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By Mohamed Vall in Africa on November 16th, 2009

As if the ever increasing tribal clashes in the south were not enough, political divisions among southern Sudanese are getting deeper by the day.

These divisions seem to pitch several small political formations, mainly reflecting tribal and ethnic entities in the south against the main political and military force, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, SPLM.

Eight South Sudanese parties opposed to the SPLM, which rules the south and co-rules the whole of Sudan along with the National Congress Party (NCP), have met in Khartoum to discuss problems in southern Sudan as well as issues related to the implementation of the 2005 North-South Peace agreement.

By Andrew Simmons in Africa on November 7th, 2009
Photo by Reuters

The International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo announced before leaving Kenya on Saturday that he had a “strong case” against key suspects in the violence that followed the 2007 Presidential elections.

He emphasised the importance of avoiding any more unnecessary delays and said he hoped to present two to three cases before judges at The Hague, possibly by July next year.

He agreed to an exclusive interview. This is my transcript:

Q: What is your assurance to Kenyan people after your visit here?

"Now I will go to the judges, it’s a judicial process, you have to understand that. The judges will decide if I can open up an investigation then I will be back.

I will go to the community, I will see the victims, I will listen to them. I have to collect the evidence.

By Andrew Simmons in Africa on November 5th, 2009
Photo by Reuters

Kenyan politics was to blame for the bloodbath in the wake of Presidential elections – and the politics of this country are also to blame for the absence of justice nearly two years later.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court plans to change that. But any hope he may have had in getting the active co-operation of the Grand Coalition formed as part of the peace deal that pulled Kenya back from the brink of civil war appear to have been dashed.

His hope had been for the Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to formally request the ICC’s intervention, triggering an immediate opening of his inquiry. In a meeting that lasted less than an hour, that was not the case.

By Mohamed Vall in Africa on October 31st, 2009
Photo by Getty Images

The 15-member African Union Peace and Security Council's endorsement of the idea of a special hybrid court for Darfur crime suspects could be a solution for the ICC-Khartoum quarrel.

The summit that has been held in the Nigerian capital Abuja stressed the need for both a solution to the conflict in Darfur and justice for the victims of the crimes committed during the war. The idea of a hybrid court has been proposed by a special AU panel on Darfur headed by former South African president Thabo Mbeki.

After all, the hybrid idea seems to have worked in Darfur with regard to peacekeeping. Not that peace in Darfur has been successfully maintained. But at least, after serious and protracted discords between Sudan and western nations over how to deal with the situation, a combined force of UN and African Union troops has been deployed and an end has been put to the row.

By Mohamed Vall in Africa on October 26th, 2009
Photo by Getty Images

Obama's new policy of "carrots along with sticks" towards Sudan has drawn ridicule and derision both on the part of some humanitarian organizations and mainstream US media. "Naive" is the term most widely used by those critics to describe Obama's special envoy to Sudan Scott Gration.

While the Sudanese doubt the possibility of any major change in US policies towards Sudan, western critics of the new policy doubt if there will be any major change in the Sudanese government's behaviour with regard to the conflict in Darfur in particular. They believe the US government has decided to reward the regime in Khartoum with incentives in exchange for empty promises from that regime.

By Mohamed Vall in Africa on October 25th, 2009
Photo by AFP

The announcement of a new US policy towards Sudan has come after years of secret cooperation on terrorism. Sudan helped the CIA with anti al-Qaeda efforts in the Horn of Africa region. The Sudanese have not even been trying to hide this fact.

They were expecting immediate dividends: the lifting of US sanctions, removing Sudan from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. But none of that happened. So during the Bush years, Khartoum got really frustrated that after all it had given (historic concessions to the southerners in the Naivasha peace agreement and cooperation on terrorism) the US government had not changed its hostile stance towards the government of Sudan. Economic and military sanctions remained in place, Sudan's name has been kept on the list of state sponsors of terrorism and the US has been the only country on earth to label the conflict in Darfur as genocide.

By Mohammed Adow in Africa on October 18th, 2009
Photo by Getty Images

I have been in the Democratic Republic of Congo for only five days, yet I cannot bear to listen to the stories of horror I am being told everywhere I go.

The country’s East is going through another of its convulsions of violence, and as ever, civilians are being systematically attacked on a scale rarely seen before.

The sheer numbers of deaths, the wholesale brutality and the culture of impunity are appalling.

The situation is so bad that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Gutteres was forced to liken it to the 2004 Asian Tsunami. After visiting camps for the displaced, he told me that the conflict in Congo is taking more human lives than the Tsunami every six months.  Difficult to believe, but it’s an accurate representation of the situation on the ground.

By Yvonne Ndege in Africa on October 3rd, 2009
Photo by EPA

Our journey into Nigeria’s violence-prone, oil-rich Niger Delta region begins in the marbled corridors of the ministries of defence and information in the government capital Abuja.

Its pristine skyscrapers are a world apart from the hundreds of mangrove creeks and ravines dotted across six Nigerian oil-producing states. There, a low level on–off war has been waging for years between Nigerian security forces and thousands of men fighting for a greater share of the billions of dollars that oil exports earn Africa’s most populous nation.

Tags: Abuja, MEND, Nigera
By Mohammed Adow in Africa on September 22nd, 2009
Photo by Getty Images

This week two major incidents took place in Somalia.

Six American gun ships attacked a convoy of vehicles carrying suspected Al Qaeda militants and killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, an Al Qaeda leader wanted for the bombings of two US embassies in East Africa in 1998 and an Israeli-owned Kenyan hotel in 2002.

The US helicopters swooped in on a convoy of vehicles and strafed them with heavy gunfire. A Land Cruiser carrying Nabhan and at least four other senior militants was badly hit as were a number of "technicals," improvised battle wagons made from pick-up trucks loaded with heavy machine guns, according to witnesses.

The attack took place close to the coastal town of Barawe, about 150 miles south of Mogadishu, deep inside territory controlled by Al Shabaab, an Islamist insurgent group.

By Mohamed Vall in Africa on September 15th, 2009
Photo by EPA

During the civil war, about 2 million southerners fled to the north of Sudan, where they still live in poor suburbs around Khartoum. 

The CPA (Comprehensive Peace Agreement) between the north and south stipulates that southerners get a referendum by 2011 (after the general elections slated for 2010 and which both sides are preparing for now) to decide whether the south should secede or remain part of Sudan. 

Interestingly, the northern government/party is insisting that the 2 million southerners living in Khartoum be part of that vote, while the SPLM thinks that if they want to vote they have to move to the south and be residents there.

Why would SPLM, which speaks in the name of the people of southern Sudan, want to prevent two million of their people from voting over the future of the South?

Why would the north insist they should vote?

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