An interesting article by Prof. Eric Reeves

From : Eric Reeves
Sent : Saturday, September 24, 2005 8:24 PM

The Slow Collapse of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement for South Sudan;
The Government of "National Unity" serves as a fig-leaf for NIF ambitions

Eric Reeves
September 24, 2005

Despite the formation of a new Sudanese "Government of National Unity" in Khartoum, there is overwhelming evidence of bad faith on the part of the National Islamic Front (NIF) in creating what is only the semblance of a new political order. Not only does the NIF dominate the Presidency, including its advisory council, but continues to engage in a systematic policy of delaying implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), reneging on benchmark commitments, and engaging in threatening military behavior. Moreover, the NIF has created what is in effect a "shadow government" that will retain all real power. In short, there has been a silent "coup," one in which the façade of
shared governance masks the ruthless preservation of power by the NIF. And yet to all this, the international community---expediently wishing to preserve the semblance of a new national government rather than confront the urgent problems posed by NIF bad faith---has given a warm welcome, with only small reservations.

Such ignorance, or disingenuousness, only encourages the NIF to believe that it can continue to consolidate its power in a new guise.

CONTROL OF OIL REVENUES: THE REAL SOURCE OF N.I.F. POWER

Most conspicuously, the National Islamic Front (the ruling faction of the "National Congress Party") has reserved to itself the two key economic ministries, which alone can bring clarity to bookkeeping for Sudan's huge oil revenues. Though the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) fought for at least one of these ministries (such sharing is clearly contemplated in the CPA language on sovereign ministries), the NIF refused. It thus becomes exceedingly unlikely that Southern Sudan will see anything approaching a fair share of the oil wealth that is spelled out in the wealth-sharing protocol, a cornerstone of the CPA.

The NIF has also worked hard to create "shadow bureaucracies" that will ensure real power, of all kinds, won't be shared. For example, the new Foreign Minister from the SPLM, Lam Akol, will find that despite his exalted title, he will have little impact on Khartoum's foreign policy. The previous Foreign Minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, will retain control over the real administrative and policy resources within the government. Indeed, bringing these resources under control of the shadow foreign ministry has been underway since the signing of the CPA. Moreover, we should recall that it was Lam Akol who, dismayingly
for southerners, became part of the NIF regime following the ill-fated "Khartoum Peace Agreement" of 1997---hardly a sign of real concern for the people of his Upper Nile Province.

The Interior Ministry has also been retained by the NIF, ensuring that issues of human rights, press freedoms, political expression, freedom of movement, and a whole series of other key issues directly affecting southerners will reflect only NIF policies. Notably, there has been a recent crackdown on the press in Khartoum by way of a "National Press Council," which demands that journalists be registered or cease to publish (Khartoum Monitor, September 15, 2005).

But it is the failure of the SPLM to have secured either the Finance Ministry or the Ministry for Mining and Energy that marks the most consequential defeat of southern hopes for meaningful representation in the national government. For real political power now flows to the NIF from huge oil revenues, not from any popular support anywhere in Sudan, north or south. And these revenues are staggering. Various wire reports and petroleum analysts indicate that current oil production is in excess of 300,000 barrels per day, growing to perhaps 500,000 barrels per day as production from Eastern Upper Nile comes on line
later this year (current production comes almost entirely from Western Upper Nile; Upper Nile Province is all in Southern Sudan). At $60./barrel, the lower range of production translates into almost $7 billion per year in annual gross oil revenues; the upper rate of production would translate into $11 billion per year. Much goes to the NIF's Asian oil partners (China, Malaysia, India), but the largest portion goes to the NIF itself---with no meaningful transparency.

Reports indicate that to date the incipient Government of South Sudan (GOSS) has received only $60 million of this enormous oil wealth, even as it struggles with the large costs of putting together a wholly new government, redeploying troops under the terms of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), and responding to the massive and urgent needs of the people of southern Sudan (see below). Even more ominously, there is no indication that the amount the NIF has put in
escrow---pending the official formation of the GOSS---is any greater. This is so even as the CPA calls for an equal division of all oil revenues from oil production in southern Sudan---90% of total production. In order to ensure that the GOSS does not receive its negotiated share of oil revenues, the NIF adamantly refused to grant either the Finance Ministry or the Ministry of Mining and Energy to the SPLM in the new Government of National Unity. Without control
of the bureaucracies and records in these two key economic ministries, there is no way for the SPLM to untangle the snarl of concession contracts, royalty contracts, construction and maintenances expenses, and other essential elements of the larger oil revenue picture. Southern Sudan will receive only what the NIF chooses to share.

