#SouthSudan Update: Obama Urges Calm, Reconciliation, Sends Small U.S. Force

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President Obama has sent 45 troops — just to protect U.S. personnel and property — to South Sudan, and issued a statement:

In 2011, millions of South Sudanese voted to forge a new nation, founded on the promise of a more peaceful and prosperous future for all of South Sudan’s people. In recent years, against great odds, South Sudan has made great progress toward breaking the cycle of violence that characterized much of its history.
Today, that future is at risk. South Sudan stands at the precipice. Recent fighting threatens to plunge South Sudan back into the dark days of its past.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. South Sudan has a choice. Its leaders can end the violence and work to resolve tensions peacefully and democratically. Fighting to settle political scores or to destabilize the government must stop immediately. Inflammatory rhetoric and targeted violence must cease. All sides must listen to the wise counsel of their neighbors, commit to dialogue and take immediate steps to urge calm and support reconciliation. South Sudan’s leaders must recognize that compromise with one’s political enemy is difficult; but recovering from unchecked violence and unleashed hatred will prove much harder.
Too much blood has been spilled and too many lives have been lost to allow South Sudan’s moment of hope and opportunity to slip from its grasp. Now is the time for South Sudan’s leaders to show courage and leadership, to reaffirm their commitment to peace, to unity, and to a better future for their people. The United States will remain a steady partner of the South Sudanese people as they seek the security and prosperity they deserve.

This is a good first step, although I’d feel better if he had sent 450 troops instead of 45, but OK. My concern is that South Sudan is flanked on the west by Central African Republican, which has recently descended into anarchy, and the Islamic Khartoum government to the North would like nothing better than instability in the South to justify intervention. The tribal aspect of the fighting in South Sudan is the real danger: “the race card is being played by both sides” —  which sounds crazy to American ears, since both the Dinka and Nuer are black as coal, but tribal animosities are the bane of political stability in modern Africa.

Thursday’s attack on a United Nations peacekeeping base in Jonglei killed three Indian troops, and there’s this:

South Sudan’s government declared that its security forces are in “absolute control of the situation,” but admitted later Thursday that the central government had lost control of Bor, the capital of the country’s largest and most populous state, where barrages of gunfire were reported.

This is not good news:

[R]ebels have taken the town of Bor.
The town, which lies about 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of the capital, Juba, was under heavy shelling, said Col. Philip Aguer, an army spokesman. Bor Mayor Mhial Majak Mhial said the town was under rebel control and heavy artillery was in use. . . .
President Salva Kiir has blamed soldiers loyal to his former vice president, Riek Machar, for starting the violence.
“The government has lost control of Jonglei state to the forces of Col. Machar and his group,” government representative Ateny Wek Ateny told CNN, referring to the state where Bor is situated.
The government could not yet confirm the number of fatalities from the violence, but “casualties are in the hundreds, including army forces and civilians,” Ateny said.

Lots more at the link. Thousands of refugees are fleeing. Even the best-case scenario — government forces swiftly defeating the pro-Machar rebels — would likely mean weeks of fighting and hundreds more casualties. And the worst-case scenario is almost unthinkable, a full-blown Rwanda-style ethnic bloodbath.

UPDATE: Andrew Green reports from Juba for Foreign Policy:

It will probably never be clear what triggered the Dec. 15 firefight that broke out at a Juba military barracks and has now brought the world’s newest country to the brink of a civil war. In the hours after the barracks shootout, fighting spread rapidly across the city — leaving hundreds of people dead and tens of thousands displaced.
By the following afternoon, before the army could even launch its investigation, President Salva Kiir — in full military fatigues — appeared on a delayed state television broadcast to denounce the fighting as an attempted coup by his former deputy, Riek Machar, a gap-toothed mechanical engineer turned fighter in the Sudanese civil war. Hours later the police detained ten leading political figures.
Machar, who slipped out of Juba and into hiding around the time the other politicians were being rounded up, fired back in an interview with a local newspaper two days later. He called the fighting “a misunderstanding” between soldiers and accused Kiir of using the clash as a cover to remove his rivals.
Whether coup or confusion, the incident has revealed just how fragile the coalitions that once held the country together really were.
Independence has not come easy for South Sudan. After decades of war, a country the United States helped midwife into existence less than three years ago, has come to the brink of war with Sudan and watched its economy crumble after it shut down oil production early last year over a refusal to pay grossly inflated transit fees the government in Khartoum was charging to use its pipeline. Meanwhile, rebel groups have continued to crisscross vast swathes of the country, engaging soldiers and disrupting humanitarian efforts. But now South Sudan faces its most serious challenge: Unresolved political divisions have already caused hundreds of deaths and now threaten to split the country along ethnic lines. . . .

