South Sudan intercepts ‘mislabelled’ U.N. weapons shipment

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South Sudan intercepts ‘mislabelled’ U.N. weapons shipment

WHO begins campaign against cholera in South Sudan

GENEVA – The World Health Organisation began a campaign on Saturday to prevent outbreaks of cholera in temporary camps in South Sudan housing thousands of people who have fled the country’s brutal two-month-old conflict.

The first phase will see around 94,000 people vaccinated against the disease in Minkaman camp in Awerial county, followed by 43,000 in camps around the capital Juba.

“Although currently there is not a cholera outbreak, people displaced by the recent conflict and living in the camps are at risk due to poor sanitary conditions and overcrowding,” the WHO said in a statement.

The programme is being carried out in coordination with the South Sudanese government, with the help of the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and UNICEF.

“Minkaman camp and Juba camp have been selected because of the relative stability of the situation and easier access in those places,” said Dr Abdinasir Abubakar of the WHO’s disease surveillance and response team.

“We are also looking at other camps, and once the accessibility and security improves, we will expand the cholera vaccination campaigns into these areas.”

South Sudan has been embroiled in a bloody conflict since December 15, 2013 pitting troops loyal to President Salva Kiir against rebels linked to his sacked vice president Riek Machar.

The unrest in the world’s newest nation has killed thousands of people and displaced close to 900,000, including tens of thousands who have crammed into UN bases in fear of ethnic attacks by either Kiir’s Dinka tribe or Machar’s Nuer.

Cholera is an acute diarrhoeal infection caused by eating contaminated food or water, with children facing a particularly high risk of infection. It can kill in a matter of hours due to rapid dehydration.

The disease, which often breaks out around natural disasters or conflicts, affects between three million and five million people per year, with up to 120,000 dying from the disease.

Middle East Online :: Main English Channel

WHO begins campaign against cholera in South Sudan

Russian consul general, wife stabbed in Sudan: police

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – A Russian diplomat and his wife were stabbed in Sudan’s capital on Tuesday by a man enraged by the death of his brother in strife-torn Central African Republic, Khartoum police said.

Reuters: Top News

Russian consul general, wife stabbed in Sudan: police

VIDEO: South Sudan Offers Cease-Fire To Rebels

South Sudan’s government announced Friday it would be willing to accept a cease-fire from the rebel group it is currently fighting.

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VIDEO: South Sudan Offers Cease-Fire To Rebels

South Sudan: Driving energy insecurity

Patrick L Young is expert in global financial markets working in multiple disciplines, ranging from trading independently to running exchanges.

Published time: December 25, 2013 14:41

The world’s youngest nation state is on the verge of civil war. Few may have heard of the landlocked nation but its oil industry means any conflict impacts the world economy.

Barely two years after Sudan was partitioned to ease ethnic tensions on July 9th, 2011, now too the breakaway South Sudan is on the cusp of being ripped asunder by clashes between the Dinka and Nuar ethnic groups. Largely obscured by Christmas festivities elsewhere, the land-locked nation is not just a scene of massacres and an airlift of foreigners by respective governments; it generates global economic concern too.

Just as South Sudan is not much discussed beyond East Africa, so too the northern state of Unity is almost unheard of, yet it is the home to more than 95% of South Sudan’s economy, some 250,000 barrels of oil per day. The full travails of Sudan, which has enjoyed barely 10 years without conflict since it won independence from Egypt in 1956 are, rightly, much discussed elsewhere. However, the impact on the oil industry is now akin to an old English maxim about resources. “For want of a nail the shoe was lost…” begins a traditional rhyme where a steady stream of small failures, easily visible with hindsight that results in the loss of a battle as the cavaliers, bereft of horses with shoes, end up defeated on a grand scale.

Oil prices have reacted unfavorably to a series of worrisome drips in supply. In the aftermath of upheaval, Libyan oil production remains patchy. Meanwhile, Syria is rather wrapped up in its own civil war, and now too South Sudan is having a fundamental internal crisis which may lead the infant state into a full-blown conflict. Out of roughly 85,000,000 barrels produced daily world-wide, the total immediately at risk is sub 2% of current supply. However consider a few other ongoing production concerns – e.g. broader Middle Eastern stability issues – and the picture becomes cloudier.

