"10 Sudanese killed in ambush; Attackers strike amid landmark referendum" by Jeffrey Gettleman, New York Times / January 12, 2011
South Sudanese waited on a barge in Juba yesterday as voting continued. The weeklong referendum is expected to split the country in two. (Jerome Delay/ Associated Press)
JUBA, Sudan — Ten civilians were killed along Sudan’s increasingly tense north-south border, Sudanese officials said yesterday, as voting continued for a third day in a landmark referendum on southern Sudan’s independence.
According to Colonel Philip Aguer, a southern Sudanese military spokesman, several truckloads of heavily armed nomads ambushed a convoy of 23 vehicles carrying southern Sudanese, who were returning home Monday to vote in the referendum....
The attack on the convoy of voters followed skirmishes over the weekend, when more than 40 people were killed in the same general area along the north-south border. It has yet to be demarcated and is home to some of Sudan’s more lucrative oil fields....
That's always a big concern in the banker's paper.
Southern Sudanese officials have blamed militias from the Misseriya community, who traditionally roam back and forth across the north-south border in search of grazing land for their animals.
I dunno; something about that just doesn't smell right.
The Misseriya are aligned with the northern government in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, and they claim the disputed area of Abyei, along the border, as their own.
Misseriya leaders have recently denied that they were the aggressors in the attacks over the weekend and said that southern Sudanese soldiers fired the first shots, on Friday....
That I can believe.
It seems that Misseriya militias are shaping up to be potential spoilers in the process of splitting the country in two, or at least that is the growing perception of them in southern Sudan.
A U.S. idea to split!
When does Kashmir get to split from.... awwwww, forget it.
Otherwise, the referendum has been going well....
But increasingly tense with.... who the hell wrote this mixed message piece of agenda-pushing crap?
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Oh.
Related: Sudan vote strongly favoring secession
"Early tally shows 98.6% vote for Sudan secession" by Josh Kron and Jeffrey Gettleman, New York Times / January 22, 2011
JUBA, Sudan — Nearly 99 percent of southern Sudanese voters have chosen to split off from northern Sudan and form their own country, according to preliminary results of an independence referendum conducted this month....
Hey, for that I am always happy for people (like on that barge above).
The commission said the results were still incomplete and were being continually updated, although all indications point to the vote’s being overwhelmingly for secession.
Secession is such a charged word; how about independence, NYT?
Election officials have also said that the turnout soared past the 60 percent threshold necessary for the referendum to be valid. The official results are to be released Feb. 14....
Happy Valentine's Day, Sudan!
Southern Sudanese living in northern Sudan were more ambivalent — 58 percent voted for secession and 42 percent for unity. Many southerners work in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital in the north, and they may fear that secession will mean they have to leave, although citizenship questions have yet to be resolved.
Now the wait begins. Southern Sudan will not achieve formal independence until July 9, when the US-backed peace treaty that put the referendum in motion is set to expire.
By then southern Sudan hopes to pick a national anthem and a name; leading contenders are Nile Republic and South Sudan.
Palestine will need those soon!
There are still delicate and potentially combustible issues that need to be resolved before Sudan can peacefully break in two, including how the two sides would share the south’s sizable reserves of crude oil and what to do about the Abyei region, which is claimed by both.
Well, the PIPELINES RUN through the NORTH so it is to BOTH THEIR ADVANTAGES to COOPERATE there!
Why did the vaunted NYT omit that?
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Yeah, sniff a little bit and it's stink reporting.
For more recent background on the vote go here and start scrolling.
