TJ COLES

Like most countries, the Republic of South Sudan is a complex nation of shifting alliances and external influences.

Recently, President Salva Kiir, who sports a Stetson hat gifted him by George W. Bush, signed a peace agreement with old enemies, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-In Opposition. Around the same time, the so-called Embassy Troika consisting of the US, Britain, and Norway facilitated International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs for South Sudan.

When China proposes investment schemes, US politicians call it “debt-trap diplomacy.” As has been seen in South Sudan, whenWestern corporations seek to plunder poor, resource-rich nations, they call it “development.”

The West’s interest in South Sudan is oil. Invoking the colonial-era “white man’s burden” of 19^th century imperialists, the US government-backed Voice of America recently justified foreign interference in South Sudan by pointing out that the country’s 3.5 billion proven barrels of crude cannot be easily exported due to the lack of pipeline infrastructure and financial mismanagement. The Embassy Troika and its IMF programs insist “that fiscal data – including on oil and non-oil revenues – should be published … regularly and without delay.”

Today, the US has lost control of the proxy it created and South Sudan is descending into a humanitarian crisis. Alan Boswell, a South Sudan specialist at the International Crisis Group, has acknowledged, “US efforts in South Sudan seemed like a final spasm of naive American nation-building, which has all collapsed in epic fashion.”

So what role did the US play in splitting Sudan and driving the country’s south into crisis?

“Tell them Muslims are responsible”

In 1899, Britain created the Condominium of Anglo-Egyptian of Sudan. The “Egyptian” eponym was a misnomer because Britain also ruled Egypt as a so-called “veiled protectorate,” so Sudan and its capital Khartoum were basically placed under British control until independence in 1956.

According to a CIA Intelligence Assessment, a “profitable slave trade was developed by European traders and their Arab cohorts in Khartoum … [T]he violence and cruelty that it fostered have not been forgotten in the South.”

Britain adopted its typical divide and rule strategy. “Christian missionaries kept the slavery issue alive by telling southerners that northern Muslims were responsible.” After independence, the southern region was “barely integrated” with the north.

In 1955, secessionist southern rebels, the Anya-Nya (“snake venom”), initiated the decades-long civil war. The CIA’s Current Intelligence Country Handbook noted that religion was not the only — or even main — point of division. The majority of southerners were black and the ruling officials in the north were overwhelmingly Arab. Resource concentration was a major problem. Heavily dependent on revenue from cotton, Khartoum absorbed Sudan’s wealth to the detriment of the rest of the nation.

CIA analysts were hopeful that the first post-independence dictator, Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Abboud, would follow a pro-Washington course. An Intelligence Bulletin states: “The regime has accepted the American aid program … [and] has moved to curb pro-Communist …. publications.” Gains made by communist politicians a decade later were crushed after the elected government banned left-wing parties and disenfranchised southerners.

As the north’s war against southern secession continued, a reported one million people had died by 1970 and hundreds of thousands had fled to neighboring countries. The US tolerated Soviet arms to Khartoum as it effectively let the USSR fight a proxy war against the south. Israel poured weapons into the south, reportedly to worsen the war in the hope of diverting the attention of the northern government from the Arab-Israeli conflicts.

The South: “exploitable amounts of crude oil”

Between 1971 and ‘72, Ethiopia brokered a short-lived peace between Sudanese ruler, Maj. Gen. Gaafar Nimeiri, and the Anya-Nya’s political wing, the South(ern) Sudan Liberation Movement. The agreement later led to Anya-Nya rebel leader, Lt. Joseph Lagu, heading the High Executive Council of the Southern Sudan Autonomous Region; a political arrangement that lasted until its abolition by President Nimeiri in 1983. By this time, Chevron had spent millions of dollars in a fruitless effort to modernize the south so that it could efficiently extract oil.

US policy shifted to quiet support for the southern secessionists. With Sudan’s oil located mainly in the south, US analysts reckoned that Nimeiri’s regime, which they described as “moderate” and “pro-Western,” had continued de-developing the south. At the time, Washington’s adversary, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, had long been in power next door in Libya. The pro-Soviet Mengistu was ruling Ethiopia on the southeast border. The CIA feared that Sudan’s “severely underdeveloped” south would again rebel, weaken Nimeiri, and leave Khartoum open to Soviet influence.

The 1980s saw the emergence of American “soft power” in Sudan: the use of “aid” and investment to create a viable, independent southern regime.

A history of the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) operations in fertile Sudan noted in the early-‘80s that, “[b]efore Sudan becomes the ‘breadbasket’ of the Middle East and other parts of the world, … it will need a great deal of investment directed towards development projects.” Of greater interest to Washington was petroleum: “The Sudanese government is reasonably confident that commercially exploitable amounts of crude oil have been discovered in southern Sudan.”

In 1983, the Sudanese Armed Forces mutinied. Commander John Garang, who had been trained by the US at Fort Benning, Georgia, led the creation of the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army. A CIA research paper describes Garang as a “socialist.” Other papers note his being backed by Ethiopia and Libya. Their backing wasn’t to last in the face of US “aid” programs.

The Clinton years: “energy management” and soft power

Washington’s slow push for south Sudanese secession probably began in the 1980s, with so-called civil society projects designed to boost the rebel groups opposing the northern government. In 1987, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – the US government-sponsored regime change entity – began funding The Sudan Times, which “uses NED funds to purchase supplies essential to its continued publication.”

In the north, President Nimeiri was overthrown by General Rahman Swar, whose ephemeral reign saw him replaced by the elected President Ahmed al-Mirghani. At this point, the CIA’s record dries up, so it is unclear what relationship the US initially enjoyed with General Omar al-Bashir, who took over in a coup in 1989.

Martin Meredith’s history of Africa notes that from 1991, the ethnic Nuer commander, Riek Machar, was aided by al-Bashir to seize the oilfields by wresting control from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army, led by Garang, an ethnic Dinka. Evidence is scarce, but the Clinton administration (1993-2001) presumably saw southern political fractures as empowering their northern enemy, al-Bashir.

The USAID program, Sudan Transitional Rehabilitation, successfully negotiated a peace between Garang and Machar in 1999. The Agency notes that its grants included provision for “Energy management.” Northwest University’s William Reno seems to argue that the effect of USAID’s Operation Lifeline Sudan, which started the year in which al-Bashir came to power, ultimately legitimized the southern rebels. Claiming that they were spies, Al-Bashir’s men executed USAID staff in 1992, leading the Agency to halt its northern programs.

In 1993, Garang was openly courting the US State Department, though media showed little interest and the history is largely confined to specialist publications. At a meeting in Washington, Garang pressed the southern elites’ cause with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and longtime CIA hand, Frank Wisner, and Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, George Moose. Eventually, the meetings paid off.

USAID reports: “In 1998, at the urging of Congress, the White House changed policy to allow the United States to provide development assistance to opposition-held areas alongside humanitarian aid countrywide.”

