Category: Culture

KHARTOUM — Chairman of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereign Council Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan on Sunday issued a decree lifting the state of emergency in all parts of the country.

The order was made to “prepare the atmosphere for a fruitful dialogue that achieves stability for the transitional period,” the sovereign council said in a statement.

Sudan has been suffering a political crisis after Al-Burhan, who is also the general commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces, declared a state of emergency on Oct 25, 2021 and dissolved the sovereign council and the government.

Since then, the Sudanese capital of Khartoum and other cities have been witnessing continued protests demanding a return to civilian rule.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

A three-day joint traditional leaders peace conference for Dinka Ngok and Misseriya communities commenced in Entebbe, Uganda on Tuesday with calls for peaceful co-existence.

30 traditional leaders are attending the forum organized by the United Nations Interim Force in Abyei (UNISFA) under the theme, “Peace through dialogue”.

The Ngok Dinka delegation is headed by their paramount chief, Bulabek Deng Kuol, while El Sadig Hireka Izzal Din is heading the Misseriya team at the conference.

In a keynote address at the opening of the conference, the Special Envoy of Secretary-General for the Horn of Africa, Hanna Serwaa Tetteh called on the Misseriya and Ngok Dinka traditional leaders to find a solution towards peaceful coexistence within the contested oil-producing Abyei region.

Decrying the increase in insecurity and loss of lives of lives in Abyei, Tetteh said efforts over the two days of the conference are key to working with governments towards finding a lasting solution to peaceful co-existence.

UNISFA’s Acting Head of Mission and Force Commander, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Olufemi Sawyerr said the conference will enable the two communities to engage themselves in a frank discussion which will unravel the root causes of the conflict and together fashion a workable and sustainable solution.

“The next three days will enable you, the Misseriya and Ngok Dinka leaders, to engage in frank discussion which will unravel the root causes to the conflict in Abyei and work for a sustainable solution. It will also define the parameters of your togetherness,” said Olufemi.

He added, “UNISFA and partners stand ready to support you with our advice and facilitation. We will also support the implementation of your solution for peace by the end of this conference”.

Olufemi appealed to the traditional leaders to have an open mind and discuss with the objective of finding a lasting solution to the crisis in Abyei.

“Our discussions should not be conducted with a view to respond to one another. On the contrary, we must use our time together to understand each other’s perspectives, desires, aspirations and fears,” he said, adding that international interventions must be understood as temporal in nature.

In recent months, violence has intensified in the contested oil-producing region despite the presence of the UN peacekeeping force in the area.

According to authorities in the area, some of the attacks were carried out by the Sudanese Messeriya tribe with the most recent one happening last month, whereby more than 40 civilians including women and children were killed by suspected Messeriya tribesmen in separate incidents in the area.

Abyei, a disputed area since South Sudan obtained independence in 2011, while there have long been tensions between the Ngok Dinka community and the Misseriya nomads who pass through the area looking for grazing.

In 2011, the UN Security Council deployed its peacekeeping force in the disputed area after deadly clashes displaced thousands of the population.

Source: Sudan Tribune

The divergence of views within the tripartite mechanism over who is eligible to take part in the intra-Sudanese dialogue to end the political crisis in Sudan led to the postponement of the preliminary meeting.

The Trilateral Mechanism released a statement on Tuesday saying that the talks between the Sudanese parties would be held “in indirect format”.

The facilitators did not explain the reason behind this decision but added that they would issue regular communications to inform the public.

Sources close to the process said that a disagreement about who can take part in the process between the African Union Special Envoy Mohamed El-Hacen Ould Lebatt and Head of UNITAMS Volker Perthes.

“Ould Lebatt is actively seeking to involve political forces that were part of the ousted regime of President Omar al-Bashir, but Perthes opposes that because the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) reject the participation of the parties that are perceived as facades of the dissolved National Congress Party”.

The African Union Representative to the Sudan Mohamed Belaiche was not reachable for comment on this matter.

