History of The Sudan

[andak01]

Originally posted by Mediocrates
you sound positively zionist!

Well, you may not realize it, but King Hassan II of Morocco made great efforts to achieve a calm between the state of Israel and the Arab world. His son, now the king has never made any statements contrary to those of his father. If it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me. And I would shove this article in the face of anyone who says that all Muslim leaders support terrorism. It's a lie that only works with people ignorant of the truth.

http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Dail...999071234.html

[andak01]

Here is a link to the site EglisesSoudan, churches of Soudan.

http://www.eglisesoudan.org/

For those of you who don't read French, we see a chart of religions on the first page. Interestingly, the Animists outnumber the Christians in every region except the Nuba mountains. This is excluding those who have been displaced because of the Civil War.

We see that, although there is bombing, diocese are operating throughout the country, even in areas completely under the control of the government.

They were able to successfully hold a bishop's conference on the 18th of September 2000. The subject of that conference was:

http://www.eglisesoudan.org/scbc/18sept00.html
Evêques : "Le business du pétrole est une malédiction pour notre peuple"

Bishops: The Oil Business is a Maladition for Our People

[abu afak]

The Sudan Slave Story

http://www.lnsart.com/Sudan%20Slave%20Story.htm

In December I was invited by Christian Solidarity International to accompany them to the Sudan to document the purchasing of slaves to free them. This is a remarkable story in the world. Against the backdrop of a continuing eighteen war of genocide of the northern government predominantly Arab Muslim on the African Christian south, in a country that is the size of the United States east of the Mississippi River, It is one of the world's most tragic stories. The north in its efforts to force a national religion is conducting an unrelenting religious war to force the issue. It is despotism at its worst. Two million people have died in the conflict, mostly civilians. In the center of this carnage a huge slave trade is going on. Civilians, mostly women and children, with their husbands slain have little ability to resist and are being sold into slavery to the northern Sudan Muslims and the eastern emirates. Most civilized nations have turned a deaf ear to this great holocaust now going on. It is one of the shames of the world that considers itself civilized. These are the stories as they appeared somewhat edited in the Santa Fe newspaper New Mexican in the February and March of 2001. Included are images that will appear in a new book Two African Stories, Rwandan Refugees and Sudan Slavery.



The Sudan, A Saga of Genocide and Enslavement

Christmas 2000


In a land in the northeastern horn of Africa, the oldest known history of man has been revealed, dating back over two million years. Here man would find the roots of known civilization in the ancient accounts of Egypt, the White and Blue Nile, Khartoum, Lawrence of Arabia, the Mahdi, Nubia and Gordon Pasha. In the Christmas season of 2000 under a blanket of a brilliant black velvety night and brightly twinkling stars that covers the whole earth, a deadly drama of genocide and human slavery is being enacted in this land, in a manner that should revolt all civilized people. For in Southern Sudan the native Dinka and Nuer people of the Christian faith are being killed and enslaved in large numbers, in a most cruel manner by members of the Islamic faith abetted by the government of the Sudan. While the Israeli and Palestinian confrontation to the north, is the more visible and well known of this religious world conflict, southern Sudan is the frontier. For here genocide is practiced with a malice that knows no human boundaries. In this oldest of human backdrops, the human condition has not advanced far.

Dinka elder and youth

The war between the Islamic north and Christian south Sudan has old roots, stemming back to the 1950s when the country, separated at the time was made one by the western world after World War II. A war between the two religious factions broke out in 1983, with the Islamic north invading the southern Christians. This is considered the time by which the current struggle is measured. From 1983, it is estimated that at least two million people have been killed in this genocide, mostly Christians, for sure civilians. Early on in this conflict, two professors at the University of Khartoum; Ushari Ahmad Mahmud and Suleyman Ali Baldo learned about the genocide and enslavement being practiced on the Dinka people and had investigated it. What they found was that raiders from the north were killing the men and had taken women and children into slavery for over two years. They wrote their report in 1987. It was widely circulated and was denied by the Sudanese government. The UN assimilated the report and then discounted it as hearsay. These two humane professors were incarcerated by their government and then were discredited throughout the world. The civilized world would not and could not hear.

Dinka houses in southern Sudan

The rumors persisted. The Catholic, Presbyterian and Anglican churches have had a strong presence in southern Sudan as well as world providers (non-governmental organizations or NGOs) who gave food, medicine and agricultural assistance to the affected people in this sub-Saharan land. We all have heard about the starvation of the Dinka people in this area with the southward movement of the desert conditions combined with the uncertain and devastating conditions of war. A normalized situation would be difficult for the people, but under the war conditions, it is intolerable, and the tribes suffer greatly. The United Nations, the European Common Market countries and the United States have all played significant roles in the area. All have received reports about the genocide and the slavery being enacted in the Sudan. All have turned a deaf ear with chilling results. In President Clinton's address to the world about Africa, "mistakes were made by the US and the world in the Rwandan genocide ", he vowed that the policy of the US would not allow genocide to happen again in Africa and apologized for the US role. Just as this speech was being given, the State Department had sent an assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Susan Rice to the Sudan to investigate the depth of the genocide and slavery. Her report was an horrific account of slavery being practiced in the southern Sudan region with interviews of former slaves being taken. The US government was in possession of an earlier report issued in 1994 of the slavery issue as were the United Nations, the European community as well as the three churches, which explained in some detail, the episodes of raids, the genocide and the wide scope of the slavery. By this time several organizations had attempted to buy back slaves from their Islamic masters and had limited success. Christian Solidarity International, (CSI) headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland was asked by local communities in 1995 to expand their operations to include the purchasing of slaves and has been quite successful. The extent of the human disaster has been only succeeded by the hypocrisy of the world community, both moral and political, and I am so ashamed.

