http://www.sabanews.net/en/news204560.htm

[30/January/2010]

ABYAN, Jan. 30 (Saba)- Security authorities in Abyan and Lahj provinces have arrested 95 Ethiopians, including 20 women, who have entered the country illegally, according to Interior Ministry.

In related news, the security authorities have said that they captured 89 Ethiopian sneakers, including 20 women, in Ahwar coast of Abyan province and 6 others in Kapitah district in Lahj province.

The Ethiopian sneakers were sent to the competent authorities to take the required legal procedures against them.

MB/AM

Saba
http://www.sabanews.net/en/news204560.htm

==========================

Eritrea Requests the AU to Respect its Membership Rights

Shabait.com The Government of Eritrea has urged the African Union to respect its membership rights and not to discuss any matter regarding Eritrea at AU Summits convened in Addis Ababa. Eritrea’s concerns are predicted on the following:

i. Ethiopia continues to occupy sovereign Eritrean territories – including the town of Badme - by flouting the Algiers Peace Agreement and the Charter of the African Union;

ii. Ethiopia continues to obstruct Eritrea’s right to participate in AU Summits and other AU meetings in Addis Ababa by its refusal to observe the basic diplomatic provisions spelled out in the HQ Agreement and that are extended to all Member States.

In view of these facts, Eritrea expressly requests that any agenda item that relates to Eritrea should not be discussed in Addis Ababa but must be deferred to the next Summit that is routinely held in some other African country. Should Ethiopia refuse to agree or continue to violate this provision, Eritrea calls on the AU to stop holding Summits in Addis Ababa.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs

29 January 2010
Asmara
http://www.eritreacompass.com/?p=764

====================

Mounting Stresses, Failing States

Lester R. Brown

After a half-century of forming new states from former colonies and from the breakup of the Soviet Union, the international community is today focusing on the disintegration of states. The term “failing state” has entered our working vocabulary only during the last decade or so, but these countries are now an integral part of the international political landscape. In the past, governments have been concerned by the concentration of too much power in one state, as in Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union. But today it is failing states that provide the greatest threat to global order and stability.

States fail when national governments lose control of part or all of their territory and can no longer ensure the personal security of their people. When governments lose their monopoly on power, the rule of law begins to disintegrate. When they can no longer provide basic services such as education, health care, and food security, they lose their legitimacy. A government in this position may no longer be able to collect enough revenue to finance effective governance. Societies can become so fragmented that they lack the cohesion to make decisions.

Failing states often degenerate into civil war as opposing groups vie for power. Conflicts can easily spread to neighboring countries, as when the genocide in Rwanda spilled over into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where an ongoing civil conflict has claimed more than 5 million lives since 1998. The vast majority of these deaths in the Congo are nonviolent, most of them due to hunger, respiratory illnesses, diarrhea, and other diseases as millions have been driven from their homes. Within the Sudan, the killings in Darfur quickly spread into Chad.

Failing states can also provide possible training grounds for international terrorist groups, as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen, or as a base for pirates, as in Somalia. They may become sources of drugs, as in Myanmar (formerly Burma) or Afghanistan, which accounted for 92 percent of the world’s opium supply in 2008, much of which is made into heroin. Because they lack functioning health care services, weakened states can become a source of infectious disease, as Nigeria and Pakistan have for polio, derailing efforts to eradicate this dreaded disease.

Among the most conspicuous indications of state failure is a breakdown in law and order and a related loss of personal security. In Haiti, kidnappings for ransom of local people lucky enough to be among the 30 percent of the labor force that is employed are commonplace. In Afghanistan the local warlords, not the central government, control the country outside of Kabul. Somalia, which now exists only on maps, is ruled by tribal leaders, each claiming a piece of what was once a country. In Mexico, drug cartels are taking over, signaling the prospect of a failed state on the U.S. border.

The most systematic ongoing effort to analyze failed and failing states is published annually in each July/August issue of Foreign Policy magazine. This analysis ranks countries according to “their vulnerability to violent internal conflict and societal deterioration.” Based on 12 social, economic, political, and military indicators, it puts Somalia at the top of the list of failed states for 2008, followed by Zimbabwe, Sudan, Chad, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Three oil-exporting countries are among the top 20 failed states—Sudan, Iraq, and Nigeria. Pakistan, number 10 on the list, is the only failing state with a nuclear arsenal. North Korea, number 17, is developing a nuclear capability.

