Sunday, June 10, 2007
Thursday, June 7, 2007
THIS PHOTOGRAPH SHOWING A STARVING SUDANESES CHILD BEING STALKING BY A VULTURE!
The Ultimate in Unfair
War doesn't determine who is right, war determines who is left.
– Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), English philosopher, author, 1950 Nobel Prize-winner in Literature
This photograph showing a starving Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture won Kevin Carter the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.
Photographer Haunted by Horror of His Work
Obituary: Kevin Carter 1960 - 1994
Johannesburg - Kevin Carter, the South African photographer whose image of a starving Sudanese toddler stalked by a vulture won him a Pulitzer Prize this year, was found dead on Wednesday night, apparently a suicide, police said yesterday. He was 33. The police said Mr Carter's body and several letters to friends and family were discovered in his pick-up truck, parked in a Johannesburg suburb. An inquest showed that he had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Mr Carter started as a sports photographer in 1983 but soon moved to the front lines of South African political strife, recording images of repression, anti-apartheid protest and fratricidal violence. A few davs after winning his Pulitzer Prize in April, Mr Carter was nearby when one of his closest friends and professional companions, Ken Oosterbroek, was shot dead photographing a gun battle in Tokoza township.
Friends said Mr Carter was a man of tumultuous emotions which brought passion to his work but also drove him to extremes of elation and depression. Last year, saying he needed a break from South Africa's turmoil, he paid his own way to the southern Sudan to photograph a civil war and famine that he felt the world was overlooking.
His picture of an emaciated girl collapsing on the way to a feeding centre, as a plump vulture lurked in the background, was published first in The New York Times and The Mail & Guardian, a Johannesburg weekly. The reaction to the picture was so strong that The New York Times published an unusual editor's note on the fate of the girl. Mr Carter said she resumed her trek to the feeding centre. He chased away the vulture.
Afterwards, he told an interviewer, he sat under a tree for a long time, "smoking cigarettes and crying". His father, Mr Jimmy Carter laid last night: "Kevin always carried around the horror of the work he did." - The New York Times
Source: Sydney Morning Herald Saturday 30 July 1994
What are the odds the little girl is alive today? Not very high, I'd say. If she is alive, what quality of life is she likely to have? She almost certainly has permanent damage from her period of starvation during crucial development, both before and after birth. It is easy to criticise Kevin Carter. Why? Because he took a photo of one starving child among thousands? Let those who send all their spare cash to the needy cast the first stone...
The Life and Death of Kevin Carter
by Scott MacLeod
As Time's Johannesburg bureau chief for the past five years, Scott MacLeod has seen more than his share of tragedy. But nothing prepared him for the devastating news in July that a colleague, 33-year-old South African photojournalist Kevin Carter, had killed himself. Carter was famous in South Africa for his fearless coverage of deadly township violence, and he had become internationally known for his Pulitzer prizewinning photo of a vulture coolly eyeing an emaciated Sudanese child struggling toward a feeding station. "Few journalists saw as much violence and trauma as he did," says MacLeod. Shocked by Carter's suicide, MacLeod determined "to understand as best I could the complexities behind his tragic end."
The result is this week's unusual tale of a troubled man's life and death. In any given issue of Time, we include, of course, many stories that are driven by news headlines. Occasionally we go back to a seemingly small event of months ago, briefly noted at the time, that strikes us as ripe with human drama and moral implications, worthy of detailed digging and sober reflection. The suicide of Kevin Carter was such an event. In researching the article, MacLeod interviewed Carter's family, close friends and colleagues, as well as experts on suicide; in the process he encountered several other journalists in pursuit of the mystery of Carter's self-destruction. But the subject eluded easy conclusions and assumptions.
MacLeod sees Carter's story as representative of a darker side of middle-class white South Africa and as a warning about the lingering effects of apartheid on all of that country's people. "The lives of some whites too were disrupted and even destroyed by the social experiment," he notes. "I wanted to show that side of the apartheid story as well."
Elizabeth Valk Long
President, Time Domestic
Johannesburg - Visiting Sudan, a little-known photographer took a picture that made the world weep. What happened afterward is a tragedy of another sort. The image presaged no celebration: a child barely alive, a vulture so eager for carrion. Yet the photograph that epitomised Sudan's famine would win Kevin Carter fame - and hopes for anchoring a career spent hounding the news, free-lancing in war zones, waiting anxiously for assignments amid dire finances, staying in the line of fire for that one great picture. On May 23, 14 months after capturing that memorable scene, Carter walked up to the dais in the classical rotunda of Columbia University's Low Memorial Library and received the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. The South African soaked up the attention. "I swear I got the most applause of anybody," Carter wrote back to his parents in Johannesburg. "I can't wait to show you the trophy. It is the most precious thing, and the highest acknowledgment of my work I could receive."
Carter was feted at some of the most fashionable spots in New York City. Restaurant patrons, overhearing his claim to fame, would come up and ask for his autograph. Photo editors at the major magazines wanted to meet the new hotshot, dressed in his black jeans and T shirts, with the tribal bracelets and diamond-stud earring, with the war-weary eyes and tales from the front lines of Nelson Mandela's new South Africa. Carter signed with Sygma, a prestigious picture agency representing 200 of the world's best photojournalists. "It can be a very glamorous business," says Sygma's US director, Eliane Laffont. "It's very hard to make it, but Kevin is one of the few who really broke through. The pretty girls were falling for him, and everybody wanted to hear what he had to say."
There would be little time for that. Two months after receiving his Pulitzer, Carter would be dead of carbon-monoxide poisoning in Johannesburg, a suicide at 33. His red pickup truck was parked near a small river where he used to play as a child; a green garden hose attached to the vehicle's exhaust funneled the fumes inside. "I'm really, really sorry," he explained in a note left on the passenger seat beneath a knapsack. "The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist."