In 1997, an Operation Lifeline Sudan report revealed the grassroots organizing in which USAID and partner NGOs were involved. So-called Capacity Building included working with “community leaders” from Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, the political wing of the southern Army (SPLM/A). Training included land surveying and gender empowerment “at odds with cultural norms and values.” The cultural modernization project prepared south Sudan for future independence.

Proxy nations as “front line states”

Garang was a personal friend of Uganda’s pro-Western dictator, Yoweri Musevini, who provided arms to the SPLM/A. Human Rights Watch reported in 1998: “The U.S. is providing U.S. $20 million in surplus military equipment to Eritrea, Ethiopia and Uganda, for defensive purposes (referring to the government of Sudan’s purported support for rebel forces from each of those countries).” Likewise a Library of Congress report notes that, “[d]uring the mid-1990s, [Clinton] instituted a Front Line States policy of pressure against Khartoum with the assistance of Uganda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.”

The Clinton administration sanctioned Sudan, citing as an excuse the Bashir regime’s alleged links with “al-Qaeda” and the political National Islamic Front, which certain US politicians claimed was a terror group.  In 1998, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) revealed: “Dr. John Garang, in his meeting with SFRC staff, insisted that all development assistance be targeted to areas under SPLA control, some of which have not been under [National Islamic Front] control for five or more years.”

So-called aid money continued to pour into the south in an effort to consolidate the rebels and build a sense of southern nationalism in the public psyche. In March 1999, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) President, Carl Gersham, said: “NED grantees continued to play prominent roles in the human rights and democracy struggles in Liberia and Sudan, where NED has mounted significant programs.”

In 2001, NED began funding the Center for Documentation and Advocacy (CDA), which “publishes and distributes the South Sudan Post throughout Sudan and abroad.” The CDA also received USAID grants. USAID notes that ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains was signed in January 2002 at the behest of the US and Switzerland, calming violence between al-Bashir’s forces and SPLM/Nuba people, who sit on enormous oil wealth. The July 2002 Machakos Protocol, according to USAID, “established the premise of ‘one country, two systems’.”

But “one country, two systems” would soon become two countries, two systems. By then, the George W. Bush administration’s (2001-09) attitude towards the north was a little more balanced. Secret “counterterrorism” operations saw quiet collaboration between al-Bashir and the Bush administration, even as the US continued to bolster al-Bashir’s southern enemies. Al-Bashir’s National Security Advisor, Salah Gosh, for instance, was a CIA collaborator who met with Secretary of State, Colin Powell. (Gosh later attempted a failed coup against al-Bashir.)

In 2002, US Ambassador John Danforth described the SPLM as “the chief antagonists in the Sudan conflict.” In December, USAID’s Office of Transitional Initiatives (OTI) sponsored the All-Nuba Conference, which “[brought] together representatives of civil society, the [government of Sudan], the SPLM, and others from all parts of the political spectrum to discuss the future of the Nuba people.”

Peace agreements legitimized southern rebels

USAID’s OTI was described in 2004 as “supporting people-to-people peace processes in southern Sudan.” The program also sought to “increase the participation of southern Sudanese in their governance structures.” This would be achieved by establishing a so-called Independent Southern Sudan Media and the creation of legal aid units, women’s empowerment, and an Education Development Center to establish short-wave radio broadcasts in Dinka, English, Juba-Arabic, and Nuer.

Facilitated by USAID’s  then-administrator, Andrew Natsios, and Ambassador John Danforth, al-Bashir signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 with the SPLM. Though the US took credit, it was a hard-won peace largely negotiated behind the scenes with Garang and Vice President Ali Osman Taha. USAID notes that the CPA “usher[ed] in a new era of American assistance in Sudan.  The country became a U.S. priority in Africa, and among the highest in the world.”

Garang died in a 2005 helicopter crash attributed to “pilot error.” He was replaced with Salva Kiir, whom US President George W. Bush described as “a friend of mine.”

In November of that year, Kiir addressed the US government-funded think tank, the Wilson Center. “I have met very important officials and I have not only come to know at personal levels but has afforded me to know how things work at the American Government,” said Kiir. This led to the establishment of “the two chambers of the national legislatures” in the south, “as well as the council of ministers (Cabinet) of the Government of National Unity.”

“Aid” continued to mold fractured southern rebel movements into a cohesive whole in preparation for the independence vote. In November 2005, US Deputy Secretary of State, Robert Zoellick, noted the southern factions’ “inability to come together (sic).” Perhaps more importantly, aid was also used to propagandize the southern civilians into supporting unity. Run by the Grand Africa Media Service Co., the Khartoum Monitor was established in 2000 by southern journalists. Its publisher, Alfred Taban, won the NED’s Democracy Award 2006.

In 2007, Rep. Frank R. Wolf, a Republican stalwart of humanitarian interventionism, told Bush’s Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice: “Salva Kiir needs his people to be trained with regard to the security, with the death of John Garang, if anything happened to him. So if you can quickly make sure that his people are trained, that would be helpful.”

The Obama years: chasing “millions of dollars worth of oil”

The US-backed Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) promised a referendum on particular forms of government for the south, including the possibility of secession. In September 2010 just months before the referendum, President Obama’s Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and future head of USAID, Samantha Power, said of her boss: “The President decided to participate in this event, which was actually at one point originally intended as a ministerial, because this could not be a more critical time in the life of Sudan.”

NED funded and championed a host of South Sudan civil society and propaganda organizations, including: the South Sudanese Network for Democracy and Elections, Eye Radio 98.6FM, the Internews Community Radio Network the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, and the South Sudanese Women’s Empowerment Network.

With pro-Western PR stunts like wearing the Stetson hat, regional leader Kiir promoted US iconography. This was bolstered by a visit from Hollywood star, George Clooney, who “observed” the referendum, which was officially monitored by the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC) in Khartoum and the Southern Sudan Referendum Bureau (SSRB).

But USAID influenced both organizations: “we are playing a key role by providing technical and material assistance, and have provided significant funding to international and domestic groups to both educate voters and ensure credible observation of the referendum.” This included a voter registration drive, which according to the European Union Election Observation Mission (EUEOM) was more concerned with getting 60 percent of registered voters to participate, as the CPA demanded, than educating the populace about the issues.

The referendum took place in January 2011. Having seized control of southern media, the US by proxy blocked out pro-unity arguments. The EUEOM concluded: “An almost complete absence of pro-unity campaigning created an environment where debate on the consequences of secession or the continued unity of Sudan was drowned out.”

Despite a preposterous 98.83 percent of voters opting for independence, US President Barack Obama instantly recognized the new government of Salva Kiir and his Vice President Riek Machar as the leaders of the Republic of South Sudan.

In 2011, the SPLA was legitimized in the eyes of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM). SPLA soldiers were trained in de-mining and tactical casualty combat care by AFRICOM personnel.