There are other ominous signs, particularly in defining the north/south boundary
in the oil regions. Here we should recall that the NIF has adamantly refused to
accept the findings of a distinguished international commission assembled to
establish the boundaries of Abyei---an Ngok Dinka enclave in Bahr el-Ghazal and
one of the most contested issues in the final negotiation of the CPA (Abyei's
proximity to the oil production areas is no accident). Now, the NIF refuses
even to allow for the creation of a commission to establish the north/south
boundary in the crucial production areas of Upper Nile Province. This is
because while the issue is straightforward (the boundary should obviously be
that which obtained at the time of Sudan's independence in 1956, as stipulated
in the bedrock Machakos Protocol of July 2002), the NIF is intent on moving the
border south, so that more of the oil region is in the north---and less in the
south. Current calculations of oil revenues for the south, to the extent they
can be discerned, are being made on the basis of the NIF's highly tendentious
definition of this border.

The overall effect of NIF financial bad faith is to leave Southern Sudan without
the resources it desperately needs, even as the international community reneges
on previous commitments of aid, both to humanitarian and emergency transitional
assistance and to development projects (there is virtually no infrastructure of
any kind in Southern Sudan).

As Secretary-General Kofi Annan notes in his most recent report on Sudan to the
Security Council (September 12, 2005 and thus prior to the final formation of a
Government of National Unity), there are "wider implications [to] the Abyei
question, which will set a precedent for how differences arising under the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement are handled" (paragraph 12). NIF President's
Beshir's peremptory rejection of the careful findings of the Abyei Boundary
Commission tells us far too much about the "precedent" being set.

OTHER OMINOUS SIGNS FOR THE C.P.A.

There are many other serious problems with the new Government of National Unity:
for example, there is not a single Nuer among the appointments made by Salva
Kiir, the First Vice-President in the GNU and the President of the GOSS. Kiir
is a Dinka, and Dinka-Nuer tensions have plagued the south throughout the long
civil war, especially as oil development began in earnest. This omission was
either gross oversight, or inexcusable favoritism on Kiir's part (six of the new
southern members of the national cabinet are from Kiir's Bahr el-Ghazal).

Just as troubling are some of the political developments in southern governance,
in which the SPLM has evidently acquiesced. One particularly telling example is
the re-appointment of Dak Dop Bishok as Governor of Upper Nile Province. Those
familiar with the ferociously destructive history of Upper Nile, including many
humanitarian workers, regard Dak Dop Bishok as little more than one of the
region's many vicious warlords. He deliberately refused to respond to the
deadly attacks on the Shilluk people of Upper Nile in early 2004 (attacks
encouraged by Khartoum), which in turn generated large-scale displacement and
created a significant humanitarian crisis in the region. Dak Dop Bishok is a
brutal, thuggish man and has none of the political skills necessary to oversee
what will be an extraordinarily difficult transition period in Upper Nile
Province. This is the region where war would almost certainly resume if the NIF
calculates that such a war can secure even greater oil revenues and incur only
manageable criticism from the international community. The appointment of Dak
Dop Bishok ensures that a deadly instability, favoring the NIF's interests, is
much more likely to prevail.

A similar cause for concern is reflected in a recent account of Upper Nile
militia activity coming from the Civilian Protection Monitoring Team (CPMT)
based in Rumbek. Though the CPMT has been largely ineffectual since late spring
of 2003, it issued in June 2005 a report that clearly indicates NIF
determination to use these militias for its own destabilizing purposes, an
extension of its "divide-and-rule" military tactics. The CPMT reported on June
29, 2005 the results of its investigation into an allegation that goes to the
heart of NIF ambitions in Upper Nile:

"Allegation: Between March and June 2005, a Government of Sudan militia
commander and officer in the Government of Sudan army, Major General Simon
Gatwic, transported and distributed large stocks of ammunition to the Lou Nuer
communities camping along the Sobat River and grazing lands of the Jonglei
region, and incited them to violence and #####ng against other communities in
the region."

