---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Ashworth <[email protected]> Date: Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 7:55 AM Subject: [sudan-john-ashworth] Fw: Sudan: "a full-fledged war" To: Group <[email protected]>
SPLM-N: "The National Congress [Party], by this unwarranted aggression, has created a full-fledged war" SLM and JEM: "the attack [on Blue Nile] is part of a premeditated plan, prepared by the ruling National Congress Party aiming to spread 'chaos and killing' over all the Sudan" 1. Press Release SPLM/N Position on the regional and international consultations to stop the war in South Kordofan and Blue Nile States The SPLM/N leadership has been consulted by a number of concerned regional and international bodies and countries on the unfolding human catastrophe precipitated by the National Congress and the need for a speedy end to the current conflict. As part of the consultation, we received an invitation from the Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, inviting the SPLM/N leadership to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for consultations. The SPLM/N has similarly been consulted by the office of the Chairman of AUHIP, former President Thabo Mbeki and also by the US Special Envoy to Sudan Ambassador Princeton Lyman. We have also conferred with the Special Envoy of the Secretary General of the United Nations Mr. Haile Menkarios. In the light of these consultations, the SPLM/N would like to underline the following principles and new realities: 1-Perment and just peace is a strategic goal for the SPLM/N. 2-The SPLM/N highly values and appreciates the concern of the regional and international community and will always be ready and available to consult with them. 3-The National Congress ignited this war and must fully bear responsibility for its consequences. Moreover, it is the National Congress that dishonored the Addis Ababa Framework Agreement in an utter contempt to the regional and international efforts! 4-We appeal and ask the regional and international community to seriously take in to account the fact the NCP is using food as a weapon in the current conflict, denying hundreds of thousands of civilians from humanitarian assistance and using some of them as human shields. This act is unacceptable and constitutes a war crime. There is a need to open safe corridors for delivering aid to the needy civil population. In this context, Sudan has precedence in the Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) which saved millions of civilians during the war in South Sudan. The same model can be applied taking into consideration the realities of today. 5-Sudan Air Force is being used by the National Congress in targeting the civil population and civilian installations from Blue Nile to Darfur. Therefore, we urge and appeal to the international community, particularly the UN Security Council to apply a NO-FLY ZONE from Blue Nile to Darfur. 5-With the SPLM/N now having been banned; thousands of civilians killed, injured, displaced, or forced to flee as refugees in South Sudan and Ethiopia; and the Chairman of the SPLM/N and the only truly elected governor in Northern Sudan having been removed unconstitutionally and state of emergency declared and SPLM/N leaders being hunted and arrested all over Sudan and with SPLM/N properties and documents confiscated, offices closed down countrywide, the CPA has practically been dismantled. The National Congress, by this unwarranted aggression, has created a full-fledged war, engulfing the New South in the North. Will it then be business as usual for the National Congress? Yasir Arman SPLM/N Secretary General September 6th, 2011 END1 2. Rebels call for non-fly zone in Blue Nile, Darfur and S. Kordofan September 4, 2011 (KHARTOUM) — Darfur rebels today urged international community to impose a no-fly zone and to establish safe corridors to provide civilians, in the Blue Nile, Darfur and Southern Kordofan, with humanitarian assistance. They also urged democratic forces to join them in their efforts to change Bashir’s regime. The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) who are fighting against the Sudanese government in Darfur since 2003 agreed recently with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) to establish an alliance to overthrow the regime but they are still discussing the place of the religion in the post-Bashir state. Abdel Wahid al-Nur, leader of a SLM faction and Ahmed Hussein Adam external relations adviser for JEM leader denounced "the aggression" of the Sudanese army on the SPLM-N in the Blue Nile. Both said that the attack is part of a premeditated plan, prepared by the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) aiming to spread "chaos and killing" over all the Sudan. They further said the regime of President Omer Hassan al-Bashir is an obstacle for peace and security not only in Sudan but for the whole region. "This regime is too deformed to be reformed," said Ahmed Hussein Adam. Abdel-Wahid who refuses to negotiate with the government since 2006, said "this regime used to dishonour any political agreement it signs and what is happening confirm what he have been saying." Abdel-Wahid and Ahmed called upon the United Nations Security Council to impose a no-fly-zone on Blue Nile, Darfur, and Southern Kordofan " to stop the ongoing aggression against the civilians populations". They further urged to establish humanitarian corridors and protected zones to to populations caught in