Meskel Square

Sudan story of the day

President Al-Bashir to address huge women mass rally Thursday
Khartoum, March 9 (SUNA) - President of the Republic Field Marshal Omer Al-Bashir is to address at the Council of Ministers Thursday a huge women mass rally, which is organized by the Secretariat General of the Working Women Association in Sudan in rejection of the allegations of the so-called International Criminal Court and to affirm support to the leadership.

Definitely one for the diary.

Reporting on Sudan: a master class

Me: Hello Mr [senior government figure]. I've heard you've been arrested...Although I suppose the fact that you've just answered your mobile phone suggests that you haven't been arrested... Is that right?

Senior government figure: Yes.

Sudan skeletons

Reuters didn't want this story yesterday. So here, in an exclusive Meskel Square production, is:

Centuries-old skeletons found at UK's Sudan embassy
By Andrew Heavens

KHARTOUM, Jan 12 (Meskel Square) - Builders uncovered fragments of three, centuries-old skeletons buried deep in the grounds of Britain's embassy in Sudan, officials said on Monday.
The contractors discovered the small pieces of skull and other bones while digging in the central Khartoum compound on Sunday, embassy spokesman Piers Craven told Reuters.
Police called in to investigate found the remains were up to 300-years-old, meaning they pre-dated the foundation of Khartoum as a major settlement in the early nineteenth century, he said.
"It is something of archaeological interest rather than anything more recent or more sinister," said Craven adding officers had not been able to work out the gender of the bodies or their age when they died.
Historians say humans have lived for thousands of years at the site of Sudan's capital at the meeting of the Blue and White Niles.
But it was little more than a fishing village until the 1820s when a Turkish-Egyptian expedition set up an outpost on the spot.
Embassy staff passed on the bones to the Sudanese police who were making arrangements for a re-burial, Craven added.

If you thought you had problems ...

... here's a rough list of the issues facing Sudan in 2009 that I put together for a feature I was writing . No doubt many are missing. Feel free to add more in the comments section.

The wildcards

The International Criminal Court
This is the only thing people are talking and thinking about in Sudan right now. What will happen when, as widely expected, the global court turns Sudan's president into a wanted man?
Expected: Any day now

President Obama
Will he follow President Bush's lead and keep the "normalisation" talks going with Sudan? Or will he follow President Clinton's lead and start ordering missile strikes on pharmaceutical factories?

Expected: 20/01/2009

The economy
The global slump has slashed the price of oil - Sudan's main source of export revenues. What happens when Khartoum and Juba stop booming?

Expected: Happening now

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement

With all the attention that Darfur has been getting over the past six years, most people have forgotten about the much longer and bloodier north-south civil war. Darfur's conflict has killed between 10,000 and 500,000 people, depending on who you believe. The north-south civil war killed at least 2 million people in its last 21-year stretch.

The north-south conflict came to an end in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. But here are some of the things that could test that deal to breaking point in the coming months and years.

The census
A population count that took place last year, seen as a vital pre-requisite of elections promised under the peace deal. The south may reject it when its initial results finally get published in February. At best, the resulting wrangling will delay other parts of the peace deal.

The elections
Everyone you speak to privately admits these can never happen by the deadline of July 2009, not least because the rainy season makes large parts of the south inaccessible around then. But no one will admit to it publicly. Southerners will greet any delay with suspicion and disappointment. The elections, when they come, will be hugely complicated, with their multiple votes and weird mix of proportional representation and first-past-the-post counting. If they go ahead, the current carve-up of parliamentary power between north and south is going to change with inevitably divisive results.

Abyei
Fighting has flared in this disputed central oil town twice since May. Both times, the clashes were sparked by relatively minor incidents. It wouldn't take much to set it going again. And what will happen when the Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration finally rules on the border? The north has already rejected the findings of another independent body.

Disarmament
The country is still filled with young men with guns.

South Kordofan
There has been a series of research groups, queuing up to describe the region as the "next Darfur". Here's what Foreign Policy had to say about it. And here's the Small Arms Survey [PDF].

