Sudan: U.S. Support of Elections Draws Criticism

Mohammed A. Salih

5 April 2010

Washington — Recent remarks by the U.S. envoy to Sudan predicting credible elections have led to criticism both here and in Sudan over Washington's policy toward the African nation.

The statement by Scott Gration that Sudan's elections will be as "free and fair as possible" came amid an extensive boycott of the presidential elections by major opposition parties in Africa's largest country.

Last week, President Omar al-Bashir's main challenger, Yassir Arman, boycotted the presidential elections due to security fears, the continued conflict in Darfur and irregularities in the electoral process. Arman was backed by the south Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), a Christian-dominated group that fought the Sudanese government during what is known as the second Sudanese civil war that lasted for 22 years.

The civil war ended in 2005 when the SPLM and the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir signed a Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Kenya.

Sudanese will cast their ballots from Apr. 11 to 13 in presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections, the first in more than 20 years.

Despite a widespread opposition boycott of the polls, the U.S. envoy to Sudan has come out publicly in defence of the elections.

"They (electoral commission members) have given me confidence that the elections will start on time and they would be as free and as fair as possible," said Gration in Sudan's capital Khartoum on Saturday.

"These people have gone to great lengths to ensure that the people of Sudan will have access to polling places and that the procedures and processes will ensure transparency," he said.

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Uganda: U.S. Legislation Authorises Military Action Against the LRA

Samar Al-Bulushi

25 March 2010

Despite harsh condemnation from US legislators in response to Uganda's draft bill criminalising homosexuality, the Senate passed a bill in mid-March that will prop up Uganda's government by authorising military action in the highly volatile region of Central Africa.

Introduced last May, the Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act aims to 'support stabilisation and lasting peace' in Northern Uganda - the site of conflict between the Ugandan government and the rebel group Lords Resistance Army (LRA) since 1986. The bill calls for an assessment of options through which the United States, working with regional governments, 'could help develop and support multilateral efforts to eliminate the threat posed by the Lord's Resistance Army'.[1]

While the bill allocates funding towards humanitarian aid and post-conflict justice and reconciliation processes, the primary focus in Congress is on a military strategy to 'apprehend or otherwise remove' LRA leaders. And despite the bill's requirement that the government of Uganda commit to 'transparent and accountable' reconstruction efforts, it makes no similar demands of a military operation, thereby giving a green light to extrajudicial executions. With recent reports of US military drones flying over Mogadishu to help the transitional government in Somalia to track the Shabaab resistance, we can expect a similar 'multilateral' approach to eliminating the LRA.

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Congo-Kinshasa: 'Blood Diamonds' Inspire 'Conflict Minerals' Campaign

Kevin J. Kelley

15 February 2010

Nairobi — A campaign is growing in the United States to end wars and atrocities in eastern Congo by discouraging the export of what organisers describe as "conflict minerals."

The effort is inspired by the movement a few years ago that helped stop murderous conflicts in West Africa by successfully targeting the "blood diamonds" that were financing them.

The Congo initiative is also modelled on the influential US varsity-based campaign to halt mass killings in Darfur as well as on the earlier push against US corporate investment in apartheid South Africa.

Prof Herbert Weiss, a Congo expert at a Washington think tank, noted at a US university forum last week that an increasing number of Americans are at last paying attention to Congo.

The organiser of the conflict-minerals campaign John Prendergast told activists to rally behind proposals in the US Congress to create a global certification system for four valuable metals found in large quantities in Congo.

Monitoring would be put in place to ensure lawful control of these minerals, which are essential for the manufacture of telecommunications devices, Mr Prendergast said.

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Sudan: U.S. Worried As Southern Region Heads for Secession

Kevin Kelley

8 February 2010

Nairobi — With Southern Sudan now believed virtually certain to vote for independence in less than a year, worries are growing in Washington not only over a possible resumption of the North-South civil war, but also over the likelihood that the newly independent state will not prove viable.

Pessimism appears prevalent both inside and outside the Obama administration.

Officials and advocates alike fear that East Africa's largest country may again be convulsed by violence after a concerted, protracted and ultimately successful US-led effort to end 20 years of disastrous fighting.

Renewed North-South warfare might yet be averted, a panel of 20 Sudan experts suggested in a report published a few months ago, but only if major disagreements are resolved before the southern Sudanese take part in a referendum scheduled for January 2011.

And "absent a change in the status quo," added the report by the nongovernmental US Institute of Peace, "most of the important substantive issues between North and South -- oil revenue sharing, security arrangements and the demarcation of boundaries -- will not be resolved before the referendum."

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U.S. advocacy groups concerned about Sudan are calling on President Obama to reverse course on his administration's strategy for dealing with the crisis in the Darfur region and conflict between the north and south. In a letter to the President this week, the advocacy groups called the current approach "fundamentally flawed."  In an interview, two prominent leaders of the campaign, John Prendergast and Omer Ismail, both part of the ENOUGH Project, explained why they disagree with the administration's approach and what they believe U.S. policy towards Sudan should be.

Read the interview here.

 The Enough Project, a leading Washington, DC-based advocacy group focusing on genocide and crimes against humanity, is stepping up efforts to end conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's trip last month to the troubled eastern region has put a spotlight on the humanitarian crisis in the area and inevitably raises questions about what the U.S. government can and will do. In an interview, Enough co-founder John Prendergast talks about changing the economic equation for conflict minerals and the role that Uganda and Rwanda can play in ending the crisis.

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A new offensive by the Congolese army, backed by United Nations peacekeepers, against Rwandan rebels ensconced in the lush forests of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is set to aggravate what is already one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

While the rebels are undoubtedly a scourge to the local population and a major driver of ongoing conflict in Central Africa, the military action planned will lead to more atrocities against Congolese civilians, create greater numbers of displaced and desperate people and, because of the UN’s involvement, do lasting damage to its peacekeeping. 

Continue reading here.

The underlying issue of gender inequality that leads to violence against women in civil conflicts is a problem in many parts of the world, but there is a difference in "scope and intensity" of the violence in some African nations, a State Department official told Congress May 13.

Gender-based violence "as a tool of war is in no way limited to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sudan, or in Africa," Ambassador Melanne Verveer told a joint hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy and Global Women's Issues and the Subcommittee on African Affairs. 

Continue reading here.

Washington, DC — Five members of the United States Congress were among a group of people arrested Monday in front of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, DC during a protest against the violence in Darfur.

The representatives – Donna Edwards (Democrat-Maryland), Keith Ellison (Democrat-Minnesota), John Lewis (Democrat-Georgia), Jim McGovern (Democrat-Massachusetts) and Lynn Woolsey (Democrat-California) – were arrested for crossing a police line, a misdemeanor. They were processed at a Washington, DC police station and released Monday afternoon.