South Sudan working with Japan on New Oil Pipeline
According to an article in the Sudan Tribune, Japan and specifically the Toyota Corporation will work with South Sudan to construct and oil pipeline through Kenya. If the project comes to fruition, it would radically alter the dynamic in play now. Sudan faces sanctions and numerous other limits to its income. Transit fees collected from South Sudan for oil shipped through its pipeline to Port Sudan constitute a major source of income that among other things allows the government to pay its security forces and purchase weaponry.
The simple fact is that the more that oil flows through Port Sudan, the more blood will flow in South Kordofan, Blue Nile, and Darfur.
Fighting, as Sudan does, is expensive and the oil revenue is essential to maintaining the fight. Of course, building the new pipeline will take years, not weeks or months, and the suffering in the Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile, and Darfur will continue.
Meanwhile, the more that Sudan works with Iran with Iran providing the Khartoum Regime both income and weaponry, the more that other nations will be willing to work with the rebel groups and to support South Sudan in its disputes with the north. With every attempt to subdue the Sudanese Revolutionary Forces that fails and results in both the death of soldiers fighting only for a paycheck and in the capture of additional military assets to be used by the SRF against the state, the situation worsens for Sudan. With every child who dies of starvation in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile, the more well motivated and committed rebel troops there will be fighting against the Khartoum Regime. The strategic situation for Sudan is not a good one now and if the oil pipeline is actually developed through Kenya, it may prove to be the coup de grace against the Khartoum Regime.
All of this is yet far off, however. There is much work to do now to save innocents lives threatened by the hands of the genocidaires in Sudan.
Sudan, Iran, and Gaza
There is now a full blown alliance between Iran, Sudan, and Hamas. Hamas leaders have publicly thanked Iran in recent days and Sudan’s Bashir has long been a friend of the Iranian Regime. None of this should be surprising. This was clear in March of 2009 when:
A delegation of senior Middle Eastern leaders has travelled to Sudan to express international support for Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, who is accused of war crimes in Darfur. Officials from Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah joined Syria’s parliament speaker and the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group for talks with al-Bashir in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital.
Sudan continues to host Iranian weapons shipments from Iran destined to reach Gaza. The Times of Israel reports that
Israeli intelligence sources believe that a cargo, loaded a week ago in Bandar Abbas, Iran, would be shipped to Sudan and from there smuggled over land to Gaza. According to the report, the cargo may include Fajr-5 rockets of the likes already fired by Hamas during the recent conflict, and whose stocks were reportedly depleted by Israeli bombings. Also possibly included: components of Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, which could be stationed in Sudan and used as a direct threat to Israel.
In other words, Iran is planning on involving Sudan in the next conflict with Israel and firing missiles from Sudan at Israel.
“With a lot of effort, Iran has skillfully built a strategic arm pointing at Israel from the south,” an Israeli source was quoted as saying.
Not that sanity has regularly prevailed in the Middle East, but it would seem that this decision by Sudan runs the risk of promoting significant Israeli and American military involvement in Sudan and military cooperation with South Sudan. It functionally turns the Sudan Revolutionary Forces and the South Sudanese into full blown allies of Israel and America in their conflict with Iran, merging the conflicts into one larger one and escalating the strategic importance of events in Sudan well beyond the level of humanitarian concerns which are generally not highly prioritized.
In other news, Sudan is planning to relocate the Yarmouk Weapons Factory which was recently destroyed in what appears to have been an Israeli airstrike on October 24 to a place “outside of the capital.”
It would seem highly likely at this point that future Israeli military action in Sudanese territory is a virtual certainty, but also that there will be an increasing flow of weaponry and funds from Iran to the Khartoum Regime, enabling it to increase its military operations in the border regions against both the Sudan Revolutionary Forces and South Sudan itself.
We may already be seeing the first stages of this change with recent Sudan Armed Forces strikes crossing the border of Bahr El Ghazal in South Sudan and with attacks against multiple villages in the Nuba Mountains in recent days. The reports from the SPLM-North are heartbreaking, among them that:
On November 16, the NCP forces and its militia lit up the fire in the dry bush and crops around the villages of, Tafrang, Banat, Kumra, Alsamaha, Katraya Almak, Safora, Najar Alhabel, Wadelgeel, Hellat Mohamed Rasheed, Umsediana, Alban Jadeed, Alnugra, and Khor Basheer. The residents of these villages tried to put out the fire, but the NCP forces and its militias forbid them from doing so by force of weapons. The fire burned down the houses and destroyed the crops and garden fields. The fire continued burning until for days.
Since then numerous villages have been bombed by the Khartoum Regime with all targets being civilian. It appears that the Khartoum Regime feels emboldened by its newly strengthened alliance with Iran and we must fear that the level of attacks will continue if not increase in the weeks ahead without outside intercession.