The southern referendum
The peace deal promised southern Sudan a referendum on secession in 2011. At best, all the problems listed above will give the country less time to prepare for it. A contested result would be a disaster. See what Alex de Waal has to say about it:

With little progress towards making unity attractive, the fundamental question is whether the referendum on self-determination will take place and if so, how it will be managed. If the process or outcome are contested, few have any doubts that the result will be a violently-contested partition of the country. A new war of this kind would not only be a humanitarian disaster but would scar the political futures of both north and south Sudan, and drag the entire region into the conflict in one way or another.

Darfur

People are still fighting. No one is talking. Peacekeepers and aid workers are still facing regular attacks and harassment.

Problem neighbours

Uganda
Or, to be more accurate, Uganda's truly heinous Lords Resistance Army rebels, who keep on slaughtering south Sudanese villagers and abducting their children.

Chad
Which is supposed to be going through a friendly patch with Sudan at the moment. But the countries keep on accusing each other of harbouring each other's rebels. The relationship will come under enormous stress if Darfur's rebel Justice and Equality Movement - which has strong links with Chad - has another go at attacking Khartoum after the International Criminal Court makes its ruling. Which is where we started.

How to get from Sudan to Star Trek in one jump

Sadiq al-Mahdi, former prime minister of Sudan, is the uncle of Alexander Siddig, the actor who played Dr. Julian Subatoi Bashir, the chief medical officer in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

The challenge - to get this into a story by the end of the year.

Cartoon Darfur

There is the brutally simplified version of Darfur - Arab militias vs "black African" villagers.

And then there is the cartoon version, brought to you this time by UPI:

There was the continuing genocide of Christian African tribes in Darfur in Western Sudan. The United States, the European Union, the United Nations and the African Union all proved totally useless in even stemming the violence.

Just for the record, there are no Christian tribes in Darfur. Everyone is Muslim. Everyone is black. And everyone is African (through the fact of everyone being Sudanese and Sudan being in Africa).

Meroitic

The ancient African language that anyone can speak but no one can understand.

Three ancient statues sit at a dig at el-Hassa, the site of a Meroitic town in Sudan in this undated photograph. Archaeologists said on Tuesday they had discovered three ancient statues in Sudan with inscriptions that could bring
them closer to deciphering one of Africa's oldest languages. René-Pierre Dissaux/Section Française de la Direction des Antiquités du Soudan

Sudan statue find gives clues to ancient language
KHARTOUM, Dec 16 (Reuters) - Archaeologists said on Tuesday they had discovered three ancient statues in Sudan with inscriptions that could bring them closer to deciphering one of Africa's oldest languages.

The stone rams, representing the god Amun, were carved during the Meroe empire, a period of kingly rule that lasted from about 300 BC to AD 450 and left hundreds of remains along the River Nile north of Khartoum.

Vincent Rondot, director of the dig carried out by the French Section of Sudan's Directorate of Antiquities, said each statue displayed an inscription written in Meroitic script, the oldest written language in sub-Saharan Africa.

"It is one of the last antique languages that we still don't understand ... we can read it. We have no problem pronouncing the letters. But we can't understand it, apart from a few long words and the names of people," he told reporters in Khartoum.

Obama's not Kenyan

He's Sudanese.

Sudan politicians claim stake in Obama heritage

Penetrating commentary

So here's the quote that spoiled my breakfast this morning. It came in an anti-American diatribe from Alfatih Ziada, a columnist for the state Sudan Vision newspaper:

America has a leader (Bush) who is tough and assertive, willing to employ pre-emptive, penetrating power. Unfortunately, as we all know, and all Viagra users experience, he is a leader displaying the same fictitious masculinity that, when the rhetorical rage of patriotism, imperialism and Christian crusade ebbs, will, like a Viagra hard-on, shrink to reveal his true, pathetic natural manhood.

I thought one of the benefits of living under Sharia law was that you were spared this kind of imagery in the popular press.