Joseph Kony’s “Christian” Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is the African equivalent of “al-Qaeda”: an elusive terror group that offers the US a pretext to arm several nations under the banner of counter-crime and counter-terrorism. Commenting on the LRA, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Karl Wycoff, said in February 2012 (paraphrased by AFRICOM): “the United States is providing training, equipment and logistical support for military efforts in Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan to fight the insurgency.”

But South Sudan, flooded with US arms and training, descended into civil war. Noting the importance of oil to the equation, AFRICOM stated that “South Sudan’s government in Juba turned off the flow in early-2012, charging that the Sudanese are siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil (sic).” Also in 2012, US President Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travelled “to the world’s youngest country, … where she and President Kiir discussed security, oil and economic opportunity.”

Years of US meddling culminate in humanitarian disaster

US efforts to create an oil vassal state did not go according to plan. The South’s Kordofan and Unity states remained in conflict, with the African Union trying to mediate. With the northern Sudanese government based in Khartoum attacking the states, the SPLA sent troops to occupy the oilfields. Citing SPLA attacks, the Sudanese Armed Forces annexed Kordofan.

A year later in December 2013, Kiir accused Vice President Machar of attempting a coup. This led to the South Sudan Civil War, in which Machar formed the rival SPLM-In Opposition. The peace of 2015 was ruptured after the SPLM-In Opposition splintered and stoked more internal fighting.

In July 2015, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) reported: “The Obama administration is blunt: the humanitarian disaster now underway is the result of unscrupulous political leaders who have exploited an ethnic conflict that they cannot control.” But the CFR neglected to mention who empowered these corrupt leaders.

China has quietly done what successive US administrations had hoped it would not do: courted South Sudan’s government and invested in the country’s energy. The International Crisis Group has said that, “by 2013, roughly 100 Chinese companies were registered in South Sudan, covering energy, engineering, construction, telecommunications, medical services, hotels, restaurants, and retail.”

Meanwhile, the public suffers the consequences of neocolonial games. South Sudan’s GDP is under $5bn compared to Sudan’s already small $35bn. Extreme poverty is over 60 percent, compared to 25 percent in Sudan. Malnutrition is 12 percent in Sudan and not even measured in South Sudan, though USAID suggests that it could be as high as 50 percent. Infant mortality in South Sudan is 62 deaths per 1,000 live births compared to 41 in Sudan. The republic is suffering under internal power struggles and violence, including a border clash that left 24 dead on January 5, 2022.

Many of these economic disparities and political problems existed while the south was part of Sudan, but after decades of US meddling, there is little light at the end of the tunnel.

What is the target of possible US intervention? There may be some guesses here. 

Libya

On Sept. 11, 2012, US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed by extremists in the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi. Last October, about 200 Marines from the task force also flew to Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily for several weeks after U.S. special operations forces captured a senior al Qaeda figure in Libya triggering unrest. Today Libya is gripped by political turmoil that has left the government struggling to assert its authority over armed groups and Islamists. Libya's oil infrastructure remains the target of protests and shutdowns as former rebels refuse to recognize the state's authority. 

On May 18 the forces loyal to rogue Libyan General Hifter attacked the country’s parliament forcing lawmakers to flee. The assault was allegedly targeted against Islamists who tried to protect the extremist militias now plaguing the nation. The attack was met with resistance from other troops. General Hifter is carrying out an offensive against Islamist militias in Benghazi, the country’s second-largest city in the east. He says the central government and parliament have no mandate and vowed to press on with his operation after authorities called it a coup. Libya’s parliament is divided between Islamist and non-Islamist forces that have had disagreements over government appointments and holding new elections. The new interim prime minister has not yet named a Cabinet.

Nigeria

On Saturday, May 17 French President Francois Hollande hosted a security summit in Paris to discuss the situation in Nigeria after the Muslim terrorist group Boko Haram abducted over 200 schoolgirls in Chibok in northern Nigeria on April 14. The summit was attended by officials from France, the United States, Great Britain, Nigeria itself and former French colonies: Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Benin. The participants expressed readiness to join efforts against Boco Harum. The group reportedly collaborates with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a force operating throughout northwest Africa that is fighting French troops in Mali. AQIM itself has been strengthened by aid from Libyan Islamist militias that Washington and Paris armed and helped put in power during the 2011 NATO war in Libya. US officials participating in the summit openly referred to the Western forces already operating on the ground in order to pressure the Nigerian regime to attack Boko Haram more forcefully. For instance, US under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman noted that the US has an «interagency team» in Nigeria. According to Sherman, the US force in Nigeria is working with French and British forces: «We are making sure that our assets are deployed in a coordinated way».

The US is already conducting surveillance flights over Nigeria. It had sent a team of «advisors» there in the run-up to the Paris summit. The team is based in Abuja and includes officials from the State Department, the Pentagon, the US military’s Africa Command, and the FBI. French, UK, Canadian and Israeli military personnel are already in Nigeria in the capacity of advisers. 

The US has assisted France with logistics and intelligence as Paris launched interventions in Ivory Coast, Mali and the Central African Republic. Extending such wars to Nigeria, a huge country of 169 million people, would signify an large-scale escalation. 

Nigeria is the largest country in Africa. It boasts 174 million of population and the largest gross domestic product on the continent. It is also Africa’s second (after Angola) largest oil producer, the eighth largest world exporter accounting for 5 percent of US oil imports. It is also the fourth largest liquefied natural gas exporter in the world. There have been calls from members of Congress for a more aggressive US intervention, including from Senator Susan Collins (Republican of Maine), who demanded that US Special Forces troops be sent to rescue the girls.

Obama, in an interview with ABC News, suggested that the US intervention against Boko Haram would expand, declaring that «this may be the event that helps to mobilize the entire international community to finally do something against this horrendous organization that perpetrated such a terrible crime».

South Sudan

The United States called on May 14 for an immediate deployment of African troops to safeguard a fragile peace deal reached in Addis Ababa last week by warring sides in South Sudan. Fighting broke out again on May 18 almost immediately after the truce was reached. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, said troops can help ensure that peace holds this time. «We have to work closely with the leaders of the region to make sure that we get IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development in Eastern Africa) troops on the ground, who will be put in the position so that they can monitor the agreement and ensure that anyone who is involved in breaking that agreement will be held responsible», she said.

Washington is seeking a UN resolution «that will allow these troops to deploy as quickly as possible», Thomas-Greenfield noted. The United States, a key backer of South Sudan's push for independence from Khartoum, has poured hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the country since it split from Sudan in 2011. It lobbied intensely for the peace deal.

Among other things Sudan is Beijing’s primary oil source in Africa which accounted for 8 percent of China’s total oil imports (China being the recipient of 78% of total Sudanese exports).

Forces in stand-by mode

The US has intensified military expansion in Africa in recent years. The Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative launched in 2005 was to boost political and military clout. It was incorporated into the United States Africa Command in 2008 with its scope of activity to be tremendously broadened in the following years. Vice-Admiral Robert Moeller, former deputy AFRICOM commander in 2010, «Let there be no mistake. AFRICOM’s job is to protect American lives and promote American interests».