How could a man who had moved so many people with his work end up a suicide so soon after his great triumph? The brief obituaries that appeared around the world suggested a morality tale about a person undone by the curse of fame. The details, however, show how fame was only the final, dramatic sting of a death foretold by Carter's personality, the pressure to be first where the action is, the fear that his pictures were never good enough, the existential lucidity that came to him from surviving violence again and again - and the drugs he used to banish that lucidity. If there is a paramount lesson to be drawn from Carter's meteoric rise and fall, it is that tragedy does not always have heroic dimensions. "I have always had it all at my feet," read the last words of his suicide note, "but being me just fit up anyway."
First, there was history. Kevin Carter was born in 1960, the year Nelson Mandela's African National Congress was outlawed. Descended from English immigrants, Carter was not part of the Afrikaner mainstream that ruled the country. Indeed, its ideology appalled him. Yet he was caught up in its historic misadventure. His devoutly Roman Catholic parents, Jimmy and Roma, lived in Parkmore, a tree-lined Johannesburg suburb - and they accepted apartheid. Kevin, however, like many of his generation, soon began to question it openly. "The police used to go around arresting black people for not carrying their passes," his mother recalls. "They used to treat them very badly, and we felt unable to do anything about it. But Kevin got very angry about it. He used to have arguments with his father. "Why couldn't we do something about it? Why didn't we go shout at those police?"
Though Carter insisted he loved his parents, he told his closest friends his childhood was unhappy. As a teenager, he found his thrills riding motorcycles and fantasized about becoming a race-car driver. After graduating from a Catholic boarding school in Pretoria in 1976, Carter studied pharmacy before dropping out with bad grades a year later. Without a student deferment, he was conscripted into the South African Defense Force (SADF), where he found upholding the apartheid regime loathsome. Once, after he took the side of a black mess-hall waiter, some Afrikaans-speaking soldiers called him a kaffir-boetie ("nigger lover") and beat him up. In 1980 Carter went absent without leave, rode a motorcycle to Durban and, calling himself David, became a disk jockey. He longed to see his family but felt too ashamed to return. One day after he lost his job, he swallowed scores of sleeping pills, pain-killers and rat poison. He survived. He returned to the SADF to finish his service and was injured in 1983 while on guard duty at air force headquarters in Pretoria. A bomb attributed to the ANC had exploded, killing 19 people. After leaving the service, Carter got a job at a camera supply shop and drifted into journalism, first as a weekend sports photographer for the Johannesburg Sunday Express. When riots began sweeping the black townships in 1984, Carter moved to the Johannesburg Star and aligned himself with the crop of young, white photojournalists who wanted to expose the brutality of apartheid - a mission that had once been the almost exclusive calling of South Africa's black photographers. "They put themselves in face of danger, were arrested numerous times, but never quit. They literally were willing to sacrifice themselves for what they believed in," says American photojournalist James Nachtwey, who frequently worked with Carter and his friends. By 1990, civil war was raging between Mandela's ANC and the Zulu-supported Inkatha Freedom Party. For whites, it became potentially fatal to work the townships alone. To diminish the dangers, Carter hooked up with three friends - Ken Oosterbroek of the Star and free-lancers Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva - and they began moving through Soweto and Tokoza at dawn. If a murderous gang was going to shoot up a bus, throw someone off a train or cut up somebody on the street, it was most likely to happen as township dwellers began their journeys to work in the soft, shadowy light of an African morning. The four became so well known for capturing the violence that Living, a Johannesburg magazine, dubbed them "the Bang-Bang Club."
Even with the teamwork, however, cruising the townships was often a perilous affair. Well-armed government security forces used excessive firepower. The chaotic hand-to-hand street fighting between black factions involved AK-47s, spears and axes. "At a funeral some mourners caught one guy, hacked him, shot him, ran over him with a car and set him on fire," says Silva, describing a typical encounter. "My first photo showed this guy on the ground as the crowd told him they were going to kill him. We were lucky to get away."
Sometimes it took more than a camera and camaraderie to get through the work. Marijuana, known locally as dagga, is widely available in South Africa. Carter and many other photojournalists smoked it habitually in the townships, partly to relieve tension and partly to bond with gun-toting street warriors. Although he denied it, Carter, like many hard-core dagga users, moved on to something more dangerous: smoking the "white pipe," a mixture of dagga and Mandrax, a banned tranquiliser containing methaqualone. It provides an intense, immediate kick and then allows the user to mellow out for an hour or two.
By 1991, working on the dawn patrol had paid off for one of the Bang-Bang Club. Marinovich won a Pulitzer for his September 1990 photographs of a Zulu being stabbed to death by ANC supporters. That prize raised the stakes for the rest of the club - especially Carter. And for Carter other comparisons cropped up. Though Oosterbroek was his best friend, they were, according to Nachtwey, "like the polarities of personality types. Ken was the successful photographer with the loving wife. His life was in order." Carter had bounced from romance to romance, fathering a daughter out of wedlock. In 1993 Carter headed north of the border with Silva to photograph the rebel movement in famine-stricken Sudan. To make the trip, Carter had taken a leave from the Weekly Mail and borrowed money for the air fare. Immediately after their plane touched down in the village of Ayod, Carter began snapping photos of famine victims. Seeking relief from the sight of masses of people starving to death, he wandered into the open bush. He heard a soft, high-pitched whimpering and saw a tiny girl trying to make her way to the feeding centre. As he crouched to photograph her, a vulture landed in view. Careful not to disturb the bird, he positioned himself for the best possible image. He would later say he waited about 20 minutes, hoping the vulture would spread its wings. It did not, and after he took his photographs, he chased the bird away and watched as the little girl resumed her struggle. Afterward he sat under a tree, lit a cigarette, talked to God and cried. "He was depressed afterward," Silva recalls. "He kept saying he wanted to hug his daughter."
After another day in Sudan, Carter returned to Johannesburg. Coincidentally, the New York Times, which was looking for pictures of Sudan, bought his photograph and ran it on 26 March 1993. The picture immediately became an icon of Africa's anguish. Hundreds of people wrote and called the Times asking what had happened to the child (the paper reported that it was not known whether she reached the feeding centre); and papers around the world reproduced the photo. Friends and colleagues complimented Carter on his feat. His self-confidence climbed.