The results of the investigation? Following numerous consultations, CPMT
announced that:

"The allegation that Government of Sudan militia commander Major General Simon
Gatwic has been actively arming and inciting Lou Nuer civilians to violence and
#####ng against other communities in the Jonglei region, along the Sobat River
and inside Malakal town is substantiated." (CPMT report, June 29, 2005)

But if CPMT had been more actively engaged in monitoring the situation in Upper
Nile, it would have been able to issue countless such reports---all reflecting
the NIF's use of militias in Upper Nile's oil regions as military proxies.

There are yet other deeply ominous military threats to the CPA. NIF deployment
of forces out of Juba, clearly called for in the peace agreement, has yet to
begin, despite disingenuous claims to the contrary by the NIF military
leadership. The security-arrangements protocol calls for a scheduled draw-down
of northern forces, from Juba as well as other southern towns. But as of
September---nine months after the signing of the CPA in Nairobi---there has been
no net reduction of the approximately 48,000 troops in Juba (which is to serve
as the capital city of South Sudan) and surrounding towns such as Torit, Lafon,
Mongalla. Some troops have been rotated out, but at least as many troops have
been rotated back in by the NIF military leadership. If the NIF is not serious
about formally negotiated troop withdrawals, it is difficult to believe it is
serious about the other key terms of the security-arrangements protocol, the
linch-pin of the CPA.

As Secretary-General Kofi Annan notes more generally in his most recent report
(September 12, 2005) to the Security Council:

"Following the signature of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement on 9 January 2005,
the [NIF] Sudanese Armed Forces provided some preliminary information on the
location of their forces, but the information remains insufficient." (Paragraph
32)

In fact, the information provided by the NIF to the United Nations is radically
insufficient, and this poses an extremely serious obstacle to UN peace support
operations (see below). Annan's report continues:

"[The NIF military] have reported the reduction of their force level by 17% in
southern Sudan, though this cannot yet be verified, since the movements were not
declared and thus not monitored. The parties have been clearly informed that
such reductions or movements of troops should be declared beforehand to enable
the UN Mission in Sudan to monitor them."

In short, the NIF is in "violation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement"
(Paragraph 32).

At the same time, activities by Uganda's maniacal Lord's Resistance Army have
resumed in the area around Yei town, to the west of Juba. It is well known that
the NIF has supported the LRA and its brutal leader Joseph Kony (who has
regularly been reported in Juba)---this as a means of threatening Ugandan aid
for the SPLM. Indeed, there has long been compelling evidence of NIF support
for this extraordinarily violent and cruel instrument of human destruction (see
detailed account by this writer, "The Khartoum Regime and the Lord's Resistance
Army: Growing evidence of high-level cooperation," August 26, 2003 at
http://www.sudanreeves.org/modules.php?op=mod...iewarticle&artid=279.

Thus it is particularly ominous that shortly before the formation of the
Government of National Unity, the NIF refused to extend the authority of Ugandan
military forces to pursue Kony and the LRA in southern Sudan, which has
frequently served as desperately need sanctuary. As the New Times (Kigali)
reports: "The implication of the Khartoum decision is that the Ugandan People's
Defense Forces can no longer operate within southern Sudan, [Ugandan Defense
Minister Amama] Mbabazi explained" (The New Times [Kigali], August 31, 2005).
Given the recent successes of the Ugandan armed forces, this "breathing space"
(as The New Times puts it) is essential for the survival of the LRA, strongly
suggesting that the NIF continues to value it as a militia proxy.

Even the highly expedient and ineffectual Jan Pronk, the Secretary-General's
Special Representative for Sudan, is obliged to acknowledge the threat posed by
the LRA:

"[The Lord's Resistance Army] was first armed by Sudan, and Pronk said there
were unconfirmed reports [that] factions in Sudan's military were still sending
weapons to the LRA, so 'we are asking questions.'" (Reuters, September 21, 2005)

Given Pronk's dismal record of confronting the NIF during his tenure, there is
no reason to believe that the "questions will be asked" with nearly enough
vigor. But in any event, the NIF's past support of the LRA is beyond question,
and the continued value of the LRA for military purposes in southern Sudan is
equally indisputable.

Compounding the strains of the military situation in Southern Sudan, and thus
threatening the CPA, is the failure of the UN Department of Peacekeeping
Operations to deploy in a timely fashion. Nine months after the formal signing
of the peace agreement, there are only approximately 2,300 of a planned 10,700
personnel on the ground. Moreover, the deployment has not produced effective
surveillance of many of the areas most likely to be flash-points for renewed
conflict.

