CBS says Israel, not US, behind Sudan strike

More on that alleged air strike in Sudan targeting weapons shipments to Gaza:

– The Sudan Tribune said yesterday it was the US, but today that it’s Israel based on a report by the American TV network CBS.

– Haaretz carries the CBS story and says it’s part of the MOU on arms smuggling inked between the US and Israel at the end of Operation Cast Lead. The Haaretz article adds:

Meanwhile, in May, an international conference is scheduled to take place in Ottawa, the third of its kind since the end of Operation Cast Lead, which will discuss how to prevent arms smuggling from Iran to the Gaza Strip.

In addition to host Canada, Britain, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Denmark, the U.S. and Israel will also take part.

Immediately after the conference a “war game” is scheduled to take place in Washington, with the participation of security officials and diplomats from the countries involved. The “war game” will practice a scenario of foiling arms smuggling from Iran to the Gaza Strip.

The most recent conference took place in London a week ago and the countries cooperating in blocking the arms smuggling from Iran formulated a joint plan of operations. The plan includes the signing of a series of bilateral agreements with countries situated along the path of the smugglers, as well as countries whose commercial fleets carry cargo from Iran elsewhere.

One interesting thing in the Sudan Tribune article is that it said something about the planes coming from Djibouti. That would put the French on the suspect list too!

At least it now appears that an air strike did happen (although casualty reports are around 40, not 300) – and confirms the reports from intelligence circles that the smuggling route for Hamas’ weapons is indeed from or through Sudan, through Egypt (a whole other story: how do they keep under the radar, especially in Sinai?), possibly originating from the horn of Africa.

al-Shorouk’s story on secret Sudan raids

The relatively new Egyptian newspaper al-Shorouk has been making some news yesterday, reporting that the US air force had been engaged in a series of attacks against convoys of trucks carrying arms in Eastern Sudan. The destination of the trucks, apparently, was Gaza via Sinai. Needless to say this is a huge story, not only because it would appear to confirm allegations that Hamas is obtaining Iranian-purchased arms via Sudan (and probably originally Djibouti) and that they are being smuggled through Sinai and the Rafah tunnels. It followed up on the story today alleging that US Air Force raids had claimed 300 lives.

The reason we’ve never heard about any of this, apparently, is that the US is not advertising the operations, the al-Bashir regime in Khartoum has declared a media blackout, and Egypt is respecting the blackout but keeping a close eye since this involves major arms traffic (it’s an old route, once used by the French poet Rimbaud) going through its territory. Today al-Shorouk said that an Egyptian intelligence agent visited the area to verify the issue.

I’ve been talking about this with a few people who closely follow the news yesterday and we’re all rather skeptical at this point. Some of the Egyptian press (not necessarily al-Shorouk though, as far as I know) has a bad reputation for pulling things out of thin air or basing them on unreliable disinformation websites like Debka. This would be a huge, world scoop if it turns out to be true, involving so many of the region’s hottest issues: arms trade, illegal US operations, Hamas’ supply line, Iran, Sudan and its recently indicted president. The story also assumes that a convoy of trucks carrying weapons (presumably the Grad rockets Hamas is launching against Israel) are able to make their way through Egypt, which seems impossible without the cooperation of the government or serious wasta up high. (That being said, drugs use the same route, and small arms did come from Sudan during the Islamist insurrection of the 1980s and 1990s.)

So basically, either al-Shorouk got it wrong, or it has revealed the first secret military actions of the Obama administration to control the arms smuggling to Gaza issue – as the Bush administration had promised Israel in the MOU it signed in mid-January. I’m a skeptic, but I’ll be watching how this develops.

The teddy bear scandal

Needless to say, this is complete bull and an obvious and pathetic attempt by the barbaric Sudanese government to get another negotiating card as it heads into yet another round of talks on Darfur and the South. Memo to the Mufti of Egypt, Sheikh al-Azhar and the Muslim Brotherhood: now’s the time to speak up against this kind of politicization of Islam that embarrasses us all.

Despite her colleagues insisting it was an innocent mistake, Sudan’s deputy justice minister confirmed yesterday that a charge had been laid. “The investigation has been completed and the Briton Gillian was charged under article 125 of the penal code,” said Abdel Daim Zamrawi, speaking to the official Sudan news agency in Khartoum. “The punishment for this is jail, a fine and lashes. It is up to the judge to determine the sentence.”

Some analysts saw ulterior motives. There are tensions between Britain and Sudan over the conflict in Darfur. In a Guardian interview this month, President Omar al-Bashir expressed anger at the threat of UK sanctions against Sudan if peace talks failed.

Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, a prominent peace activist in Khartoum, said: “This was an opportunity for the government to distract people from the main issues in Sudan: the problems between the authorities in the north and south of the country, the conflict in Darfur and the question of letting in United Nations peacekeepers.”