Carter quit the Weekly Mail and became a free-lance photojournalist - an alluring but financially risky way of making a living, providing no job security, no health insurance and no death benefits. He eventually signed up with the Reuter news agency for a guarantee of roughly $2,000 a month and began to lay plans for covering his country's first multiracial elections in April. The next few weeks, however, would bring depression and self-doubt, only momentarily interrupted by triumph. The troubles started on 11 March. Carter was covering the unsuccessful invasion of Bophuthatswana by white right-wing vigilantes intent on propping up a black homeland, a showcase of apartheid. Carter found himself just feet away from the summary execution of right-wingers by a black "Bop" policeman. "Lying in the middle of the gunfight," he said, "I was wondering about which millisecond next I was going to die, about putting something on film they could use as my last picture."
His pictures would eventually be splashed across front pages around the world, but he came away from the scene in a funk. First, there was the horror of having witnessed murder. Perhaps as importantly, while a few colleagues had framed the scene perfectly, Carter was reloading his camera with film just as the executions took place. "I knew I had missed this f--- shot," he said subsequently. "I drank a bottle of bourbon that night."
At the same time, he seemed to be stepping up his drug habit, including smoking the white pipe. A week after the Bop executions, he was seen staggering around while on assignment at a Mandela rally in Johannesburg. Later he crashed his car into a suburban house and was thrown in jail for 10 hours on suspicion of drunken driving. His superior at Reuter was furious at having to go to the police station to recover Carter's film of the Mandela event. Carter's girlfriend, Kathy Davidson, a schoolteacher, was even more upset. Drugs had become a growing issue in their one-year relationship. Over Easter, she asked Carter to move out until he cleaned up his life.
With only weeks to go before the elections, Carter's job at Reuter was shaky, his love life was in jeopardy and he was scrambling to find a new place to live. And then, on 12 April 1994, the New York Times phoned to tell him he had won the Pulitzer. As jubilant Times foreign picture editor Nancy Buirski gave him the news, Carter found himself rambling on about his personal problems. "Kevin!" she interrupted, "You've just won a Pulitzer! These things aren't going to be that important now."
Early on Monday 18 April, the Bang-Bang Club headed out to Tokoza township, 10 miles from downtown Johannesburg, to cover an outbreak of violence. Shortly before noon, with the sun too bright for taking good pictures, Carter returned to the city. Then on the radio he heard that his best friend, Oosterbroek, had been killed in Tokoza. Marinovich had been gravely wounded. Oosterbroek's death devastated Carter, and he returned to work in Tokoza the next day, even though the violence had escalated. He later told friends that he and not Ken "should have taken the bullet."
New York was a respite. By all accounts, Carter made the most of his first visit to Manhattan. The Times flew him in and put him up at the Marriott Marquis just off Times Square. His spirits soaring, he took to calling New York "my town." With the Pulitzer, however, he had to deal not only with acclaim but also with the critical focus that comes with fame. Some journalists in South Africa called his prize a "fluke," alleging that he had somehow set up the tableau. Others questioned his ethics. "The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering," said theSt Petersburg (Florida) Times, "might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene." Even some of Carter's friends wondered aloud why he had not helped the girl.
Carter was painfully aware of the photojournalist's dilemma. "I had to think visually," he said once, describing a shoot-out. "I am zooming in on a tight shot of the dead guy and a splash of red. Going into his khaki uniform in a pool of blood in the sand. The dead man's face is slightly gray. You are making a visual here. But inside something is screaming, 'My God.' But it is time to work. Deal with the rest later. If you can't do it, get out of the game." Says Nachtwey, "Every photographer who has been involved in these stories has been affected. You become changed forever. Nobody does this kind of work to make themselves feel good. It is very hard to continue."
Carter did not look forward to going home. Summer was just beginning in New York, but late June was still winter in South Africa, and Carter became depressed almost as soon as he got off the plane. "Jo'burg is dry and brown and cold and dead, and so damn full of bad memories and absent friends," he wrote in a letter never mailed to a friend, Esquire picture editor Marianne Butler in New York.
Nevertheless, Carter carefully listed story ideas and faxed some of them off to Sygma. Work did not proceed smoothly. Though it was not his fault, Carter felt guilty when a bureaucratic foul-up caused the cancellation of an interview by a writer from Parade magazine, a Sygma client, with Mandela in Cape Town. Then came an even more unpleasant experience. Sygma told Carter to stay in Cape Town and cover French President Francois Mitterrand's state visit to South Africa. The story was spot news, but according to editors at Sygma's Paris office, Carter shipped his film too late to be of use. In any case, they complained, the quality of the photos was too poor to offer to Sygma's clients.
According to friends, Carter began talking openly about suicide. Part of his anxiety was over the Mitterrand assignment. But mostly he seemed worried about money and making ends meet. When an assignment in Mozambique for Time came his way, he eagerly accepted. Despite setting three alarm clocks to make his early-morning flight on July 20, he missed the plane. Furthermore, after six days in Mozambique, he walked off his return flight to Johannesburg, leaving a package of undeveloped film on his seat. He realised his mistake when he arrived at a friend's house. He raced back to the airport but failed to turn up anything. Carter was distraught and returned to the friend's house in the morning, threatening to smoke a white pipe and gas himself to death.
Carter and a friend, Judith Matloff, 36, an American correspondent for Reuter, dined on Mozambican prawns he had brought back. He was apparently too ashamed to tell her about the lost film. Instead they discussed their futures. Carter proposed forming a writer-photographer free-lance team and traveling Africa together.
On the morning of Wednesday 27July, the last day of his life, Carter appeared cheerful. He remained in bed until nearly noon and then went to drop off a picture that had been requested by the Weekly Mail. In the paper's newsroom, he poured out his anguish to former colleagues, one of whom gave him the number of a therapist and urged him to phone her. The last person to see Carter alive, it seems, was Oosterbroek's widow, Monica. As night fell, Carter turned up unannounced at her home to vent his troubles. Still recovering from her husband's death 3 months earlier, she was in little condition to offer counsel. They parted at about 5:30pm.
