Nairaland Forum

This is Injustice. Sudan is raiding a sovereign state and nobody is doing anything about it. Yet, the United Nation and their western country allies are spending so much time on the Syrian conflict. More people are dying from the Sudanese conflict than the Syrian conflict. But then again, considering the fact that Sudan is Arab and South Sudan is black, I guess nobody will give a sh*t

JUBA/KHARTOUM (Reuters) - South Sudan said the Sudanese air force bombed key oil fields in a cross-border raid on Tuesday, the latest violence in some of the worst fighting between the neighbours since the South's secession in July.

Sudan denied any air strikes but said its ground forces had attacked southern artillery positions which had fired at the disputed oil-producing area of Heglig that is partly controlled by Khartoum.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was worried about the fighting that started on Monday in several places along the poorly-marked border, of which many parts are disputed.

The two countries have been at loggerheads since the South became independent last year under a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war.

Oil, the lifeline of both economies, is at the heart of the feud. The landlocked South took most of known reserves when it became independent but needs to export its oil through Sudan. Juba shut down its output of 350,000 barrels a day after Khartoum started taking oil to compensate for what it calls unpaid transit fees.

The latest violence prompted Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to suspend a trip to Juba on April 3 to meet his southern counterpart Salva Kiir where he was due to discuss a long list of disputes, Sudan's state radio said.

South Sudan accused Khartoum of bombing the main oil fields in Unity state near the border.

"This morning as you called I heard the Antonov hovering over Bentiu town because it has just dropped some bombs in the main Unity oil fields," Unity state Information Minister Gideon Gatpan told Reuters.

"It has now gone back, possibly for refuelling, and may come back," he said by telephone.

Asian oil group GNPOC - the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, a consortium led by China's CNPC - confirmed the bombing.

WARPLANES HOVERING

"The warplanes are hovering everywhere ... One bomb actually just missed Unity base camp but anywhere else so far there is no information," said Vice President Chom Juaj.

"They bombed the oil field but so far we are still waiting for the report from the field telling us if they are damaged or not," he said.

But a spokesman for Sudan's foreign ministry denied any air strike on Unity state, saying ground forces had attacked southern artillery positions in response to an earlier attack.

"The SPLA (southern army) attacked the area of Heglig on Sudanese soil. So we used artillery to respond to the SPLA artillery," El-Obeid Morawah said.

Both sides blamed each other for having started the fighting on Monday. Events in the 1,800 km (1,100 miles) long border area are hard to verify as much of the territory is disputed and not accessible for journalists.

The new violence ends a recent rapprochement between the neighbours which had made some progress this month in talks in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, sponsored by the African Union, trying to end the bitter dispute.

Both countries have been unable to agree how much the landlocked South should pay to export its crude through Sudan, prompting it to shut down its production after Khartoum started taking some oil for what it calls an unpaid transit fee.

Khartoum and Juba earlier this month reached two agreements on free movement of citizens in each other's territory, a step that had raised hopes that an oil deal was also possible during the presidents' meeting.

But Sudan's Information Minister Abdallah Ali Masar questioned the recent agreements, accusing Juba of playing tricks at the negotiation table.

VISIT SUSPENDED

"The agreements in Addis Ababa and a visit of a southern delegation (on Friday) to Khartoum was only swindle and manipulation," he told state news agency SUNA late on Monday.

Officials in Khartoum could not immediately be reached to confirm that Bashir's visit to Juba had been suspended as reported by Sudanese radio and newspapers.

Each country has accused the other of supporting rebels on either side of the border but direct confrontations are rare.

Sudan's army has been fighting SPLM-North rebels in South Kordofan since June. Clashes spread in September to Sudan's Blue Nile state which also borders South Sudan.

Both South Kordofan and Blue Nile are home to large communities who sided with the south during the civil war but were left on the Sudan side of the border after the secession. Khartoum says SPLM-North is supported by South Sudan, an accusation dismissed by the southern government.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said it was worried about the safety of 16,000 refugees in Yida camp, South Sudan, near the border where fighting was reported on Monday.

"It is very close to Yida, that is why we are concerned," UNHCR spokeswoman Fatoumata Lejeune-Kaba said. "It was already volatile, dangerous and life-threatening. News of increased cross-border clashes makes it much worse.

I wonder why the hypocritical NATO hasn't instituted a 'no fly zone' to protect civilians like they did with Libya, or why Western Governments aren't expressing moral outrage over the murder and intransigence being carried out by Bashir and his blood-sucking crew? Black man in the White House ? You could have fooled me.