http://www.lnsart.com/Sudan%20Slave%20Story.htm

[abu afak]

Sudan - Slavery ($35 each)

The government of Sudan for decades has attempted to force a national religion, Islam, upon all of its people, including the Christians in the south. In its many years of war and genocide it has been unsuccessful to force its will on the south, resulting in a defense organization, the SPLM/SPLA, which provides the overall defense for the southern people. The Sudanese government forces have occupied some regional trading centers, Wau, Aweil and Juba, garrisoning them with troops, yet little affecting the people. The government troops remain in isolated compounds whose soldiers can not foray into the countryside, without danger. They are logistically supported from the air and the railroad. The railroad is usually controlled by the government, but runs only sporadically. Thus the vast open spaces populated by small Christian villages are a particular problem for the central government to control. The people are for the most part self-subsistent. This sets the stage for the genocide and slavery that the Sudanese government has forced upon its southern people in its attempt to subject them and assimilate them into the Islamic religion of northern Sudan.

Over the years the Sudanese government has conducted major forays into the south, destroying villages, killing the men and taking into slavery, the women and children in addition to their animals. Raids conducted two, three, four, six, eight and ten years ago are documented. These coincide with the years that the slaves told me that they have been in servitude. The average is between four to six years of servitude, while one woman told me that she had been in slavery over twelve years. Approximately 6 years ago, CSI was asked to take over the program of purchasing slaves from their masters. The redemption was originally an effort implemented by the local chiefs. Some of the local Arabs which worked and traded with the Dinkas had a problem with the continual warfare and raids, which eliminated total villages and enslaved tens of thousands of their friends. When the Dinka chiefs attempted to find their stolen relatives, the friendly Islamic Arabs would seek out where the slaves were and inform the chiefs. Then the chiefs would raise the ransom that the northern Arabs asked for plus a fee for the intermediaries for the costs they incurred. Over time, a monetary standard was established which amounted to $35 per slave for redemption. A new trade was created. Usually the Arab masters would sell the weaker, older and less able slaves for currency. As this network became more established, it has become a source of hard currency for the Arabs and the redemption of slaves has grown into sizable numbers. Masters now had a ability to raise scarce cash; the friendly Arabs would be the go-between, providing the logistics and risking the wrath of the government. Soon the local chiefs ran out of the ability to raise the cash needed to redeem the slaves. CSI took over the trade when 15-20 slaves would be redeemed. As the network has improved the slaves redeemed in a single five day period has risen to average 4000, while a single trip has bought back over 5000 slaves. CSI conducts these very secretive trips to new locations each two to three months. They have redeemed over 42,000 slaves and the flow of the trade shows no sign of abatement. The trip that I was on brought home 4119 slaves plus one, when you add the boy that was born on the redemption day. I witnessed the birth.

On the first day we flew 600 miles into the Sudan to a small town right on the border, lying on the north south road and on the front lines. We landed at a small dirt airstrip in the evening that appeared out of nowhere within a half a mile of putting down. The rough dirt strip was just long enough to handle the small plane, which piloted by an experienced bush pilot, was still a handful to bring to a stop in the very short runway. Upon arrival, the local commissioner and the tribal chiefs met us and greeted us warmly. They had been informed in advance that we were coming and that slaves would be redeemed on this trip by CSI. Our luggage was taken to a baay, or an enclosure of matted reeds which contained several turkuls around an open area. Armed guards with Russian AK47 automatic weapons taken from the enemy, surrounded the area. We pitched our tents and then walked to the center of the village which contained the ceremonial fire. Unique Dinka chairs, which defy all normal furniture practices for stability and longevity were brought and there was a meeting of greeting and introductions. Around the meeting place the massed townspeople stood and watched with avid interest. The political structure that has arisen from this continued war contains local tribal chiefs, a commander for an area selected by the SPLA and the regional commissioner by the SPLM, usually an elder selected because of leadership ability which reports to the rebel civil government. All three were at this meeting. After the introductions and discussion, music and dancing by the local village members commences. Later a feast of chicken, bread and fish are brought out to welcome the CSI personnel. We, as outsiders, but as guests of CSI are welcomed warmly too. It is a lovely evening. In the middle of the center of the village stands a covered machine gun captured from the government troops. It stands there forever reminding us that we are on the front lines, as do the armed guards that are all around us.

