re: "South Sudan"

David Warren at David Warren Online ("my daily newspaper articles for the time since Sept. 11th, 2001") shared some nearly specialist-level area knowledge of South Sudan.

Money quote(s):

"The frontiers are not yet secure, and the ultimate shape of this new country depends on the resolution of the conflict with (northern) Sudan, over possession of the large district of Abyel, which is a melding zone between the Muslim north and Christian-Animist south, both geographically and demographically."

"Melding zone" is one way of looking at it. Abyei, within South Kordofan (the name itself is a form of arabization-inspired north Sudan cultural imperialism), is part of Islam's "bloody borders," marking the bleeding edge of moslem conquest as it marches (and rides, and raids) further and further up the Nile valley.

"Only in the 19th century did European adventurers become fully aware of regions like southern Sudan, thanks more to private missionary efforts than to imperial ambitions. It was an afterthought to the Anglo-Egyptian authorities, extending their rule into the swampland of the White Nile, a very long way from Cairo; and also to British East African officials, curious to find what lay beyond Uganda.

History, and in this case the imperial histories that underlie so many contemporary world issues, is unfortunately no longer taught except to ideological specialists, which is how I excuse this very general briefing. The British in fact saw the problem coming, of putting millions of tropical rainforest-dwelling black Africans under the rule of desert-dwelling Arabized Muslims, at least a century ago. Their intention to make the region an extension of Uganda, instead of Sudan, was defeated by "events."

So much of today's sprawling political and economic catastrophe through sub-Saharan Africa can be traced not to imperialism, per se, but to the imperial authorities' eagerness to leave around the signal year of 1960. It was an appalling cat's cradle of quick fixes they left behind.

The rest could be attributed to the people they put in power, or dangerously near power, during this evacuation: a generation of African statesmen educated in places like the London School of Economics, or the École Nationale de la France d'Outre-Mer, on what were then the latest Fabian and socialist principles.

Add nascent African nationalisms - also encouraged by the chic, departing Europeans - and stir. In retrospect, the reduction of sub-Saharan Africa, with its extraordinary natural resources and diversity of alert and capable peoples, to desperate poverty and a violent hash, was just what we should have expected."

The preceding five short paragraphs encapsulate the historical truths it took me week, and volumes, to conclude. (Nice work.)

"Africa is not a mess because it is black. Africa is a mess because it was made into an immense Petri dish for asinine Utopian experiments, by people who walked when they started going wrong."

Simplistic and incomplete, but not untrue.

(7/9)

re: "An awkward independence day for diplomats in South Sudan"

Edmund Downie at PASSPORT ("A Blog By The Editors Of Foreign Policy") noted a little problem of an ICC warrant being out on one of the invited guests.

Money quote(s):

"The International Criminal Court's March 2009 indictment alleged that Bashir was responsible for war crimes in the ongoing conflict in Darfur. Recent violence in border states Abyei and South Kordofan hasn't endeared him to the international community either. Bashir and rebel leaders pledged in late June to pull troops out of Abyei before the referendum, but Bashir's ambassador to Kenya reaffirmed yesterday the north's claim to the region."



(7/8)

re: "Ramping Up to Another Jihad Genocide in The Sudan?"

Andrew Bostom ("Uncreated, Uncreative Words") puts the situation in Nubia (i.e., South Kordofan) into historical perspective.

Money quote(s):

"(Y)et another jihad genocide may be under way in The Sudan—Arab Muslim mass murderers preying upon indigenous non-Arab, primarily Christian blacks—this time in the Nuba Mountains."

The Nuba Mountains are, mostly, in the central part of what is now (since the formerly semi-autonomous Southern Sudan is now independent South Sudan) southern Sudan.

"Conservative death toll estimates as of now suggest that the number is at least in the “hundreds,” with a minimum of 60,000 displaced.

The feckless UN peacekeeping presence confined to its Kadugli base, includes Egyptian peacekeepers, viewed as very sympathetic toward the Arab Khartoum government, and accused by many Nuba of being complicit in targeted assassinations within the U.N. camp sheltering displaced refugees."

This is a very old story for Sudan, predating independence by centuries.

"Jihad depredations against the Nuba are a recurring phenomenon in Sudan’s history. Winston Churchill’s accounts from The River War as a young British soldier fighting in the Sudan at the end of the 19th century, described the chronic situation, in its larger context"

Looks like I'll have to find this book.

"During the 1990s, some 500,000 Nuba were killed when the Arab Muslim Khartoum government declared jihad against them."

Governments declaring jihad against their "own" people? That can't be a good thing, can it? I suppose it's easier if you don't actually see them as either "yours" or "people."

"The Nuba’s chronic plight raises yet again this overarching moral and existential question for our era of resurgent global jihad posed in 1999 by the late southern Sudanese leader John Garang:

Is the call for jihad against a particular people a religious right of those calling for it, or is it a human rights violation against the people upon whom jihad is declared and waged?"

John Garang, who died in 2005, got his start as a South Sudanese leader when he was sent to quell a mutiny among Sudanese troops in the south who had been ordered to move to the north (where they didn't want to go).

He joined them. (Before that, he was an officer in the Sudanese Armed Forces.)