In 2013 alone, AFRICOM conducted joint exercises with fourteen African nations, leading land, sea, and air-based operations carrying out a total of 546 «military activities» which is an average of one and half military missions a day. In 2013, American troops had on or another form of temporary presence in Niger, Uganda, Ghana, Malawi, Burundi, Mauritania, South Africa, Chad, Togo, Cameroon, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and South Sudan.

Opposing China – real reason behind stated goals

In 2013, when trade between the China and Africa soared to a record total of $200 billion including a 44 percent spurt in Chinese direct investment in Africa. US trade with Africa, but only in goods, not services, totaled $85 billion in 2013. Services amounted to about another $11 billion. European trade with Africa reached $137 billion in 2013. China is rapidly challenging US economic hegemony in Africa. Having invested in a variety of sectors from mining and oil, to telecommunications and banking, China has made itself into a viable alternative to the US. All over Africa, the United States has tried to check the growing influence of China. It’s easy to see what’s driving the US policy on the continent. Remembering Bill Clinton «It's the economy, stupid». The planned military interventions are part of larger geopolitical game…

Berlin’s interest in this turbulent, far-off African country is motivated by both economic and geostrategic considerations. Three quarters of Sudan’s oil reserves are located in South Sudan, and the country has borders with Kenya and Uganda – countries that are generally regarded to be pro-Western. Khartoum, meanwhile, occupied an anti-Western position, for which it seems to have paid the price of the country’s partition. You may recall that South Sudanese President Salva Kiir’s first visit was to Tel-Aviv, where he met with the Israeli president, as well as the heads of Israel’s foreign and defence ministries. Subjects under discussion included economic cooperation between Juba and Tel-Aviv, and the opening of a South Sudanese embassy in Israel. Israel’s political and economic presence in East Africa is traditionally strong. Relations between Germany and Israel are collaborative in every way. Uganda and Kenya have always been in Tel-Aviv’s field of vision, since presence in the former meant control over a strategically important position in East Africa, and in the latter ensured transit from Israel to the Indian Ocean. It also enabled Israel to have a backdoor influence on the politics of its enemies among North Africa’s Muslim states – Egypt, Sudan and others. 

A rapprochement between South Sudan and the East African Community, which is also being regarded as a united project of the pro-Western faction, is now in the interests of both Uganda and Kenya. A close cooperation between Juba and the East African Community will bind South Sudan with Kenya and Uganda in a number of ways, while closer relations with an oil-rich region is also arousing genuine interest in these two countries. Juba, unlike Khartoum, does not have access to the sea to transport its oil to the international market. 

Kenya has agreed to let South Sudan use its own ports for the transportation of oil. Furthermore, back in 2005, Kenya announced its intention to open a consulate in South Sudan in order to attract Kenyan companies to South Sudan’s oil market. Military cooperation between Juba and Nairobi is also gaining momentum. The stakes are so high that the Kenyan government has repeatedly expressed its willingness to begin training several thousand South Sudanese police officers, and the Ugandan air force has subjected the positions of those supporting former South Sudanese Vice-President Riek Machar to bombing campaigns (although Kampala denies this). Machar is a member of the Nuer ethnic group, while South Sudanese President Salva Kiir is a member of the Dinka ethnic group. There is a long-standing conflict between these two South Sudanese ethnic groups which emerged fully as soon as Juba obtained its independence from Khartoum. 

Berlin’s policy regarding Sudan should generally be in keeping with the policies of Washington and London, namely: the partition of a formerly united country and the separation of South Sudan should not just mean the separation of a large area with considerable strategic importance from Khartoum, but also a change in the ownership of a significant part of Sudan’s oil resources. In this instance, the interests of Germany, the US and Great Britain are the same – these Western powers are eager to «protect» East Africa from penetration by China… Today, more than half of Sudan’s oil is being exported to the People’s Republic of China, and Chinese workers and engineers in Sudan are no longer an uncommon sight. 

Cooperation between Beijing and Khartoum does not just involve oil, but arms as well. China supplies Sudan with tanks, aircraft, and artillery equipment. The international isolation of Khartoum initiated by three leading Western states (the US, Great Britain and Germany) has pushed Sudan even closer to Beijing, but this does not mean that Beijing is not looking for ways to cooperate with the South Sudanese authorities. It is important for the West to make sure that the oil contracts in South Sudan bypass the Chinese. Despite the fact that Western companies managed to be the first to entrench themselves in South Sudan’s oil market, China’s presence there is becoming increasingly more noticeable. 

It must be admitted that Khartoum gave the West a number of reasons to intervene during the conflict, carrying out policies of Arabisation and Islamisation in South Sudanese provinces inhabited by Christians. Washington, London and Berlin are now positioning themselves as fighters for the rights of the South Sudanese population. In truth, however, prolonged interethnic conflicts are tearing apart many African countries, and far from all of these have been awarded the «good fortune» of becoming an object of concern for Western proponents of democracy. South Sudan was «lucky» because it has oil.

Berlin’s awareness of East Africa is not a new trend in Germany’s foreign policy, but a long-forgotten old one. At the end of the 19th century, German East Africa included Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. Today, these countries are members of the pro-Western East African Community, whose zone of influence is expected to pull in South Sudan. 

However, German experts are not sure whether it is worth Berlin interfering in events in this part of the world. South Sudan is quickly sinking into the abyss of an intertribal war. There is no guarantee that the conflict will not spread to neighbouring countries, with the whole of East Africa plunging into an abyss of drawn-out armed conflicts.

According to the government of South Sudan, Juba, the capital, is tranquil again, the diplomatic missions are secure. (3) But it’s too early to say the situation is fully stabilized. Fighting has renewed in Juba, insurgents captured a number of large cities, for instance Malakal, the capital of Upper Nile State. (4) The town of Mading-Bor, the Jonglei State's capital city, situated in central South Sudan, keeps on changing hands. (5) 

South Sudan has plunged into the quagmire of civil war. The Dinka people are subject to mass slaughter. (6) It is called «ethnic cleansing» in an attempt to avoid using the word «genocide». According to United Nations convention, genocide is the «intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such». It constitutes a legal ground for an intervention of the «international community» and such structures as the International Criminal Court. It also includes a political element – the people of Dinka traditionally support President Salva Kiir, while the Lou Nuer people side with (ousted) Vice-President Riek Machar… 

On December 24 the United Nations Security Council observed the situation in South Sudan and adopted the resolution N 2132 which envisions significant expansion of the United Nations Mission in the country. 

