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Sudan: Coping with divorce

Horror of deadly cattle vendetta

Pointing to war?

Forced to choose between Sudans

Garang's ex-chef savours freedom

The UN has denounced the bombing of a camp housing some 5,000 refugees in South Sudan near the border with Sudan.

A boy was injured and 14 other people went missing during the air raid in El Foj in Upper Nile state on Monday, the UN refugee agency said.

A Sudan army spokesman told the BBC that Sudanese forces had not carried out any bombing raids in the area.

South Sudan split from Sudan last July and since then their relationship has deteriorated.

Both countries accuse the other of backing rebels operating in their territories and it is not the first time South Sudan has been bombed – there were attacks in Upper Nile state and Unity state last year.

Refugees fled

The UNHCR says a plane dropped several bombs on Monday morning which landed on the transit site for those who have fled the conflict in Blue Nile over the border in Sudan.

“Bombing of civilian areas must be condemned in the strongest terms,” Mireille Girard, UNHCR's representative in South Sudan, said in a statement.

The BBC's James Copnall in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, says the UN did not say who was responsible, but the refugees will almost certainly suspect the Sudanese Armed Forces.

Blue Nile is one of three border areas – along with South Kordofan and Abyei – where fighting has broken out since South Sudan's independence.

Many rebels in these regions fought alongside southerners during the decades-long civil war that ended with Khartoum agreeing to the south's independence.

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Analysis

Martin Plaut BBC World Service Africa editor

Relations between Khartoum and Juba are clearly at breaking point. Since South Sudan won independence last July, there has been no end of trouble along their border. At times their armed forces have clashed, using tanks and aircraft, but no all-out conflict.

But the dispute over oil could push relations over the edge. South Sudan has decided to close its oil production after Sudan seized crude oil piped through its territory to reach international markets. Both countries depend almost entirely on oil for their revenues. They have few alternatives to fall back on.

For South Sudan there is the option of finding a route to the sea via Kenya. There are reports that the authorities in Juba will announce the building of a pipeline through Kenya next week. Another possibility is taking the oil in tankers by road. Both are hugely ambitious, but South Sudan argues that it survived years of war and could survive whatever comes its way.

For Sudan, the reduction in oil revenues has already caused difficulties, with people complaining of rising prices.

Both Sudan and South Sudan have much to lose by continued confrontation, but at the moment there seems little appetite in either capital to find a compromise.

South Sudan to suspend oil output

Sudan's army spokesman Khalid Sawarmi said Sudanese forces had been recently involved in fighting against rebels in Blue Nile in the village of Aroum.

“We attacked them and drove them out of this place. [We] did not use any planes or Antonovs there,” he told the BBC.

Following the strike on El Foj, most people have now fled the area or have been helped to relocate by the UN, the agency says.

The authorities in Upper Nile state say they do not have first-hand confirmation of an incident at El Foj.

However Upper Nile's Information Minister Peter Lam Both did accuse Sudan of carrying out another air raid in the state on Sunday.

He told the BBC that three people were killed and four wounded in Khor Yabous, near the border with Sudan.

He also said South Sudan's army had fought off an attack by militias around this time.

The UN says more than 78,000 people have fled Sudan since last August because of fighting in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile.

Our correspondent says the latest incident highlights the bad relationship between the two countries as well as the difficult situation many refugees face.

Recently the focus has been on oil resources, with South Sudan deciding last week to shut down its production rather than, as it sees it, have some of its oil stolen by the north, he says.

The two sides are currently discussing how to share their oil resources at talks in Ethiopia.

But whatever the full truth of the matter, the greatest concern to many is security not oil, our reporter says.

Sudan: A country divided

Geography

Ethnic groups

Infant mortality

Water & sanitation

Education

Food insecurity

Oil fields

Show regions

The great divide across Sudan is visible even from space, as this Nasa satellite image shows. The northern states are a blanket of desert, broken only by the fertile Nile corridor. South Sudan is covered by green swathes of grassland, swamps and tropical forest.

Sudan’s arid north is mainly home to Arabic-speaking Muslims. But in South Sudan there is no dominant culture. The Dinkas and the Nuers are the largest of more than 200 ethnic groups, each with its own languages and traditional beliefs, alongside Christianity and Islam.

The health inequalities in Sudan are illustrated by infant mortality rates. In South Sudan, one in 10 children die before their first birthday. Whereas in the more developed northern states, such as Gezira and White Nile, half of those children would be expected to survive.

The gulf in water resources between north and south is stark. In Khartoum, River Nile, and Gezira states, two-thirds of people have access to piped drinking water and pit latrines. In the south, boreholes and unprotected wells are the main drinking sources. More than 80% of southerners have no toilet facilities whatsoever.