“Any document purporting to be part of the trilateral mechanism that are not issued on the AU, IGAD or UNITMAS official platforms are not endorsed or recognized by the mechanism,” reads the statement.

Mohamed Hamdan Daglo aka Hemetti, Deputy Head of the Sovereign Council said on Tuesday that the trilateral process should be inclusive for all the Sudanese parties “otherwise the disputes will resume and in a worse way this time,” he said.

“We now see that the dialogue is moving in a certain direction, and this will not serve the cause of the Sudanese people,” he underscored.

“The issue concerns all the 18 states of the Sudan, not just three streets,” he concluded.

Mutaz Salih, a member of the FFC leadership council told the Sudan Tribune that the AU envoy wants to hold the meeting without fulfilling the requirements of dialogue, while the UNITAMS insists on the need not to rush and wait until a number of requirements are met.

Salih went further to say that “Ould Lebatt want to impose his point of view”.

The FFC group say committed to the process but they would not participate before the implementation of the confidence-building measures including the release of all the political detainees, ending of violence against protesters and lifting of the state of emergency.

Meanwhile, a leading member of the National Umma Party (NUP), Orwa al-Sadiq, also attributed the postponement to the differences over who is eligible to participate in the process.

” The FFC believes that there are attempts to bring unknown groups to the dialogue table. Also, some components refuse to engage in the dialogue process due to the continuation of the repressive approach, (…) and the failure to lift the state of emergency,” al-Sadiq told the Sudan Tribune.

The NUP is the only FFC party that announced its readiness to take part in the dialogue process without any requirement saying there are enough guarantees that the military would accept to hand over power to civilians.

Source: Sudan Tribune

Analysts are questioning the East African Community’s capacity to equip a multinational military force formed to battle insurgencies in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Last week, the seven nations that make up the regional body announced the force’s mission would be to ”end decades of bloodshed,” Reuters reported.

The challenges of getting the force on the ground are enormous, said Onesphore Sematumba, an analyst on the DRC and Great Lakes region at the International Crisis Group. He questioned the readiness of EAC countries to provide troops and logistics for the force and deploy it.

“Unfortunately, this regional force does not yet exist. It must first be mounted and made operational,” he told VOA.

Over 120 rebel groups and militias still operate in the DRC’s eastern provinces nearly two decades after the official end of the country’s civil wars. The effort to restore peace has, since 2010, involved the United Nations’ largest peacekeeping force, with billions of dollars invested in the operation.

Some of the groups in the eastern DRC have operated there for two decades or more. That includes cross-border groups considered hostile to their countries of origin, such as the Ugandan Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which operates in DRC’s North Kivu and Ituri provinces. According to the United Nations, the ADF killed over 1,200 people in 2021 alone, an increase of nearly 50% from the previous year.

Other cross-border groups are the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), or FLDR, in North Kivu and the RED-Tabara of Burundi in South Kivu.

Naureen Chowdhury Fink, executive director of the New York-based Soufan Center, said it was crucial to “reflect on lessons learned from other regions” where multiple groups are active. “It can get complicated very quickly,” she told VOA.

Fink added that it was important for groups such as the EAC military force “to ensure their operations are based on the rule of law, as human rights violations can further exacerbate tensions with the communities they are intending to serve.”

“Also importantly,” she said, “there needs to be a clearly defined operational strategy and objective so that it does not end up targeting a wide and undefined group of actors in the name of countering terrorism.”

EAC partners include Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and, finally, the DRC, which became the community’s newest member earlier this month.

“Even by bringing together all the armies of the region, it will be difficult to militarily defeat more than 120 armed groups scattered over a very large area in a region of forests and mountains,” Sematumba said.

“We are dealing with extremely mobile groups that have a very good knowledge of the field and have good networks of information within the populations,” he told VOA. “Their asymmetrical warfare strategy requires a similar type of intelligence and special forces response from a potential regional force. States need patience.”