The situation for the peoples of the Nuba Mountains is worsening and the threat of major conflict between Sudan and South Sudan is increasing rapidly.
Report of Summary Executions in Liri, Sudan
Sources in the region have brought to the attention of Help Nuba that following clashes between the SPLA-North and the Sudan Armed Forces in the area of Liri in South Kordofan, Sudan that the Governor of that province, Ahmed Harun, who is already a wanted criminal for his actions during the genocide in Darfur, arrested and summarily executed sixteen civilians from the Nuba Liri tribe, including the paramount chief of the Liri Nuba, Elmak/Adam Juju.
The sixteen victims are:
1- Elmak/ Adam Juju
2- Abdalla Juju – Brother of the Mak
3- Jalal Balola
4- Mohammed Akol
5- Mohammed Sileman
6- Elfaki Kallo
7- Mater Abbas
8- Jallab Elfaki
9- Adam Hasan
10- Mohammed Tiya Elmaban
11- Adam Tago
12- Saliim Kanno Elmahdi
13- Ali Dawudi
14- Eltayib Kunda Abu Rafas
15- Ahmed Musa
16- Marghani Hasan
Also two SPLA Soldiers who were captured last July are said to have been executed last week while in detention.
They are:
1- Pvt. Adam Hammad
2- Pvt. Mukhtar Korti
Seeking Peaceful Resistance amid Violent Oppression
As the number of refugees flowing into South Sudan continues to increase along with the severity of the famine and drinking water crises in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, protests in Sudan against the Khartoum Regime continue. The government is using tear gas, rubber bullets, and even live ammunition to disperse protests. They are also evidently beating protesters and preventing people from accessing health care. A Standing Committee of Sudanese Physicians press release from June 29 stated that:
We witnessed the police force and large numbers of regime thugs take control of Omdurman ‘s hospital A&E entrance to prevent those injured from gaining access to the admission desk to receive treatment.
Yassir Arman, Secretary General of the SPLM-N, said in a press release from July 5th that:
As of now, more than 1,500 activists are in jail. Some of them are subject to torture including some leaders from the SPLM-N.
Meanwhile, the Khartoum Regime may indeed be allowing some aid into South Kordofan, but only into areas controlled by the regime and only if distributed by organizations supported by the regime. In other words, humanitarian aid is not at all being allowed to reach those most in need, those being attacked by the regime.
The resistance to the regime continues. In Khartoum, the opposition parties have gone to the extent of creating a “Democratic Alternative Charter” that calls for the end of the rule of the regime, but seem to be doing so primarily, if not solely, based upon economic issues and, in particular, the ending of gas subsidies. The parties do not seem to be interested in sharing power with those not in Khartoum.
This brings up more from Yassir Arman’s press release. He stated that:
The SPLM-N and the SRF will continue to support the non-violent and peaceful paths of the uprising. The uprising will continue, and the SRF, in our last meeting, resolved the following: 1) to support and to seriously be involved in the peaceful uprising; 2) to set a mechanism that will enable effective participation of the SRF supporters; 3) to look for a comprehensive alternative with other political forces. Ending the war is a priority that cannot be done without the SRF.
Help Nuba Supports The Peaceful Revolts
A Brief Statement by Help Nuba in Support of the Peaceful Revolts in Sudan
Help Nuba, an organization led by Iowan representatives of the Nuba, Darfur, and South Sudanese communities along with representatives of the UN Association of Iowa, Catholic, Jewish, Presbyterian and Episcopal religious and community leaders and a growing number of supporters from around the United States along with members of the Sudanese and South Sudanese communities from around the world, calls on all people of conscience to support the peaceful revolts occurring in Sudan against the oppressive Khartoum Regime which has committed genocide in Darfur and seeks to do so in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile as well.
We stand with those who seek freedom, justice, peace and security in Sudan.
Opposition Calls for Overthrow of Khartoum Regime
Growing dissatisfaction with austerity measures imposed by the administration of Omar Bashir’s government, opposition parties are calling for the overthrow the government. Students are protesting in large numbers in the streets shouting, “The people want to overthrow the regime!” The opposition parties and rebels groups in Sudan separately made similar calls yesterday. According to the Sudan Tribune:
The opposition forces say the austerity plan announced by the government did not affect the huge budgets of the army, police, security apparatus, and sovereign sector which acquire 70% of wages and salaries line or 56% of the whole 2012 budget.
This is not only the sign of a regime in severe economic difficulties, it is the sign of a regime on the verge of collapse. Governments cannot abandon care for the general needs of their population. Further, it is clear that Sudan’s ability to continue fighting, much less to improve its capabilities on the battlefield through increased military spending, are non-existent.
Ahmed Hussein Adam, the foreign relations secretary of the Darfur based rebel group known as the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said that:
What is happening in Sudan these days is the beginning of a true revolution.
Help Nuba - A Sudan Advocacy Organization 