The Braamfonteinspruit is a small river that cuts southward through Johannesburg's northern suburbs - and through Parkmore, where the Carters once lived. At around 9pm, Kevin Carter backed his red Nissan pickup truck against a blue gum tree at the Field and Study Centre. He had played there often as a little boy. The Sandton Bird Club was having its monthly meeting there, but nobody saw Carter as he used silver gaffer tape to attach a garden hose to the exhaust pipe and run it to the passenger-side window. Wearing unwashed Lee jeans and an Esquire T shirt, he got in and switched on the engine. Then he put music on his Walkman and lay over on his side, using the knapsack as a pillow.
The suicide note he left behind is a litany of nightmares and dark visions, a clutching attempt at autobiography, self-analysis, explanation, excuse. After coming home from New York, he wrote, he was "depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners..." And then this: "I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky."
Source: Time magazine 12 September 1994 Volume 144 Number 11
from Time Domestic
3 October 1994 Volume 144 Number 14
Letters:
Suicide of a Pulitzer Winner
It is tragic that the world has lost a photographer with the talent and skill of Kevin Carter. But it should come as no surprise that he found it difficult to reconcile the peaks and valleys of his career with the suffering and violence upon which it was built. It disturbed him, as it should have. By embarking on a career in photojournalism, Carter set himself apart from the lives of the people he photographed. He chose to be an observer rather than a participant. Carter opted for a moral detachment that most of us cannot achieve and that I would not want to have. Though I can admire his work and courage in the face of danger, I cannot imagine witnessing such violence and human suffering without trying to intervene. Perhaps, in the end, Kevin Carter could not either.
Andrew W Hall
Galveston, Texas AOL: Tigone
As Kevin Carter's sister, I am sad that Time has stooped to such sensationalist reporting concerning my brother's death. Scott MacLeod did not interview me or my sister or two of Kevin's very close friends. His "detailed digging" resulted in the presentation of a series of negative issues through which he attempted to explain a suicide. Suicide is obviously the result of the negative outweighing the positive, in the victim's mind, but this does not mean that there were not hundreds of positive aspects to the particular individual. Kevin was a person of passion and presence; he left his mark wherever he went. He was an incredible father to Megan and a man who grappled deeply with issues most people just accept. In many ways he was ahead of his time. The pain of his mission to open the eyes of the world to so many of the issues and injustices that tore at his own soul eventually got to him. The year 1993 was a good one for him, but at the end of it he told me he really needed a break from Africa, that it was getting to him. He knew then that he was losing perspective. Unfortunately, the pressure only got worse, with the increased violence leading up to the elections and, worst of all, the loss of his friend Ken Oosterbroek. The Pulitzer Prize certainly didn't send Kevin "deeper into anguish." If anything, it was a confirmation that his work had all been worthwhile. Your version of Kevin's death seems so futile. What is anyone going to learn or gain from reading it?
Patricia Gird Randburg
South Africa
-It is ironic that Kevin Carter won the Pulitzer for a photograph which to me is a photograph of his own soul and epitomizes his life. Kevin is that small child huddled against the world, and the vulture is the angel of death. I wish someone could have chased that evil from his life. I'm sure that little child succumbed to death just as Kevin did. Both must have suffered greatly.
Joanne Cauciella Bonica
Massapequa, New York
Source: home-4.tiscali.nl
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Other
Date: 10 Aug 2005 04:27:50 -0000
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Email: claudiahas@comcast.net
Comments: Kevin Carter took that picture of that little Sudanese girl and walked on to under a tree to calmly have a cigarette. Shit, I would have stomped that bird, picked up that baby, put her in my camera bag and gotten her to a hospital and then adopted her. But her little bones are laying in the Sundan sun bleached white by now.
That photo is why I believe that man keeps deluding himself in believing in a "God". There is no God. If there is and it could allow that to happen to such a sweet little innocent being it's a perverse and sick "God". The photo outrages me. We keep spending money on weapons, we keep electing men to power that are weak and feeble minded, we let millions of beings both human and animals suffer horrendously daily and look the other way.
I'm not a "nut" I'm just tired of the cruelty that stems from mankind's stupidity.
Claudia
Claudia,
I think you'll find that it's much easier to criticise than it is to act. Have you adopted an orphan? Joined a political activist group? No? Oh.
I don't accept the idea of God myself, but certainly not for the reason that bad things happen to people and animals.
The Atrocity Exhibition: A War Fuelled by Imagery
by Charles Paul Freund
In 1993, a photographer named Kevin Carter went to Sudan to capture images of that nation's dismal and unending civil war. One of the pictures he took was of a starving little girl: she had collapsed in the bush, and a vulture nearby seemed to be waiting for her to die. The photo was reproduced all over the world, touching many thousands of people, becoming an icon of African misery, winning a Pulitzer Prize, and, a year later, apparently contributing to Carter's own suicide.
Carter, a white South African, spent only a couple of days in Sudan. According to Susan D Moeller, who tells Carter's story in Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death, he had gone into the bush seeking relief from the terrible starvation and suffering he was documenting, when he encountered the emaciated girl. When he saw the vulture land, Carter waited quietly, hoping the bird would spread its wings and give him an even more dramatic image. It didn't, and he eventually chased the bird away. The girl gathered her strength and resumed her journey toward a feeding centre. Afterward, writes Moeller, Carter "sat by a tree, talked to God, cried, and thought about his own daughter, Megan."
When the image of the prostrate girl and the patient vulture appeared, many people demanded to know what had happened to her. The New York Times explained in an editors' note that while she resumed her trek, the photographer didn't know if she had survived. Carter stood accused; callers in the middle of the night denounced him. The girl began to haunt the photographer. In June 1994, Carter, beset by difficulties, killed himself. His suicide note speaks of the ghosts he could not escape, the "vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain," and the "starving and wounded children" ever before his eyes.