Source: Voice of America

South Sudanese intellectuals and the Jieng (Dinka) Council of Elders have petitioned President Salva Kiir over the resumption in digging of the Jonglei Canal and dredging of the Nile River tributaries.

In an interview with Sudan Tribune on Monday, the Council’s Secretary General Joshua Dau Diu said they twice met government officials and expressed concerns on how digging of the canal and combing of the Nile tributaries would drain water from low wetlands and tributaries into the Nile.

The Jonglei Canal was a canal project started, but never completed, to divert water from the vast Sudd wetlands of South Sudan to deliver more water downstream to Sudan and Egypt for agriculture and industrial use.

“The council has rejected the resumption of this project from the time we heard what the vice president for infrastructure development and the minister of water resources said in the media. We did not mince our words and position because they are advancing the views of Egypt,” said Dau.

The veteran politician, one of those arrested in opposing the construction of the canal in 1974, said the matters concerning the project are “not new.”

“It was the Egypt-Sudan project of digging the Jonglei Canal that was initially proposed in 1904 to be dug in the heart of South Sudan to drain water from tributaries and the canal because these two countries are in dire need of water, and it led them to construct Aswan dam for Egypt and Jebel Awlia dam in Sudan”, said Dau.

He continued: “The proposed canal with its multiple imaginary and fallacious developmental projects were drastically objected to by South Sudanese public in a countrywide mass demonstrations and students protests during which a schoolboy was shot dead by police that fired live bullets in a failed attempt to disperse the protestors in Juba in 1974”.

Dau said several people, including members of Parliament, were detained.

“Those members of Parliament who were arrested and imprisoned included Hon. Clement Mboro, Stephen Ciec Lam, Benjamin Bol Akok, Simon Mori, Gabriel Acuoth Deng, and me, the one who is speaking to you. I am the one who is alive today and the rest, the majority passed away,” recalled.

Dau vowed to continue leading resistance to the Jonglei Canal project.

Juba University Vice-Chancellor, John Apuot Akech said over 200,000 people signed a petition calling for an end to any activities on the canal.

The campaign is part of a petition seeking Kiir’s support to halt the project.

“I welcome signatures by academics, civil society, concerned public, students, and people of goodwill everywhere”, Akech notes in the petition.

Also included in the petition is the issue of arms embargo since South Sudan does not currently trade with the United Kingdom and countries in the European Union (EU) as a result of sanctions imposed on individual leaders.

Akech said the restrictions amount to a trade embargo because they do not allow business-to-business transactions, causing the country get goods or services from companies in the EU countries and the United Kingdom.

For is part, former Defense minister, Majak De Agoot said the best way to handle flooding in the country was to regulate water levels when it is risen above normal, proposing building of dams on Fula Rapids and Biden Falls.

These dams, he argued, would provide both clean energies for consumption in the entire country and can also be used as grand reservoirs.

Aldo Ajou Deng Akuey, a former Sudanese deputy prime minister said rise in water levels should be prevented to save lives and peoples’ properties.

“Although Egypt is dredging rivers, tributaries, and streams, this project must be suspended till further studies are undertaken by nationals of South Sudan to determine benefits in areas of agriculture and hydropower,” said Akuey.

ABOUT THE JONGLEI CANAL PROJECT

The idea of the Jonglei Canal project was proposed by Sir William Garstin, a British civil engineer, in 1907. In 1946, the government of Egypt conducted a study and plans took shape between 1954 and 1959 during the period of decolonization which included Sudanese independence in 1956. Against the context of Sudan’s postcolonial civil conflict, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), led by late Dr. John Garang De Mabior halted construction of the canal in 1984. The dispute over the canal and access to Nile waters, added a significant environmental dimension to the post-1983, second Sudanese civil war, in which disputes over the religious, linguistic, and cultural elements of Sudanese national identity also played prominent roles.

Source: Sudan Tribune