violence in the three regions. The Sudanese government refuses to allow an action by international aid groups or open camps for the civilians displaced by the fight in Blue Nile or Southern Kordofan saying they do not want to repeat the situation of Darfur. Only the government controlled bodies distribute the humanitarian assistance. On the internal front, Darfur rebels and the SPLM-N are discussing the formation of a political and military coalition to fight the Sudanese regime in Khartoum. The talks are stalled over the issue of religion. The SLM factions insisted particularly on the need for a total separation between the state and religion while JEM says the citizenship should be prioritized. "The secular state is our vision and ambition" said Abdel Wahid who appealed on the other political forces to share with him this vision and to topple down the regime of the National Congress Party. "The JEM is now working closely with SPLM and with other resistance movements and the democratic forces to counter the current wave of terror and go further to forge a new inclusive alliance to lead the efforts of the Sudanese for a democratic change,” stressed Ahmed Hussein Adam. Yasir Arman yesterday said that the SPLM-N would seek to solidify the strategic alliance it forged with Darfur rebel groups. Arman revealed that a meeting took place on Friday between him, the SLM leaders Abdel-Wahid al-Nur and Minni Minnawi and Mansour Abdel Gadir who represented JEM. The SPLM and Darfur groups called on the other democratic forces in the North Sudan to join them in this alliance. But President al-Bashir who chairs the NCP also sought to mobilize the other political forces. He held a meeting on Sunday with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Mohamed Osman al-Mirghani, the Umma National Party (UNP) of Sadiq Al-Mahdi and other small forces to brief them on the latest development in the Blue Nile. Both sides seek to convince the opposition parties to support his position. However, the main Democratic forces particularly, the DUP and UNP reject the military action against the regime but refuse to support Khartoum and demand democratic reforms and a negotiated settlement for Darfur, Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan conflicts. (ST) END2 3. SUDAN: 20,000 flee Blue Nile clashes KHARTOUM, 5 September 2011 (IRIN) - Armed conflict and air raids, blocked humanitarian aid and potential food shortages: conditions for civilians in two states on the border with South Sudan are giving increasing cause for concern. "I am really afraid for my life. The first two days of the [fighting], we could see dozens of dead bodies on the streets," said Ahmed*, a resident of Ed Damazine, the capital of Blue Nile state, where clashes broke out on 1 September between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), prompting more than 20,000 people to flee to neighbouring Ethiopia. "I have been at home since Saturday [3 September]. At the beginning, people chose to leave the city by car or by bus. Most of the people did. I had things to do before leaving. Now, it is too late. Nobody can go out from the city. I am SPLM. The army knows it. I am afraid," added the student, speaking to IRIN by telephone before lines were reportedly cut. SPLM-N was formed as the northern branch of the political party dominating the government in the now independent state of South Sudan. On 4 September, SPLM-N Secretary-General Yasir Arman said Khartoum's ruling National Congress Party had banned SPLM-N and arrested many of its members and confiscated property in many parts of Sudan. Each side blamed the other for igniting the clashes in Blue Nile. SPLM-N described Khartoum's actions as a coup against elected Blue Nile governor Malik Aggar, a former commander in the movement's military wing (SPLA), during Sudan's 1983-2005 north-south civil war. SAF spokesman Al-Sawarmi Khalid Sa'ad described Aggar as a "rebel" whose forces had been planning attacks on four army positions in the state. Sense of foreboding Ali*, another Ed Damazine resident, made his escape by bus to the town of Wad Madani with his wife and three children a day before fighting broke out. "There was something in the air, something was about to happen. There had been soldiers everywhere in town for several weeks," he told IRIN. Thousands of residents of Kurmuk, the main town in the south of Blue Nile, also took flight after the SAF began aerial bombardments there on 2 September, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Many UN and NGO workers based in Kurmuk have also left for Ethiopia. "People are still coming in large numbers," Kisut Gebre Egziabher, a spokesman for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), told IRIN in Addis Ababa. "Within two days alone, we have received over 20,000 refugees from Sudan to Ethiopia's Sherkole refugee camp. This might increase as we have not received today's data yet. Based on initial reports, the number of women and children is high," he said. "Because of the drought in the Horn of Africa, it is very challenging to welcome these new refugees," he said. "We are worried that [UN] compounds [in Blue Nile] might be looted. Vehicles with GPS devices have already been stolen," said Peter de Clerq, head of the UNHCR mission in Sudan. The World Food Programme (WFP) said it had 140MT of food in Blue Nile, enough to feed 20,000 for two weeks. "There is no chance of restocking for the moment," WFP spokesman Amor Almagro told IRIN in Khartoum. Call