Scores for each of the 12 indicators, ranging from 1 to 10, are aggregated into a single country indicator: the Failed States Index. A score of 120, the maximum, means that a society is failing totally by every measure. In the first Foreign Policy listing, based on data for 2004, just 7 countries had scores of 100 or more. By 2008 it was 14—doubling in four years. This short trend is far from definitive, but higher scores for countries at the top and the doubling of countries with scores of 100 or higher suggest that state failure is both spreading and deepening.

Ranking on the Failed States Index is closely linked with key demographic and environmental indicators. Of the top 20 failed states, 17 have rapid rates of population growth, several of them expanding at close to 3 percent a year or 20-fold per century. In 5 of these 17 countries, women have on average more than six children each. In all but 6 of the top 20 failed states, at least 40 percent of the population is under 15, a demographic statistic that often signals future political instability. Young men, lacking employment opportunities, often become disaffected, making them ready recruits for insurgency movements.

In many of the countries with several decades of rapid population growth, governments are suffering from demographic fatigue, unable to cope with the steady shrinkage in cropland and freshwater supplies per person or to build schools fast enough for the swelling ranks of children.

Sudan is a classic case of a country caught in the demographic trap. It has developed far enough economically and socially to reduce mortality, but not far enough to quickly reduce fertility. As a result, women on average have four children and the population of 41 million is growing by over 2,000 per day. Under this pressure, Sudan—like scores of other countries—is breaking down.

All but 3 of the 20 countries that lead the list of failing states are caught in this demographic trap. Realistically, they probably cannot break out of it on their own. They will need outside help—and not just a scattering of aid projects but systemic assistance in rebuilding—or the political situation will simply continue to deteriorate.

Among the top 20 countries on the failing state list, all but a few are losing the race between food production and population growth. Close to half of these states depend on a food lifeline from the World Food Programme. Food shortages can put intense pressures on governments. In many countries the social order began showing signs of stress in 2007 in the face of soaring food prices and spreading hunger. Food riots and unrest continued in 2008 in dozens of countries, from tortilla riots in Mexico to breadline fights in Egypt. In Haiti, soaring food prices helped bring down the government.

Another characteristic of failing states is a deterioration of infrastructure—roads and power, water, and sewage systems. Care for natural systems is also neglected as people struggle to survive. Forests, grasslands, and croplands deteriorate, generating a downward economic spiral. A drying up of foreign investment and a resultant rise in unemployment are also part of the decline syndrome.

Countries like Haiti and Afghanistan are surviving because they are on international life-support systems. Economic assistance, including food lifelines, is helping to sustain them. But there is not enough assistance to overcome the reinforcing trends of deterioration they are experiencing and replace them with the demographic and political stability need to sustain economic progress.

In an age of increasing globalization, the functioning of the global system depends on a cooperative network of functioning nation states. When governments lose their capacity to govern, they can no longer collect taxes, much less be responsible for their international debts. More failing states means more bad debt. Efforts to control international terrorism depend on cooperation among functioning nation states, and these efforts weaken as more states fail.

As the number of failing states grows, dealing with international crises becomes more difficult. Actions that may be relatively simple in a healthy world order, such as maintaining monetary stability or controlling an infectious disease outbreak, could become difficult or impossible in a world with numerous disintegrating states. Even maintaining international flows of raw materials could become a challenge. At some point, spreading political instability could disrupt global economic progress, suggesting that we need to address the causes of state failure with a heightened sense of urgency.

http://www.garageband.com/mp3/Book_Byte_Mounting_Stresses__Failing_States.mp3?|pe1|WdjZPXLrvP2rYVeza2ptDw

======================================

Population Pressure: Land and Water: Cars and People Compete for Grain

At a time when excessive pressures on the earth’s land and water resources are of growing concern, there is a massive new demand emerging for cropland to produce fuel for cars—one that threatens world food security. Although this situation had been developing for a few decades, it was not until Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when oil prices jumped above $60 a barrel and U.S. gasoline prices climbed to $3 a gallon, that the situation came into focus. Suddenly investments in U.S. corn-based ethanol distilleries became hugely profitable, unleashing an investment frenzy that will convert one fourth of the 2009 U.S. grain harvest into fuel for cars. 76