Let’s recall that the state of South Sudan was created on July 9, 2011 after a referendum was held, 98, 83 percent of voters voted for independence. (7) The emergence of the new African state was supported by some definite forces acting formally under the United Nations aegis. For instance, the vote ballots were printed in Great Britain. «International donors» allocated 58 million dollars for the referendum. Finally it was all decided in January 2005 when the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was formally signed by the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). It looked like an internal agreement, but in reality the document was signed by top officials of some European states and then US State Secretary Colin Powell. Technically those were the signatures of «witnesses», but it could not deceive anyone. In its statement on February 9, 2011 the United Nations Security Council emphasized that being sui generis the case set no precedent. It’s hard to believe because such cases have been repeated on and on but the United Nations keeps harping on that all they are all «sui generis». 

Since the very start of its independence South Sudan faced grave security problems. It’s worth to note that the day before the voting the United Nations Security Council adopted the resolution N 1996 establishing the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). The Mission was initially created to last one year, but it was envisaged that it could be prolonged if need be. UNMISS will consist of up to 7,000 military personnel, including military liaison officers and staff officers, up to 900 civilian police personnel, including as appropriate formed units, and an appropriate civilian component, including technical human rights investigation expertise; and further decides to review in three and six months whether the conditions on the ground could allow a reduction of military personnel to a level of 6,000. One of the tasks is to «deter violence including through proactive deployment and patrols in areas at high risk of conflict, within its capabilities and in its areas of deployment, protecting civilians under imminent threat of physical violence, in particular when the Government of the Republic of South Sudan is not providing such security . (8) 

The new United Nations resolution envisages significant surge of the force’s strength from seven to twelve and a half thousand – actually doubling the Mission’s strength. No new units are needed to be brought into Africa to accomplish the tasks set by the UN, the forces are to be transported from the already existing United Nations African missions in Darfur (Sudan), Liberia, Cote D’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

The resolution № 2132 was prepared by the United States. In some aspects it serves as an example of how the forces of the United Nations are used in the interests of the United States of America to provide for the operations of the US armed forces. The matter is that after the last flare-up of violence the United States tried to evacuate its citizens working in the country on its own, but lost a few dozen of servicemen. Now the forces from other African missions are being urgently transported to the country. Of course, it is all done under the guise of protecting South Sudanese civilians, including the evacuation of more than twenty thousand refugees given temporary shelter on the territory of the Juba Mission. The humanitarian problems exist in South Sudan since a long time ago exacerbated by armed clashes between the security forces and non-state armed formations, as well as between ethnic groups. The state of Jonglei is hardest hit. In the period from the beginning of 2013 till the middle of September there were around 18 thousand refugees from Jonglei registered in Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. According to the United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs, at least 265 incidents of violence have taken place since the beginning of 2013 resulting in the death of about one thousand, while around 160 thousand people were added to increase the numbers of already displaced persons. 65 percent of all South Sudanese displaced are the refugees from Jonglei. Besides, around two million people suffer from hunger. The exodus from South Sudan continues (around a quarter of million people totally). 

The country’s troubles and the new flare-up of violence in the middle of December are caused by the activities of armed groups and the interethnic strife. The bulk of armed clashes take place between the Sudan People's Liberation Army and the armed formations led by David Yauyau. At the beginning of July President Salva Kiir reiterated its readiness to declare amnesty for all members of armed groups, but Yauyau rejected the offer. Some groups agreed to accept the conditions offered by the amnesty (the South Sudan Liberation Army and the South Sudan Defense Forces). At present the both formations are in the process of integration into the country’s regular armed forces. Talking about interethnic conflicts, the state of Jonglei is the hotbed of violence. First of all the situation is aggravated due to the fighting between the Lou Nuer and Dinka communities. Hundreds of people lose their lives, children are kidnapped. (9)

On the one hand, the fierce fighting taking place in South Sudan is the further exacerbation of the old strife which never stopped no matter the new state was created. On the other hand, the separation of South Sudan was not the result of armed struggle – it was rather incited by the influence from outside. The West was adroit enough to use the International Criminal Court to blackmail the President of Sudan Omar al Bashir and made him agree to the idea of holding the referendum with the result easily predicted. (10) The separation of oil rich areas becoming the territory of the independent Republic of South Sudan in 2011 never envisaged the policy implemented by South Sudanese President Salva Kiir aimed at terminating oil extraction. (11) He could not get away with it… Princeton Lyman, U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, said clear and purposefully on December 23 that it was President Salva Kiir who is to blame for sparking the violence in South Sudan. (12) It also was not an occasion when learning about the break up of violence, President of South Sudan took away his famous hat which has become his calling card (the present of former United States President George Bush) and changed it for a beret as an element of his military fatigue to don. It means Mr. Kiir perfectly understands where the wind of new war in South Sudan is coming from. 

The Nile Basin is seeing record fragmentation of nation-states by secessionist and other rebel movements, some backed by the United States and its Western allies and others backed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Yet other secessionist groups are backed by regional rivals such as Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, and Sudan.

Ethiopia has announced that its Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project on the Blue Nile will begin diverting the Blue Nile at the end of 2014. Ethiopia’s decision has set off alarm bells down river in Sudan and Egypt, which are both critically dependent on the Nile for drinking water, irrigation, and in the case of Egypt’s Aswan High Dam, electric power. A 1959 agreement between Egypt and Sudan guarantees Egypt 70 percent and Sudan 30 percent of the Nile’s water flow.

Egypt’s government has warned Ethiopia, a historical rival, not to restrict the Nile water flow to the extent that it would adversely affect the Aswan Dam or Egypt’s water supply. Sudan has voiced similar warnings. Cairo and Khartoum are also aware that their mutual enemy, Israel, has close relations with Ethiopia and the Republic of South Sudan, the world’s newest nation. The independence of South Sudan would not have been possible without the backing of Israel’s leading neo-conservative allies in Washington and London.

The White Nile flows from the Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, through Uganda and South Sudan, to Sudan. Egypt and Sudan have also been concerned about Israel’s heavy presence in South Sudan. The South Sudanese secession put tremendous pressure on the future territorial integrity of Sudan, which faces additional Western- and Israeli-backed breakaway movements in Darfur and northeastern Sudan.

Independence for South Sudan was long a goal of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her god-daughter, current U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice. The splitting of Sudan into an Arab Muslim north and a black Christian and animist south was also long a goal of Israel, which yearned for a client state in South Sudan that would be able to squeeze the supply of the Nile's headwaters to Egypt and north Sudan.

South Sudan’s independence was cobbled together so rapidly, its Western sponsors were not even sure, at first, what to call the country. Although South Sudan was finally agreed upon, other proposals were to call the nation the «Nile Republic» or «Nilotia,» which were rejected because of the obvious threatening meaning that such names would send to Cairo and Khartoum.

The names «Cush» or «Kush» were also rejected because of their reference to the land of Cush that appears in the Jewish Bible and the obvious meaning that such a name would have for those who accuse Israel of wanting to expand its borders beyond the borders of the Palestinian mandate. «New Sudan» was also rejected because of implied irredentist claims by South Sudan on the contested oil-rich Abyei region between Sudan and South Sudan.