As I had been asked to go on such short notice and was told to be in Zurich at a specific time with very little other instructions, I did not realize that I should take a bed role, mattress pad, food and a tent. I was fortunate to be invited to share the tent of the human rights worker but I had to sleep on the floor of the tent with a thin cloth over me. In the day it was very hot, but in the evening the temperature would drop into the low forties. So I covered myself with my jacket, the thin cloth and used my photographers vest for a pillow. The ground was as hard as concrete. I was very uncomfortable and it took some time to drop off in a fitful sleep. We awakened early the next morning to take the plane to the first redemption site. We had to take off very early so the government planes would not spot our plane and bomb it. After a breakfast of tea we were escorted to the plane and in a cloud of dust and a highly revved engine, we took off for a forty-five minute flight to a new dusty rough airstrip. As before, we unloaded and were taken to a compound where we pitched our tents and prepared ourselves for the first redemption of slaves. We walked for a way and soon saw a great number of people sitting under a huge tree, women and children, quietly somber. In all, there were 292 people herded together in a small group. To the side, a number of Arabs were waiting, clothed in white robes with white face coverings to prevent photographs that would enable northern Khartoum leaders to identify them for retaliation. The slaves had been waiting, some for two months and some just arriving a few days ago. They lived in the open, protected at night by a cloth held up by sticks to protect them from the elements and the mosquitoes. Their food was a gruel of corn ground into a fine mush and water. Many slaves showed signs of malnutrition over an extended period. I spoke to some of the women and children through an interpreter. Without exception, the younger women told the story of a raid destroying a whole village by fire, killing the men and capturing the women and children. They told of soldiers in fatigues coming in trucks and Arabs with white robes and horses conducting the raid, killing and burning. The people were then herded into a march to the north. On the way the women were gang raped. Then they were taken by a master to a home. Here the story changes. Some women become concubines, some servants in the house, some work in the fields, all are sexually used on a regular basis. The young girls as young as six, speak of rape. In this group the average time in enslavement was four years. Some women were noticed with large protruding scars. Without exception these were created by their capturers, using iron rods, knives and fire, usually because of resistance to sex. We were told by some women of genital mutilation but I did not witness it. Young boys were used as herdsman, for sex and as they grew older would be inducted into the army while the younger ones would be used for security purposes. Most of the boys were given instruction in the Koran. Some wore the traditional caps worn by Islamic people. A young boy of 14 told of the raid and capture six years ago, which included his father's herd of 30 goats. His cousin was also captured with a herd of 20 goats. His cousin lost one and was killed on the spot. The cousins herd was added to his own, and he was told that if he lost one he would too would be killed. He proudly told us that in the six years he did not lose one goat. His whole village had been obliterated. Six years later the ruins of the turkuls were covered with brush and trees taking over the area of the former village. He did not know anybody. When asked where he would go, he replied that he would go to the local chief for help. Many of the women had Arab children and/or were pregnant by their masters. Some of the women could not identify the father due to the multiple rapes which they had suffered. Some gave the name of their masters. In this group 11 had died enroute to the redemption site...""

http://www.lnsart.com/Sudan%20Slave%20Story.htm

[abu afak]

Sudan - More Slave Redemptions


The CSI leader then explained to the slaves that they were being purchased to be freed. After some documenting and assuring that the roster was accurate; they would be fingerprinted, photographed and released to go where ever they wanted to go. Throughout the process of verifying the numbers and the roster, the murmur of the crowd got more and more animated. Smiles started to appear. Families which had lost wives and children waited in the brush as the process continued. As family members spotted each other, recognition and joy would appear. It was lovely. Finally the process was over and the CSI leader sat down with the intermediaries and counted out the piles of money, 35 dollars multiplied by 1500 (the value of local currency to the dollar) by the number of slaves redeemed. Immediately after the transaction, the leader stood up and told the crowd, you are free to go. Immediately a roar went up, the freed surrounding the CSI personnel, some rushing to their family, some going slowly, as if there are some questions of their acceptance in the community, others drift quietly into the underbrush returning to their villages. Some would walk for days and weeks to find their relatives. It is a heart wrenching time for my colleagues and me. Later, I understood that all would be received warmly into their communities, the Arab children would now be accepted as Dinka family members. Pregnant women would be received by their husbands. Many would ask that I take a picture of them. Most of them had never seen a white man.
Slave women

The next group of slaves was nearby and consisted of 322 women and children. The stories were the same. The procedure followed the same ritual. The intermediaries were different. This was Schindler's List revisited. It was easy to dislike the white robed Arabs as they were conducting the transaction, but as they said later at a meeting. "Yes, we do it for money, but the money could not pay us for the danger we are incurring. These are our friends and we do not agree with slavery and genocide." Without exception we were told of the Arab intermediaries kindness in the redemption process, as the slaves were treated kindly, even some receiving needed medical help after being purchased from their masters. We also heard other stories that some of their Islamic masters were kindly, and even though they expected sexual favors, the slaves were treated with respect. Usually these slaves were sold to the redeemers because of a jealous Islamic wife's intervention. In this dusty, remote and beautiful dry land the human condition realizes one moment of absolute freedom for the redeemed slaves. Others are not so fortunate.