Read the whole thing.

 


Quick #SouthSudan Update

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My kids’ Christmas concert is tonight, so I’ll have to run, but here’s the latest Reuters update on the emerging crisis:

South Sudanese government troops battled to regain control of a flashpoint town and sent forces to quell fighting in a vital oil producing area on Thursday, the fifth day of a conflict that has deepened ethnic divisions in the two-year-old nation.
The conflict, which has so far killed up to 500 people, has alarmed South Sudan’s neighbours. African mediators held talks with President Salva Kiir on Thursday to try to broker peace.
The fighting that erupted around the capital Juba on Sunday night has quickly spread, pitting loyalists of the former Vice President Riek Machar, a Nuer, against Kiir, a member of the dominant Dinka clan.
Machar, whose dismissal in July led to months of tensions, has denied Kiir’s accusation that he had led a coup attempt.
Rivals have fought fierce gunbattles over the town of Bor, north of Juba, the scene of a 1991 massacre by soldiers loyal to Machar of hundreds of Dinkas.
Thousands of people have sought refuge in U.N. bases, including 200 oil employees in a main crude-producing region. U.N. officials said one base in Jonglei state, where Bor is located, was breached by Nuer and there may have been deaths.

Here’s Agence France-Presse:

The fierce fighting that erupted in South Sudan this week risks spiralling into an ethnic conflict, UN human rights chief Navi Pillay warned Thursday.
“The risk of seeing the fighting taking on an ethnic dimension is extremely high and could result in a dangerous situation,” Pillay said in a statement.
She expressed deep concern over reports of “civilians killed in Juba based on their ethnicity,” and of “numerous extra-judicial killings.”
Some 450 people have been killed in the capital Juba since battles broke out late on Sunday and thousands displaced, as rebels loyal to fugitive former vice president Riek Machar battle government forces following an alleged failed coup attempt against President Salva Kiir.
They seized the town of Bor in Jonglei state late Wednesday.

Voice of America News:

The U.N. says the situation in South Sudan’s Jonglei State has deteriorated and a group of young people has reportedly forced its way onto a U.N. base sheltering civilians. Officials say there may be casualties, but they cannot confirm how many.
The United Nations says Lou Nuer youth are reported to have entered a temporary operating base belonging to the U.N. Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) in Akobo, Jonglei state.  The United Nations said it is trying to extract its unarmed personnel from the area while reinforcing the base with an additional 60 peacekeepers.
U.N. Deputy-Secretary General Jan Eliasson told reporters that they are working to verify reports of casualties.
“Our base in Akobo, Jonglei state, was attacked and we have reports that lives were lost.  We do not have the details of that yet.  Of course, the secretary-general and I both condemn this attack in the strongest terms,” said Eliasson.


 


Anarchy in Africa: U.S., U.K. Evacuate as South Sudan Spirals Out of Control UPDATE: Rebels Hit U.N. Mission

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The United States has evacuated non-essential personnel from its embassy in Juba, South Sudan, British nationals are being evacuated, and people are trying to make sense of the crisis that developed suddenly over the weekend:

During the final session of the National Liberation Council, one of the ruling party’s highest political organs, on December 15, there was a dispute among different elements of the Presidential Guards (Tigers) over orders to surrender their arms. According to Adwok, guards were disarmed but later the officer in charge opened the stores and rearmed only the Dinka soldiers. The Nuer guards questioned this, a fistfight ensued and more Nuer soldiers came in and broke into the stores. The Nuer soldiers managed to take control of the headquarters and the next day after some SPLA reinforcements, the mutineers were dislodged. There is no evidence of any planning, masterminding or political coordination before or during the clash.
Although ethnicity is a major factor, the crisis was actually precipitated by a deep political rift and power struggle. Yes, the President Salva Kiir is a Dinka and his rival the former vice-president Riek Machar is a Nuer. Yes, the race card is being played by both sides, and certainly it is a real dimension of the conflict especially at the ground level. But behind Riek Machar is a coalition that includes prominent Dinka politicians as well such as the former Sudanese minister of foreign affairs and the widow of the founding father of the SPLM John Garang. Other prominent non-Nuers are in the camp of the former vice president such as the now dismissed secretary-general of the ruling party, Pag’an Amum, a Shilluk.

Reuters reports that oil workers are being evacuated, and witnesses report that SPLA troops targeted ethnic Nuers.

South Sudan only recently gained its independence from Sudan’s Muslim-dominated Khartoum regime, and this sudden descent into violent tribal anarchy is profoundly disappointing for those who supported Juba’s independence. The breakdown of discipline in the SPLA is particularly disturbing, and remember that South Sudan is right next to the Central African Republic:

Armed gangs are rampaging through the Central African Republic carrying out atrocities including executions and mutilations, despite the presence of French and African troops.
Reports by two leading human rights organisations say the situation in the war-torn country is spiralling out of control and requires a robust response from the international community.
Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International say the death toll is much higher than reported and that peacekeeping forces in the CAR must be beefed up to protect the population from further war crimes.

Have you heard anything about this on the national news? Has any reporter asked our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president about it? No, of course not. Innocent people are being slaughtered wholesale, but it’s not “news” because, hey, it’s just Africans.

On the one hand, media silence about the bloodbath in central Africa is racist, but on the other hand, it’s also “racist” to expect Obama to do something to prevent genocidal violence. So this brutality continues, and we’re not supposed to notice.

UPDATE: South Sudan is rapidly going from bad to worse:

The United Nations says it fears casualties after attackers forced their way into a peacekeeping base in South Sudan’s Jonglei state.
Rebels from the country’s second-largest ethnic group, the Nuer, attacked the base, targeting civilians of the majority Dinka ethnic community. . . .
UN spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters on Thursday that “fighting took place” at the compound in Jonglei.
“We fear there may have been some fatalities but can’t confirm who and how many,” he said.
The UN peacekeeping mission is sheltering civilians in five state capitals, including Juba and Bor. The attack on the Jonglei compound came after Nuer rebels seized control of Bor. Even before the unrest, Bor was seen as one of the most volatile areas of South Sudan.
Earlier, there were reports of gun battles in the town, as renegade officers fought with troops still loyal to the president.

 


Thanks to the Reader Who Bought ‘Call of Duty: Ghosts’ From Our Amazon Links!

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There’s still time to do your last-minute Christmas shopping via our Amazon Associates holiday specials, and this week somebody ordered the hottest game of the year, “Call of Duty: Ghosts” for an Xbox 360 system. (It’s also available for PlayStation and other systems.) The sale price was $47.99 and, as with all sales from our Amazon links, we got a small commission at no cost to you.

Among the other Amazon purchases this week, readers bought an Alexander Del Rossa designer fleece bathrobe for $49.99 and a Lenox Portola 65-Piece Flatware Set for $127.49.

 

 

Let’s face it: You don’t want to go to the mall and fight those crowds, just to find they don’t have what you want, or they don’t have it in the right size or color. Who needs that hassle? Just click the link, shop around Amazon and have it shipped in time for Christmas!

And if you’re not sure what to buy that special someone? Just get them an Amazon Gift Card and have it shipped in a special gift box.

 

 

RECENTLY:

 

The #PajamaBoy Thing, Also: Bizarre Holiday Ad Targets Gays for ObamaCare

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OK, I’m way late blogging this.