The United States quickly came to dominate the crop-based production of fuel for cars. In 2005, it eclipsed Brazil, formerly the world’s leading ethanol producer. In Europe, where the emphasis is on producing biodiesel, mostly from rapeseed, some 2.1 billion gallons were set to be produced in 2009. To meet its biodiesel goal, the European Union, under cropland constraints, is increasingly turning to palm oil imported from Indonesia and Malaysia, a trend that depends on clearing rainforests for oil palm plantations. 77

The price of grain is now tied to the price of oil. Historically the food and energy economies were separate, but now with the massive U.S. capacity to convert grain into ethanol, that is changing. In this new situation, when the price of oil climbs, the world price of grain moves up toward its oil-equivalent value. If the fuel value of grain exceeds its food value, the market will simply move the commodity into the energy economy. If the price of oil jumps to $100 a barrel, the price of grain will follow it upward. If oil goes to $200, grain will follow.

From 1990 to 2005, world grain consumption, driven largely by population growth and rising consumption of grain-based animal products, climbed by an average of 21 million tons per year. Then came the explosion in grain used in U.S. ethanol distilleries, which jumped from 54 million tons in 2006 to 95 million tons in 2008. This 41-million-ton jump doubled the annual growth in world demand for grain almost overnight, helping to triple world prices for wheat, rice, corn, and soybeans from mid-2006 to mid-2008. A World Bank analyst attributes 70 percent of the food price rise to this diversion of food to produce fuel for cars. Since then prices have subsided somewhat as a result of the global economic downturn, but as of mid-2009 they are still well above historical levels. 78

From an agricultural vantage point, the world’s appetite for crop-based fuels is insatiable. The grain required to fill an SUV’s 25-gallon tank with ethanol just once will feed one person for a whole year. If the entire U.S. grain harvest were to be converted to ethanol, it would satisfy at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive fuel needs. 79

Projections by Professors C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer of the University of Minnesota in 2003 showed the number of hungry and malnourished people decreasing steadily to 2025. But their early 2007 update of these projections, which took into account the biofuel effect on world food prices, showed the number climbing rapidly in the years ahead. Millions of people living on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder, who are barely hanging on, are losing their grip and beginning to fall off. 80

Since the budgets of international food aid agencies are set well in advance, a rise in food prices shrinks food assistance. The WFP, which is now supplying emergency food aid to more than 30 countries, cut shipments as prices soared. Hunger is on the rise, with 18,000 children dying each day from hunger and related illnesses. 81

The emerging competition between the owners of the world’s 910 million automobiles and the 2 billion poorest people is taking the world into uncharted territory. Suddenly the world is facing an epic moral and political issue: Should grain be used to fuel cars or feed people? The average income of the world’s automobile owners is roughly $30,000 a year; the 2 billion poorest people earn on average less than $3,000 a year. The market says, let’s fuel the cars. 82

For every additional acre planted to corn to produce fuel, an acre of land must be cleared for cropping elsewhere. But there is little new land to be brought under the plow unless it comes from clearing tropical rainforests in the Amazon and Congo basins and in Indonesia or from clearing land in the Brazilian cerrado. Unfortunately, this has heavy environmental costs: a massive release of sequestered carbon, the loss of plant and animal species, and increased rainfall runoff and soil erosion.

While it makes little sense to use food crops to fuel cars if it drives up food prices, there is the option of producing automotive fuel from fast-growing trees, switchgrass, prairie grass mixtures, or other cellulosic materials, which can be grown on wasteland. The technologies to convert these cellulosic materials into ethanol exist, but the cost of producing cellulosic ethanol is close to double that of grain-based ethanol. Whether it will ever be cost-competitive with ethanol from grain is unclear. 83

There are alternatives to this grim scenario. The decision in May 2009 to raise U.S. auto fuel efficiency standards 40 percent by 2016 will reduce U.S. dependence on oil far more than converting the country’s entire grain harvest into ethanol could. The next step is a comprehensive shift to gas-electric plug-in hybrid cars that can be recharged at night, allowing most short-distance driving—daily commuting and grocery shopping, for example—to be done with electricity. 84

As the leading grain exporter and ethanol producer, the United States is in the driver’s seat. It needs to make sure that efforts to reduce its heavy dependence on imported oil do not create a far more serious problem: chaos in the world food economy. The choice is between a future of rising world food prices, spreading hunger, and growing political instability and one of more stable food prices, sharply reduced dependence on oil, and much lower carbon emissions. 85
------
Our early twenty-first century civilization is being squeezed between advancing deserts and rising seas. Measured by the biologically productive land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking. Mounting population densities, once generated solely by population growth, are now also fueled by the relentless advance of deserts and may soon be affected by the projected rise in sea level. As overpumping depletes aquifers, millions more are forced to relocate in search of water.