Much of this is a function of poor planning and conception by the UN Department
of Peacekeeping (see analysis by this writer, "The International Failure to
Confront Khartoum," March 17, 2005, at
http://www.sudanreeves.org/modules.php?op=mod...cle&artid=494&page=1.
Many countries have either reneged or dragged their feet in deployment. But
even more consequential is NIF obstruction of the deployment of an effective
peace support operation. This obstruction takes many forms, for the NIF has had
all too much practice in frustrating international efforts to bring peace to
Sudan and alleviate the suffering of its marginalized peoples. Some of the most
fundamental issues are noted, if in peculiarly understated fashion, in the
recent report of Secretary-General to the Security Council, especially on the
critical "status-of-forces agreement," central to any effective peacekeeping:

"[Unresolved issues] include the key issues of full and unrestricted movement
for the UN Mission in Sudan, which is imperative for the fulfillment of the its
mandate and was previously agreed between the parties in the Comprehensive Peace
Agreement." (Paragraph 23)

The current restriction of movement by UN peacekeeping forces is almost entirely
the responsibility of the NIF military apparatus and its militia proxies in
southern Sudan. Annan also notes:

"In addition, the Government [of Sudan] has been reluctant to accept some major
operational requirements of the Mission, which are in accordance with the
established practices and principles of peacekeeping, in particular with respect
to the self-registration of UN Mission in Sudan vehicles. The Government [of
Sudan] has also objected to the status of locally recruited staff of the UN
Mission in Sudan, and to the relevant privileges and immunities provided under
the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations of 1946,
from which the Government now wishes to deviate. This delay is a matter of
serious concern as it negatively affects the deployment of the Mission and the
implementation of its mandate." (Paragraph 24)

The report also notes that the "Government [of Sudan] delayed providing land for
military camps" (Paragraph 27).

Though Annan refers to the "Government" of Sudan, he is in fact speaking about
various powers within the National Islamic Front (NIF), certainly not the new
Government of National Unity as a whole. The NIF is seeking to prevent an
effective peace-support mission from deploying to southern Sudan, and the
motives are clearly to make it more difficult for peace to take hold. This is
one reason that only 2,300 of a planned 10,700 personnel have been deployed in
the nine months since the signing of the peace agreement (Report of the
Secretary-General, Paragraph 26). Such obstructionism calls into serious
question NIF commitment to the CPA and its various protocols on wealth- and
power-sharing, security, and geographic delineations.

There is finally no other explanation for obstruction of the UN peace support
operation.

THE CONTINUING N.I.F. ASSAULT ON HUMANITARIAN OPERATIONS IN SOUTHERN SUDAN AND
DARFUR

Even as it obstructs UN peace-support operations in southern Sudan, the NIF has
engaged in a series of unilateral actions that amount to an assault on
humanitarian relief throughout Sudan (including Darfur), but will have a
particularly devastating impact on the South. These actions include new visa
regulations as well as regulations of humanitarian organizations operating in
Sudan; both sets of regulations were promulgated unilaterally by the NIF before
completion of the new Government of National Unity.

The visa requirements now impose on anyone entering Sudan, including Southern
Sudan, the obligation to obtain a visa from Khartoum, where an application can
be held hostage indefinitely by the NIF bureaucracy. This will have a severe
impact on those humanitarian organizations that have been serving the people of
Southern Sudan from Kenya, and to a lesser degree from Uganda. Whereas formerly
humanitarian organizations needed only a pass from the humanitarian wing of the
SPLM, they will now need to obtain from Khartoum visas for all expatriate
workers. Moreover, the US embassy in Khartoum will no longer grant "country
clearance" to US government employees seeking access to Sudan unless they also
have a Khartoum-issued visa. We may be sure that the human costs of this
deliberate and entirely predictable bureaucratic obstruction will be enormous
unless there is a reversal of policy.

