One Village At a Time » Sudan http://onevillageatatime.org Thu, 17 May 2012 14:26:52 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Over Their Head http://onevillageatatime.org/2012/01/17/over-their-head/ http://onevillageatatime.org/2012/01/17/over-their-head/#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:44:31 +0000 Susan http://onevillageatatime.org/?p=1718 Remember Francis my driver? Despite the grenades going off when last I was in Kenya, he reassured me that El Shabbab was nothing. I can’t tell whether that was wishful thinking or meant to keep my tourist dollars over there.
Today I read an extremely cogent article by Ken Menkhaus of enough project.org. His best sentence is this: Intervention strategies that plan the war but not the peace will fail. That should by the byword for all countries.
It’s not just Kenya, but imagine of Bush had thought about planning the peace in Iraq or Afghanistan.
What is so wonderful about this article is that he painstakingly spells out the problems of Kenya’s incursion into Somalia. Now campers, I wish you would read the whole thing and indeed here is the link:http://www.enoughproject.org/files/MenkhausKenyaninterventionSomalia.pdf
But since I find that folks don’t like to read lengthy articles I’m going to give you the highlights
Kenya’s military capacity to wage war. Kenya’s military has very limited experience in direct combat, and, with the exception of some peacekeeping deployments, has never waged war across the Kenyan border. Some analysts worry that Kenya’s untested forces will fare poorly in clashes with Somali forces on Somali terrain. Related to this concern are worries that Kenya initiated this attack in the early weeks of the dheere rainy sea- son, when track roads become impassable and heavy military equipment gets bogged down. This is one of the reasons Kenyan forces moved so slowly in the first two months of the campaign. This gave many observers the impression that the Kenyan offensive was not adequately planned.
Unclear objectives. Kenyan officials have expressed divergent goals. They have at different points claimed the aim is to prevent Shabaab from engaging in cross-border abductions of tourists, defeat Shabaab, capture the strategic seaport of Kismayo, and to secure the border area.
Shabaab terrorist reprisal attacks in Kenya. Kenya is exceptionally vulnerable to Shabaab terrorist attacks. Shabaab moves freely in and out of Kenya, where the group does business, recruits, and engages in fundraising. A major Shabaab terrorist attack
in Kenya would have devastating consequences for Kenyan tourism and business. Observers have expressed alarm that Shabaab could make good on threats to take
the war to Kenya, and that Kenya would be less secure as a result of its offensive into Somalia. As evidence of this, foreign embassies have elevated security alerts for Kenya. Two grenade attacks in Nairobi, carried out by a professed Kenyan Shabaab member and recent convert to Islam, have amplified these fears. Shabaab leaders have implored their followers in Kenya to launch jihadi attacks in Kenya, a tactic that could produce “lone wolf ” terrorism in addition to planned Shabaab attacks. The actual threat may beoverstated, however, as Kenya’s value to Somali interests makes it risky for Shabaab to launch a major terrorist attack there. But the danger could grow larger the longer Kenyan forces stay inside Somalia.
Kenyan offensive as tool for Shabaab recruitment. Observers have raised concerns that Kenya’s military operation into Somali territory could work to Shabaab’s advantage,
by rallying Somalis against a foreign occupation, in much the same way that Shabaab enjoyed significant popular support when Ethiopia occupied Mogadishu in 2007 and 2008. Though Somalis are exhausted from war and are devoting most of their resources to assisting relatives affected by the famine, a sustained Kenyan military presence, with inevitable reports of civilian casualties, runs the risk of generating a new wave of Somali jihadi recruits and fund-raisers for Shabaab. The ill-advised public announcement of Israeli counterterrorism support to Kenya was exactly the kind of misstep that Shabaab could parlay into propaganda to turn the Jubbaland intervention into a jihadi cause.8 So far few Somalis and Somali Kenyans appear to have joined Shabaab in response to either the Kenyan or Ethiopian military offensives in southern Somalia; Shabaab appears instead to be relying more and more on forced conscription.
Prospects of quagmire in Kismayo. Questions have been raised about how Kenyan forces will fare if and when they take the city of Kismayo. In a crowded urban setting, Kenya’s military will lose some of the advantage it enjoys from its armored vehicles and heavy weapons, and will be more vulnerable to urban guerilla warfare and the use of roadside bombs. It could become bogged down in counterinsurgency warfare that Ethiopian forces and now African Union peacekeepers, or AMISOM, have faced in Mogadishu since 2007. There is reason to hope that local populations are so furious with Shabaab policies—especially forced recruitment and heavy taxation—that they will turn on Shabaab and prevent it from waging insurgency attacks in the town. But most communities in Somalia today are so fearful of reprisals that they are more likely to lay low and do nothing.
It’s a really good article folks.