This death of a messenger is a cautionary tale for an age of atrocity imagery. Terrible pictures of agony and murder have come to America from Lebanon, from Somalia, from Haiti, from Rwanda, and now from Kosovo, and they have unleashed the most powerful of emotions. Yet these emotions emerge from pictures that tell inevitably distorted versions of their awful realities. Their concrete representations suggest a moral imperative to act, to intervene with force against evil. Yet the resulting interventions have, one after the other, revealed the illusions of mercy: there is no such thing as military humanitarianism. Such action, despite its moral incentive, is always political, and always results in political consequences and responsibilities. When these assert themselves, the atrocity imagery changes: it often features Americans.
In Carter's case, Western newspaper readers saw a little girl. Carter, in the Sudanese village where he landed, was watching 20 people starve to death each hour. Perhaps he might have laid aside his camera to give the victims what succor he could (and thus never have encountered the girl in the bush); perhaps his photographs could have led to greater help than he could personally give. Should he have carried one girl to safety? Carter was surrounded by hundreds of starving children. When he sat by the tree and wept, it was beneath a burden of futility. But his was not a photo of futility, nor of mass starvation, nor of religious factionalism, nor of civil war. Readers saw a little girl. In part, at least, Carter died for that.
While Kevin Carter was in Sudan, American forces were not very far away: they were in Somalia. They'd been dispatched there by George Bush, who specifically cited the "shocking images" of starvation and violence from that collapsed nation when he announced a humanitarian intervention. The use of America's military power for such purposes had broad public support; indeed, Bush was actually under pressure to act as a result of the deeply disturbing imagery. The Cold War was over; history had ended with the collapse of ideological challenge to liberal democratic capitalism. America's enormous military power could become an arsenal for decency.
But it turns out that war is fought on history's nether side. The post-historical urge to rescue, as it emerges from dangerously sentimentalised atrocity imagery, is considerably weaker in practice than is the historical urge to power that it confronts on the ground.
American forces, under Bill Clinton, altered their Somali mission from one of alleviating hunger to one of "nation building," thus involving the US military in a local political struggle that policy makers didn't take seriously. The result was that the United States, in all its might, was driven from Somalia by a local militia leader whose followers dragged the despoiled corpses of some American soldiers through the streets. Somalia remains the "failed state" it was before American troops arrived, its people living in the continuing misery that results from total national dysfunction. But what little imagery emerges from Somalia has seemingly lost its moral dimension; for Americans, at least, such imagery now has political content, and is judged politically when it is displayed at all.
This intervention was itself a replay of the American misadventure in Beirut in 1982, when, in the wake of the massacres at the Sabra and Shattila refugee camps, Ronald Reagan sent in the Marines while citing the terrible pictures of suffering. Though seemingly engaged in a humanitarian effort aimed at policing and stabilizing the volatile situation, Americans actually found themselves enmeshed in a complex political struggle for the control of Lebanon. The Marines were of course pulled out the next year after their barracks were bombed, killing 223 soldiers. The perpetrators of the bombing have never been identified; Lebanon today is controlled by Syria.
The NATO intervention under American leadership in Yugoslavia, over the issue of Kosovo, is the apotheosis of this pathos-driven moral imperative reduced immediately to political dross. In a notoriously rambling 23 March speech intended to frame the issues involved in the Kosovo conflict and to garner support for American military involvement there, the president cited a variety of reasons to take military action, and evoked the horrible pictures of Balkan bloodshed that had appeared in the press for years. He told the country that he wanted to create a world "where we don't have to worry about seeing scenes every night for the next 40 years of ethnic cleansing in some part of the world." With likely images of dead Americans no doubt in mind, the president made it clear in advance of the bombing campaign that there were no plans to send in ground troops.
This attempt to sell a military action on humanitarian grounds, yet split the difference between the two kinds of atrocity images, has had serious consequences: a military, political, and humanitarian miscalculation of historic proportions. NATO's air attacks provided cover for Serbian leader Slobodon Milosevic to begin an expulsion of ethnic Albanians from the Serbian province. Hundreds of thousands of persons have been driven into the fragile countries bordering Kosovo, straining their limited resources, threatening their political stability, and submerging the entire conflict in staggering suffering.
Indeed, although the bombing campaign was originally intended to force Milosevic to sign a NATO-brokered treaty involving Kosovo, the scale of the humanitarian emergency - including reports of murders of Kosovar men - recast him as an unofficial war criminal. That threw into doubt the air campaign's moral underpinnings. After all, what kind of moral victory would it be if a such a perpetrator was forced to sign a treaty, but otherwise retained political power?
Politically, the air campaign seemed to unite Serbians behind Milosevic, although most of them had disliked him and had wanted to get rid of him. Many Serbians felt unfairly targeted: hundreds of thousands of them had recently been driven from Croatia, suffering great hardship with little or no attention from the United States or NATO. Indeed, many Serbians argued that during the Tito dictatorship after World War II they had been driven by the thousands from Kosovo, which they consider their sacred homeland, by the ethnic Albanians who then had power over the province.
As a result of the bombing campaign, NATO seems to have traded its relationship with Russia (where nationalists were threatening to radicalize a fragile political situation) for a marriage of sorts with the Kosovo Liberation Army, a group that the United States had until recently called "terrorists" and provocateurs. The KLA's backing is as murky as its agenda, which reportedly calls for the creation of a "Greater Albania" along the lines of the rump state created by fascist Italian occupiers during World War II. That would appear to require the dismantling not only of Yugoslavia but of Macedonia as well. Yet some members of Congress have called for the arming and support of the organisation.
While the bombing campaign became focused increasingly on the refugee problem it had itself seemingly exacerbated, the Clinton administration fell into visible disarray. The White House appeared completely flummoxed, claiming to have foreseen the expulsions, though obviously failing to prepare for them. Meanwhile, persons in the CIA, the Pentagon, and the State Department leaked stories to the press intended to pass the blame for the stunning mess. It was a singularly dismaying performance.
Yet American public support for continued military action - and even for the introduction of ground forces - actually grew. The power of atrocity imagery continued to assert itself.