The return to the compound brings somber reflection for what we have witnessed. Is it real? Can it be like this? The thoughts race through our minds with stunning power. The Dinka people are simple people with old values. Here truth is a basic value between people. Too many historical facts would have to be arranged by these simple people, to arrange these stories. With a dawning it comes. This is real. Slavery and cruelty does exist just as it did in America 150 years ago. How can this happen in our modern society? How can the world powers accept this basic value adopted as a world crime by all of the United Nations? How do the churches rationalize the morality of the situation ? Do all of the worlds organizations not recognize what is being told to them? If they know, then are they not part of the crime? Here where the roots of American slavery started, the cruel attempt to assimilate the Dinka people into the Islamic religion is being recreated for all the world to witness. Here genocide and slavery are revealed in all of its horrific attributes and appendages. Here human life is valued at $35.00.

We eat a visitors feast of goat stew with bread and water for dinner. The villagers have a gruel with touches of green and meat. The star studded sky is peaceful and a little later, the brilliant moon lights up the compound as though it is day. Finally the quietness of the evening lulls us to sleep on the hard earth. We are awakened by the sound of a donkey braying before dawn, fifteen feet away and the roosters crowing. Dawn rises with the red sun awakening through the acacia trees. For yesterday's redeemed slaves it is a new day.


More at http://www.lnsart.com/Sudan%20Slave%20Story.htm

[andak01]

The government of Sudan for decades has attempted to force a national religion, Islam, upon all of its people, including the Christians in the south. In its many years of war and genocide it has been unsuccessful to force its will on the south, resulting in a defense organization, the SPLM/SPLA, which provides the overall defense for the southern people.

Provided with weapons from Israel and training from the CIA. Make it clear that this rebel army(s) is fighting against the government and have successfully held off Russian made gunships and arial bombardment for some 15 years. Are you telling us that these are some missionaries with hunting rifles? This is a Civil War. And it is quite clearly being fought over control of oil reserves, the center of which lie beneath the southern region. You don't mention oil, but the Episcopal Bishops council themselves do. Who is being dishonest here, when you discount the voice of the domestic church and the decision of the UN in favor of a Christian Missionary group out of Switzerland?

The government troops remain in isolated compounds whose soldiers can not foray into the countryside, without danger.

WHY IS THAT??? WHO'S SHOOTING AT THEM AND MAKING THEIR LIVES DANGEROUS??? AND WITH WHAT? Where do the SPLA and the SPLM, two rebel armies get enough weapons and training to hold off the government of Sudan?

Thus the vast open spaces populated by small Christian villages are a particular problem for the central government to control.

Five percent of the population is Christian in the South, outnumbered by animists in every region but the Nuba mountains.

The people are for the most part self-subsistent. This sets the stage for the genocide and slavery that the Sudanese government has forced upon its southern people in its attempt to subject them and assimilate them into the Islamic religion of northern Sudan.

A non-sequetor that points out the extreme bias of this article. The people are self-subsistent, therefore the government enslaves them and kills them?

Outside of CSI (a Christian Missionary group), what groups have investigated. I have already posted an investigation above by the Schiller institute that found no slaves.

CSI conducts these very secretive trips to new locations each two to three months. They have redeemed over 42,000 slaves and the flow of the trade shows no sign of abatement. The trip that I was on brought home 4119 slaves plus one, when you add the boy that was born on the redemption day. I witnessed the birth.

If CSI is so interested in bringing these crimes to light, why are the locations of slavery so secret? Are they so secret that no other external investigative team can find evidence of them?

Armed guards with Russian AK47 automatic weapons taken from the enemy, surrounded the area.

That concurs with all of my previous statements that Russians supplied the weapons to the north. And where Russians supply weapons to one side and the CIA supplies training to the other, IT'S A COLD WAR TYPE CONFLICT! And like many Cold War conflicts, there is oil in the center.

The political structure that has arisen from this continued war contains local tribal chiefs, a commander for an area selected by the SPLA and the regional commissioner by the SPLM, usually an elder selected because of leadership ability which reports to the rebel civil government.

So these poor unarmed Christians not only have an army, they have even had a chance to establish their own government? IT'S A CIVIL WAR!

As I had been asked to go on such short notice and was told to be in Zurich at a specific time with very little other instructions, I did not realize that I should take a bed role, mattress pad, food and a tent. I was fortunate to be invited to share the tent of the human rights worker but I had to sleep on the floor of the tent with a thin cloth over me.

I suggest on your next trip, you stay as a guest of the government and see how unbiased a report you get from them. Talk about being spoon fed!

Here is a Christian missionary interpreter who is going to translate what these slaves are saying. We are standing here in front of the white robed Arabs, but they aren't killing us. Ask one of them why. Tell him we have $35 American we'll give him if he shows us a slave. He gets nothing if he can't. Tell that malnourished woman there we'll give her food if she can tell us what her Arab captors did to her. We'll be over here in the tent with the cross on top.

[andak01]

http://216.26.163.62/2002/af_sudan_10_04.html


Special to World Tribune.com
MIDDLE EAST NEWSLINE
Friday, October 4, 2002
WASHINGTON — Sudanese rebels are said to have acquired new heavy weapons in their war against the Khartoum regime as they opened a new front near the Eritrean border.

The weapons obtained by the Sudanese People's Liberation Army have include T-55 tanks and mobile anti-aircraft guns. Western diplomatic sources said this has resulted in rebel advances against government forces over the last month.

The SPLA downed two Sudanese military helicopters during a four-day period last week. The helicopters were providing air support for Sudanese commandos who had tried to recapture the strategic town of Torit, lost to the rebels in August.

