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| Africa: East |
| 10 dead in Sudan bombing ... |
| 2003-11-22 |
| AT least 10 civilians were killed overnight during a bombing raid by Sudanese government forces on villages and rebel positions in the country’s troubled western Darfur region, a rebel official said. Just some more ethnic cleansing by the NIF and their "militias" to wrap up Ramadan ... The official from the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) accused the government of committing with the bombing attacks a "flagrant violation of the ceasefire" that has been in place since September 3. My guess would be that it’s the Arab militias who are one step removed from the NIF supported by the air force, rather than the NIF military themselves. There’s been accusations floating around these militias are made up of al-Qaeda fighters who are paying back Bashir for his hospitality by helping him knock off a sizeable chunk of the natives. If that’s true (and the information generally comes from pro-rebel outlets) then this could easily be their handiwork backed up by the Sudanese air force, which we already know likes to bomb civilians. Speaking in Cairo by telephone, Abdallah Hassaballah said the bombing raid attacked SLM positions and villages in the Cornei region, about 130km north of al-Fasher, the main town in the semi-desert Darfur. "At least 10 civilians, including women and children, have been killed and a certain number have been injured," he said. Since February, Darfur, on Sudan’s border with Chad, has been the scene of clashes between SLM rebels and government forces backed by local militias. The militias are the ones who have carried out most of the actual massacres and the like thus far, thereby providing the NIF with plausible deniability for what’s going on in Darfur. At least 3000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced by the fighting, with the conflict choking economic development in the region. But is it a Quagmire(TM) yet? The government and the SLM are due to restart negotiations aimed at reaching a comprehensive settlement on December 4 in Chad. Chad, incidentally, is said to be backing some if not all of the Darfur rebels. It’s an ethnic thing, I guess ... |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 The Messalit, Fur, Berti, Zaghawa and Toubou tribes that are under attack by Arab cattle nomads (baggara) are African and came late to Islam. The baggara, generally as Africanized as the tribes they attack, are supported by the Nile River Arabs who though intermixed with Africans like to trace their roots to Saudi Arabia. Their leaders are a racist pack of jackals who have been carrying on their own war against the Southern Sudanese since Sudanese independence in 1955. Since independence, the tribes of the periphery have argued that the core (the Khartoum Arabs) could care less about them. And this can be visualized as yet another effort by the periphery to be free of a vicious uncaring government whose leaders are only bent on feathering their own nest. |
| Posted by: Tancred 2003-11-22 9:16:55 AM |