Desert expansion in sub-Saharan Africa, principally in the Sahelian countries, is displacing millions of people—forcing them to either move southward or migrate to North Africa. A 2006 U.N. conference on desertification in Tunisia projected that by 2020 up to 60 million people could migrate from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Europe. This flow of migrants has been under way for many years. 86

In mid-October 2003, Italian authorities discovered a boat bound for Italy carrying refugees from Africa. After being adrift for more than two weeks and having run out of fuel, food, and water, many of the passengers had died. At first the dead were tossed overboard. But after a point, the remaining survivors lacked the strength to hoist the bodies over the side. The dead and the living shared the boat, resembling what a rescuer described as “a scene from Dante’s Inferno.” 87

The refugees were believed to be Somalis who had embarked from Libya, but the survivors would not reveal their country of origin, lest they be sent home. We do not know whether they were political, economic, or environmental refugees. Failed states like Somalia produce all three. We do know that Somalia is an ecological disaster, with overpopulation, overgrazing, and the resulting desertification destroying its pastoral economy. 88

Perhaps the largest flow of Somali migrants is into Yemen, another failing state. In 2008 an estimated 50,000 migrants and asylum seekers reached Yemen, 70 percent more than in 2007. And during the first three months of 2009 the migrant flow was up 30 percent over the same period in 2008. These numbers simply add to the already unsustainable pressures on Yemen’s land and water resources, hastening its decline. 89

On April 30, 2006, a man fishing off the coast of Barbados discovered a 20-foot boat adrift with the bodies of 11 young men on board, bodies that were “virtually mummified” by the sun and salty ocean spray. As the end drew near, one passenger left a note tucked between two bodies: “I would like to send my family in Basada [Senegal] a sum of money. Please excuse me and goodbye.” The author of the note was apparently one of a group of 52 who had left Senegal on Christmas Eve aboard a boat destined for the Canary Islands, a jumping off point for Europe. They must have drifted for some 2,000 miles, ending their trip in the Caribbean. This boat was not unique. During the first weekend of September 2006, police intercepted boats from Mauritania with a record total of nearly 1,200 people on board. 90

For those living in Central American countries, including Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, Mexico is often the gateway to the United States. In 2008, Mexican immigration authorities reported some 39,000 detentions and 89,000 deportations. 91

In the city of Tapachula on the Guatemala-Mexico border, young men in search of jobs wait along the tracks for a slow-moving freight train passing through the city en route to the north. Some make it onto the train. Others do not. The Jesús el Buen Pastor refuge is home to 25 amputees who lost their grip and fell under a train while trying to board. For these young men, says Olga Sánchez Martínez, the director of the refuge, this is the “end of their American dream.” A local priest, Flor María Rigoni, calls the migrants attempting to board the trains “the kamikazes of poverty.” 92

Today, bodies washing ashore in Italy, Spain, and Turkey are a daily occurrence, the result of desperate acts by desperate people. And each day Mexicans risk their lives in the Arizona desert trying to reach jobs in the United States. On average, some 100,000 or more Mexicans leave rural areas every year, abandoning plots of land too small or too eroded to make a living. They either head for Mexican cities or try to cross illegally into the United States. Many of those who try to cross the Arizona desert perish in its punishing heat. Since 2001, some 200 bodies have been found along the Arizona border each year. 93

With the vast majority of the 2.4 billion people to be added to the world by 2050 coming in countries where water tables are already falling, water refugees are likely to become commonplace. They will be most common in arid and semiarid regions where populations are outgrowing the water supply and sinking into hydrological poverty. Villages in northwestern India are being abandoned as aquifers are depleted and people can no longer find water. Millions of villagers in northern and western China and in parts of Mexico may have to move because of a lack of water. 94