In fact, attempting to respond to such images is entirely appropriate; if the United States can alleviate suffering with aid, sanctions, or even military action, then it shold debate doing so, determine if it is willing to accept the foreseeable consequences, and act. But misunderstanding and sentimentalising these images is an invitation to disaster. For all their inherent emotional content, they remain ultimately political in nature. They arise from political circumstances, and one cannot "stop" them without accepting the inevitable political consequences of intervention. The United States cannot pretend that it is the Red Cross with a Pentagon, though a succession of presidents have acted as if it were.
In Haiti, American forces have become virtual prisoners of pathos. They were sent there by Clinton in response to pitiable images of Haitian bloodshed and chaos, and in support of a reform president, and they are now reportedly unable to leave their barracks. Haiti has made no discernible progress toward real democratic practice, and its government - made possible by this American act of militarised humanitarianism - stands accused of murdering its enemies. It is unclear what moral purpose is served by the continued presence in the country of US troops. They remain under close confinement, however, to ensure that they do not become yet more targets of Haiti's endemic political violence, and the subject of more atrocity photographs featuring Americans soldiers.
In Rwanda, President Clinton took no action at all to forestall the true genocide that occurred five years ago, although the United States, France, and Belgium were all forewarned that many thousands of persons would soon be hacked to death by their traditional tribal enemies. However, the pictures of piles of bloody corpses that soon emerged from Rwanda were horrifying, and a massive effort was made to care for the many refugees who soon filled camps outside the country. There were many pitiable images to emerge from these camps as well; these pictures seemed to portray the remnants of a targeted people who had somehow escaped slaughter, and who were now reduced to the misery of refugee camp life. Having failed to stop the murders, the West surely had a moral obligation to give succor to the survivors.
But the details that eventually were reported from the camps were very different. Many of the people in the camps were not survivors of the slaughter; they were either perpetrators of the slaughter or members of the tribe that supported it. They had crowded into the camps to escape retribution. What appeared to be a morally necessary act of sanctuary was revealed to be - in large part, at least - aid and comfort to murderers.
And what of Kashmir? Tibet? The Kurds? Indeed, what of Iraq, where the deaths of many thousands of children have been attributed by the United Nations to the sanctions policy imposed by the United States? "Because we cannot do everything everywhere," says Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, "does not mean we should do nothing nowhere." True as far as it goes. But it also means that when we do choose to act, it should be in full appreciation not only of mercy's limits but of its consequences.
Charles Paul Freund is a Reason senior editor
Source: reason.com Reason Magazine June 1999
Inner Horror Plagues War Photographers
It is not always bullets or bombs that kill war correspondents, but the horror they keep inside.
Amy Eldon is too familiar with both causes of death. The young documentary maker lost her older brother, a freelance photographer who worked for Reuters and others, 5 years, ago in Somalia. Now she has learnt that television journalist Carlos Mavroleon, a subject of her new film on battle-zone reporters, died in August of a heroin overdose.
"It is job-related," Eldon said. "So many of these guys, after what they've seen, they become so tormented and they don't know where to put all this horror. Carlos just escaped to another world." Mavroleon was one of several photographers and cameramen Eldon interviewed for her two-hour television documentary Dying to Tell the Story, which premiered on an American cable network.
The film was inspired by her brother Dan, beaten to death in Somalia two months short of his 23rd birthday. After his death, she left college and fought off depression before deciding to make a film about him and other journalists who live to cover wars.
"They're cut from a different cloth. They're mad," Eldon said, "I think some go into it and then they become used to a higher threshold of pain. They become adrenaline junkies."
The addiction has left some of Dan's colleagues with a lifetime of pain. Donald McCullin, a self-described "war-a-year" man, now lives in an isolated English manor where cabinets are filled with photos of the dead and dying. Despite quitting, McCullin was haunted by what he had witnessed. A switch to landscape photography was no relief: his photos still look like war zones, Eldon said. "He'll have this beautiful picture of a sparrow that will be dead on white snow and it looks exactly like his pictures from Vietnam or Cambodia. It's frightening."
But Dan Dot only loved adventure, he saw himself performing a public service. Having grown up in Africa, he was concerned about the famine and civil war killing the people of Somalia. "What really motivated Dan was the fact that he was making a difference," his sister said.
"There he was at 21 and was making the double middle-page spread of Time and Newsweek. He was driven by the fact that he was actually galvanising people into action." Once Eldon believed her older brother was invincible. Dubbed by colleagues the Mayor of Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, Dan seemed to know everyone and fear nothing.
But Eldon saw her brother grow increasing tense after his stints in the war-ravaged country. "I was concerned because when you're in a war zone you're so aware of the fragility of life. And you're always on the edge and it's very difficult to sustain that when you go back to normal life. That's why some people get into drugs." Despite Dan's enthusiasm, the conflict wore on him and he said he had "had enough" just before he was killed. He was not addicted to war coverage, she said, and had thoughts of attending film school and making movies.
Dan, whose spirit is "very much around and challenging me to take bigger risks", also left 17 journals of his travels around the world. He filled the pages with photos, drawings and neatly penned writings. Parts of the colourful, complex pages appear in The Journey Is the Destination, published in 1997. The actual notebooks are carefully preserved by Amy and her family. "My mother calls them her grandchildren," Eldon said.
In her documentary, she questions veteran correspondents about why they keep returning to combat zones despite the grimness. Seven journalists were interviewed extensively, including long-time BBC foreign correspondent Martin Bell and CNN's chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour.
"There are certain people who have to do what they do and it can't be explained," Amanpour said. Bell takes a humble approach: "We can't be heroes because we can get out when we want," he told Eldon.
Asked if she thinks about the moment of her brother's murder, when a mob of enraged Somalis beat him and three other photographers to death, Eldon says no. "His death was a teaspoon of his life. It was such a brief thing. And the rest was just a tremendous life filled with love and joy." - Reuter
Source: The Dominion Thursday 17 September 1998
Trauma, Torment of War Reporters
by Carlin Romano
Review of the book Journalists Under Fire: The Psychological Hazards of Covering War by Anthony Feinstein, Johns Hopkins University Press.
