Sudan......hot or not?

Sudan - Do we need to start packing the warm weather kit ready for another African deployment. Can we cope commiting more Troops to deployments, as Mr 'desperate for the top job' Brown has not ruled out being 'supportive' in sending peacekeepers? The outcome will be quite interesting at a time where Bliar is looking at making yet more cuts in defence.

Better start re-fuelling HMS Ocean again then by the looks of it!

Comments??

 

Are the septics going? Is there large quantities of oil? Have the Sudanese got Melons Of Mass Deception?

If not, we will send a troop of medics, a 3 Tonner and a section of The East Riding Rifles, Underwater Basket Weaving Team.

Better start refueling a small fishing boat from Grimsby.

 

Hered on the radio today some bigwig saying

"send in the UN cause their very quick at sorting thease things out"

nearly fell of my chair laughing

 

surley you're not mocking that august organisation who's rapid intervention has forestalled wars in.....

er...

I meant helped calm down situations in.....

er...

brought an early return to normal democracy and facilitated the removal of EU/NATO/UK troops from....

er...

wibble...

gnarr....

Fcuk it, they are shite!

 

And taken over 25 years to broker a peace treaty between two NATO members... and are still failing at even that task.

 

Yagoddit - check this from today's << Mirror>>
A CRY IN THE WILDERNESS

Anton Antonowicz


THEY call this country the new Rwanda. Sudan is now officially "suffering the worst humanitarian disaster in the world".

The international community is beginning to wake up to this catastrophe - Britain yesterday added £28million to the newly launched disaster appeal.

But the situation here is already unimaginably desperate.

At the overflowing refugee camps, food is running out, drinking water is scarce and there are outbreaks of cholera and diarrhoea.

As you approach, the stench comes first. Piles of rotting garbage at the far end of town. Just beyond the fetid mess, the camp, shimmering in the heat, stretching three miles wide and a mile deep.

This is Abu Shouk, the plastic-sheeted home to 40,000 people. Abu Shouk, "House of Thorns", is one of many such camps marking a vast tragedy. The settlement was set up late last year. Numbers have grown continuously. And with them, increasing starvation. The recognised "critical level" of child malnutrition is 14 per cent. Here, they say it is 40 per cent.

It is difficult to know for sure. A government minder stops our visit to a feeding centre for starving babies after only two minutes. He constantly refers our movements to his bosses by mobile phone. We are not expected to see too much, far less report it.

Yet people crowd round. One elderly lady, Ikseinna Hassan, says her husband, son and grandson have been killed. Her daughter-in-law raped. Now she is left with four children to rear.

Zahara Yahya is pushed forward. She is four years old and an orphan. Her parents were murdered a month ago. She stands quietly, then, suddenly, she throws back her head and emits a scream - long, curdling, hopeless.

Another voice crying in the wilderness. One among more than a million men, women and children driven into desolation.

According to the United Nations, 300,000 of those voices will be silenced for ever by the end of the year. A further 750,000 could perish in their wake. But theirs are voices drowned by the "habub" - the desert winds.

This is Darfur, no further from Khartoum than the distance from London to Glasgow. But there are no real roads, no railway linking it to the nation's capital and its markets, gold-laden jewellers and uniformed schoolchildren.

In Darfur, nomad Arab goat and camel-herders meet African farmers. Ethnic tensions have existed for centuries and now there are accusations of genocide.

But this is not the genocide of a Nazi holocaust or the mass extermination of Rwanda. Like the Sahara sands, this killing has been a creeping thing. Little by little, village by village.

In any case the Sudanese government may dismiss the charge, claiming the tragedy has been caused by local armed gangs.

But it is far more sinister and flies in the face of the UN Genocide Convention which obliges us to punish, but also prevent, the crime of genocide. According to the UN: "This is the greatest humanitarian tragedy in the world today." And men have allowed it to happen.

The tragedy began last year, when rebels started attacking military installations, accusing the Khartoum government of arming Arab militias. They also claimed on behalf of its marginalised, desperately poor people to be fighting for a larger share of Sudan's oil and agricultural wealth.

Peace talks were agreed. But this week, despite the pleas of Kofi Annan, Colin Powell and the UK government - Sudan's second-largest donor - they foundered. All that is left is the reality of choking misery.

It has a clear, consistent shape, created by a repeated method. First, the gun-ships of the Sudanese air force, dropping bombs and strafing towns. The people scatter.

And then the horsemen, backed by troops, charge. These are "Janjaweed" - "the mounted men", armed with AK-47s.

They encircle the villages, torch the flimsy homes, kill the men, rape the women and girls. They rustle the cattle, steal the grain. Some of the boys they also rape or enslave. And the terrorised run. First as families, then as groups, finally en masse. Half - according to estimates - make it to the camps bordering townships. The rest seek shelter in the bush. At least 30,000 people have already died. The true figure is unknown.

YET still Khartoum says this is not genocide. It says it is taking steps to rein in the horsemen, the regional troops, the armed militias.

It claims, with some justification, that atrocities have also been committed by the rebels.

It cites cases where they have raped, killed and poured acid, chili and petrol into the mouths, ears and noses of victims. It says many terrible things. Many are true.

But then you enter camps like this one, where Zahara was orphaned by those Janjaweed. Where government officials dog your every step. And where, despite this, the people come forward to tell their story.

The majority of Darfur's suffering come from three tribes - the Fur, the Massaleit and the Zaghawa.