Advancing deserts are squeezing expanding populations into an ever smaller geographic area. Whereas the U.S. Dust Bowl displaced 3 million people, the advancing desert in China’s Dust Bowl provinces could displace tens of millions. 95

Africa, too, is facing this problem. The Sahara Desert is pushing the populations of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria northward toward the Mediterranean. In a desperate effort to deal with drought and desertification, Morocco is geographically restructuring its agriculture, replacing grain with less thirsty orchards and vineyards. 96

In Iran, villages abandoned because of spreading deserts or a lack of water already number in the thousands. In the vicinity of Damavand, a small town within an hour’s drive of Tehran, 88 villages have been abandoned. And as the desert takes over in Nigeria, farmers and herders are forced to move, squeezed into a shrinking area of productive land. Desertification refugees typically end up in cities, many in squatter settlements. Others migrate abroad. 97

In Latin America, deserts are expanding and forcing people to move in both Brazil and Mexico. In Brazil, some 66 million hectares of land are affected, much of it concentrated in the country’s northeast. In Mexico, with a much larger share of arid and semiarid land, the degradation of cropland now extends over 59 million hectares. 98

While desert expansion and water shortages are now displacing millions of people, rising seas promise to displace far greater numbers in the future, given the concentration of the world’s population in low-lying coastal cities and rice-growing river deltas. The numbers could eventually reach the hundreds of millions, offering yet another powerful reason for stabilizing both climate and population. 99

In the end, the issue with rising seas is whether governments are strong enough to withstand the political and economic stress of relocating large numbers of people while suffering heavy coastal losses of housing and industrial facilities.

During this century we must deal with the effects of trends—rapid population growth, advancing deserts, and rising seas—that we set in motion during the last century. Our choice is a simple one: reverse these trends or risk being overwhelmed by them.

==============================

U.S. Feeds One Quarter of its Grain to Cars While Hunger is on the Rise

January 21, 2010

The 107 million tons of grain that went to U.S. ethanol distilleries in 2009 was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels. More than a quarter of the total U.S. grain crop was turned into ethanol to fuel cars last year. With 200 ethanol distilleries in the country set up to transform food into fuel, the amount of grain processed has tripled since 2004.

The United States looms large in the world food economy: it is far and away the world’s leading grain exporter, exporting more than Argentina, Australia, Canada, and Russia combined. In a globalized food economy, increased demand for food to fuel American vehicles puts additional pressure on world food supplies.

From an agricultural vantage point, the automotive hunger for crop-based fuels is insatiable. The Earth Policy Institute has noted that even if the entire U.S. grain crop were converted to ethanol (leaving no domestic crop to make bread, rice, pasta, or feed the animals from which we get meat, milk, and eggs), it would satisfy at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive fuel needs.

When the growing demand for corn for ethanol helped to push world grain prices to record highs between late 2006 and 2008, people in low-income grain-importing countries were hit the hardest. The unprecedented spike in food prices drove up the number of hungry people in the world to over 1 billion for the first time in 2009. Though the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression has recently brought food prices down from their peak, they still remain well above their long-term average levels.

The amount of grain needed to fill the tank of an SUV with ethanol just once can feed one person for an entire year. The average income of the owners of the world’s 940 million automobiles is at least ten times larger than that of the world’s 2 billion hungriest people. In the competition between cars and hungry people for the world’s harvest, the car is destined to win.

Continuing to divert more food to fuel, as is now mandated by the U.S. federal government in its Renewable Fuel Standard, will likely only reinforce the disturbing rise in hunger. By subsidizing the production of ethanol, now to the tune of some $6 billion each year, U.S. taxpayers are in effect subsidizing rising food bills at home and around the world.

============================

Ethiopian dam to wreck lives in Kenya: conservation group

by Staff Writers

Nairobi (AFP) Jan 20, 2010

The livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Kenyans around the world's largest desert lake will be wrecked by an Ethiopian dam on the lake's main tributary, conservationists said Wednesday.

"The Ethiopian dam project is going to bring nothing but tragedy and harm to Kenya," warned renowned archeologist and environmentalist Richard Leakey.

The Gilgel Gibe III dam being built on the Omo river, which supplies 80 percent of the water in Lake Turkana on the Kenya-Ethiopia border, is one-third complete.