There were reports yesterday of pamphlets being circulated in Khartoum calling on people to protest against the teacher after Friday prayers. But many people seemed to take her side. Muhammad Kamal Aldeen Muhammad, a 20-year-old student, said it was clear that she had not intended to insult the prophet. “All she was doing was trying to help her students. The government is looking at this purely from an Islamic perspective.”

[From British teacher charged with insulting Islam over teddy bear’s name | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited]

Candlelight vigil to mark Sudanese refugees massacre

Activists are holding a candle light vigil, Friday 29 December, 6pm, in front of the UNHCR office in Mohandessin, to mark the first the anniversary of the massacre of Sudanese refugees on the hands of the Egyptian Interior Ministry’s Central Security Forces.

وق�ة بالشموع �ي ذكري مذب�ة اللاجئين السودانيين

Blogger Nora Younis witnessed the atrocity last year, and wrote her testimony here…

Good and bad media news from Sudan

The recent beheading of a newspaper editor in Sudan is horrible news — but really what do you expect from a regime that has perpetuated one of Africa’s longest and bloodiest civil war and continues to engage in ethnic cleansing in Darfur?

Masked gunmen bundled Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed, editor-in-chief of the private daily Al-Wifaq, into a car outside his home in east Khartoum late Tuesday. Police found his severed head next to his body today in the south of the capital. His hands and feet were bound, according to a CPJ source and news reports.

Mohammed Taha had previously angered Islamists by running an article about the Prophet Muhammad. He had also written critically about the political opposition and armed groups in Sudan’s western Darfur region, according to press reports. No group has claimed responsibility for the killing, Reuters reported.

Mohammed Taha, 50, was an Islamist and former member of the National Islamic Front. But in May last year, he was detained for several days, his paper was closed for three months, and fined 8 million Sudanese pounds (US$3,200), after he offended the country’s powerful Islamists by republishing an article from the Internet that questioned the ancestry of the Prophet Muhammad. Demonstrators outside the courthouse demanded he be sentenced to death for blasphemy. Sudan is religiously conservative and penalizes blasphemy and insulting Islam with the death penalty.

A crackdown on the press seems to have intensified over the past year, although Sudan had until then a lively and diverse press (even if it was mostly not free.)

On the bright side, Chicago Tribune correspondent Paul Salopek, who had been charged with espionage, has been released thanks to the efforts of New Mexico’s governor:

EL FASHER, Sudan, Sept. 8 — Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Salopek said from a Sudanese prison Friday night that the government would soon release him and two Chadian colleagues after a 34-day confinement on charges of espionage and producing “false news.”

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir agreed to release Salopek after meeting with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital. The three men are expected to be freed Saturday, Richardson’s office said in a statement.

Salopek, a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, was arrested Aug. 6 while working on a story for National Geographic magazine about the Sahel region that runs along the southern edge of the Sahara.

Sudan charges Paul Salopek with espionage

Just after those Fox News journalists were released in Gaza, I heard that twice Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Paul Salopek has been charged with espionage in Sudan. I had the opportunity to meet Paul once, around the time Iraq was invaded. He was an extremely humble and smart journalist (a rare combination in this profession) and we had a long talk about sub-Saharan Africa, where he reported from for years, and our common love for Ryszard Kapucinski’s books. At the time he was coming back from a sabbatical running his family’s cattle farm in Mexico.

I realize that this isn’t exactly the worse thing happening in Sudan — hopefully this will be one area where US policy will be a force for good in the region — but let’s hope he and the people arrested with him (two Chadians, who are going to have a tough time considering the current tension between Chad and Sudan) will make it out of this mess.

AP story after the jump.
Continue reading Sudan charges Paul Salopek with espionage

The cost of wanting to be white

A crave for skin-lightening cosmetics in Sudan is causing a rise of women with skin problems:

Millions of women throughout Africa use creams and soaps containing chemicals, like hydroquinone, to lighten the color of their skin. But the creams can cause long-term damage.

Dermatologists say prolonged use of hydroquinone and mercury-based products, also found in some creams, destroys the skin’s protective outer layer. Eventually the skin starts to burn, itch or blister, becomes extremely sensitive to sunlight and then turns even blacker than before.

Prolonged use can damage the nerves or even lead to kidney failure or skin cancer and so prove fatal.

“It’s a very bad problem here. It sometimes kills the patient … It’s bad, bad news,” said a doctor at a Khartoum hospital. He said the number of women coming to the dermatology department with problems caused by skin-whitening treatments had grown to at least one in four of all dermatology patients.

This attitude about skin color is common everywhere from Morocco to India, as far as I can tell. Probably beyond.