So too with the new, highly threatening regulations of humanitarian
organizations promulgated by NIF Presidential decree in August. Among the
stipulations of these regulations:

[1] "No voluntary organization is allowed to practise any work or activity in
its own name if is not registered according to the provisions of this act."
(Paragraph 5, "Decree for Regulating Voluntary Humanitarian Work," Khartoum,
August 4, 2005)

[2] All financial assets and capital, of all agencies operating in Sudan,
including UN agencies, are to be regarded as "public property";

[3] No civil society organization will be permitted to received funds from any
foreign person or agencies without explicit permission from the Minister of
Humanitarian Affairs (Paragraph 36);

[4] "The General Registrar of Voluntary Organizations may cancel the
registration of any federal national civil society organization or foreign
voluntary organization if [that organization violates] the provisions of this
act or its regulations." (Paragraph 10)

Since the document gives considerable evidence of hasty composition, and is
dangerously vague at key junctures (some important humanitarian organizations
are already seriously confused by the language and time-frame of the document),
it looms as a deep threat to humanitarian operations throughout Sudan.
Revealingly, there was no consultation with the SPLM prior to NIF President
Beshir's promulgation of these regulations, by decree, even as Southern Sudan
will be most deeply affected by them.

This could not come at a worse time for the people of Southern Sudan, in
particular those living in Bahr el-Ghazal and Upper Nile. Food insecurity is
mounting and humanitarian assistance is critically short:

"Malnutrition levels in southern Sudan have passed the emergency mark, according
to a report from the international aid organization Action Against Hunger
[Action contre Faim/ACF] on Monday, which said the North African country once
again faced starvation amid donor fatigue and an emergency-saturated media."
(ISN Security Watch, September 20, 2005)

"'What we basically have is a large number of refugees and Internally Displaced
People who are returning home to nothing. What we are trying to do is to try and
get more aid to these regions where one out five children could die from
malnutrition,' ACF spokeswoman Cathy Skoula in New York told ISN Security Watch
on Monday."

The most dispiriting comments come later in the ISN Security Watch dispatch:

"The overall rate of Global Acute Malnutrition rate is 20.7 per cent, above the
15 per cent emergency threshold and equaling the rates of malnutrition currently
observed in Niger. However, the report also shows that in certain areas of the
Upper Nile and Bahr-el-Ghazal regions, the malnutrition rates have doubled and
even tripled, reaching up to 39 and 64 per cent."

"'The mortality rate in under-fives in some areas, especially in the Upper Nile
region is critical,' Skoula warned. 'The nutritional situation in southern
Sudan is dire by any standards. Rates show a prevalence of malnutrition
comparable to what we have in Niger or in Darfur. But it seems that nobody
cares, or maybe worse, that everybody has gotten used to it.'" (ISN Security
Watch, September 20, 2005)

"But it seems that nobody cares, or maybe worse, that everybody has gotten used
to it."

This is what the NIF counts on, and the reason it so brazenly and cruelly
promulgates restrictive regulations that directly affect organizations such as
Action contre Faim. Instead of devoting a substantial portion of its billions
of dollars in oil revenues to feeding Sudan's citizen, the NIF instead continues
its policies of humanitarian obstruction, even as it has the temerity to blame
other countries for Sudan's food crisis. Speaking of Eastern Sudan, where the
US Agency for International Development (among others) has long pointed out the
acute food needs of the Beja and other peoples of this region, NIF Foreign
Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail has fantastically declared:

"'In the eastern part of Sudan, we are telling them (donors) that people don't
have food and don't have medicine,' [Ismail] said. 'Unfortunately they will come
after there is loss of life, after the people have left their homes and become
displaced and refugees, then the international community will come.'"
(Associated Press, September 15, 2005)

The NIF view as announced by Ismail is that despite the NIF's deliberate and
well-chronicled obstruction of humanitarian aid, throughout Sudan, it is the
rest of the world that is failing the people of Eastern Sudan. Despite the
billions of dollars of dollars in annual oil revenues---much of which has been
devoted to profligate military expenditures---the NIF holds the international
community responsible for the suffering of marginalized peoples in Sudan
(including the many hundreds of thousands of southerners who are living in utter
squalor and deprivation in the very environs of Khartoum itself). The
agricultural sector remains under-capitalized by the NIF (as even the feckless
International Monetary Fund is obliged to acknowledge), and yet all too
predictable food shortages are, according to Ismail, no responsibility of
Khartoum.

The obscenity of NIF fiscal policies is entirely consistent with its genocidal
ambitions, whether in the Nuba Mountains, the oil regions of Southern Sudan, or
Darfur.

DARFUR GENOCIDE: A CLEAR THREAT TO THE C.P.A.