In addition, the SPLA opened a second military front in the current offensive against Sudanese government forces in the southeast near the Eritrean border. Over the last two days, the SPLA said it captured three positions from the Khartoum regime, including the town of Khasm Girba near Kasala.

The SPLA said it would soon capture Kasala. Sudan's military has denied any rebel gains.

Sudanese officials said Israel has provided some of the weapons and training to the SPLA. Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Othman Ismail said the help has included the supply of anti-tank missiles to the rebels via the Israeli embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.

Last month, Ismail was said to have complained of the Israeli help to the SPLA during a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. Later, the Sudanese minister said it was the first such meeting at this level with the United States in 15 years.

A recent study by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group reported on SPLA procurement of improved weaponry. The report said the procurement has resulted in a greater combat capability by the rebels.

"The SPLA also has acquired some heavier weapons, especially anti-aircraft, a little better mobility, and more consistent resupply capabilities -- relatively small enhancements individually that combined have produced a big impact on the battlefield," the report said.

But the organization said the Khartoum regime, citing night-vision systems and night-time air bombing, continues to maintain an edge in military capability. The report said Sudan has ordered Western platforms to improve the military's ability to fight in swamps that dot the war-torn south.

"Superior mobility and logistics give government forces a counter to the SPLA's manpower advantage," the report said. "This battlefield edge will be heightened by the government's purchase from Australia of airboats designed to travel in swamp environments and especially useful in the oilfield areas of Upper Nile."

[andak01]

Just coincidently, a Christian missionary group, guest of the Dinka tribe gets an earfull of hogwash. Hogwash that the UN refused to acknowledge.


http://www.peaceactionme.org/junesudan.html

Many tribes have suffered at the hands of the S.P.L.A. The SPLA has looted their cattle and grain and scattered landmines along the southern borders of Sudan in order to prevent refugees from fleeing the country. U.S.-based humanitarian organizations working in Sudan, including CARE, World Vision, Church World Service, Save the Children and the American Refugee Committee, no friends of the Sudanese government, have gone on record to the effect that the SPLA has "engaged for years in the most serious human rights abuses, including extra-judicial killings, beating, arbitrary detention, slavery, etc."

A small group of elite from the Dinka tribe control the SPLA, profit from the sale of weapons and have bank accounts in Switzerland. The Dinka elite also profit from the abduction of Sudanese youth from refugee camps in Kenya and Uganda. Many of these youths are forced into the SPLA army, sold into slavery, or brutally tortured.

The SPLA plays the same role in the southern Sudan that the Contras played in Nicaragua. In addition to using surrogates, the United States has provided military training to the SPLA by CIA and special forces instructors. U.S. army generals, for example, have been present during Ugandan army exercises held in conjunction with SPLA forces and Eritrean army units. The American military was there in the guise of advisors on anti terrorism. Africa Confidential has confirmed that the SPLA "has already received U.S. help via Uganda" and that U.S. special forces are on "open-ended deployment" with the rebels.

[andak01]

http://www.finalcall.com/perspective...05-15-2001.htm

The recent emergence of the relationship between the mainstream media, elected officials, White conservatives, Black civil rights leaders, a Sudanese opposition group (SPLA/M), and a Christian human rights organization, Christian Solidarity International (CSI), caused us to reflect over a long history of covert relationships between US and foreign intelligence agencies and Christian missionaries. One of the best examples of such was the relationship between the famous Wycliffe Bible Translators and the CIA. The relationship was documented in a book, Thy Will Be Done, written in the 1990s.

According to Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett, the association between the intelligence community and Christian missionaries predates the public emergence of the CIA. In Thy Will Be Done, they write of the Wycliffe Bible Translator's (also known as the Summer Institute of Linguistic -SIL) and its founder William Cameron Townsend's (also known as "Cam") association with the intelligence community.

[Hierophant]

Sudan Islamists kill more women, children
Latest assault in 'scorched-earth' effort to secure oil-rich area

Helicopter gunships of Sudan's militant Islamic regime killed at least 17 civilians, including women and children, and seriously injured many others during relief distribution by the U.N.'s World Food Program, according to international workers.

The attack on Wednesday, which followed a similar assault less than two weeks ago, is part of the National Islamic Front's "scorched-earth policy" aimed at ridding the oil-rich area of civilians, says Eric Reeves, a noted Sudan researcher and analyst at Smith College in Massachusetts.

"What Khartoum is bent on doing with those oil revenues is to acquire additional military assets in order to complete its self-described jihad" against the mostly Christian and animist south, Reeves told WorldNetDaily.

That assessment is backed by at least four separate reports, conducted by the Canadian government and Amnesty International in 2000, and last year by the group Christian Aid and a British-Canadian human rights team.

"Khartoum wants to effect a final solution to what they perceive as their southern problem," Reeves said. "And it is truly genocidal in ambition."

Backed by Muslim clerics, the National Islamic Front regime in the Arab and Muslim north is waging a campaign to force Islam on the south. Since 1983, an estimated 2 million people have died from the war and attendant famine. About 4.5 million have become refugees.