During the two years it will take to fill the dam reservoir Lake Turkana will recede, increasing its salinity, damaging the local economy, degrading biodiversity and increasing the risk of cross-border conflicts, the Friends of Lake Turkana conservationist organisation said.

The group called for construction to be halted pending an assessment by Kenya, which has said it will import power generated from Ethiopia, on the impact the dam will have on the locals and the environment.

"What we are asking the Kenya government is to reassess, to rethink about what they are doing before it's too late," said Samia Bwana, a top official of the Kenyan group.

Around 300,000 fishermen and herders depend on Lake Turkana, while hundreds of thousands more, mainly farmers, rely on the Omo's annual flooding for river bank cultivation and grazing of livestock.

"We are depending on a country that is known for drought, known for rainfall failure, to provide expensive power to Kenya," Leakey told reporters.

"There is no future for hydroelectric schemes in arid parts of Africa."

Ironically, Kenya plans to build Africa's biggest wind farm around Lake Turkana, which is expected to produce 300 MW. The Omo dam is projected to have a capacity of 400 MW when it is completed in 2013.

Leakey said the feasibility study for the Ethiopian dam was "so badly done that the dam may never even fill up because of cracks that are already known to exist."

"If it never fills up they will never let the water out and if they never let the water out, Lake Turkana will not only drop some metres it..." will be wiped out, he added with a gesture of despair.

UN chief appeals for Sudan unity

The UN secretary general has urged African leaders to work for national unity in Sudan to avoid the south of the country seceding from the north.

Ban Ki-moon's appeal comes as the African Union is due to hold its summit in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

Mr Ban said both the UN and AU had a big responsibility "to maintain peace in Sudan and make unity attractive".

A referendum is due next year on whether the oil-rich south should become independent.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has said he will accept the result of the poll even if the south voted for independence.

The theme of the three-day AU summit in Addis Ababa is information and technology.

But heads of states will also be discussing, among other issues, the escalating violence in Somalia and who will take over the AU chairmanship from Libya.

The position should go to Malawi, the choice of the southern African regional grouping, SADC. But Libya wants to extend its one-year term and has Tunisia' s support.

With eastern and southern African countries apparently solidly behind Malawi, it could be a bruising contest for the AU chairmanship, writes the BBC's Uduak Amimo.

High tensions

"Whatever the result of the [southern Sudan's] referendum we have to think how to manage the outcome," Mr Ban said in a joint interview with AFP and RFI radio.

"It is very important for Sudan but also for the region. We'll work hard to avoid a possible secession," he added.

Sudan's mainly Muslim north and the Animist and Christian South ended their two-decade war in 2005 and joined a unity government.

But tensions remain high as the country holds in April its first genuine multi-party national elections since 1986.

The south, which has a semi-autonomous government, is likely to vote to secede from the north in the 2011 referendum, correspondents say.

Story from BBC NEWS:

2010/01/31

=====================

Critical year ahead for Sudan amid fears of war

By Martin Plaut
BBC Africa analyst

On the fifth anniversary of the signing of a deal ending decades of war between north and south Sudan, US President Barack Obama's special envoy has commended the agreement as "the foundation of peace."

"The Comprehensive Peace Agreement has survived through five years of sometimes acrimonious dissent between the parties and it has prevented a return to war," General Scott Gration told the BBC.

However, the general's remarks came after 10 charities issued a report warning that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) is in danger of failing, and that Sudan could slide back into war.

General Gration acknowledged the aid organisation's findings, saying that north and south Sudan are "far behind in their implementation of the most contentious provisions of the CPA."

The general also warned that the peace agreement expires in 2011 and that many of its provisions have still not been implemented.

The CPA, signed on 9 January 2005, ended a war that had torn Sudan apart.

Apart from a period of peace between 1972 and 1983 Sudan had been at war since independence in 1956.

More than two million people died, and four million were forced into exile.

Southern Sudan All Sudan Population: 7.5m to 9.7m Population: 42.2m Area: 640,000 sq km Area: 2.5m sq km Maternal mortality: 1,700 deaths per 100,000 births Maternal mortality: 1,107 deaths per 100,000 births Access to clean water: 50% Access to clean water: 70% Life expectancy: 42 years Life expectancy: 58.92 years

Sources: CIA, UN, UNFPA

Despite obstacles, setbacks and missed deadlines, the agreement has remained intact.
Analysts point out that meaningful progress is essential over the coming year.

