Month: June 2007

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Khalifa dies in accident

Majzoub al-Khalifa, an advisor to Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, died in a car accident, along with his brother, on his way to Shendi.

Khalifa graduated from Khartoum university’s faculty of medicine in 1976. He had previously held the positions of governor of Khartoum and agriculture minister.

Known for his gruff manner, he was energetic, large of stature and said to be one of Bashir’s close inner circle.

Sometimes called a “thug” by his critics, he was blunt and to the point in his diplomatic dealings.

The United Nations paid tribute to Khalifa on Wednesday, offering its condolences to his family.

Khalifa was one of the point men on the 2006 Darfur Peace Accord. Unfortunately, with only one of the various rebel factions involved, and a lack of interest in stopping the bloodshed on the part of the government, the violence has continued unabated.

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China’s small movements

As pressure continues to build over China’s involvement with Sudan, and activists continue to paint the upcoming Olympics as a genocide event, Beijing seems to be showing the first signs of potential movement.

China, in response, has denounced these efforts to link the games with its foreign policy, saying such a campaign runs counter to the Olympic spirit.

“There are a handful of people who are trying to politicize the Olympic Games,” Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told reporters, stressing that the Games are a time to celebrate friendly ties between nations. “This is against the spirit of the Games. It also runs counter to the aspirations of all the people in the world.”

But protestations aside, it seems someone in Beijing is listening. Shortly after Farrow’s op-ed appeared, China appointed a special envoy to Darfur and reportedly stepped up efforts to persuade Khartoum to accept international peacekeepers in Darfur.

Pressure over the Olympics could help cause a shift from China’s noninterference policy, says Reeves. “To date, what we’ve seen are largely cosmetic efforts, trying to ‘respond to Darfur’ on the cheap … but as shame and dismay intensify, as the pain grows, we’ll see a good deal more than cosmetics.”

It’s unlikely that China will pull its investments from Sudan, especially considering the amount of money they have tied to the oil industry, but perhaps they can push Khartoum in the direction the United Nations needs in order to quell the violence.

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Congress calls for charges against Ahmadinejad

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution that calls on the United Nations to charge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with genocide. The bill states that:

…on October 27, 2005, at the World Without Zionism Conference in Tehran, Iran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” described Israel as “a disgraceful blot [on] the face of the Islamic world,” and declared that “[a]nybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury”

…on December 12, 2006, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed a conference in Tehran questioning the history of the Holocaust and said that Israel would “soon be wiped out”

…on August 3, 2006, in a speech during an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated that the Middle East would be better off “without the existence of the Zionist regime,” called Israel an “illegitimate regime” with “no legal basis for its existence,” and accused the United States of using Israel as a proxy to control the region and its oil resources

The resolution passed the House with 411 votes and has been forwarded to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. You can read the entire resolution here.

I find it both sad and ironic that Congress is so easily moved to action against rhetoric, but lacks any strength of resolve to fight actual acts of genocide.

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Aid worker killed in Sudan

Even though Sudan recently agreed (on paper) to accept a mixed UN/AU force into the Darfur region, the violence in the western part of the country has continued unabated. Reuters reports this morning that an aid worker for the NGO ACT-Caritas was killed near the DP camps in Zalingei, bringing the total number of deaths in the area to five.

“This killing follows a spate of attacks in the camps around Zalingei,” the charity said in a statement on 19 June. “Since the beginning of June, five camp residents have been shot and killed, huts have been set on fire, people have been beaten, and women assaulted almost daily. Hijackings of vehicles belonging to the UN and other international organisations also continue.”

Adam Adam, a guard and pump operator at a water point in Khamsa Degaig camp for internally displaced persons in Zalingei, was shot on 17 June. He was one of the local leaders in the camp.

“The incident was witnessed by three women on their way to the water point,” ACT-Caritas noted. “People in the camp tried to react, but the attackers fired shots into the crowd, dispersing them and allowing the gunmen to escape.”

According to the NGO, security in and around Zalingei, where about 100,000 people are camped, has continued to deteriorate over the past year yet people keep arriving every day.

This recent spate of violence against NGOs and displacement camps follows closely behind an announcement that Oxfam would be ceasing its operations in the Gereida region.

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Wildlife survives in Southern Sudan

It’s not often that you get to share any kind of good news when your subject is genocide. So imagine my surprise when I opened up my Google Reader account this morning and read that aerial surveys of south Sudan turned up the presence of some 1.2 million animals (white-eared kob, tiang antelope and Mongalla gazelle) that were thought to have been eradicated by 25 years of violence.

The survey project was conducted by J. Michael Fay, a conservationist with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence; Paul Elkan, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society Southern Sudan Country Program; and Malik Marjan, a Southern Sudanese Ph.D. candidate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. They worked in cooperation with the Ministry of the Environment, Wildlife Conservation, and Tourism of the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS). Funding for the project also came from USAID under the USAID/U.S. Department of Agriculture Sudan Agreement and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. After years of fighting northern Sudan, Southern Sudan formed an autonomous region as part of a 2005 peace agreement, and will hold a referendum on independence in 2011.

“I have never seen wildlife like that, in such numbers, not even when flying over the mass migrations of the Serengeti,” said Fay. “This could represent the biggest migration of large mammals on earth.”

Fay, Elkan and Marjan also report an estimated 8,000 elephants, with concentrations mainly in the Sudd, the largest freshwater wetland in Africa. They also found evidence of even larger numbers of elephants in Boma and in the Jonglei landscape. According to the World Conservation Union’s African elephant database, there were no reliable records of elephants in Sudan.

“Although we were telling people that wildlife was still present in Southern Sudan, nobody believed us,” said Maj. Gen. Alfred Akwoch, undersecretary of the Ministry of the Environment, Wildlife Conservation, and Tourism. “Thanks to the aerial surveys, we now know that wildlife resources, including elephants, are still intact in many areas, but also urgently need strong measures to conserve and manage them through joint efforts at all levels.”

In sadder animal news, the last two white rhinos in Zambia were shot by poachers earlier this week, killing the female and wounding the male.