The Unity fields are a microcosm of global oil, with America’s Chevron and the Chinese National Petroleum Company heavily invested in South Sudan. Governments ignore at their peril security of energy supply. North America has liberally embraced shale technology and hence rebalanced its hydrocarbon needs – although ironically it too has niggling problems as a longstanding lack of investment has created bottlenecks in US infrastructure for refining and supply. These problems are being addressed, albeit slower than shale is being commercialized, leading to further price volatility.

Meanwhile, the European Parliament, under green NGO influence, is increasingly trying to turn its back on shale despite efforts by nations such as Poland and the UK to forge ahead. Even then man cannot heat by shale alone and the core energy security issue which arises around various hotbeds of potential conflict, often infused with a fundamentalist Islamic undercurrent (Middle East, Sudan etc.) suggests oil prices could remain elevated for some time to come.

That’s bad news for the world economy as higher energy prices always impact consumption. With a Chinese credit crunch looming in the background, there is a severe danger the world could tip back towards recession, all because the nail, shoe and horse became lost, beginning in Libya, Syria and Sudan.

Which leads us back to just where energy can be obtained with less angst… Given the stability of the Russian Federation, one wonders just how long the EU can haughtily demand enforcement of its regulations on pipelines like South Stream when Russia’s gas will flow under the Black Sea to Western Europe via Serbia to provide a steady supply of energy avoiding not merely the Middle East but even potentially volatile nations like South Sudan or Ukraine?

The terrible suffering of the people of South Sudan is a microcosm of the world’s ongoing energy security dilemma.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

RT – Op-Edge

South Sudan: Driving energy insecurity

Fears grow of civil war in South Sudan as rebels seize town

By Carl Odera and Ben Makori

JUBA Sun Dec 22, 2013 5:06pm EST

SPLA soldiers drive in a truck in Juba December 21, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Stringer

JUBA (Reuters) – South Sudan’s government said on Sunday rebels had seized the capital of a key oil-producing region and fears grew of all-out ethnic civil war in the world’s newest country.

The U.N. announced it was trying to rush more peacekeeping forces to landlocked, impoverished South Sudan as foreign powers urged both sides to stop fighting, fearing for the stability of an already fragile region of Africa.

The South Sudan government said on its Twitter account it was no longer in control of Bentiu, the capital of Unity State.

“Bentiu is not currently in our hands. It is in the hands of a commander who has declared support for Machar,” it said.

Information Minister Michael Makuei said on Saturday an army divisional commander in Unity State, John Koang, had defected and joined rebel leader and former Vice President Riek Machar, who had named him the governor of the state.

But the government in Juba said it was still in control of the oilfields crucial to the economy.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told a news conference in Manila the U.N. planned to send resources from other peacekeeping missions in the region to South Sudan.

“We are now actively trying to transfer our assets from other peacekeeping missions like MONUSCO (in the Democratic Republic of Congo) … and some other areas,” he said.

“And we are also seeking support from other key countries who can provide the necessary assets.”

Clashes between rival groups of soldiers in the capital Juba a week ago have spread across the country, which won its independence from Sudan in 2011 after decades of war.

President Salva Kiir, from South Sudan’s Dinka ethnic group, has accused Machar, a Nuer whom he dismissed in July, of trying to launch a coup. The two men have long been political rivals.

Machar dismissed the charge but has since said he is commanding troops fighting the government.

MACHAR “ESCAPES BY BOAT”

Government soldiers had come across Machar with a group of fighters, Foreign Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin said.

“Riek managed to escape, used his boat along the Nile and ended up in his village of Ado and went into Bentiu (the administrative capital of Unity) … the night before, he attacked government institutions,” Benjamin added.

On Friday mediators from other African states met Kiir in Juba for what they called “productive” talks. His government said it was willing to hold talks with any rebel group.