Egypt has been lending quiet support to Ethiopian and Somali secessionists, which Cairo sees as a counterweight to Ethiopian neo-imperialist designs in the Horn of Africa. Although Ethiopia maintains good relations with the breakaway Republic of Somaliland, Addis Ababa does not want to see Somalia fragmented any further. But that is exactly what is desired by Cairo to keep Ethiopia’s military and revenues preoccupied with an unstable and collapsing neighbor to the east. 

Two other parts of Somalia, Puntland and Jubaland, also spelled Jubbaland, have declared separatist states. Jubaland should not be confused with the capital of South Sudan, Juba, which is being relocated to Ramciel, close to the border with Sudan. However, all this confusion and map redrawing is a result of increasing hydropolitics in the region, as well as the ever-present turmoil caused by the presence of oil and natural gas reserves. The Rahanweyn Resistance Army is fighting for an independent state of Southwestern Somalia. 

Somaliland has its own secessionist movement in the western part of the country, an entity called Awdalland, which is believed to get some support from neighboring Djibouti, the site of the U.S. military base at Camp Lemonier.

Ethiopian troops, supported by the African Union and the United States, are trying to prop up Somalia’s weak Federal government but Somalia’s fracturing continues unabated with Kenya supporting a semi-independent entity called «Azania» in a part of Jubaland in Somalia. 

There are also a number of nascent separatist movements in Ethiopia, many being brutally suppressed by the Ethiopian government with military assistance from the United States, Britain, and Israel. Some of these movements are backed by Eritrea, which, itself, broke away from Ethiopia two decades ago. Chief among the groups are the Ogadenis, who want a Somali state declared in eastern Ethiopia and the Oromo, who dream of an independent Oromia. 

Ethiopia’s ruling dictatorship has tried to placate the Oromos and Ogadenis with peace talks but these moves are seen as window dressing to placate Ethiopia’s benefactors in Washington and London.

However, separatist movements throughout the Horn of Africa took pleasure in the advent of South Sudan because they saw the «inviolability» of colonial-drawn borders, long insisted upon by the Organization of African Unity and the African Union, finally beginning to wither. In fact, that process began with Eritrea’s independence in 1993. Eritrea also faces its own secessionist movement, the Red Sea Afars. The Afars also maintain separatist movements in Ethiopia and Djibouti, the latter having once been known as the French Territory of the Afars and Issas.

In another U.S. ally, Kenya, the homeland of President Barack Obama’s father, Muslims along the coast have dusted off the Sultan of Zanzibar’s 1887 lease to the British East Africa Company of the 10-mile strip of land along the present Indian Ocean coast of Kenya. Legally, when the lease expired the strip was to revert back to control of the sultan. Since the Sultan was ousted in a 1964 coup, the coastal Kenyans argue that the coastal strip was annexed illegally by Kenya and that, therefore, the coastal strip should be the independent Republic of Pwani. The discovery of major oil and natural gas reserves in Uganda and South Sudan has resulted in plans for pipelines to be built to the port of Mombasa, the would-be capital of Pwani on the Indian Ocean. In Kenya, hydropolitics and petropolitics in the Horn of Africa has resulted in Balkanization spilling into Kenya.

In the Himalayas, glacier retreat and rapidly diminishing snow cover are also adding to hydropolitical angst and fueling separatist movements backed by the bigger powers in the region: India, China, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Snow melt is now being seen in some parts of the Himalayas in December and January. Four dams on the Teesta River, which flows from Sikkim through north Bengal to the Brahmaputra basin, have not only affected the geo-political situation in Sikkim, which has nascent independence and Nepali irredentist movements, but also helps to fuel demands for increased autonomy for Gorkhaland, Bodoland, and Assam, an independent Madhesistan in southern Nepal, an ethnic Nepali revolt in southern Bhutan, and consternation in Bangladesh, where the Brahmaputra and Ganges converge to largely support a country with a population of 161 million people. Bangladesh has also seen its share of secessionist movements, including the Bangabhumi Hindu and the Chittagong Hill Tracts movements.

Hydropolitics, petropolitics, and the status quo, like water and oil, do not mix, especially when it comes to the preservation of current borders. Northeastern Africa and South Asia are not unique in this respect.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia have received rather limited recognition after Washington, London, Berlin, and Paris threatened various African and Pacific nations with severe repercussions if they granted Abkhazia and South Ossetia the same diplomatic recognition the West has pressured a number of nations to confer on Kosovo. The United States, like a schoolyard bully who failed to get his way, cut off funding for the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) when it admitted Palestine as a full and sovereign member state.

Similarly, the West, using propagandized celebrities like George Clooney and Angelina Jolie, led the charge for South Sudan’s secession from Sudan. South Sudan is now a virtual colony of Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are financed by the George Soros/U.S. Agency for International Development nexus, which are representing the interests of Western oil companies eager to exploit the new nation’s vast petroleum reserves.

The NATO/Gulf Cooperation Council alliance that intervened to overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi has permitted, without military intervention, the eastern region of Libya, Cyrenaica, declared the “Emirate of Barqa” by Salafist Wahhabi Muslims on the payroll of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to declare its autonomy from the transitional government based in Tripoli. An autonomous or fully-independent Cyrenaica would be a coveted gem for the West since it contains two-thirds of Libya’s oil reserves. The Congress of the People of Cyrenaica, which declared the region’s autonomy, was led, in part, by a Libyan-American. The Cyrenaica Transitional Council is led by Ahmed Zubair al-Senussi, a member of the corrupt royal family ousted by Qaddafi in 1969. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the other Gulf Arab monarchies, as well as Jordan and Morocco, would like nothing more than to see the restoration of at least one Arab monarchy to justify their own regimes as popular stirrings for change have reached all the Arab monarchies.

The United States, Britain, and other Western nations have turned a blind eye on Cyrenaica’s autonomy while paying lip service to appeals from Tripoli that Libya must remain united. There are now calls for autonomy for the Fezzan region of southern Libya, the third part, along with Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, of the old federal kingdom of Libya.

While Washington and its allies are comfortable with independence for Kosovo and South Sudan and autonomy for Cyrenaica and Fezzan, they are as adamant as ever that there will be no recognition for South Ossetia or Abkhazia. Even more astounding, Britain has stymied the independence wishes of its former colony of British Somaliland, which was briefly independent for a few days in 1960 before uniting with the former Italian Somaliland in what would eventually become a failed state. In 1991, after years of being attacked by first, the Soviet, and then the U.S.-supported forces of Somali dictator Mohammed Siad Barre, Somaliland reverted to independence. The United States and Britain failed to recognize Somaliland’s independence and echoed the African Union’s stance that the nation should remain part of Somalia, a failed state. 

Recently, Somaliland’s government, after years of refusing to participate in any talks with the U.S.-supported Transitional National Government in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, agreed to attend a conference on Somalia’s future held in London. Many observers worried that Somaliland walked into a trap and that it will be forced to re-enter a Somalia and be governed by an Anglo-American regime in Mogadishu, which is backed up by U.S., British, and South African mercenary “private security contractors,” U.S., British, and French special forces, and regular ground troops from Uganda and Burundi.