The U.S. House of Representatives in 1999 overwhelmingly adopted a resolution finding that "the National Islamic Front government is deliberately and systematically committing genocide in southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains, and the Ingressa Hills."

The House has passed a bill, the Sudan Peace Act, that would impose capital market sanctions on the oil companies operating in the country, denying them New York Stock Exchange listings. But the Senate version does not include those sanctions and the bill is in limbo, awaiting a conference to reconcile the two versions.

The bill is opposed by the White House and Wall Street, Reeves notes.

"A measure that was introduced into the Senate by Republican Senator Bill Frist in July of 1999 is in February of 2002 being held up by the Senate Republican leadership," he said. "It's absolutely a disgrace to the legislative process."

The attack on the Bieh relief center in Western Upper Nile followed assaults on the Akuem and Nimni centers Feb. 9 that killed several people, including children.

On Wednesday, a helicopter hovered over the World Food Program compound and fired five rockets into an area where "a large number of vulnerable people had gathered, waiting to receive food," the WFP said in a statement yesterday condemning the attack. WFP says it had a team of two people on the ground to distribute 76 metric tons of food to 10,000 people.

WFP Executive Director Catherine Bertini called the deliberate targeting of "civilians about to receive humanitarian assistance" an "intolerable affront to human life and to humanitarian work."

After initially denying the Feb. 9 attack, Khartoum issued a statement Feb. 13 expressing its "profound regrets" over the bombing at Akuem in Bahr el-Ghazal province, insisting that it was a "technical error" and promising that it would not happen again.

"What's significant about that," Reeves said, "is that they did not acknowledge what they knew at the time ? that there already had been another attack on Nimni the same day, 160 miles east."

The attack this week "makes nonsense of pledging there would be no repeat of the incident," Reeves said, "to have a helicopter gunship fire rockets into thousands of people gathered at a U.N. World Food Program center to receive emergency food aid. This is just despicable prevarication."

On the day of the Feb. 9 attack, Khartoum Minister of Foreign Affairs Mustafa Uthman Isma'il conducted an interview in Washington with the C-SPAN television network in which he denied his regime oppressed Christians and abetted slavery.

Meanwhile, Islamic law has been applied to a pregnant Christian woman who received 75 lashes for allegedly committing adultery, according to U.K.-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

Abok Alfa Akok, 18, whose death sentence was overturned by a Sudanese appeals court, contends that she was raped while her husband was away for six months. However, she was unable to produce the four male witnesses required by Islamic law to validate her statement.

The appeals court overturned Abok's sentence following international protest and recommended that she receive a "rebuke" sentence instead.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=26566

[andak01]

Christian Solidarity Worldwide
Christian Solidarity International

Your two sources for this data contradict Amnesty International, the UN and even EglisesSoudan the Episcopal council there which clearly shows this is a Civil War for oil. If the Sudanese government were planning on selling all their oil to the U.S. at reduced rates, the press would be treating them as freedom fighters like we treated the Mujjahiddeen in Afghanistan, before those same freedom fighters along with Bin Laden became the Taliban and refused to do business with us. We have no qualms about backing Pinoche, but when Russian and Chinese back one side, we are certain to back the other. And certain to paint them as the sort of people who pull babies from incubators.

[andak01]

Whose being led around by the nose? The CSI.

http://www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/ar...99/040299h.htm

... “Knowledge that there are foreigners (with presumably deep pockets) willing to pay to redeem slaves can only spur on unscrupulous individuals to make a business out of redemption,” Human Rights Watch said...

Read, whether they are really dealing in slaves or not. Since they don't speak the local languages, how do they know that they aren't being sold something other than slaves? Or did they indeed create a slave trade by offering money in the first place.

...Eibner noted that the system for redeeming slaves was already in place before Christian Solidarity International began its efforts. That system, organized by Dinka chiefs and northern neighbors, relies on trust from all parties that no fraud will take place, he said.

Noting that Eibner and others leading a recent redemption operation do not speak Arabic or Dinka, Sesana said that he had heard a report of questionable translations from their guides. He urged groups involved in redeeming slaves to allow human rights experts and journalists who can take a critical viewpoint and “who speak at least Arabic, able to ask the right questions at the right time, plus some Dinka translators properly selected, to accompany them on a trip. This trip should not be a hit-and-run redemption scoop, but it must allow time for the team to survey the surrounding area and interview in depth the people they encounter.”...

[andak01]

http://www.sasociety.com/archive/614open.htm
http://www.africa2000.com/IMPACT/sudanwar.html

The similarities between Angola and Sudan are many. In Angola, the point was never a military or political victory, but rather to make the battle for liberation as costly as possible. Recent news reports suggest that Sudan, too, may have been singled out as a vulnerable nation in a vulnerable region which could be used as an example to all so-called 'rogue states' that refuse to accept western 'leadership.'
The official version of the U.S. Sudan policy began to unravel on the pages of American newspapers in late 1996. In November, for example, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. government had approved military assistance to 'three African countries collaborating to help overthrow the militant Islamic regime in Sudan.' The article, which carried the byline of Post staff writer David B. Ottaway and quoted inside sources, announced that almost $20 million in military equipment was then scheduled for shipment to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda to work with the west in 'a joint offensive to topple the Khartoum government.'

