors. These are the dry, statistical facts of life – and, increasingly, of death – in the Horn of Africa.

This is already a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions – worse, much worse than the one that inspired Band Aid, says Louise Paterson, director of the British medical aid agency Merlin in Kenya and Somalia. "We haven't seen anything like this for decades," she told The Independent on Sunday . "Hardened aid workers are weeping at what they see."

Marixie Mercado, a Unicef spokesman, told a news briefing: "We have over two million children who are malnourished. Half a million of these children are in a life-threatening condition at this stage – a 50 per cent increase over 2009 figures. Child malnutrition rates in some camps are at least 45 per cent, three times the emergency threshold"

Dadaab camp in eastern Kenya is now the largest refugee centre in the world, some 382,000 people are crammed into a facility designed for 90,000.

"This," said Antonio Guterres, the head of UNHCR "is the worst humanitarian disaster we are facing in the world."

The cycle of disaster-aid-disaster-aid, from one crisis to the next must be broken. Henry Kissinger at the 1972 UN Food Summit and vowed to eradicate world hunger within 20 years. There is no shortage of organisations willing to try to remedy the situation. Charities launch campaigns, telling us what a donation of 20p, £1 or £100 will buy, holding back the more damning statistic that 95 percent of the money donated is eaten up in administration and infrastructure.

Under a system in which production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit, a system that has expunged the causes of war, a system that can locate people to areas less prone to flooding and drought, famine can then be a thing of the past. The UN Food and Agricultural Organisaion readily admits that the world produces more than enough to ensure "adequate food for all" (2,700 calories per person per day). In the 1970s, the World Health Organisation announced that we could feed a world population seven times its then size, and as late as 1995 admitted that Africa could feed a population six times its present size were western farming techniques to be introduced there.

Another corrupt president

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has been accused of siphoning off up to $9bn (£5.6bn; 7bn euros) of his country's funds by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court .Luis Moreno Ocampo told the BBC that had hidden the money in personal accounts outside Sudan.

If Mr Bashir does indeed hold a fortune of $9bn in secret bank accounts, that would be equivalent to one tenth of the country's annual GDP.