The United States, Britain, and its allies have also shown no compunction to support the independence of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, a member of the African Union, whose territory in Western Sahara, the former Spanish Sahara, has remained illegally occupied by Morocco since 1975. With oil being discovered off the Western Saharan coast, Washington and London have curried favor with the Moroccan occupiers to be granted off-shore drilling rights. Meanwhile, the Sahrawis remain confined to squalid refugee camps on the Moroccan-Algerian border. The camps have also received the added indignation of being referred by the West as fertile recruiting centers for the dubious “Al Qaeda in the Maghreb,” which, like “Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia,” “Boko Haram” in Nigeria, and “Al Shabaab” in Somalia, appears to be a hyped-up propaganda raison d’etre for continued Western military intervention in North Africa, the sub-Sahel region, and across the Red Sea in southern Arabia.

In Pakistan, the West has been covertly supporting Baluchi separatists who have carried out terrorist attacks on Iran. However, the Baluchis are as intent on separating from Iran as they are in secession from Pakistan. Many regional observers have pointed out that an independent Baluchistan would further the interests of the United States, Britain, and Israel in the region. The. U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, a bastion of pro-Israeli sentiment and policy-making in Washington, has held hearings on a possible independent Baluchistan carved out of Pakistan and southeastern Iran. 

Meanwhile, U.S. special operations teams have joined their Indian counterparts in helping to stamp out separatist guerrilla activity in the state of Kashmir, which, in a controversial move unrecognized by Pakistan, became a state of India in 1947. Pakistan argued that Kashmir, with its majority Muslim population, should have joined Pakistan or become independent. In addition to playing favorites in the Kashmir dispute, U.S. special forces have also provided training to and conducted anti-insurgency operations against tribal groups in northeastern India that have fought for independence ever since Britain put the region under Indian control upon Indian independence n 1947. It may come as a surprise to the evangelical neo-conservative power clique in Washington, which continues to dance to the tune of the globalists, that U.S. special forces in northeastern India are helping Indian troops kill Nagas, Mizos, and Meghayala tribal members who are mostly Christian. But such details matter not to the evangelicals who are awash in money thanks to their daily crusades on behalf of Wall Street, the Pentagon, and Israel.

From the Franklin D. Roosevelt to the John F. Kennedy administrations, the United States supported decolonization of European colonies around the world. Beginning with the Lyndon Johnson administration and continuing ever since, the United States has supported the continuation of European colonialism abroad because colonies equal current and potential military bases: from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to Aruba in the Caribbean and Tahiti in the Pacific to Greenland in the Arctic. As a result, the United States and its allies have sought to curtail the work of the United Nation’s decolonization committees and activities.

With U.S. hypocrisy over the issue of self-determination and colonialism at an all-time high pitch, it is time to just simply call for every aspirant nation to become independent; Scotland, Wales, Cornwall (Kernow), Quebec, West Papua, Kurdistan, South Yemen, Brittany, Basque Lands (Euzkadi), Catalonia, Hawai’i, Northern Italy (Padania), Zanzibar, Cabinda, Ogoniland, Casamance, Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia), New Caledonia (Kanaky), Bougainville, Nagaland, Khalistan, Guam, and Martinique. Such independence and a world of 500 nations would help curtail American globalist and imperialist goals. Having large swaths of the interior United States, including the Lakotah Sioux and Navajo nations, become independent and expelling U.S. military bases, including intercontinental ballistic missile silos and nuclear weapons sites, will do more to bring the world to peace than having CIA-influenced and -controlled NGOs and think tanks carve up the world for the selfish goals of Wall Street, the Pentagon, and Israel.

On July 9, the Republic of South Sudan became the newest internationally-recognized nation-state. As the result of a civil war truce and peace deal worked out five years previously, South Sudan and its former master, the Republic of Sudan, independent since 1956, mutually recognized their divorce.

Unlike the “velvet divorce” of the Czech Republic and Slovakia from the former Czechoslovakia, the Sudanese divorce of the largely Muslim north and majority Christian south was all but peaceful. The two sides staked rival claims to border regions such as the oil-rich Abyei and a renewed war between north and south Sudan loomed as the south achieved independence.

The independence gala in the South Sudan capital of Juba was attended by such luminaries – some would call them “interlopers” – as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, U.S. Africa Command chief General Carter Ham, British Foreign Secretary William Hague, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe. The international “glitterati” from the West studiously avoided meeting Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, who faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for war crimes in Darfur.

The snub of Bashir in Juba by the Western leaders points to the essence of international diplomacy today.International relations have become a “reality television show,” where leaders who do not comport to the standards dictated by a consortium of political leaders representing multi-national corporate interests and international “do-gooders” like actor George Clooney and actress Angelina Jolie representing un-elected and well-paid executives of non-government organizations decide what peoples are repressed, what regions deserve independence, and what leaders are “good guys” and “bad guys.” International diplomacy has become a children’s game and the effects have plunged nations and peoples into civil war and strife…

South Sudan was immediately recognized by Sudan, the United States, Russia, China, and other major nations and was quickly voted in by the UN as its 193^rd member.

Although Kosovo, carved out of Serbia by some of the same players that succeeded in breaking South Sudan away from Sudan, was not able to join the UN because of Russian and Chinese permanent member veto threats, the largely Albanian state received the warm embrace of Washington, Paris, London, and Brussels.

Why did South Sudan and Kosovo succeed where other aspirant nations like Palestine, Abkhazia, Western Sahara, and Somaliland have failed? The answer is a very basic capitalistic one: South Sudanhas large oil reserves and Kosovo has large coal and rare earth mineral reserves. Therefore, their independence was nurtured and blessed by the world powers that want to exploit the resources of these new “nations” on behalf of corporate interests. It was decided that for the corporate elites it was more beneficial to deal with newly-independent states than the central governments of Serbia and Sudan. The historical template for such imperialist and corporate backing of secessionists is an old one: the United States backed Panamanian separatists from Colombia to get a better deal on the construction of the Panama Canal and American-backed secessionists in Texas helped to ensure that the vast Mexican territory would eventually become an American state. U.S. shipping companies would benefit greatly from the canal as would U.S. railroad and cattle tycoons from the acquisition of Texas.

Some would argue that East Timor, which achieved independence from Indonesia in 2002 after a bloody war for independence, had nothing to do with natural resources craved by the West but was an outreach by the West to a beleaguered people. However, it was shortly after independence that Australia sought to gain lucrative deals on oil exploration in the Timor Sea, in waters claimed by East Timor. Canberra obviously believed that it could get a better deal from East Timor than from the Indonesian government in Jakarta, with which Australia has had a tortured history.

Somaliland, which declared independence from fractured Somalia in 1991, and briefly enjoyed independence in 1960, after it was granted independence before joining Italian Somaliland, feels it should also be granted independence. Somaliland is a functioning democracy and enjoys de facto independence. However, the African Union maintains that it has a policy that colonial borders should not be altered.

