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More Weapons To South Sudan
While the capturing of the "Faina", a Ukranian ship loaded with tanks and other military stuff, by the Somali coast guard/pirates was noticed around the world, little has been reported in English about another ship that delivered a load of weapons late last year.
The earlier ship was the German fund owned heavy lift ship "Beluga Endurance", IMO 9312169. There were reports on this in Der Spiegel, Nord-West-Radio and the Hamburger Abendblatt, all in German.
The ship is on long term charter with Beluga Group, a heavy lift shipping company. In November/December 2007 the ship was on secondary charter with ACE Shipping, a company on the British Isle of Man which shortly before was sold to some Ukrainian interest.
The ship then was ordered to the Ukrainian harbor Oktjabrsk in the Black Sea. There the state owned company Ukrinmasch loaded the ship. SPIEGEL says it has documents showing 42 T-72 tanks, 15 anti-air canons, 2 multiple rocket launchers, 2 tons of RPG and 95 tons of Kalashnikov guns and accessories were loaded. The freight was declared to be "general cargo: power generation machinery and vehicles."
From Oktjabrsk the ship went to Israel for unknown purpose and from there to Mombasa, Kenia. Israel is known for upgrading/refurbishing Ukrainian weapons as it did with tanks for Czechia and multiple rocket launchers for Georgia. Note that the "Faina" is owned by an Israeli who is negotiating its release and there are rumors of contacts between the pirates and the Israeli prime minister Olmert.
The load delivery papers refer to "GOSS" as acceptor. This is supposed to stand for Government of South Sudan. Eye witness reported that the weapons did go there.
Neither the Ukranian nor the Kenian government acknowledges the above.
South Sudan gained some autonomy after a long civil war with the north. A referendum is scheduled for 2011 on whether to remain in the greater Sudan or to become an independent nation. There is a UN observer mission in South Sudan which has officially not seen any of the weapons. Weapon delivery to South Sudan is forbidden.
The BBC quoted a Jane's Defence Weekly correspondent who says that more than 100 T-72 and T-55 Russian tanks have been received by the South Sudan in recent months. All together five ship loads were said to be involved.
One wonders who pays for these weapons and how they can escape more scrutiny.
slightly OT –
mahmood mamdani
part one of this year’s ‘international human rights day’ lecture from december 15 in nairobi
Why Africans fight
All of us know of the terrible violence unleashed in Darfur and on Darfur in 2003-04.
That violence has a history. It also has a meaning. Violence is not its own explanation. When people fight, whether non-violently or violently, there is inevitably a history and inevitably issues around which they fight.
The violence in Darfur began as a civil war in 1987-89. There was a reconciliation conference at the end of that civil war. Both sides made representations at this reconciliation conference, putting forth their point of view on the conflict. Both claimed to be victims.
Human-rights organisations from Human Rights Watch to the International Crisis Group have focused on the atrocities committed during the violence in Darfur.
I want to focus on the background that they have ignored: Why the violence? What were the issues that drove the civil war? The violence in Darfur is usually described as an ethnic conflict, sometimes even as a racial conflict.
The question is: Do Africans fight one another just because they are different? Or do they fight because they have differences?
The background to the conflict in Darfur is marked by two most important issues.
The first, the more immediate though not necessarily the most important, is that of sheer survival in the face of an ecological crisis, a crisis of drought and desertification.
According to a UNEP study issued last year, the Sahara has moved roughly 100 kilometers in 40 years, pushing northern tribes southwards.
The second issue was even more long-term. It stemmed from the land tenure system created during the colonial period.
Like most places colonised by Britain after the Berlin Conference in late 19th century, Darfur was tribalised by being divided into tribal homelands during the colonial period.
The British divided the tribes of Darfur into three: Settled peasant tribes got the largest homelands, equivalent to their settled areas; semi-settled cattle nomads got smaller homelands that included their villages but not necessarily their grazing grounds; finally, tribes of camel nomads who had no settled villages got no tribal homelands.
To understand the responses of different tribes to the drought that reached its most acute expression in the mid-1980s, you needed to understand this background of how tribal homelands had been created in the colonial period.
…
recommended
also worth note – fake & funk’s THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA: Darfur–Intervention and the USA
The Scramble for Africa analyzes the current humanitarian crisis in Darfur and the activist movements surrounding it, thereby taking on both the U.S. Government and the Save Darfur coalition alike. The authors present the basic information on the political and military aspects of the conflict, examine the options, and suggest ways forward, always with a concern for the broader international implications and for the hundreds of thousands of victims.
This meticulously-researched work gives the history of Sudan, and especially the Darfur region, in relation to U.S. and Western objectives, discussing, at length, the immensely harmful role the U.S. played in Sudan in the 70s and 80s through Washington’s support of repressive regimes in Khartoum.
Alongside this, some of the more dubious aspects of the Save Darfur Movement in the U.S. is examined, such as the sidelining of Muslim and Sudanese voices, the lobbying for questionable goals, and the perceived support of the Bush administration’s policy objectives. Considering, in the end, how activists concerned with playing a positive role might engage the movement.
Finally, the authors also assess the analysis presented of the Darfur conflict by those on the radical left and evaluate the merits of their opposition to the use of UN peacekeepers on anti-imperial grounds.
more footnotes than txt, but nice to have it all in one source
overview in this commentary – Can Washington ’save Darfur’?
The corporate media never raise the obvious questions: does the history of US involvement in Sudan merit such a sanguine conclusion about its intentions now? Is Washington really the potential saviour of Darfur that it is often portrayed to be?
The US first became heavily involved in Sudan in the 1970s, forging an alliance with the rightward-turning dictatorship of Jafaar Nimeiri, who Washington came to see as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, Libya and the region’s moves towards pan-Arabism.
George H. W. Bush, then the US ambassador to the UN, shared satellite imagery with the Nimeiri regime indicating possible oil reserves in the country’s south, and obtained approval for the US-based energy giant Chevron to do the exploratory work.
The Sudanese government’s desire for the oil money to flow into the central government’s coffers, instead of to the country’s south, reignited a north-south civil war, which would last 22 years and take some 2 million lives, mostly civilians in the south.
Such was the level of US backing for Khartoum that a senior Sudanese official noted that there was a Washington-Khartoum “air bridge” of weapons shipments, used by the government to wage war.
anyone have any good sources on the role of ranneberger, the current u.s. ambassador to kenya, in any of this? he has had official capacity wrt sudan during the early part of this decade, possessing a cv that intertwines w/ a history of cia hotspots & covert arms transfers
country officer in angola (1981-84) while the u.s. was overtly supporting the “proto-terrorist” Unita
then constructively engaged as deputy chief of mission in mozambique from ’86-9 while the u.s. was covertly supporting the outright terrorist mvmt Renamo
then paraguay for the ’89 coup and on through 1992
then ’92-94 around el salvador & guatemala for who knows what
a brief stint as deputy chief of mission in mogadishu around ’94
then some work in haiti
then coordinator for cuban affairs (’95-99)
on to ambassador to mali from ’99-2002
in sudan from 2002-4 for a civil war while the u.s. supporting the south
then on to the african bureau
sudan again, as senior representative for sudan
and, since 2006, ambassador to kenya & responsibility for u.s. relations w/ somalia
Posted by: b real | Dec 22 2008 6:56 utc | 13
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