http://www.cin.org/archives/cinjust/200201/0028.html

It should be noted from the outset that this news item is but one in a catalogue of questionable and discredited claims that have been made over the years on Sudan and the Sudanese conflict. In 1999, for example, the British media widely reported similarly dubious claims that Sudanese government forces
had used chemical weapons in southern Sudan. (1) In 2000, a British newspaper reported that 700,000 Chinese soldiers were being deployed in southern Sudan, a claim similarly publicly exposed as yet another false allegation. (2) Rubin's glib and intellectually undemanding recital of Sudan's alleged involvement in terrorism is tenaciously out of date. He starts off by citing
the Clinton Administration's 1993 listing of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism. This listing was questioned from the start by former President Jimmy Carter, who asked to see the evidence for Sudan's listing. He reported that: "In fact, when I later asked an assistant secretary of state he said they did not have any proof, but there were strong allegations." (1) The
simple fact is that the listing was based on the over one hundred CIA reports on Sudan and terrorism from 1993 withdrawn in 1996 as unreliable or having been fabricated. (2) Sudan continues to be listed more as a matter of saving face for Washington than anything else. The gap between American claims about
Sudan, and reality, was also clearly demonstrated by Washington's amazingly inept 1998 cruise missile attack on the al-Shifa medicine factory in Khartoum, an attack acknowledged to have been the result of yet more disastrous American intelligence failures.(3) This level of incompetence led the London 'Times' newspaper to state that such a circumstance "is no great
surprise to those who have watched similar CIA operations in Africa where 'American intelligence' is often seen as an oxymoron." (4) Much the same might be said of Rubin and research skills. All Rubin has done is echo claims that are not just unreliable but which, in the final analysis, amount to
little more than state sponsored propaganda by the former Clinton Administration.(5)

http://www.aboutsudan.com/issues/ter...locked_fbi.htm

On July 30, one day after the Moran story broke, the SPLA of Garang charged that the Sudan government had bombed the villages of Kaaya and Lainya in Western Equatoria province with chemical weapons. The charges were further aired by the Norwegian Peoples Aid (NPA), which was renounced by the Norwegian government for its open partisanship toward the SPLA, and was exposed by EIR for involvement in gun-running to Garang. The NPA and SPLA demanded a full UN investigation on-site. In contrast to its refusal to investigate the Al-Shifa plant as per the requests of the Sudan government, the UN has complied, sending a medical team over to the alleged chemical target. It is of course Garang's sponsors, including British Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords Baroness Caroline Cox of Christian Solidarity International, who have played a key role in fabricating and circulating fake stories on Sudan.

It would appear that despite the known falsification, the policy against Sudan remains intact in Washington, a policy whose consequences have made a debacle of U.S. policy in all of East and Central Africa.

[andak01]

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2002/107/21.0.html

Compiled by Ted Olsen | posted 02/26/2002


Many freed Sudanese slaves and slavers are no such thing, report says
“Momentum has been growing among American Christians to do something about the captives in Sudan. But recently, evidence has surfaced that suggests purchasing the freedom of slaves may be doing more harm than good,” Christianity Today reported back in 1999. At the heart of our story then were fears that the slave redemption programs of groups like Christian Solidarity International (CSI) were “fueling both a slave economy and the war” in Sudan.

Now the story has shifted dramatically—in many cases, slave redemption is nothing but an elaborate hoax. The Washington Post puts the exposé on today’s front page, but The Irish Times apparently had it first on Saturday, and British papers The Independent and The Scotsman first published reports on Sunday (all three articles were written by Nairobi-based reporter Declan Walsh, but they differ). “In reality, many of the ‘slaves’ are fakes, rounded up by SPLA officials to pose for the cameras,” Walsh wrote in The Scotsman. “The ‘slavers’ are also fake, sometimes a light-skinned rebel soldier that resembles an Arab, other times a passing trader. Before the CSI plane lands, the children are coached in stories of abduction and abuse to be repeated when a redeemer, or visiting journalist, asks questions. Interpreters may be instructed to twist their answers.”

The key whistleblower is Italian missionary Mario Riva, who recognized some of the “slaves” as his own parishioners. "The people told me they had been collected to get money. It was a kind of business," he tells Walsh. And since he could speak the local language, he also noticed deliberate mistranslations: “For example, says Father Riva, [CSI representative John] Eibner would ask if a slave had been held in captivity. The official would translate the question as ‘have you suffered in the war?’ The villager would emphatically reply in the positive. Then the translator would tell Eibner that the man had been abducted by Arabs, treated inhumanely and was grateful to CSI for saving his life.” With armed rebel soldiers—who make a lot of money from such “slave redemptions”—standing by, Riva waited until later to voice his concerns.

Both CSI and Baroness Caroline Cox’s Christian Solidarity Worldwide (which stopped participating in slave redemptions last year) say they’ve never been cheated.

[abu afak]

Originally posted by Hierophant
Sudan Islamists kill more women, children
Latest assault in 'scorched-earth' effort to secure oil-rich area

Helicopter gunships of Sudan's militant Islamic regime killed at least 17 civilians, including women and children, and seriously injured many others during relief distribution by the U.N.'s World Food Program, according to international workers.