]]> http://onevillageatatime.org/2012/01/17/over-their-head/feed/ 3 Mother of All Battles http://onevillageatatime.org/2011/10/19/mother-of-all-battles/ http://onevillageatatime.org/2011/10/19/mother-of-all-battles/#comments Wed, 19 Oct 2011 18:02:35 +0000 Susan http://onevillageatatime.org/?p=1586 Every time I prepare to return to Kenya there are those who think that joining me would be great fun/education. And each time I invite the person to join me. I’m always up for company. Once they hear about the accommodations, the shots, the lack of food that they would eat and the potential for danger they find a reason that they can’t go.
Today, while reading the Nation, I see that Kenya actually could get dicey before the elections. Kenya has sent troops into Mogadishu, and the terrorists are PISSED. So now the threat is that they will bomb Nairobi. I’m not saying they will, but it does give me pause. I forget to think about those things.
I wonder, though, if 11/11/11 will mean anything to terrorists in Somalia and Southern Sudan. Cuz I’ll be in Nairobi then and I’d prefer not to dodge falling debris. Oh yes I’m still going, but it did have a weird affect on my psyche.
So I’m off to see my kids this weekend. A new granddaughter awaits. I always like to see them before I go. It’s not that I’m not planning to be home for Thanksgiving, but just in case, I will have had a chance to say I love you one more time.
And if you’d like to read the Nation Article, here’s the link.

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Kenyan+army+in+for+mother+of+all+battles+/-/1056/1257302/-/q4sxf6/-/index.html

]]> http://onevillageatatime.org/2011/10/19/mother-of-all-battles/feed/ 0 Shhh…Don’t Tell…They’re Killing People http://onevillageatatime.org/2011/01/10/shhh-dont-tell-theyre-killing-people/ http://onevillageatatime.org/2011/01/10/shhh-dont-tell-theyre-killing-people/#comments Mon, 10 Jan 2011 18:27:00 +0000 Richard http://onevillageatatime.org/shhh-dont-tell-theyre-killing-people/ The voting continues in the Sudan. It’s hard to get the truth out of folks.
This article just upsets me. “A UN source speaking on condition of anonymity”…really? really??? This comes from an MSNBC article. So let’s see let’s lie and say things are going well when they are killing each other. The UN must save face right? or is it George Clooney? Or just whom?

As I said yesterday, I didn’t have high hopes for no violence, and we don’t know exactly how much is going to happen, but that the UN source can only tell what’s happening on promise of anonymity is disgraceful Aren’t the supposed to be the ones reporting what’s happening.

The second article comes from the Nation which I trust more than MSNBC. Still says that there are areas where the killing has started. It’s not that I’m blood thirsty, I pray for peace, but I know the hatred that runs deep within tribes. The resources in the Sudan are located in the south, so what’s in it for the north to give up gracefully? Pray people, pray.

“This is their last attempt to try to disrupt the voting process but they will not succeed,” Aguer said.
Misseriya leader Mokhtar Babo Nimr told Reuters 13 of his men had died in Sunday’s violence and accused southerners of starting the fighting.
“They attacked us because they don’t want the Arabs to go south to water their herds but the cattle need water and they will go. If they continue to stop us going south this fighting will continue.”
A U.N. source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there had been another clash in the village of Todach on Monday morning.
In another sign of tension, Aguer said two men — a Ugandan and a northern army soldier — were arrested with four boxes holding
700 rounds of AK-47 ammunition in the southern capital Juba on Sunday night.
The northern army’s spokesman, al-Sawarmi Khaled, on Monday denied any link to the ammunition or the clashes.
Janjaweed 
The Sudanese president’s regime is accused of unleashing Arab militias known as janjaweed, against rebels in the Western Darfur region which have committed atrocities against ethnic African towns and villages. The U.N. says some 300,000 people have died since 2003. The government denies backing the janjaweed and says the death figures are inflated.
Southerners, who mainly define themselves as African, have long resented their underdevelopment, accusing the northern Arab-dominated government of taking their oil revenues without investing in the south.
Southern Sudan is among the world’s poorest regions. The entire France-sized region has only 30 miles of paved roads. Because only 15 percent of southern Sudan’s 8.7 million people can read, the ballot choices were as simple as could be: a drawing of a single hand marked “separation” and another of clasped hands marked “unity.”
Independence won’t be finalized until July, and many issues are yet to be worked out. They include north-south oil rights, water rights to the White Nile, border demarcation and the status of the contested region of Abyei, a north-south border region where the biggest threat of a return to conflict exists.
Most of Sudan’s oil is in the south, while the pipelines to the sea run through the north, tying the two regions together economically.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Nation Kenya’s national paper



