I thought they already made one.
"In Sudan, history repeats itself in the worst possible ways; Children fleeing civil war, as did Lost Boys of ’90s" by Jeffrey Gettleman | New York Times, July 01, 2012
YIDA, South Sudan — Thousands of unaccompanied children are streaming out of an isolated, rebellious region of Sudan, fleeing an aerial assault and the prospect of famine.
Sent by their parents on harrowing odysseys across battlefields and malaria-infested swamps, the children are repeating one of the most sordid chapters of Sudanese history: the perilous flight of the so-called Lost Boys in the civil war in the 1990s, who wandered hundreds of miles dodging militias, bombers, and lions.
Now, a new generation of Lost Boys, and some Lost Girls, too, is emerging from a war that, despite a peace deal, has never completely ended....
Sudan, perhaps more than any other country in this region, seems to have a destructive capacity to sink back to the worst days of its past.
Yeah, yeah, we all know why the Jewish war paper has a hard-on for Sudan.
Many other African nations have plunged into civil war but eventually pulled themselves out. Even bullet-riddled Somalia is shaking off chaos. But the Sudanese have essentially been at war with themselves for 56 years, with few respites. Today, this war grinds on in many of the same old places, in many of the same old ways.
A hallmark of the Sudanese government’s counterinsurgency strategy is an unsparing assault on civilians, unleashed in the south in the 1980s, the Nuba Mountains in the 1990s, and Darfur in the early 2000s. Now, it is the Nuba Mountains again, where bombing by Sudan’s air force has forced villages to retreat to mountaintop caves.
They must have copied the U.S. strategy for Afghanistan and Yemen.
The bloodshed in Nuba is directed by some of the same officials responsible for previous massacres, such as President Omar al-Bashir, in power since 1989, and Ahmed Haroun, governor of the state that encompasses the Nuba Mountains. Both are wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity for bloodshed in Darfur, and al-Bashir faces genocide charges.
Ah, yes, the selectively racist U.N. When they start hauling Bush, Bliar, and the cadre of Israeli war criminals I'll start paying attention; otherwise, frying two-bit tin pots the PTB have turned on doesn't interest me. It's show trials, that's all.
The current offensive seems to be putting Nuban children in the cross-hairs, and often there is nowhere to run.
I know, I know, I don't care about the children, blah, blah, blah. Well, if USrael wasn't running a weapons-smuggling ring out of South Sudan I'd feel better about it.
Btw, I'm sure Gazans can relate to the "nowhere to run" scenario.
A caretaker in the Yida camp said 14 boys trying to get here were gunned down at a Sudanese army checkpoint.
That often happens during occupations.
Bomb shrapnel has sliced apart countless others. Disease is sweeping the countryside.
Since even before independence in 1956, Sudan has been dogged by center-periphery tensions often expressed in exploding shells. Just as the central government has a tradition of brutality, minority groups have a tradition of heavily armed insurrection.
Today, Nuban soldiers, equipped with artillery, rockets, and tanks, are refusing to disarm until the government falls in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, saying they have been oppressed, partly because many Nubans are non-Arab and Christian, while the government is led by Arab Muslims.
Translation: the Nuba are backed by western intelligence services.
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Also see: Sunday Globe Special: Sudan's N-Word
Don't say it.
And now, the touch of "soft" power(?):
"Sudan minister scoffs as notion of Arab Spring in his nation" Associated Press, July 06, 2012
CAIRO — A Sudanese Cabinet minister said recent protests there against austerity measures are not comparable to last year’s popular Middle East uprisings.
Occupy Sudan?
Tourism Minister Hassabo Abdel-Rahman described the protests as ‘‘normal.’’ He was speaking to reporters during a visit to Cairo on Thursday.
‘‘There is no Arab Spring in Sudan,’’ he said, adding that he doubts Sudanese will be inspired by the revolts in neighboring Egypt and Libya.
Demonstrations erupted when subsidy cuts increased the cost of public transportation and doubled the price of fuel and food. The demonstrators have also called for an end to President Omar al-Bashir’s 23-year reign.
Although the protests have been relatively small in scale, Sudanese police have responded with a swift crackdown, detaining activists and journalists and breaking up rallies with tear gas.
You know, like all governments.
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Oh, yeah, happy birthday:
"On 1st birthday, South Sudan still needs to grow up" July 07, 2012
The United States, which has helped midwife the fledgling nation, should hold the leaders of South Sudan accountable for the reckless decisions they have made.
If you go back far enough in my Sudan scroll you will see it was considered a great diplomatic triumph and foreign policy successes of Bush, one that will be recorded in the annals of history for all time.
Among the worst was their invasion of the disputed oil-producing region of Heglig, which is widely seen as belonging to the north.
That's a real interesting take because the news pages were saying something a lot different.
That aggressive action has brought the north and the south back to the brink of war.
With nary a peep from the US, which I take as approval of the invasion.
Even more disastrously, South Sudan has shut down oil production in its territory over a dispute with the north on a series of outstanding issues....
I $uppo$e that would be a di$a$ter to my money mouthpiece masquerading as a newspaper.
A leaked World Bank report predicts that South Sudan will run out of its fiscal reserves as early as the end of this month. The poverty rate is expected to rise from 50 percent of the population to 80 percent unless the oil is turned back on. As if the situation were not bad enough, South Sudanese president Salva Kiir recently accused 75 government officials of plundering some $4 billion in public funds.
Why didn't I see any of this in the news pages, huh? Wasn't even in the previews!
All this comes at time when drought and ethnic conflict have uprooted hundreds of thousands. In the past, South Sudan’s leaders have always been able to count on foreign aid to keep its population alive. During the war, the United Nations and a host of nongovernmental aid agencies flew in planeloads of food and medical supplies to Juba.
But they can't do it for Palestinians?
But now, South Sudan’s destiny is in the hands of its people. The suppliers of aid should use their leverage to push for greater self-sufficiency from South Sudan, along with better decision-making.
That seems like blackmail and extortion to me, but that's just me (blog editor defenselessly throws up hands).
The leaders of the south must learn that true independence means developing a healthy economy and slowly growing free of foreign aid.
Then Israel isn't truly independent, is it?
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Related: Repairing Israel's Image
By imprisoning and deporting Jewish South Sudanese refugees?
It's the skin color, isn't it?