Peace balls

It is amazing what you can achieve with a choir of sweetly-singing students, a bell and a bag of branded footballs.

PRESS RELEASE
UNAMID Deputy Head of Mission Delivers a Peace Message to the People of Darfur: Encouraged by the Rising Winds of Peace

El Fasher, 21 September 2008 – The Principal Deputy Joint Special Representative of the African Union –United Nations Hybrid Operations in Darfur (PDJSR) Mr. Henry Anyidoho expressed optimism about attainment of peace in Darfur.

Addressing the celebration in Al Fasher of this year’s International Day of Peace which took place at the State Legislative Council Hall, Anyidoho said “I can see the wind of peace blowing in this hall this morning, and I pray that it would take us to our destination”. He added that the sweet voices of students singing for peace in Darfur were a clear testimony of the advancement on the road to peace...

...He later distributed “Peace Balls” to all the schools invited, and also rang the peace bell to make UN commitment to the ideal of world peace heard far and wide, and to remind all that peace is a common desire for people everywhere.

Next stop Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Constant motion but no forward movement

Was re-reading some background papers on Sudan last night and came across this quote from commentator Alex de Waal:

"We must face the possibility of continued turbulence and paralysis in Sudan - a political process marked by constant motion but no forward movement."

There has been lots of "motion" over the last year - everything from rebels racing across hundreds of miles of desert to attack Khartoum to peace envoys zipping across the world holding consultations and conferences. But very little, if anything, that counts as "movement".

Meskel Square's new patron saint

Sudan's Catholics turn to Darfur saint
By Andrew Heavens and Skye Wheeler

KHARTOUM/JUBA (Reuters) - In a dusty church in Khartoum's Jeberona camp for displaced persons, the congregation claps and sings beneath a portrait of a smiling woman who has become a focus of hope for a divided country.

Josephine Bakhita, a former slave who died in 1947, has risen from obscurity to become the first saint from Darfur in western Sudan, a region convulsed by war for the past five years.

"I would say she was a gift from God ... an offer from God," said Bishop Daniel Adwok, the Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop of Khartoum. "She has come on time for the conflict here in Sudan."

Google Chrome denied

So the U.S. trade sanctions against Sudan are at last beginning to bite. Here is the screen I got when I tried to download Google's new Chrome internet browser from Khartoum.

Something similar happened with Google Earth - at the time Google said it blocked downloads in Sudan saying it couldn't distribute its software in the blacklisted country.

First Google Earth. Now Google Chrome. Sudan's geeks are going to be enraged. Could this be the move that finally brings the Khartoum regime to its knees?

A Reuters reporter saw...

Here's an interesting example of journalistic style from a story on today's court appearance of five men accused of murdering U.S. aid worker John Granville.

All five men wore beards and traditional white gowns, and a Reuters reporter at the court saw two of them spit in the faces of two Western women journalists before walking into the building with iron shackles on their ankles.

It would have been more informative but less journalistic to say:

All five men wore beards and traditional white gowns, and I saw two of them spit in the faces of my wife and a friend before walking into the building with iron shackles on their ankles.

Winning Darfur’s PR war

5am yesterday – Sudanese government forces surround Kalma camp for displaced persons in South Darfur

8.30am – Shooting begins after Sudanese forces enter camp, saying they are searching for weapons and suspects.

8.57am – Journalists receive first of many text messages from Darfur rebel Sudan Liberation Army faction left by Ahmed Abdel Shafie.

Hey, Over 100 GOS (Government of Sudan) vehicles surrounded Kalma camp this morning n prevented IDPs (internally displaced people) from leaving the camp from going on with their biz. Please call Abdelshafi 4 quick reaction.

Within the next hour other rebel groups and displaced people inside camp also phone in their updates, claiming many camp residents were killed and describing the incident as a “government attack”.

7.20pm – Reuters gets first quote from Sudanese army, saying armed camp residents started the fighting.

11.30pm – State news agency SUNA puts out first official statement about incident, denying death figures and claiming officers were fired on first.