Whatever Ghaddafi is accused of doing pales into insignificance when compared with the lives black Africans have lost over the last decade as a result of Bashir, his army and his janjaweed militia. And in all this, the useless and toothless AU has done fuc/kall to protect them, like they did in Libya.

Janjaweed remind you of anyone ?

Its sickening. They really dont care about africans though. At least the black ones anyway. AU is pointless btw

It is high time the AU sent a fighting-force not a peace-keeping force into Sudan.

But who will lead the invasion? Uganda, Nigeria, South Africa, who?

PROUD-IGBO:
I wonder why the hypocritical NATO hasn't instituted a 'no fly zone' to protect civilians like they did with Libya, or why Western Governments aren't expressing moral outrage over the murder and intransigence being carried out by Bashir and his blood-sucking crew? Black man in the White House ? You could have fooled me.

Whatever Ghaddafi is accused of doing pales into insignificance when compared with the lives black Africans have lost over the last decade as a result of Bashir, his army and his janjaweed militia. And in all this, the useless and toothless AU has done fuc/kall to protect them, like they did in Libya.

Janjaweed remind you of anyone ?

Which 'hypocritical NATO'?
Where were you when the Western powers desperately tried to sanction and secure condemnation for Sudan's president over Darfur only to be blocked by your chinese masters? Have you been living under a rock these past few days that you haven't seen or heard of the frantic efforts being made by the UN to resolve this situation.
Where were you when the South Sudan president was complaining about being 'ordered' to pull his troops back from the contested territory they wrested away from the Sudanese Army?

While Sudan is strategically not nearly as important as Libya, it is brainless and ignorant to say the world has done nothing.

Please Africans should focus more on the AU and their inactions. I suggest you pay more attention to world issues as clearly you're unaware of the situation of things.

texazzpete:

Which 'hypocritical NATO'?
Where were you when the Western powers desperately tried to sanction and secure condemnation for Sudan's president over Darfur only to be blocked by your chinese masters? Have you been living under a rock these past few days that you haven't seen or heard of the frantic efforts being made by the UN to resolve this situation.
Where were you when the South Sudan president was complaining about being 'ordered' to pull his troops back from the contested territory they wrested away from the Sudanese Army?

While Sudan is strategically not nearly as important as Libya, it is brainless and ignorant to say the world has done nothing.

Please Africans should focus more on the AU and their inactions. I suggest you pay more attention to world issues as clearly you're unaware of the situation of things.

^^^Fool, if there's any 'brainless' dolt here it's you. If you can't respond to my post without the condescending and rude language then you're not only brainless but an uncouth gutter-mouth bastard to boot.

Stick to your opinions on the wests pathetic response to Bashirs antics viz-a-viz their response to that of Ghaddafi, and i'll stick to mine thank you very much . Just listen to yourself, saying that the west "desperately tried to sanction and secure condemnation bla bla bla". They know to follow the rules only when it suits them fool!!!

In one breath you say AU is 'inactive' (echoing what i said in my post), and in another you say South Sudan was 'ordered' to pull back: fool, make up your mind. Why didn't they 'order' Bashir and his lot to stop the killings and genocide all these past years? Why didn't the AU intervene in the slaughter, ra.pe and dehumanisation visited on blacks in Libya last year (besides the half-hearted appeals for calm, etc)? Sure AU is a fearsome Rottweiler .

And where do you come off thinking i regard the Chinese as "my masters" ?

PROUD-IGBO:



In one breath you say AU is 'inactive' (echoing what i said in my post), and in another you say South Sudan was 'ordered' to pull back: fool, make up your mind. Why didn't they 'order' Bashir and his lot to stop the killings and genocide all these past years?

If you had bothered to read the news in recent times instead of acting the m0r0n, you'd have known that the 'order' to the south sudanese president came from the UN. The same western nations you condemn here were the ones desperate to stop Bashir and his allies from genocide.

Nigerians are too easily hoodwinked by Western propaganda masquerading as "news". There was never any genocide in Sudan. Ever since oil was discovered in Sudan with every drop of it going to China, Sdan became a marked nation. That is why they were covertly financing, training and arming rebels in South Sudan to attack the interests of Khartoun knowing fully well that the government in Khartoun will respond.

Their press-titutes then painted that response as genocide thus having a pretext for a so-called "humanitarian intervention" just like what they did to Libya and are now doing to Syria. They could not invade Sudan because China vetoed their war resolutions on the Security Council. Libya was not so lucky as Russia and China did not protect it similarly. Guess what happened after invasion of Libya, Chinese economic/oil interests were kicked out by the new NATO puppets in Libya.