JUBA, January 10, 2011 (AFP) – The feuding Misseriya Arab and Ngok Dinka peoples of the disputed Sudan district of Abyei on Monday both reported heavy losses in clashes over the past three days totalling at least 33 dead.
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“Thirteen Misseriya have been killed and 38 wounded since Friday,” Misseriya tribal leader Hamid al-Ansari said.
Abyei chief administrator Deng Arop Kuol said: “The total for these three days, we lost about 20 to 22 Dinka.
“They attacked us three times already and we are expecting them to attack again today.”
UN peacekeepers have been sent to Abyei to investigate, UN Mission in Sudan spokesman Kouider Zerrouk said.
Tensions in the district on the north-south border have been rising with the launch of a landmark independence referendum in the south on Sunday.

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]]> http://onevillageatatime.org/2011/01/10/shhh-dont-tell-theyre-killing-people/feed/ 0 Got Hope? http://onevillageatatime.org/2011/01/09/got-hope/ http://onevillageatatime.org/2011/01/09/got-hope/#comments Mon, 10 Jan 2011 01:23:00 +0000 Richard http://onevillageatatime.org/got-hope/ Hardly seems possible that it was 2 years ago I was readying for Obama’s Inauguration. The tee shirts and slogans abounded and one that I loved was a take off on Got Milk? I wear it now and it says Got Hope? I’m not really sure. I’m not talking about Obama or the horrific shooting in Arizona yesterday, I’m talking about the Sudan. I read different accounts of the voting today and it’s mixed. Of course our news reports some killings, but the African papers seem to be saying it’s going pretty well.

A good friend talked me out of going there right now. He assures me that the rebels are coming up from Darfur and that the north is going to have to stop them. Then he went into all the other possibilities of potential dangers in the Sudan as it reaches its arms up to the  to snatch a new country down from the African sky.

 Southern Sudan, how will it name itself? What flag will it fly? What anthem?  And how will the North and the South divvy up the oil, the people, the rest of the resources? I read in the Nation that the religious animosity is beginning. The president of the Sudan already has started by saying that any southern sudanese who work in the north will be fired. And he’s going to make Islam the national religion of the North.

Having lived through the chaos of Kenya’s ugly election violence and watching how their constitutional referendum came with such peace is encouraging. I ask myself will the Sudanese be tired of fighting and end up in peace, I hope so. But again, I have to be honest. I don’t  really have hope. I wish I did.
Stay tuned y’all and I’ll keep you informed. Our papers never really cover Africa.

Here’s what the Nation had to say about it.

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S. Sudan: Thorny issues that must be resolved

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A soldier guards a polling station in Juba on January 9, 2011 on the first day of a week-long independence referendum expected to lead to the partition of Africa's largest nation and the creation of the world's 193rd UN member state. AFP PHOTO/Roberto SCHMIDT

A soldier guards a polling station in Juba on January 9, 2011 on the first day of a week-long independence referendum expected to lead to the partition of Africa’s largest nation and the creation of the world’s 193rd UN member state. AFP PHOTO/Roberto SCHMIDT 
By EMEKA MYAKA GEKARA newsdesk@ke.nationmedia.comPosted Sunday, January 9 2011 at 22:00
Even as Southern Sudanese appear likely to vote for divorce with the North, the real test of a peaceful coexistence with Khartoum will depend on how the two states resolve contentious issues.
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The two states would also have to agree on a common currency, payment of foreign debt and the future of the oil-rich region of Abyei.
The agreement must be reached before July 9 when the new state would be proclaimed.
The other thorny issue is the fate of the nearly 1.5 million Southern Sudanese — mostly Christian — living and working in the North.
President Omar-al-Bashir has already declared that if the southerners opt for separation those working in the North will be discharged.
The Southern Sudanese hold 20 per cent of the jobs in public service.
Mr Bashir has announced that if the South goes separate, he will change the constitution in the North to impose Sharia law and ensure that Islam and Arabic are the official religion and language, respectively.
Analysts have warned unless mutually agreed upon, they contentious issues run the risk of re-igniting conflict and preventing smooth secession.
“We are supposed to decide on how to deal with the huge $35 billion (Sh2.8 trillion) external debt and the sharing of boundaries.
Our breaking away will not mean that we cut oil to the North,” says Mr Garang Majak Angok, a former Finance minister in the South.
President Bashir and Salva Kiir of the South, have pledged to resolve the issues with sincerity, fairness and in consistency with international laws to ensure cordial relations between the two possible states.
“I have reiterated several times that even if Southern Sudan separates from the North it will not shift to the Indian Ocean or to the Atlantic Coast,” said Mr Kiir recently.
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