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| Photo: Edjane Obama |
The United States has continued to keep the plight of South Sudan close to its heart. President Obama today called South Sudanese President Silva Kiir to express his concern at the violent fighting going on in the South Kordofan province and advise Southern Sudanese troops steer clear of the fighting along the border with Sudan. Obama also ‘expressed hope that the two countries' heads of state will meet soon at a summit’ (White House Briefing) though this seems unlikely given the current impasse on the oil question (see below).
Perhaps the call was triggered by a horrific piece of footage broadcast by Al Jazeera which shows the Governor of South Kordofan inciting Sudan Armed Forces, or SAF, soldiers to commit war crimes during a pep talk before they head into battle with SPLA North forces in the contrsted region. He openly instructs Sudanese troops to “ hand over the place clean. Swept, rubbed, crushed. Don’t bring them back alive. We have no space for them," Ahmed Harun, who is wanted for crimes against humanity by the ICC, goes on to justify the indiscriminate killing on the grounds that he wants no administrative costs” from the war in the Nuba mountains. A later interview with Sudanese government officials on Al Jazeera showed an institutional disregard for international law when the official did not even seem to realise that killing soldiers indiscriminately breeched the Geneva Convention!
But more likely, the call was simply a check up on the US’s long term ally with whom it shares a common dislike of Khartoum. US-Sudanese relations have long been strained and nothing indicates this better than the fact that Sudan remains on the ‘State Sponsors of Terrorism’ list compiled by the US State Department. The US has not forgotten the shelter Sudan provided for Osama Bin Laden in the 1990s and the support it gave to Al Qaeda. More recently, the US fumed at the Government of Sudan's continued complicity in unabated violence occurring in Darfur. The US has great sympathy for the South, who it sees as the helpless victim of persecution at the hands of it aggressive neighbour.
Bizarrely, South Sudan remains a bit of a political hot potato in Washington, with solid support from the Black Caucus, the Evangelical Christian lobby as well as George Clooney and his Hollywood supporters. Each have their own motivations for closely following South Sudan, but they all generally stem from an oversimplification of the crises affecting the region in the American political discourse and mainstream broadcast media. For many, the conflict between North and South has been portrayed as a moral battle between good and evil where a helpless group of black Christians are being persecuted by a tyrannical Arab Islamic regime. Having passionate, powerful but uninformed people involved in any African crisis is always risky, though South Sudan really does need any support it can get.
Perhaps the call was triggered by a horrific piece of footage broadcast by Al Jazeera which shows the Governor of South Kordofan inciting Sudan Armed Forces, or SAF, soldiers to commit war crimes during a pep talk before they head into battle with SPLA North forces in the contrsted region. He openly instructs Sudanese troops to “ hand over the place clean. Swept, rubbed, crushed. Don’t bring them back alive. We have no space for them," Ahmed Harun, who is wanted for crimes against humanity by the ICC, goes on to justify the indiscriminate killing on the grounds that he wants no administrative costs” from the war in the Nuba mountains. A later interview with Sudanese government officials on Al Jazeera showed an institutional disregard for international law when the official did not even seem to realise that killing soldiers indiscriminately breeched the Geneva Convention!
But more likely, the call was simply a check up on the US’s long term ally with whom it shares a common dislike of Khartoum. US-Sudanese relations have long been strained and nothing indicates this better than the fact that Sudan remains on the ‘State Sponsors of Terrorism’ list compiled by the US State Department. The US has not forgotten the shelter Sudan provided for Osama Bin Laden in the 1990s and the support it gave to Al Qaeda. More recently, the US fumed at the Government of Sudan's continued complicity in unabated violence occurring in Darfur. The US has great sympathy for the South, who it sees as the helpless victim of persecution at the hands of it aggressive neighbour.
Bizarrely, South Sudan remains a bit of a political hot potato in Washington, with solid support from the Black Caucus, the Evangelical Christian lobby as well as George Clooney and his Hollywood supporters. Each have their own motivations for closely following South Sudan, but they all generally stem from an oversimplification of the crises affecting the region in the American political discourse and mainstream broadcast media. For many, the conflict between North and South has been portrayed as a moral battle between good and evil where a helpless group of black Christians are being persecuted by a tyrannical Arab Islamic regime. Having passionate, powerful but uninformed people involved in any African crisis is always risky, though South Sudan really does need any support it can get.
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