to end hostilities UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres on 4 September appealed for an immediate halt to hostilities in the state. "We need, at all costs, to stop yet one more refugee crisis in a region of the world that has been witnessing in recent months so much suffering," he said in Geneva. Meanwhile, the situation in the nearby state of South Kordofan, where the SAF and SPLM-N have been fighting since early June, displacing or severely affecting some 200,000 civilians, "has reached a critical point", Valerie Amos, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, said in a statement on 30 August. "Unless there is an immediate stop to the fighting, and humanitarian organizations are granted immediate and unhindered independent access throughout South Kordofan, people in many parts of the state face potentially catastrophic levels of malnutrition and mortality," she said. But the SPLM-N has said it will resist the north's "plan to eradicate" it, which Arman alleged "had been designed a long time ago by the National Congress, which fears the role of the SPLM-N as a democratic force in the transformation of the North. "We vociferously declare that the only option before us is to forge a nationwide democratic front with the agendas of a radical restructuring of the power's centre in Khartoum and build a new state that recognizes others and their right to be others," he said. The NCP "has deliberately chosen war as the only mechanism to eradicate the SPLM-N. The NCP will live to regret this choice as the SPLM-N is there to stay and to lead," he said. *Names changed to protect identity http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93660 END3 4. Al-Bashir vows to squash SPLM-N as Sudan’s army says ready to take rebels’ stronghold August 4, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – President Omer al-Bashir of Sudan has threatened to quell any military attacks by the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement North (SPLM-N) as the country’s army declared readiness to seize the SPLM-N’s main stronghold in the Blue Nile State. Sudan’s southern state of Blue Nile on Thursday became the country’s latest flashpoint after Sudan’s army (SAF) clashed with forces of the SPLM-N led by the state’s governor Malik Agar who was elected to his position in April 2010. As fighting intensified, al-Bashir declared a state of emergency in the state and sacked Agar, prompting the SPLM-N to vow resistance to the ‘coup’ against the elected governor. Addressing a gathering of political parties’ representatives in Khartoum on Sunday, al-Bashir said that the government had run out of patience in the face of SPLM-N’s provocations. He claimed that Agar had sought to scuttle the popular consultation vote which the government implemented in the Blue Nile pursuant to the provisions of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). According to al-Bashir, the legislative assembly in the Blue Nile rejected demands of autonomy for the region, adding that the government tried not to replicate the scenario of South Kordofan in Blue Nile. He told his audience that the government was exerting efforts to help those affected by the events in the Blue Nile and “purge it of outlaws.” Addressing the same gathering, Sudan’s minister of defense Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein claimed that SAF had asserted control over several areas, including the vicinity of al- Rosieres Dam which accounts for nearly 50 percent of the production of electric power in the country. The commander-in-chief of SAF in the Blue Nile, Yahia Mohamed Khair, who was appointed as a military ruler, said that the army assumed control of the situation in all fronts. He added that the army had managed to secure the state’s capital al-Damazin and was now ready to retake Al-Kurmuk town which is the mainstay of the SPLM-N. Meanwhile, Khartoum announced that 4200 people fled al-Kurmuk and Gisan areas into Ethiopia. The country’s humanitarian coordinator Hasbu Abdel Rahman said that the refugees were now staying in camps along the border areas. In a related development, the head of Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) Mohamed Atta visited Ethiopia and delivered a message from President al-Bashir to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. According to the Sudanese Media Center (SMC), a website run by the NISS, the letter briefed Zenawi on the situation in the Blue Nile. It is to be noted that the Ethiopian Prime Minister had led efforts to reconcile the SPLM-N and the government. Zenawi arrived in Khartoum last month and moderated talks between Agar and president al-Bashir but the talks failed as both sides remained inflexible. (ST) END4 ______________________ John Ashworth Sudan Advisor [email protected] +254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile) +249 919 695 362 (Sudan mobile) +27 82 853 3556 (South Africa mobile) +44 750 304 1790 (UK/international) +88 216 4334 0735 (Thuraya satphone) PO Box 52002 - 00200, Nairobi, Kenya This is a personal e-mail address and the contents do not necessarily reflect the views of any organisation -- The content of this message does not necessarily reflect John Ashworth's views. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, John Ashworth is not the author of the content and the source is always cited. You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sudan-john-ashworth" group. 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