Sudan army battles Darfur rebels

NEWS AFRICA
Sudan army battles Darfur rebels

Jem took up arms against the Sudanese government in 2003 accusing it of marginalising Darfur [File: AFP]
Sudanese forces say they have seized control of a key rebel held area in the western Darfur region after killing more than 150 members of the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem).

"We have liberated Jebel Moon from the Justice and Equality Movement," Al-Sawarmi Khaled, an army spokesman, said on Saturday.

"We have detained 61 rebels and confiscated 16 cars and three large trucks."

The army gave no details of army casualties in the clashes.

The Sudanese government signed a framework peace pact with Jem in February, which was hailed by the international community as a major step towards bringing peace to Darfur after seven years of war.

But talks soon reached a stalemate and a deadline set for completing the peace deal passed on March 15 without agreement.

Police convoy 'attacked'

The latest fighting came after police said 27 police officers and 30 rebels had been killed on Thursday when Jem attacked a convoy in South Darfur.

IN DEPTH


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Inside Story: Peace for Darfur?
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According to police, Jem fighters "attacked a convoy carrying food destined for the citizens of Darfur but the attack was thwarted by central police forces who were protecting the convoy".

But Jem said it was acting in self-defence during Thursday's fighting.

"It is completely false. Our forces were defending themselves from attack by the army which has intensified its operations since the end of elections" in Sudan on April 15, Ahmed Hussein Adam, a Jem spokesman, told the AFP news agency.

The latest violence seems to have dealt a further blow to the already shaky peace talks between Jem and the government in Khartoum.

On Friday, Jem denied a UN mediator's claim that the group would resume the Qatari-brokered peace talks.

Adam said the group was actually leaning towards quitting the negotiations altogether.

"We are still suspending our participation in the negotiations, and we are closer to withdrawing from the negotiations in Qatar," he told the AFP news agency.

"We are in a true state of war after the government reneged on the ceasefire agreement."

'Ceasefire violated'

Jem has accused Sudan's military of attacking its positions last month, saying Khartoum was trying to impose a "military solution" to the conflict, which the United Nations estimates has killed 300,000 people.

Khartoum, which says 10,000 people have died since the rebels took up arms in 2003, denied that the offensive took place.

"If Jem wants to go back to war, the Sudanese army and police are all prepared and on alert to stop any offensive."

Ismail al-Haj Musa, NCP official

Ismail al-Haj Musa, a leading member of the Sudan's ruling National Congress Party, told Al Jazeera that claims that the government violated the ceasefire agreement were "absolutely untrue".

"We always hear such false allegations from Jem to justify its return to square one of war once again," he said.

"One can ask the UN and African Union observers on the ground to make sure who has first violated ceasefire. They will say that Jem has.

"If Jem wants to go back to war, the Sudanese army and police are all prepared and on alert to stop any offensive."

In another sign that peace efforts were deteriorating, Khartoum last week sought Interpol's helpin arresting Khalil Ibrahim, the Jem leader, over a 2008 attack near Khartoum that killed 220 people.

Army build-up

Unamid, a joint peacekeeping mission by the UN and the African Union, has said it has reports that Sudanese army and Jem fighters have been massing in North Darfur state's Shangil Tobay area.

Hundreds of refugees have fled a camp near El Fasher, a government stronghold and hub for aid workers and peacekeepers, as the rival forces gathered.


About 2.7 people have fled the fighting
in the Darfur s region since 2003
Approximately 70 per cent of the 2,000 people living in the New Shangil Tobay Camp had left fearing clashes, Unamid said in a statement on Wednesday.

Two international sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters there were signs Jem was moving south east through Darfur towards the neighbouring region of South Kordofan, where it has attacked oilfields in the past.

Al-Tahir al-Feki, a Jem official, confirmed the group had troops around Shangil Tobay and South Kordofan but said they were on "administrative" missions, holding talks with local leaders.

Sudan's army earlier this month accused Jem of attacking villages in West and North Darfur states to expand its territory.

Jem was one of two rebel forces that launched a revolt against Sudan's government in 2003, accusing it of starving Darfur of funding and marginalising its population.