Kenyan Lieutenant-General Lazarus Sumbeiywo said on Sunday mediators had not yet made contact with Machar to hear his side of the story.

“I don’t think it is feasible at the moment under the circumstances … and so we will find another way of getting to Riek Machar. Not through Juba,” Sumbeiywo told Reuters.

The army acknowledged losing the town of Bor in Jonglei State on Wednesday, and the United Nations said oil workers had taken refuge in its bases in neighboring Unity.

Reuters television footage showed the government sending more troops on Saturday to Bor – the scene of an ethnic massacre of Dinka in 1991 by Nuer fighters loyal to Machar.

Benjamin said Machar had not seized oilfields in Unity.

“Of course there is a threat. But … he is not occupying the oilfields. The oil has been running.”

Speaking in Khartoum, South Sudan’s Ambassador Mayen Dut Wol also said oil was flowing normally. South Sudan’s output of 245,000 barrels per day supplies almost all government revenues and hard currency to buy food and other vital imports.

The United Nations says hundreds of people have been killed in the conflict and around 62,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in five of South Sudan’s 10 states. Around 42,000 of them were seeking refuge at U.N. bases, it added.

U.N. BASES LOOTED

“Looting of humanitarian compounds has been reported in Jonglei (Akobo and Bor) and Unity. Several U.N. and NGO compounds in Bor town have reportedly been completely looted, including vehicles stolen,” the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report.

A spokesman for U.N. peacekeepers said they were bringing in more aircraft from their logistics base in Entebbe in Uganda to South Sudan.

A diplomatic source at the U.N. in New York said elements of the U.N. intervention brigade in eastern Congo could help out in South Sudan, but would only reinforce security at U.N. bases and not try to confront armed groups.

The source said the U.N. had asked countries to help it get real-time satellite images of South Sudan and there was a possibility of using unmanned surveillance drones, currently deployed in eastern Congo.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan said on Sunday it was relocating non-essential staff and planned to reinforce its military presence in Bor and Pariang to protect civilians.

About 100 civilian staff were being relocated on Sunday, and 60 staff from other U.N. agencies left on Saturday.

Three U.S. aircraft came under fire from unidentified forces on Saturday while trying to evacuate Americans from the conflict. The U.S. military said four of its members were wounded in the attacks.

The United States safely flew a number of Americans from Bor to Juba on Sunday, the State Department said, adding that overall it had taken about 380 Americans and about 300 citizens of other countries out of South Sudan on four chartered flights and five military aircraft.

The U.N. mission in South Sudan said one of four U.N. helicopters sent to Youai, in Jonglei state, had come under small-arms fire on Friday. No crew or passengers were harmed.

(Additional reporting by George Obulutsa in Nairobi, Philippa Croome in Kampala, Lou Charbonneau in New York, Khaled Abdel Aziz in Khartoum and Missy Ryan in Washington; Editing by Andrew Roche)

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Fears grow of civil war in South Sudan as rebels seize town

Urging Peace in South Sudan

Grant T. Harris

December 20, 2013
07:17 PM EST

Reinforcing President Obama’s strong message encouraging South Sudan’s leaders to choose peace, today National Security Advisor Susan Rice recorded an audio message for the people of South Sudan.  In it she reinforces the importance that South Sudan not allow the new country it fought so hard for to be torn apart by violence and suffering. She again calls on Sudan’s leaders to renounce violence, end the fighting, and commit to peaceful dialogue, and reiterates the United States’ support for a peaceful, democratic, unified South Sudan.

Listen to the message below, or download as an mp3.

Hello.  This is Susan Rice, National Security Advisor to President Barack Obama.  Today, I want to speak directly to you—the people of South Sudan. 

For the better part of 20 years, I’ve had the privilege of working alongside you as you sought your independence and built a new nation.  When the war was at its height, I visited with people across your country—in Marial Bai and Rumbek and Lui.  You told me about how the conflict was affecting your lives and your families.  And, when I was the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, I was honored to share your stories with the world and to support your struggle for independence.