The attack on Wednesday, which followed a similar assault less than two weeks ago, is part of the National Islamic Front's "scorched-earth policy" aimed at ridding the oil-rich area of civilians, says Eric Reeves, a noted Sudan researcher and analyst at Smith College in Massachusetts.

"What Khartoum is bent on doing with those oil revenues is to acquire additional military assets in order to complete its self-described jihad" against the mostly Christian and animist south, Reeves told WorldNetDaily.

That assessment is backed by at least four separate reports, conducted by the Canadian government and Amnesty International in 2000, and last year by the group Christian Aid and a British-Canadian human rights team.

"Khartoum wants to effect a final solution to what they perceive as their southern problem," Reeves said. "And it is truly genocidal in ambition."

Backed by Muslim clerics, the National Islamic Front regime in the Arab and Muslim north is waging a campaign to force Islam on the south. Since 1983, an estimated 2 million people have died from the war and attendant famine. About 4.5 million have become refugees.

The U.S. House of Representatives in 1999 overwhelmingly adopted a resolution finding that "the National Islamic Front government is deliberately and systematically committing genocide in southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains, and the Ingressa Hills."

The House has passed a bill, the Sudan Peace Act, that would impose capital market sanctions on the oil companies operating in the country, denying them New York Stock Exchange listings. But the Senate version does not include those sanctions and the bill is in limbo, awaiting a conference to reconcile the two versions.

The bill is opposed by the White House and Wall Street, Reeves notes.

"A measure that was introduced into the Senate by Republican Senator Bill Frist in July of 1999 is in February of 2002 being held up by the Senate Republican leadership," he said. "It's absolutely a disgrace to the legislative process."

The attack on the Bieh relief center in Western Upper Nile followed assaults on the Akuem and Nimni centers Feb. 9 that killed several people, including children.

On Wednesday, a helicopter hovered over the World Food Program compound and fired five rockets into an area where "a large number of vulnerable people had gathered, waiting to receive food," the WFP said in a statement yesterday condemning the attack. WFP says it had a team of two people on the ground to distribute 76 metric tons of food to 10,000 people.

WFP Executive Director Catherine Bertini called the deliberate targeting of "civilians about to receive humanitarian assistance" an "intolerable affront to human life and to humanitarian work."

After initially denying the Feb. 9 attack, Khartoum issued a statement Feb. 13 expressing its "profound regrets" over the bombing at Akuem in Bahr el-Ghazal province, insisting that it was a "technical error" and promising that it would not happen again.

"What's significant about that," Reeves said, "is that they did not acknowledge what they knew at the time ? that there already had been another attack on Nimni the same day, 160 miles east."

The attack this week "makes nonsense of pledging there would be no repeat of the incident," Reeves said, "to have a helicopter gunship fire rockets into thousands of people gathered at a U.N. World Food Program center to receive emergency food aid. This is just despicable prevarication."

On the day of the Feb. 9 attack, Khartoum Minister of Foreign Affairs Mustafa Uthman Isma'il conducted an interview in Washington with the C-SPAN television network in which he denied his regime oppressed Christians and abetted slavery.

Meanwhile, Islamic law has been applied to a pregnant Christian woman who received 75 lashes for allegedly committing adultery, according to U.K.-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

Abok Alfa Akok, 18, whose death sentence was overturned by a Sudanese appeals court, contends that she was raped while her husband was away for six months. However, she was unable to produce the four male witnesses required by Islamic law to validate her statement.

The appeals court overturned Abok's sentence following international protest and recommended that she receive a "rebuke" sentence instead.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=26566

INTERNATIONAL TEAM UNCOVERS KILLING FIELDS IN SOUTH SUDAN

Liang, South Sudan, February 6, 2003 --

In late January, 2003, an international team of US and Canadian experts traveled to Liang, Upper Nile Province, where they discovered fields littered with human remains, many of them from young children. Interviews with local survivors confirmed that the remains were those of victims of an unprovoked attack upon the unarmed civilian villages of Liang, Dengaji, Kawaji and Yawaji in late April 2002.

It is estimated that between 1/3 to 1/2 of the original 6,000 civilians living in the region were killed in the attack. The attackers were reported by the survivors to be Sudan regular army from the Boing Garrison, commanded by Brigadier General Ibrahim Saleh. Striking in the early morning while the villagers slept, the heavily armed Government of Sudan (GOS) soldiers began killing the unarmed residents and burning their houses.

The attackers were reportedly armed with 60 mm mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, 12.7mm heavy machine guns and AK-47 assault rifles. In a videotaped interview, Mr. Tunya Jok described the horrors as he witnessed his 4-year –old daughter shot and killed as she fled from the GOS soldiers. Then his 6-year-old son was captured and beheaded by the soldiers. His body was thrown into a burning hut and his head planted upright facing away from the hut.

Servant’s Heart, Freedom Quest International and The Voice of the Martyrs (Canada) call for an investigation by the international Civilian Protection and Monitoring Team assigned to report on violations of the March, 2002 agreement between the Government of Sudan and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement. Among other things, both sides agreed not to attack civilian targets. We also call on the US State Department to include this incident in their Sudan Peace Act-mandated report to Congress on atrocities and war criminals in Southern Sudan..""

http://www.blue-nile.org/