That policy has been overturned by the independence of Eritrea from Ethiopia in 1993 and the recent independence of South Sudan. However, as much as Somaliland has legitimate reasons to be recognized as independent, the axis of NGO’s with overt and hidden agendas – groups like the International Crisis Group, George Soros’s Open Society Institute, International Rescue Committee, as well as celebrities like Clooney and Jolie – have determined that there is nothing Somaliland has to offer the capitalist exploiters, bankers, or heart strings of the constantly-duped citizens of Western countries. Making matters worse for Somaliland is the presence of a large CIA counter-terrorism presence in Mogadishu, a capital largely without a country to govern but one where the U.S. props up a pathetically-ineffective “national unity government.” As long as Washington maintains a love fest for the anarchy known as Somalia, Somaliland has little chance of becoming a full member of the UN.

The same situation exists with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the de facto independence of which is strenuously opposed by the Georgian government. Georgia has used the same lobbying tactics and influence operations that its ally Israel uses to wage a battle against independence and statehood for Palestine. In both cases, Georgia and Israel have received the backing of the same ruling global elites that successfully promoted the independence of Kosovo and South Sudan.

As South Sudan became the 193^rd member state of the UN, Palestine was preparing its own application to become the international organization’s 194^th member. However, Palestine faced a definite veto from the United States in the UN Security Council, which must approve new members without a veto from any of its permanent members. Israel wielded its considerable influence among its international lobby, largely composed of politically- and financially-connected Jewish pressure groups, to stymie the statehood and UN membership aspirations of Israel. The U.S. House of Representatives voted to suspend aid to the Palestinian Authority for pursuing a statehood resolution in the UN General Assembly, where the United States holds no veto power.

On July 11, 104 European Parliament members wrote a letter to Baroness Catherine Ashton, the EU Foreign Affairs High Representative, urging her not to support Palestine’s bid for recognition by the UN. Israel, desperate to mobilize its lobby in the EU Parliament, looked foolish when the motley list of the parliament members signing the letter was closely examined: a Danish member who likes to sing Nazi songs and give the Nazi salute; a British Euro-skeptic who is a lesbian activist; the British Tory father of a journalist for the Rupert Murdoch-owned and scandal-plagued paper, The Sun; a Spanish neo-fascist and proud descendant of a notorious Spanish slave-trader; a British-Sri Lankan who represents the interests of the U.S. far right-wing Heritage Foundation and U.S. Republican Party in both Britain and the EU; a British Tory one-time scholar for the American far-right state-level American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) group; and a Polish member whose main interests in parliamentary committees include Israel and beer.

The sad facts are that, today, the fates of nations and aspirant peoples are no longer determined by tactful and seasoned diplomats but are left to the whims of charlatan politicians, movie performers, and unanswerable executives of NGOs that shill for multinational corporate interests. Diplomacy is not in the purview of modern-day Dag Hammarskjolds, Ralph Bunches, or Lester Pearsons but left to the devices of flirty Susan Rices, publicity-hungry George Clooneys, and circus act parliamentarians eager for their stipends of shekels from Jerusalem’s influence peddlers.

The separatist insurgency in South Sudan dates back to the mid-1950ies, the epoch opened by Sudan's independence. Attempts to settle the conflict failed serially since the time.

The resolution on Sudan's independence from the colonizers was passed on August 16, 1955, and a rebellion driven by the quest for independence broke out in the southern part of the country almost immediately thereafter, on August 18. Sudan acquired some sort of statehood only after the North pledged that the country would be recast into a federation. The official birth date of the Republic of Sudan is January 1, 1956. It is worth noting that the blueprint for the partition of Sudan was authored by the British colonizers in the early XX century. To an extent, the persecution of the South's Christians in Sudan was a reaction to the activity of European missionaries who incited the pro-independence movement in the South.

At the moment the situation in Sudan is shaped by several parallel conflicts which can eventually induce a total fragmentation of the country, while the current government is uniquely open to compromise. The new constitution introduced a federative territorial system and offered South Sudan a broad autonomy. Former leader of the People's Liberation Amy John Garang was appointed vice president of Sudan. The government's consent to the referendum was perhaps the biggest concession ever. On the other hand, the past steps taken by the administration in Sudan are to blame for the irreconcilable character of the popular opposition to the regime. Radical efforts to subdue the Christian population were made in the past. For example, the Islamic Sharia Law observing which is regarded as a private choice even in the majority of undividedly Muslim countries was imposed on the country as a whole in 1983. J. Garang died under suspicious circumstances just 6 months after the appointment.

In fact, almost any country in Africa has a history no less loaded with conflicts than that of Sudan, but still we do not see all of them split via UN-backed referendums. External forces played a bigger role than the internal ones in the developments that led to the divorce in Sudan, and it is fair to say that the country is being partitioned rather than falling apart.

Sudan's president O. Bashir recognized the victory of the supporters of South Sudan independence in the referendum even before the official ballot-counting was complete. The impression is that the government sees no other way of solving the problem but the amputation of the South. The view must be credited with certain logic: Sudan's independence epoch saw dozens of governments, and literally every power transition in Khartoum was attributable to the war with the South, which makes the seemingly radical decision in favor of divorce a form of self-defense for Khartoum's present-day leaders. Getting rid of the non-Muslim South will enable them to put together a real Muslim state without having to deal with an opposition of considerable proportions.

The referendum in Sudan was a bizarre phenomenon from the standpoint of the international law. First, not only the people in Sudan but also Sudanese immigrants in other countries — but only those from South Sudan – were invited to partake. Secondly, southerners living in the North voted in the referendum, but other northerners did not. Within a more common approach, the entire population of a country rather than some part of it is supposed to contribute to decisions affecting everybody.

Behind the UN facade, easily identifiable forces helped a new African country come into being. Even the bulletins for the referendum were printed in Great Britain. International donors reportedly poured $58m into the whole process. Strictly speaking, the independence was a foregone decision in January, 2005 when the comprehensive peace deal in Sudan was sealed. Formally, it was a truce between the government of Sudan and the liberation army and could be perceived as the country's domestic matter, but the corresponding document was somehow penned by then-US Secretary of State C. Powell and several European leaders.

The Abyei province will add further complexity to the problems in Sudan. For the fist time in history, the dispute between a sovereign country's government and insurgents was taken to an international court. The very unprecedented international involvement in Abyei makes the fairness of the solution look dubious. The pro-separatism message will surely be heard in Darfur which is now sandwiched between the crumbling Sudan and the «liberated» Egypt, plus likewise referendums in Mountain Nubia and the Blue Nile loom on the horizon.

Sudan's recent history may be seen from a yet broader perspective. In contrast to most oil exporters, Sudan delivers to the international market not only crude oil but also oil products. Moreover, Bashir's plans for the country included attaining food self-sufficiency. The realistic forecast is that the partition of Sudan will continue.