Then, two years ago, on July 9^th, 2011, I was so proud to speak to you on behalf of President Obama and the American people when finally you celebrated your hard-won independence.  I remember so clearly the overwhelming joy and the spirit of unity that day—how you came together as one people to begin building a new nation, founded on your shared democratic values.   

But the violence we’re seeing now is a grave threat to your young nation.  Continued fighting—and the specter of ethnic violence—could tear apart the nation you so painstakingly knit together.  We know all too well what horrors can occur when irresponsible provocateurs pit tribe against tribe and brother against brother. 

We’ve seen the devastation in Bosnia, Rwanda and so close to home in Darfur.  As a longstanding friend of the people of South Sudan, I urge everyone to step back from conflict and instead address your differences through peaceful dialogue.   

In recent years, you’ve overcome incredible odds and shown the world that you can break the cycle of violence; that through careful and constant work, you can give birth to a new nation that respects the rights of all its peoples.  That’s what you, the South Sudanese people, died for and then so peacefully voted for:  an independent, peaceful and unified nation with a better future.  And that’s the promise that young people and religious leaders and community elders across South Sudan are calling for their leaders to live up to now. 

The United States joins these calls for peace.  We urge leaders on all sides to publicly renounce violence, end the fighting, and commit to peaceful dialogue.  Ethnic violence must cease immediately.  Those who have committed acts of violence against civilians must be held accountable.  And those who seek to achieve their goals at the barrel of a gun must understand that international legitimacy and support cannot be gained through conflict. 

For all those who choose the path of peace and democracy, know that the United States will continue to stand with you, as we have at every step of your journey.  But, I must also be clear:  if a different choice is made, if individuals or groups seek to take or hold power through force, mass violence, or intimidation, the United States will have no choice but to withdraw our traditional, robust support.  Killing will only lead to deprivation and isolation for the people of South Sudan.    

I know how much you have already endured and how far you have come, but please remember: democracy is always hard work.  Reconciliation always takes time.  You have to keep working at it each and every day through dialogue and compromise.  And the choices you make today will determine the future of your country.  You can choose whether your children will live in a nation of peace and growing prosperity or one scarred by resumed conflict.  As someone who has always stood with you to imagine a better future for you and your families, I ask each of you to make the choice for peace—make the choice for a unified and cohesive South Sudan.  Make this choice for yourselves and your children.  Thank you.

Grant T. Harris is the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs

White House.gov Blog Feed

Urging Peace in South Sudan

Aid worker dies after armed attack in South Sudan

• A staff member of Doctors Without Borders died this week, the group says


• The car he and another worker were traveling in came under attack


• The other staff member remains seriously wounded


• Doctors Without Borders calls for an investigation into the “brutal attack”

(CNN) — A staff member of the aid organization Doctors Without Borders has died after an attack on a vehicle near the capital of South Sudan, the group said Friday.

The aid worker, Joseph Philip Sebit, died two days after the attack, which took place Monday on a main road outside the capital, Juba, according to Doctors Without Borders.

A second employee for the organization remains seriously wounded, the group said.

Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, said that the “exact circumstances” of the attack aren’t yet clear, but the car in which its two staff members were traveling was “clearly marked as belonging to Medecins Sans Frontieres.”

The organization has requested that South Sudanese authorities “investigate the brutal attack that resulted in the killing of our colleague,” said Marcel Langenbach, director of operations for the group.

“We want to emphasize the need to respect international humanitarian law and on the obligation to ensure the protection of humanitarian workers, their property and health facilities,” he said.

Doctors Without Borders said it had been working in the region for more than 30 years.

South Sudan officially gained its statehood in July 2011 after separating from Sudan.

CNN.com Recently Published/Updated

Aid worker dies after armed attack in South Sudan

State news: Sudan to shut oil pipeline from South Sudan

(CNN) — The president of Sudan has ordered the shutdown of an oil pipeline running from South Sudan, his country’s state-run Sudan News Agency reported late Saturday.