There are two key deadlines: April 2010, when nationwide elections are due to be held (already having been postponed from July 2009) and January 2011, when a referendum will decide whether the south should remain part of a united Sudan, or become an independent state.

Former enemies

A new report from the Royal Institute for International Affairs supports the general's more optimistic tone.

Its author, Edward Thomas, argues that the CPA is "resilient" despite a lack of trust and frequent arguments between the two sides.

He says the agreement has established an "unprecedented kind of constitutionalism, of two governments without popular mandates, based on and backed by two armies that fought each other for two decades."

Mr Thomas points out that the CPA survived the death of the southern leader John Garang in 2005, and the indictment of the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court in 2009.

Northern and southern elites have repeatedly taken matters to the brink, before pulling back at the last moment.

For example, it took days of intensive talks last December between President Bashir and the southern leader and Sudanese Vice-President, Salva Kiir, to finally reach an agreement on the law governing the 2011 referendum.

Both the election and the referendum could increase tensions.

The political leadership of the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement are due to meet next week to decide whether to back Omar al-Bashir for the presidency in April 2010, or to put up their own candidates in conjunction with a range of northern political parties.

Based on current trends, the south is likely to vote for independence in 2011, threatening to take Sudan's oil-wealth with it.

President Bashir's government, as well as neighbouring Egypt, have expressed their opposition to the establishment of an independent southern state.

There are a number of reasons for optimism, including:

The United States is fully engaged in the region, with General Gration adopting a less confrontational tone with the Sudanese government, seeking consensus where possible.

The United States and its allies are providing technical and legal advice, as well as applying political pressure when setbacks occur.

The former South African President, Thabo Mbeki, is expanding the remit of the Panel for Sudan given to him by the African Union to deal with the CPA as well as the civil war in Darfur.

Addressing the UN Security Council on 22 December 2009 over the agreement between north and south Sudan, Mr Mbeki said the "panel will interact with these two parties to the CPA to help accelerate the process towards the completion of the agenda detailed in this agreement."

The United Nations peacekeeping operations in Sudan - one in Darfur (with the African Union) and another overseeing the CPA - are both in place with most of their men and equipment.

While they still complain of a lack of helicopters and point out that they could not halt any serious north-south conflict, the UN presence does provide a degree of re-assurance and stability.

Armed stalemate

However major obstacles remain, perhaps the largest of which is Darfur, where an armed stalemate continues.

Talks between the Sudanese government and some of the rebel movements were due to resume in December, but will now take place later this month.

The United States is attempting to bring the groups together.

"Aside from some notable holdouts of rebel forces, we believe that all parties to the conflict in Darfur are showing a greater willingness now to address the root causes of conflict than at any time in the past," said General Gration.

Edward Thomas, of the foreign affairs think tank Chatham House, warned that American involvement in settling the country's crises carries dangers.

"US mediation may mean that Sudan is not seeking to redefine itself through engagement with its peoples or its neighbours, but is looking to the superpower to set out a solution," Mr Thomas told the BBC.

Clearly 2010 will be a critical year for the country and the wider region, with as many possibilities for failure as success. 

BBC NEWS:  2010/01/09

================================

South Sudan awaits oil bonanza

By James Copnall
BBC News, southern Sudan

In a village perched a difficult climb half-way up a steep mountain slope in South Sudan, a woman is grinding up leaves plucked from a tree.

The drab green powder - added to some water - will have to make do for lunch. “ The government has not done anything here ”

Deputy village chief Pilagio Ohiasa

Extreme poverty, hunger and frequent deadly inter-ethnic clashes make life in the region extremely tough.

South Sudan's semi-autonomous government has received nearly $7bn (£4.2bn) in oil revenue since it took over after a 2005 peace deal, but many question whether it is doing enough for its people.

The village, Lobira Boma in Eastern Equatoria, is remote even by southern Sudanese standards.

It was founded in 1987, as people from the Latuka ethnic group built new homes half-way up the mountain to escape fierce fighting in the north-south civil war.

More than two decades on the war has ended, but the struggles of the villagers have not.

"Every day we eat these leaves, every day" says Josephine, convinced this unhealthy diet and the local water leads to eyesight problems.