Can anyone care to guess where most of the Oil in South Sudan goes to after their secession was recognized by the West? Your guess is as good as mine. You won't hear of "genocide" again but you were constantly bombarded by " Darfur genocide " when all the oil was going to China. Orchestrating a southern secession broke China's strategic economic foothold in oil-rich Sudan. the folks in Congo DRC should beware of the phony Kony 2012 video flying around. It is a red herring designed to elicit consent for another intervention in resource rich Congo

Only idiots believe that Western nations are benevolent or care about democracy, human rights and freedom. The don't give a f--k about non-white peoples .Their geopolitical interests dictate everything they do. No permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.

Why are some people here calling on the west and NATO to come and help? Why not call on AU? Why not encourage African countries to deal with their own problems?

If NATO steps in now many of you here will start shouting oil oil oil, ask AU to take that oil and solve the conflict.

Chief of Defence Forces Gen. Aronda Nyakairima has warned Uganda will not sit back watching Gen. Omar Bashir bomb the South, Chimpreports.com reports

The Uganda army commander’s threat comes hardly 24 hours after Sudan leader Bashir threatened to wipe out SPLA from oil-rich Heglig and also topple Gen. Salva Kiir in Juba.

“Having suffered a proxy war for over 20 years, we are now getting intelligence that Kony, who was left with less than 200 fighters, is now in contact with Sudan. That is intelligence,” said Aronda during a meeting with regional security chiefs in Kampala on Wednesday night.

“In one way or another we are going to get involved. We cannot sit and watch. As a member of this region, Uganda will intervene,” Aronda threatened.

Aronda’s statement underlines Uganda’s preparedness to render all logistical support to South Sudan not only to consolidate her hold on Heglig but also remove Bashir from power.

Aronda called upon all members of the region to join hands to avert war between the two countries. Bashir on Thursday told a huge rally in Sudan that he would teach SPLA a lesson they would never forget. He threatened to seize Juba and liberate Southerners from the bad rule of SPLA.

Uganda enjoys a jovial relationship with Juba, having supported South Sudan forces for over two decades to gain independence from Khartoum.

According to army spokesperson Lt. Col. Felix Kulayigye, Uganda backed SPLA in response to Sudan’s support of Kony.
LRA perpetrated massacres in Northern Uganda before the rebel group was kicked out of Uganda in 2006. Three years later, UPDF war planes attacked LRA’s hideouts in Garamba thus sending the bandits into disarray. Mobile Special Forces intelligence squads are hunting down Kony and his elements in Central African Republic.

The war rhetoric has been escalated by SPLA Liberation Council Senator David Majur who has called upon all South Sudanese especially students in Uganda to rush to Juba to defend their nation from Bashir.

“Bashir is a wounded hyena capable of eating up its own offspring. How many will he fight? He has to fight the people from Blue Nile, Nuba Mountains, opposition in Khartoum, the international community and the International Criminal Court (ICC),” Majur said Thursday during an interview with NTV.

“We keep telling Bashir not to drag his people into war because they will suffer but he does not listen. I welcome Uganda’s support. Bashir calls people insects but we are used to that. It’s not new. He has in the past called us infidels,” said Majur.
He assured Uganda SPLA would hunt down Kony and his master Bashir if LRA resumed its atrocities.

“We are returning to the trenches. We are a sovereign country. If somebody says he is invading us we shall fight him. Ask what happened to Saddam when he invaded Kuwait. We are no longer rebels. These are Bashir’s last days,” warned Majur.
Military sources say the Ugandan army is on red alert in preparation for war with Bashir in case he attacks the South.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/21/us-sudan-south-idUSBRE83K0CX20120421

(Reuters) - South Sudan accused its neighbor Sudan of bombing its troops as they pulled out of the disputed oil region of Heglig on Saturday, dampening already faint hopes of any imminent settlement between the bitter foes.

The newly-independent South seized Heglig last week, raising fears of an all-out war with Sudan, then announced it had started withdrawing on Friday, following sharp criticism from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

"The Sudan armed forced bombed our positions last night ... and this morning with Antonovs," South Sudan's army spokesman Philip Aguer told Reuters.

"Last night we were in full control of Heglig and now we have almost completed our orderly withdrawal," he added.

There was no immediate response from Sudan's army which said on Friday it had "liberated" Heglig by force.