The closure ordered by President Omar al-Bashir goes into effect Sunday, SUNA reports.

Following a popular referendum, South Sudan gained its independence from Sudan in 2011. But the two countries have remained at odds over a number of issues, including defining their borders and oil exports.

CNN.com Recently Published/Updated

State news: Sudan to shut oil pipeline from South Sudan

Israel Deports Refugees to Sudan Despite Threat to Their Lives

Haaretz reported on Tuesday that Israel deported at least 1,000 Sudanese refugees to North Sudan via a third county, without informing the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees  (UNHCR) and despite the fact that “[Sudan] has vowed to punish any of its citizens who ever set foot in Israel”:

Though Israel claims the people’s return was voluntary, this claim was rejected by UNHCR, which says there is no “free will from inside a prison.”

Under a recent amendment to Israel’s infiltration law, asylum seekers can be jailed for years without trial. Testimony from within prisons indicates that detainees were also denied access to UNHCR, in violation of the UN convention on the status of refugees, which Israel has signed.

…Michael Bavli, UNHCR’s representative in Israel, warned the Population, Immigration and Border Authority that “deporting Sudanese to Sudan would be the gravest violation possible of the convention that Israel has signed – a crime never before committed.” [emphasis mine]

An Israeli man shouts racist slogans at a group of Sudanese refugees from the Darfur region as they arrive at a cultural center in southern Tel Aviv on February 15, 2013. (Marco Longari / AFP / Getty Images)

The U.N. refugee convention holds that even if an immigrant was not a refugee when he or she immigrated, he or she becomes such if being repatriated constitutes a threat to life and limb. As Haaretz notes, this understanding of international law has been upheld by Israel’s Supreme Court. Former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak wrote in one verdict that:

This is the great principle of non-refoulement, under which a person cannot be deported to a place where his life or liberty would be in danger. This principle is enshrined in Article 33 of the refugee convention.… It applies in Israel to every governmental authority that deals with deporting someone from Israel.

Many of the Sudanese who fled to Israel did so from Darfur, where American Jewish social activists have been deeply involved in the struggle against the Sudanese government’s genocidal policies; the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes and genocide in Darfur. Refugees coming from other parts of Sudan

have also been subjected to brutal attack by the Sudanese government – including aerial bombing, the destruction of entire villages and mass arrests of hundreds of thousands of people – in an effort to suppress what the government terms rebellions.

Israel’s decision to send defenseless human beings back to this reality is disturbingly of a piece with the treatment it has long afforded African refugees: As mentioned above illegal immigrants may be detained for years without trial; the legal status of refugees has been manipulated so that they may not legally seek work; Minister of the Interior Eli Yishai and other coalition members have incited racial violence against the refugees; the police have distorted crime statistics; and in one horrific case, a group of 21 refugees was literally left to starve on the border before three were imprisoned and the rest forced to return to the Sinai, where human traffickers routinely torture and rape whoever falls in their hands.

This story has gone largely under-covered by the American press (though not, as some have suggested, entirely unreported, with the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post all publishing articles just in the past year, to name three outlets), and I have some thoughts as to why: the story doesn’t fit into the usual Israeli-Arab conflict tropes; the American press continues to face enormous financial struggles and has been slashing foreign coverage for years; the world is a huge place with major disasters and human tragedies playing out every day; and finally, while the African refugees in Israel number in the tens of thousands, there are frankly much bigger refugee stories out there, with much less complicated narratives. These are not excuses, they are only possible explanations, and the fact is: the information is out there, should we care to look for it.

But mostly, American and Israeli Jews have not cared to look for it—and if we have, we’ve supported the Israeli government in what can only be described as shocking and unconscionable actions. We can agree that a country has a right to protect its borders and spend its budget on its own citizens, without agreeing to this. Virtually every Jewish family alive today has a story burned into its collective memory of pogroms, ethnic discrimination, official scapegoating, privation, starvation, rape, and murder.

Is this the Jewish State we dreamed of?

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Israel Deports Refugees to Sudan Despite Threat to Their Lives