Throughout Sudan, access to primary school education is strongly linked to household earnings. In the poorest parts of the south, less than 1% of children finish primary school. Whereas in the wealthier north, up to 50% of children complete primary level education.

Conflict and poverty are the main causes of food insecurity in Sudan. The residents of war-affected Darfur and South Sudan are still greatly dependent on food aid. Far more than in northern states, which tend to be wealthier, more urbanised and less reliant on agriculture.

Sudan exports billions of dollars of oil per year. Southern states produce more than 80% of it, but receive only 50% of the revenue. The pipelines run north but the two sides have still not agreed how to share the oil wealth in the future.

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Equatorial Guinea is a small country off West Africa which has recently struck oil and which is now being cited as a textbook case of the resource curse – or the paradox of plenty.

Since the mid 1990s the former Spanish colony has become one of sub-Sahara's biggest oil producers and in 2004 was said to have the world's fastest-growing economy.

However, few people have benefited from the oil riches and the country ranks near the bottom of the UN human development index. The UN says that less than half the population has access to clean drinking water and that 20 percent of children die before reaching five.

The country has exasperated a variety of rights organisations who have described the two post-independence leaders as among the worst abusers of human rights in Africa.

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At a glance

Politics: President Obiang seized power in 1979; rights groups have condemned his rule as one Africa's most brutal; he faces a “government in exile” and a separatist movement

Economy: Equatorial Guinea is sub-Saharan Africa's third biggest oil producer. Oil earnings are allegedly stolen by the ruling elite

International: Equatorial Guinea and Gabon are in dispute over islands in potentially oil-rich off-shore waters

Country profiles compiled by BBC Monitoring

Francisco Macias Nguema's reign of terror – from independence in 1968 until his overthrow in 1979 – prompted a third of the population to flee. Apart from allegedly committing genocide against the Bubi ethnic minority, he ordered the death of thousands of suspected opponents, closed down churches and presided over the economy's collapse.

His successor – Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo – took over in a coup and has shown little tolerance for opposition during the three decades of his rule. While the country is nominally a multiparty democracy, elections have generally been considered a sham.

According to Human Rights Watch, the ''dictatorship under President Obiang has used an oil boom to entrench and enrich itself further at the expense of the country's people''.

The corruption watchdog Transparency International has put Equatorial Guinea in the top 12 of its list of most corrupt states. Resisting calls for more transparency, President Obiang has for long held that oil revenues are a state secret. In 2008 the country became a candidate of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative – an international project meant to promote openness about government oil revenues – but failed to qualify by an April 2010 deadline.

A 2004 US Senate investigation into the Washington-based Riggs Bank found that President Obiang's family had received huge payments from US oil companies such as Exxon Mobil and Amerada Hess.

Observers say the US finds it hard to criticise a country which is seen as an ally in a volatile, oil-rich region. In 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hailed President Obiang as a “good friend” despite repeated criticism of his human rights and civil liberties record by her own department. More recently President Barack Obama posed for an official photograph with President Obiang at a New York reception.

The advocacy group Global Witness has been lobbying the United States to act against the President Obiang's son Teodor, a government minister. It says there is credible evidence that he spent millions buying a Malibu mansion and private jet using corruptly acquired funds – grounds for denying him a visa.

Equatorial Guinea hit the headlines in 2004 when a plane load of suspected mercenaries was intercepted in Zimbabwe while allegedly on the way to overthrow President Obiang.

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Ban Ki-moon said “confronting discrimination is a challenge”

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Gay rights: Africa, the new frontier

Nigerian leaders unite against same-sex marriages

African Union opens new $200m HQ

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has urged African leaders to respect gay rights.

Discrimination based on sexual orientation had been ignored or even sanctioned by many states for too long, Mr Ban told an African Union summit.

Homosexuality is illegal in many African countries – a situation which has drawn increasing criticism from activists and the West.

Mr Ban also said the Arab Spring proved leaders “must listen to their people”.

The two-day summit, in the AU's new building in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, is set to elect a new AU Commission chair.

South Africa has put forward long-serving minister Nkosozana Dlamini Zuma – the ex-wife of President Jacob Zuma – to challenge the incumbent, Jean Ping of Gabon, who has been in post since 2008.

If Ms Zuma wins Monday's vote, she will be the first woman to take the helm of the 54-nation bloc's executive council.

The AU has already chosen Benin President Thomas Boni Yayi to become AU chairman – replacing Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema in the one-year rotating post, the AFP news agency quotes officials as saying.