Security in Darfur, both for civilians and humanitarian workers, continues to
deteriorate badly. A recent dispatch from the UN Integrated Regional
Information Network ("Darfur risks descending into anarchy," September 14, 2005)
gives the blunt view of a number of observers:

"Darfur risks sliding into a perpetual state of lawlessness even as the Sudanese
government and the main rebel groups in the war-torn region discuss the
possibility of peacefully resolving the conflict there, observers have warned.
Banditry and continuous attacks by armed groups on humanitarian workers, Arab
nomads and villages in Darfur have increased significantly over the past weeks
and threaten to destabilise the fragile ceasefire in the volatile western
Sudanese region."

In fact, military confrontations between the NIF military and the Darfur
insurgents are clearly on the rise as well, an ominous shift from the relative
absence of large-scale military confrontations in recent months. The African
Union monitoring force appears ever weaker and less capable, and has failed to
reach personnel levels on the ground proposed months ago. This failure includes
(according to well-placed sources) the reneging by South Africa on its
commitment to deploy more than 700 military police. The AU has failed, and the
fact remains unacknowledged by international actors only because to speak openly
of AU inadequacy forces the question: "What will the world do to stop ongoing
genocidal destruction in Darfur?"

There are many causes for the increase in violence beyond AU incapacity. Many
observers on the ground note that the chain of command of the largest insurgency
group (the Sudan Liberation Army/SLA) continues to disintegrate. The decision
by SLA forces under Secretary-General Minni Arcua Minawi to attack the fortified
town of Shearia (South Darfur), even as peace talks were commencing in Abuja
(Nigeria), represents an extremely serious development, and perhaps a permanent
split between Minawi (a Zaghawa) and SLA Chairman Abdel Wahi al-Nur (a Fur).
Moreover, a splinter group, the National Movement for Reform and Development
(NMRD), has refused to have any part of the Abuja talks (the NMRD, with
significant though undetermined military assets in Darfur, has been skillfully
divided from the other two insurgency groups by the NIF).

The peace talks for Darfur in Abuja, with only one faction of the deeply divided
SLA represented, must also confront the charges and counter-charges of
large-scale military violence, especially in North Darfur and South Darfur
states (see, for example, UN IRIN dispatch at
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN...ca1faddd9d2204b7.htm.
The chances for meaningful diplomatic progress seem vanishingly small,
especially since the Janjaweed again seem to have been given a much freer hand
by the NIF.

It has become meaningless to attempt to sort out responsibility for military
instigation and response at this point: the AU has proved itself woefully
inadequate to the task, even in the particular instances where it does manage to
investigate (the history and complexity of fighting around Malam, near Nyala,
seems entirely to have escaped AU investigators, for example). The task at hand
is clearly to provide the robust intervening force that can protect innocent
civilians and humanitarian workers; secure humanitarian corridors (which are
increasingly severed by insecurity); provide protection for camps for displaced
persons; and begin the process of overseeing voluntary returns by those who so
desperately wish to resume agriculturally productive lives.

But such a force is contemplated by no one other than the International Crisis
Group (see "The AU's Mission in Darfur: Bridging the Gaps," July 6, 2005; at
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?l=1&id=3547, and the consequences for
humanitarian operations and civilians throughout Darfur are all too clear. The
most recent UN Darfur Humanitarian Profile (No. 17, reflecting conditions as of
August 1, 2005) reports, for example, that 37% of the needy population in South
Darfur is "inaccessible," almost entirely a function of insecurity.

Even more terrifying is the statistic recently released by the UN's World Food
Program, which currently estimates that 3.5 million Darfuris are in need of food
aid. As of September 13, only 4% of the current month's targeted beneficiaries
had been reached. These are people who have exhausted their food reserves, are
weakened by months of inadequate food supplies, and who because of insecurity
created by the NIF's Janjaweed militia proxies have no opportunity to use their
superb foraging and survival skills.

*******************

Sudan cannot function as country, and the new "Government of National Unity"
cannot serve as a means of democratizing power, so long as the NIF is engaged in
genocide in Darfur and is deliberately aborting essential features of the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement with Southern Sudan. Either the international
community chooses to confront this fundamental and inescapable conclusion, or it
will be choosing to abandon Sudan---yet again.

Eric Reeves
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063

413-585-3326
[email protected]
www.sudanreeves.org