The desert region, which is the size of France, has been gripped by a civil war since then and about 2.7 million have been displaced, according to the UN.

Al Jazeera English - Africa - Somali cabinet set for shake-up

Al Jazeera English - Africa - Somali cabinet set for shake-up

Africa Has Less Say After Changes in World Bank Voting

Africa Has Less Say After Changes in World Bank Voting
Monday 17 May 2010
by: Hilaire Avril | Inter Press Service

Paris - The World Bank has described its recent increase of 3.13 percent in the voting power of emerging economies as a reform "to enhance voice and participation of developing and transition countries". But the shift has actually decreased a third of African countries’ share of votes.

Eighteen sub-Saharan countries have thus lost a measure of their already modest influence in the institution’s decision-making process. Nigeria and South Africa are hardest hit, their voting powers having been decreased by about 10 percent.

Only oil-rich Sudan - whose president has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on suspicion of war crimes - has seen its share of votes increase.

The World Bank, internationally mandated with financing development projects, has long been criticised by civil society and recipient countries as unrepresentative of those it claims to be helping. Sub-Saharan Africa, the target of many of its "poverty reduction" programmes, retains a total of less than six percent of the institution’s voting rights.

Finally responding to critics, the Bank has in recent years indicated some intention towards reforming its governance and making it more inclusive of its purported beneficiaries. Its Istanbul Declaration of October 2009 committed to "protect the voting power of the smallest poor countries".

But on Apr 25, it shuffled voting rights to increase the share of China (by 1.64 percent), South Korea (0.58 percent), Turkey (0.55 percent), Mexico (0.5 percent), and Singapore (0.24 percent). According to the Bank’s own economic definitions, South Korea and Singapore are high-income countries, whereas Mexico and Turkey are upper middle-income countries.

Criticising the adjustments, head of research for anti-poverty campaigner Oxfam, Duncan Green, noted in a blog entry titled "The World Bank breaks its promises on Africa’s voting power" that "the reform reflects the shift in global GDP (gross domestic product), and so benefits the big emerging economies, not the slower growing economies in Africa".

Adds Sebastien Fourmy, who follows global financial institutions at Oxfam’s French chapter: "This reform is an attempt at making nice with the main emerging world players, such as China and Brazil, in the hope that they will contribute a larger share of the Bank’s funding.

"This comes at a point where Europe has growing difficulties in meeting its financial commitments to development," he explains. "European countries have therefore agreed to a minor reduction in their voting powers but most are still clinging to their chairs."

"And, of course, the United States remains the only member with the power to veto the Bank’s decisions," Fourmy confirms. This is because the Bank’s voting system weighs votes according to countries’ shares of the world’s GDP.

South Africa’s finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, reportedly said his country was disappointed with the reforms as sub-Saharan countries’ say was diminished despite ongoing pressure that the Bank should boost the voices of developing countries in decision-making at the Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

World Bank president Robert Zoellick admitted that, "the change in voting-power helps us better reflect the realities of a new multi-polar global economy where developing countries are now key global players". Yet, endorsement of the shift in voting power was "crucial for the Bank’s legitimacy", according to Zoellick.

The British watchdog initiative called the Bretton Woods Project, which monitors the World Bank and the IMF, said in a recent report that: "a closer look shows that the World Bank will continue to be overwhelmingly dominated by rich countries.

"Developing countries represent over 80 percent of the world's population and the Bank's membership. They are where almost all of the Bank's activities take place" -- and yet, "its governance remains illegitimate and outdated," the report argued.

Fourmy agrees: "In the end, the fundamentals of decision-making at the Bank have been carefully preserved."

Moreover, "even if votes were effectively reformed in favour of its poorest members, decisions will still be taken by consensus rather than votes. Out of the 24 administrator countries that usually craft consensus decisions at the Bank, only two are from sub-Saharan Africa," explains Fourmy. "There was talk of including a third one but that idea has not been mentioned in a while," he adds.

"We hope that emerging economies whose voting rights were increased are going to bear increasing responsibility in the funding of development but that remains to be seen," says Fourmy. "So far, none of them have expressed clear commitment or a detailed vision of their approach to development assistance."


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