'What makes a good newspaperman?" New York Herald Tribune city editor Stanley Walker famously asked in 1928. His reply to that rhetorical question became journalistic lore. "The answer is easy," Walker wrote. "He knows everything... His brain is the repository of the accumulated wisdom of the ages... He can go for nights without sleep. He dresses well and talks with charm. He hates lies and meanness and sham... When he dies, a lot of people are sorry, and some remember him for several days."
The New York Times revived that part-heroic, part-sardonic image of the newspaperman Thursday when, without fear (and with just a little favour), it devoted part of its front page and its entire inside obituary section to one of its own: "R W Apple Jr, Times Globe-Trotter Dies at 71." Over more than 40 years as a correspondent and editor, the Times reported, "Johnny" Apple "wrote from more than 100 countries about war and revolution, politics and government, food and drink, and the revenge of living well..." By any standard of the trade, Apple deserved a salute. He fulfilled the popular image of the American foreign correspondent as a stylish, charismatic, invulnerable character who jets in, gets the story, keeps (in Apple's case) his traveling pepper mill by his side, and makes it home undamaged in time for his daughter's wedding.
But there's a far-less-covered side to this trade, and it's the singular feat of Toronto psychiatrist Anthony Feinstein's Journalists Under Fire to turn his own clinician's light on it. Feinstein quotes from the memoir of another former Times foreign correspondent, Chris Hedges, who provides a searing foreword to this book. In War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Hedges writes of his goodbye to what Feinstein describes as three "harrowing" trips to El Salvador's civil war:
My last act was, in a frenzy of rage and anguish, to leap over the KLM counter in the airport in Costa Rica because of a perceived slight by a hapless airline clerk. I beat him to the floor as his bewildered colleagues locked themselves in the room behind the counter. Blood streamed down his face and mine. I refused to wipe the dried stains off my cheeks on the flight to Madrid, and I carry a scar on my face from where he thrust his pen into my cheek. War's sickness had become my own.
Feinstein studs his study with such examples of "war journalists' " falling to pieces, experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression. Among the symptoms: uncontrolled anger, distressing images and flashbacks, estrangement from others, troubled sleep, "hypervigilance" (such as hitting the ground when a child pops a balloon).
Veteran ITN cameraman Jon Steele, at the outset of his memoir, War Junkie, drolly recalls his "emotional disintegration" one day at Heathrow's Terminal Four: "Attention, Club World and World Traveller passengers. British Airways is happy to announce the nervous breakdown of Jon Denis Steele at check-in counter twenty."
London Times reporter Anthony Loyd remains haunted by a Chechen woman who brandished the bloody leg of a bombed family member. British photographer Jon Jones still sees a particular child's severed head under a blanket. A witness to Rwanda's genocide lifts a glass of champagne to his lips in London and immediately takes in the "smell of corpses... . That has happened a lot, the sense that the smell was all over you... it would not go away."
According to Feinstein, "nowhere in the countless pages of journals devoted to psychological trauma is there a single piece of research on war journalists." Filling that gap, he's conducted multiple surveys and many interviews. In one of Feinstein's surveys that analyzed 110 male and 30 female war journalists, "29% of the group had met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD over the course of long careers," compared with about 5% of the general public. Feinstein covers plenty of territory: the special torments of mothers and freelancers among war correspondents; the brutal effect of war journalism on relationships with spouses; the so-called adrenaline junkies among foreign hands; the dysfunctional- family backgrounds of many attracted to foreign coverage; the impact on "domestic" reporters covering incidents like 9/11.
What sticks, though, is the flip side to the upbeat R W Apple image of foreign correspondence. "It slowly takes away your smile," says South African photographer João Silva of the work. One veteran sees dead colleagues walking toward him. Another can no longer eat meat. "Do not delude yourself into thinking," the BBC's Allan Little tells others, "that you can swan in and swan out of other people's wars year after year and not be affected..."
Feinstein believes that journalistic organizations should take more responsibility for the mental health of their foreign correspondents and that newspapers do worse in that regard than broadcasters. What's clear is that while some may remember a journalist for just "several days," war journalists never forget what they've seen on our behalf, and they're never quite the same.
War doesn't determine who is right, war determines who is left.
– Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), English philosopher, author, 1950 Nobel Prize-winner in Literature
This photograph showing a starving Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture won Kevin Carter the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.
Photographer Haunted by Horror of His Work
Obituary: Kevin Carter 1960 - 1994
Johannesburg - Kevin Carter, the South African photographer whose image of a starving Sudanese toddler stalked by a vulture won him a Pulitzer Prize this year, was found dead on Wednesday night, apparently a suicide, police said yesterday. He was 33. The police said Mr Carter's body and several letters to friends and family were discovered in his pick-up truck, parked in a Johannesburg suburb. An inquest showed that he had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Mr Carter started as a sports photographer in 1983 but soon moved to the front lines of South African political strife, recording images of repression, anti-apartheid protest and fratricidal violence. A few davs after winning his Pulitzer Prize in April, Mr Carter was nearby when one of his closest friends and professional companions, Ken Oosterbroek, was shot dead photographing a gun battle in Tokoza township.
Friends said Mr Carter was a man of tumultuous emotions which brought passion to his work but also drove him to extremes of elation and depression. Last year, saying he needed a break from South Africa's turmoil, he paid his own way to the southern Sudan to photograph a civil war and famine that he felt the world was overlooking.
His picture of an emaciated girl collapsing on the way to a feeding centre, as a plump vulture lurked in the background, was published first in The New York Times and The Mail & Guardian, a Johannesburg weekly. The reaction to the picture was so strong that The New York Times published an unusual editor's note on the fate of the girl. Mr Carter said she resumed her trek to the feeding centre. He chased away the vulture.
Afterwards, he told an interviewer, he sat under a tree for a long time, "smoking cigarettes and crying". His father, Mr Jimmy Carter laid last night: "Kevin always carried around the horror of the work he did." - The New York Times
Source: Sydney Morning Herald Saturday 30 July 1994
What are the odds the little girl is alive today? Not very high, I'd say. If she is alive, what quality of life is she likely to have? She almost certainly has permanent damage from her period of starvation during crucial development, both before and after birth. It is easy to criticise Kevin Carter. Why? Because he took a photo of one starving child among thousands? Let those who send all their spare cash to the needy cast the first stone...