Twitter gold! The Obama #PajamaBoy selfie
and other must-see mash-ups and memes
— Twitchy

Pajama Boy, An Insufferable Man-Child
— Politico

Footiejammies from the Id!
— Ed Driscoll

Even MSNBC Is Laughing
Hysterically at Pajama Boy
— Jammie Wearing Fools

Meanwhile, an organization called “Out2Enroll” (get it?) produced this gay-themed ad for ObamaCare:

 

Exit Questions: How many U.S. tax dollars are being spent to fund these laughable ObamaCare propaganda efforts? Couldn’t that money be better spent on, y’know, actual health care?

 

Today’s Ray Of Hope

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— Wombat-socho


Yesterday’s Washington Times featured an article by Rowan Scarborough indicating that the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pa. was going to be removing portraits of Confederate generals such as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and hinted that this was more political correctness run wild, as in the case of Duval County, Florida’s Nathan B. Forrest High School, soon to be renamed something less offensive. For The ChildrenTM.


Evidently the commandant of the War College reads the Times, or was informed of the article, since he posted an article to the War College blog pointing out the several inaccuracies in the article and stating that there was no plan to “remove all traces of the CSA”. They are planning on adding more art dealing with the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, as well as organizing the art in a less random fashion, which will mean less of the Civil War-oriented art that currently dominates the walls, but there is by no means a politically correct art purge going on at Carlisle Barracks. So that’s something.


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This Is Not News: Carl Herold and His ‘Domestic Partner’ Charles Dunnavant

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Interesting which crimes get overlooked by the national media:

Two Alabama men have been charged with imprisoning and filming their sexual abuse of a minor for use in child pornography made with the son of one of the accused.
Domestic partners Charles Dunnavant and Carl Herold face a litany of charges ranging from sexual torture and sodomy to exposing a person to an STD and child pornography production.
The young boy, only nine-years-old, was held hostage in the Huntsville house of horrors for eight months, during which he was sexually assaulted, abused, sodomized and exposed to an STD by both men while a camera caught all the depraved details, according to a court filing cited by WHNT. . . .
‘They held the child captive for eight months and there are no standards, taboos or lines this defendant and his co-defendant hesitated to cross,’ Huntsville Police Department investigator Chad Smith testified in court Monday, according to WHNT.

Yes, this is strictly a local news story:

Dunnavant lived with Herold  in Huntsville. . . .
Dunnavant was arrested at a family home in Lincoln County, Tenn., Friday investigators said. During a hearing Monday seeking to raise Dunnavant’s bond from $276,000 cash-only to $1 million cash-only, Huntsville Police Department investigator Chad Smith testified he was contacted by the FBI in early November about the possibility of a child sex victim in Huntsville.
Smith said investigators came across numerous photos depicting sexual torture involving a child.

This has no ramifications or significance outside Alabama. However, if somebody says something that offends gay people . . .

Hyping the absurd Duck Dynasty controversy, Chad Griffin of the gay-rights lobby Human Rights Campaign said this: “Phil Robertson’s remarks are not consistent with the values of our faith communities or the scientific findings of leading medical organizations. We know that being gay is not a choice someone makes, and that to suggest otherwise can be incredibly harmful.”

Got that? It is “incredibly harmful” even to “suggest” that individuals are capable of rational action. No, according to “scientific finding,” we are told, sexual behavior is biologically determined, utterly beyond our control, and our sexual preferences are so hard-wired and overpowering that incredible harm will result if we attempt to conform our actions to moral ideals or social norms.

Ideas Have Consequences, as Richard Weaver once famously observed, and this idea — what I’ve called the “Desire Is Destiny” view of sexuality — has consequences far beyond the narrow and selfish purposes of HRC’s Chad Griffin, who is interested only in fundraising, political power and his own $360,000 annual pay.

Chad Griffin is not some idealistic humanitarian, you see. He’s a highly paid professional activist, a full-time anger merchant who oversees an organization whose top dozen officials, himself included, rake off a combined $2.56 million a year. Most people don’t understand that there is a sort of political industry at work — Gay, Inc. — and there are many hundreds of people who earn their livings from various gay advocacy groups, not to mention other similar gigs, e.g., “Queer Theory” professors at universities.

All these people wake up every morning and go to work where they spend the entire day laboring to destroy morality in America. Given the enormous resources and manpower devoted to this project, we certainly ought not be surprised by their successes.

And never mind what they might consider a “success.”