An official from the local church and aid workers warn that hunger will be a real problem this year, since the rains came late.

In this difficult period, many in Lobira Boma feel neglected.

Village militia

"The government has not done anything here," says Pilagio Ohiasa, the deputy village chief.

"It's like they are completely absent. It's only non-governmental organisations. They built a health centre, sometimes they give us things. But the government has not touched anything in this village."

The village even looks after its own security. Young men armed with knives and even rifles stroll around the village, dodging herds of goats and the occasional cow.

For many in southern Sudan, insecurity is a huge concern.

More than 2,000 people have been killed in inter-ethnic clashes in Jonglei State alone this year, according to the UN.

Jonglei, just north of Eastern Equatoria, is the size of Bangladesh, and has only 50km (31 miles) of roads usable all year round, which gives some idea of the problems facing the authorities.

It is difficult for the government of South Sudan to move troops to protect villagers, or to chase after attackers.

The south has a long history of inter-ethnic fighting, exacerbated by two civil wars.

Even now politicians from one ethnic group or another are accused of stirring up conflict to fuel their own agendas.

"The communities are crying for the government to come to their help," says one southerner who prefers not to be named.

“ We are the only ruling political party in the whole African continent that sacked two ministers of finance because of allegations of corruption ”

SPLM's Pagan Amum

"The government has to be serious in uniting the people, and not separating them. The politicians are happy to cause divisions or confusions in our society."

Most of the inter-ethnic fighting takes place out in the countryside, where resources are scarce.

But even in the main city Juba - a boom-town filling up with Kenyans, Ugandans and southern Sudanese keen to make a quick dollar - frustration with the south's leaders is widespread.

Oil money?

Officials drive around in flashy new 4x4s, receiving envious glances from the less fortunate.

"I think these roads will never be good," says Akot, the driver of a "Boda Boda" or motorbike for hire, as he bounces along a dirt alley.

"They say they are building new roads, but I think the ministers just pocket the money."

He is not alone in making the claim.

A report by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a US-based non-governmental organisation, says that corruption is a problem "at all levels of government".

"Misuse of public funds, favouritism in hiring and the existence of ghost names on government payrolls are examples of corruption that plague government offices," the report says.

And when the US announced a new policy on Sudan last month, one of the strategic objectives was to "promote improved governing capacity and greater transparency in southern Sudan".

The policy statement pointed out that financial transparency was key to attracting investment.

Pagan Amum, secretary general of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the former rebels who now run the south, puts up a spirited defence when pressed on these matters.

He says the nearly $7bn (£4.2bn) received as the south's share of oil revenues is not nearly sufficient, considering the neglect of the south over many decades.

"It is not a lot of money compared to the real needs our people have; $7bn is not enough to establish and run a government for four years; $7bn is not enough to build all the schools, hospitals and roads that we need," Mr Amum told the BBC.

He points out that hundreds of thousands of children have been enrolled in schools, and hospitals have been renovated.

"With this money we have done something, but it is only a drop in the ocean of the needs of the southern Sudanese people," he said.

"We have built more than 5,000km (3,100 miles) of roads in southern Sudan, linking towns within the south, and the region with Kenya and Uganda."

Like many southern officials, Mr Amum accuses the north of arming local groups to fuel inter-ethnic warfare in the south ahead of national elections due next year and a referendum on whether the south should secede from Sudan in 2011.

The National Congress Party of President Omar al-Bashir has always denied the charge, and the SPLM has produced no recent evidence to back up the allegation.

Explosive mix

But this does not obscure the accusations of corruption made by ordinary people and foreign bodies alike.

"Corruption is a serious problem," Mr Amum admitted, before shifting the blame to the north.

"We joined a highly corrupt government, with a civil service which is also corrupted," he said.

"We declared a war on corruption. We are the only ruling political party in the whole African continent that sacked two ministers of finance because of allegations of corruption.

"We are satisfied with what we have done in the last four years."

No-one doubts the problems of southern Sudan are huge.

Low literacy rates, incredibly bad infrastructures, poverty, violence and hunger - the mix is explosive.
It would be an immense challenge for any administration.

But faced with sky-high expectations when it took power after 21 years of conflict and with crucial votes looming, the SPLM is under growing pressure to prove that it can improve the lives of its hard-pressed people.

BBC NEWS: 2009/11/02