It is impossible in this ancient land, where African and Arab blood has so long mixed, to say precisely who is who. Nearly all here are Muslim. But one group herd, the other plant. And it is the latter who are languishing in tragedy.

Fewer than one in seven are men. Where are the teenage boys? What has happened to the men? Some may have joined the rebels, some may be working abroad. But the larger conclusion is obvious.

"The helicopters came and shot through the village," says widow Hawa al-Bakr Haroun. "My husband and 10-year-old son were killed in seconds. I walked for seven days until I got here with my two daughters."

Asha Sadimi adds: "These Janjaweed, these troops with them, come to kill the men and the boys of fighting age. Then they rape.

"I am 15. They raped me and now I am pregnant. What can I do? I do not want this baby. And my village will not have it. You know it will be left to starve."

Asha was raped when she went to the waadi, or stream, to fetch water. It is a known risk. The Janjaweed wait there.

If the men or boys went, they could be killed. If the women or girls went, they risked rape or a beating. Asha received both.

IN such circumstances it is easy to understand why the people are reluctant to leave these "Houses of Thorns". Of course, there is safety in numbers. But there is also the threat of other pestilence.

The rains have come. And with it the threat of diarrhoea, cholera, malaria. Polio has broken out and forecasts say a 4,000-mile wide swathe of locusts is heading their way.

The World Food Programme says it only has half the prepositioned food supplies necessary. It must therefore resort to air-drops... the last resort, the most expensive, the least exact.

And nearly nine out of 10 of these homeless people of Darfur have no shelter. Three-quarters still have no access to clean water. And half - those sheltering in the bush - have no food but wild plants.

Even if they were to return and try to farm, they have no tools, no seeds. Everything is scarce.

These are the basics of life for which this week the major charities are appealing. These are the things which make up the world's greatest humanitarian crisis.

And meanwhile, governments put pressure on Khartoum. They are sending monitors to probe cease-fire violations. They threaten sanctions, they talk of a peace-keeping force. They allude to war crimes.

They hear Sudan's leaders saying they have been misjudged. If that's so, they must prove it - by responding to the cries of their people.

They are not far away. No further than Glasgow to London.

TO make a donation towards the Sudan appeal, call the Disaster Emergency Committee hotline on 0870 60 60 900 or visit www.dec.org.uk
------------------------------ends------------------------------------

Anyone here involved in the camp at Brazda (SP) ? This is one camp with forty thousand people in it......ask the QM how much water per day they consume.how many tonnes of food are required every day to sustain that many people.....

Coverage like this ( and we haven't seen much TV coverage yet...but we will) produces political pressure UPWARDS.....and I have no doubt that the Armed Forces will be asked to respond. Why should we?
'Cos that's what we're paid to do.....
Why Britain? - Ex colonial power - just as France is in neighbouring Chad

My guess is - a mixed Mil/Civ European Intervention Force - French infrastructure based in Chad - Op Artemis Deux.....acclimatised Brits draw down from the Sandbox and redeploy!


( you heard it here first....)

Le Chevre

 

Going in to sort out that kind of mess is something I could live with. However, it's the type of conflict that needs manpower and can't be won by technology. You can't deal with a bunch of scrotes on horseback with AK-47s using network enabled warfare, strategic ISTAR assets, effects based warfare and all the other buzzwords. Try and get inside the decision cycle of that lot ? IPB tactical overlays and decision templates ? Don't make me laugh.

What you do need are good motivated properly equipped infantry who can operate independently at all levels of command. A corporal's war in other words. And lots of them to cover the areas involved.

Pity TCH is reducing our capability for such ops isn't it ? But he said we'd be more effective ...

 

Send in the Germans and Frogs - their armies are just sitting around doing nothing!

Even the soft cock foreign ministers of those two countries shouldn't be able to find a reason to weasel out of a deployment such as is needed in Sudan.

There's not even an evil despot paying `oil for food' money into their bank accounts this time.

 

sounds like Op keeling to Sierra Leone last year

 

Is it just me but do developing nations not seem to be a drain on every developed nations resource? After all we have had a substantial amount of our tax money (and it IS OUR money) leave these shores each year and for what........yet again we appear to be on the edge of a humanitarian crisis........I too am on the edge of a crisis ..my beer fridge is running low..............I however don't annually receive several million pounds a year from one country alone to stock it. Now it seems likely that not only will I have to subsidise a corrupt politicians lifestyle.I will be expected to see him go to Brussels and earn pots!!! But back to Sudan...........Having only just got back from one hot sunny place and said hello to family; will I be really chuffed to get fecked off to another? My job puts me very much in the frame and so I can cofidently state............not feckin likely

 

There's a pattern developing here...

Sierra Leone - Ex colony
Kuwait - Ex bit of the Empire
Balknas - once a protectorate of the Empire
Iraq - ex Colony
Cyprus - Colony
Afghanistan - bit of the Empire
Sudan - was once a bit of the Empire too.

Are we collecting the Empire again, but in an underhand, slightly PC way? If so, can I look out my Red Tunic, blanco my webbing and wear a Piff Helmet?

Now where did I put that Lee Enfield..?

 

NOW you're talking.....first class killing machine......should never have ditched .303....bloody Belgians....bloody septics an' their surplus Vietnam puny 5.56 mm....[off/rant]

Le Chevre
--

 

Bloody .303 whimp calibre !

Should never have ditched .577 !

 

No stuff that, it's a mediocre rd.

Bring back the .75 !