Chinese-built HQ

Ban Ki-moon told delegates that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity “prompted governments to treat people as second class citizens or even criminals”.

The new Chinese-built AU headquarters is seen as a symbol of Beijing's new role in Africa

“Confronting these discriminations is a challenge, but we must not give up on the ideas of the universal declaration (of human rights),” he said, quoted by AFP.

Homosexual acts are illegal in most African countries, including key Western allies such as Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and Botswana.

Both the US and UK have recently warned they would use foreign aid to push for homosexuality to be decriminalised on the socially conservative continent.

The Arab Spring, Mr Ban noted, was a “reminder that leaders must listen to their people”.

“Events proved that repression is dead. Police power is no match to people power seeking dignity and justice,” he said.

He also called on the leaders of Sudan and South Sudan to reach agreement on how to divide up their oil wealth. Some analysts warn the feud risks seeing a return to all-out conflict.

‘Nuisance’

Delegates are meeting in the new $200m (£127m) AU headquarters, funded and built by China, which was officially opened on Saturday.

The 100m tall building – which dominates the Addis skyline – is a “testimony” to the growing relationship between China and Africa, project co-ordinator Fantalum Michael said.

It is the first summit since the death of Libya's Colonel Gaddafi, who played a key role in the formation of the African Union.

Heads of states never admitted it, but his eccentric manner and constant grandstanding at summits would often hold up any meaningful talk for hours, the BBC's Will Ross reports from Addis Ababa.

“He was a nuisance,” one senior politician told our correspondent.

As well as the growing tension between Sudan and South Sudan, the war in Somalia and the escalating violence in Nigeria are also expected to be discussed during the summit.

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KANO, Nigeria – The assault bore the hallmarks of long-term planning: Cars loaded down with heavy explosives and driven by those willing to die, men wearing security uniforms and ready to shoot any official who believed they belonged to the government they despise.

The coordinated attack in Nigeria’s second largest city by the radical Islamist sect known as Boko Haram has shown its metamorphosis from a group that sent out lone motorcycle-riding gunmen to one that deployed scores of killers who moved with military precision. Nigeria’s ill-equipped police and military have been unable to confront this growing threat to peace in Africa’s most populous nation.

“Nigeria has never seen anything like this before,” said Elizabeth Donnelly, an analyst at the London-based think tank Chatham House. “It’s something so diffuse, so amorphous. It’s very nimble and really hard to understand and pin down.”

Boko Haram killed at least 185 people during its attack Friday on Kano, a city of more than 9 million that has political and religious importance in Nigeria’s Muslim north. Suicide bombers targeted police stations and men wearing police or other uniforms gunned down officials, witnesses said.

Police said they discovered 10 vehicles in the city wired with explosives before they detonated. Officers also recovered about 300 explosives packed into aluminum cans, as well as eight drums each containing 770 pounds (350 kilograms) of explosive each, local police commissioner Ibrahim Idris said.

The large amount of explosives and the attacks on multiple locations including police stations, a secret police headquarters and immigration offices shows the attack was well planned. It also shows that Boko Haram wants to make the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian, appear unable to control the country, analysts said.

It “signaled an escalation of the Boko Haram threat not only for its sophistication, lethality and coordination but for the brazenness of the attack on a city considered sacred ground by millions of Muslims,” said Philippe de Pontet, an analyst for the Eurasia Group. The “near-simultaneous bombs in Kano (are) focused on more traditional adversaries — the government, the police and local supporters of the Jonathan administration. Boko Haram is seeking to delegitimize the administration.”

But government itself remains unable to stop Boko Haram. Nigeria’s federal police force lacks the forensic capability to investigate massive crimes like the Kano bombing. More than a fourth of its manpower is relegated to serving as drivers and personal assistants to the country’s elite, Human Rights Watch says. Many of those who remain man checkpoints and roadblocks designed to collect bribes from passing motorists.

A study published in February 2011 by the U.S. Air Force’s Air War College suggests the country’s military strength of 76,000 suffers from mismanagement and a lack of funding.

The military is also stretched, with soldiers deployed to the east of here in the spiritual home of the sect; in the country’s restive middle belt, where communal violence has killed thousands in recent years; in the oil-rich southern delta, where militants and criminal gangs run rampant; and in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos, to quell unrest against the government.

“I think being overstretched is a real worry at the moment,” Donnelly said. “I think that’s why a plan needs to be got together. There needs to be some sort of strategy because clearly this is not sustainable.

“I think the question in everybody’s mind is as well, you know: ‘After Kano, where’s next?’”

___

Jon Gambrell can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

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