The Life and Death of Kevin Carter
by Scott MacLeod
As Time's Johannesburg bureau chief for the past five years, Scott MacLeod has seen more than his share of tragedy. But nothing prepared him for the devastating news in July that a colleague, 33-year-old South African photojournalist Kevin Carter, had killed himself. Carter was famous in South Africa for his fearless coverage of deadly township violence, and he had become internationally known for his Pulitzer prizewinning photo of a vulture coolly eyeing an emaciated Sudanese child struggling toward a feeding station. "Few journalists saw as much violence and trauma as he did," says MacLeod. Shocked by Carter's suicide, MacLeod determined "to understand as best I could the complexities behind his tragic end."
The result is this week's unusual tale of a troubled man's life and death. In any given issue of Time, we include, of course, many stories that are driven by news headlines. Occasionally we go back to a seemingly small event of months ago, briefly noted at the time, that strikes us as ripe with human drama and moral implications, worthy of detailed digging and sober reflection. The suicide of Kevin Carter was such an event. In researching the article, MacLeod interviewed Carter's family, close friends and colleagues, as well as experts on suicide; in the process he encountered several other journalists in pursuit of the mystery of Carter's self-destruction. But the subject eluded easy conclusions and assumptions.
MacLeod sees Carter's story as representative of a darker side of middle-class white South Africa and as a warning about the lingering effects of apartheid on all of that country's people. "The lives of some whites too were disrupted and even destroyed by the social experiment," he notes. "I wanted to show that side of the apartheid story as well."
Elizabeth Valk Long
President, Time Domestic
Johannesburg - Visiting Sudan, a little-known photographer took a picture that made the world weep. What happened afterward is a tragedy of another sort. The image presaged no celebration: a child barely alive, a vulture so eager for carrion. Yet the photograph that epitomised Sudan's famine would win Kevin Carter fame - and hopes for anchoring a career spent hounding the news, free-lancing in war zones, waiting anxiously for assignments amid dire finances, staying in the line of fire for that one great picture. On May 23, 14 months after capturing that memorable scene, Carter walked up to the dais in the classical rotunda of Columbia University's Low Memorial Library and received the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. The South African soaked up the attention. "I swear I got the most applause of anybody," Carter wrote back to his parents in Johannesburg. "I can't wait to show you the trophy. It is the most precious thing, and the highest acknowledgment of my work I could receive."
Carter was feted at some of the most fashionable spots in New York City. Restaurant patrons, overhearing his claim to fame, would come up and ask for his autograph. Photo editors at the major magazines wanted to meet the new hotshot, dressed in his black jeans and T shirts, with the tribal bracelets and diamond-stud earring, with the war-weary eyes and tales from the front lines of Nelson Mandela's new South Africa. Carter signed with Sygma, a prestigious picture agency representing 200 of the world's best photojournalists. "It can be a very glamorous business," says Sygma's US director, Eliane Laffont. "It's very hard to make it, but Kevin is one of the few who really broke through. The pretty girls were falling for him, and everybody wanted to hear what he had to say."
There would be little time for that. Two months after receiving his Pulitzer, Carter would be dead of carbon-monoxide poisoning in Johannesburg, a suicide at 33. His red pickup truck was parked near a small river where he used to play as a child; a green garden hose attached to the vehicle's exhaust funneled the fumes inside. "I'm really, really sorry," he explained in a note left on the passenger seat beneath a knapsack. "The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist."
How could a man who had moved so many people with his work end up a suicide so soon after his great triumph? The brief obituaries that appeared around the world suggested a morality tale about a person undone by the curse of fame. The details, however, show how fame was only the final, dramatic sting of a death foretold by Carter's personality, the pressure to be first where the action is, the fear that his pictures were never good enough, the existential lucidity that came to him from surviving violence again and again - and the drugs he used to banish that lucidity. If there is a paramount lesson to be drawn from Carter's meteoric rise and fall, it is that tragedy does not always have heroic dimensions. "I have always had it all at my feet," read the last words of his suicide note, "but being me just fit up anyway."
First, there was history. Kevin Carter was born in 1960, the year Nelson Mandela's African National Congress was outlawed. Descended from English immigrants, Carter was not part of the Afrikaner mainstream that ruled the country. Indeed, its ideology appalled him. Yet he was caught up in its historic misadventure. His devoutly Roman Catholic parents, Jimmy and Roma, lived in Parkmore, a tree-lined Johannesburg suburb - and they accepted apartheid. Kevin, however, like many of his generation, soon began to question it openly. "The police used to go around arresting black people for not carrying their passes," his mother recalls. "They used to treat them very badly, and we felt unable to do anything about it. But Kevin got very angry about it. He used to have arguments with his father. "Why couldn't we do something about it? Why didn't we go shout at those police?"
Though Carter insisted he loved his parents, he told his closest friends his childhood was unhappy. As a teenager, he found his thrills riding motorcycles and fantasized about becoming a race-car driver. After graduating from a Catholic boarding school in Pretoria in 1976, Carter studied pharmacy before dropping out with bad grades a year later. Without a student deferment, he was conscripted into the South African Defense Force (SADF), where he found upholding the apartheid regime loathsome. Once, after he took the side of a black mess-hall waiter, some Afrikaans-speaking soldiers called him a kaffir-boetie ("nigger lover") and beat him up. In 1980 Carter went absent without leave, rode a motorcycle to Durban and, calling himself David, became a disk jockey. He longed to see his family but felt too ashamed to return. One day after he lost his job, he swallowed scores of sleeping pills, pain-killers and rat poison. He survived. He returned to the SADF to finish his service and was injured in 1983 while on guard duty at air force headquarters in Pretoria. A bomb attributed to the ANC had exploded, killing 19 people. After leaving the service, Carter got a job at a camera supply shop and drifted into journalism, first as a weekend sports photographer for the Johannesburg Sunday Express. When riots began sweeping the black townships in 1984, Carter moved to the Johannesburg Star and aligned himself with the crop of young, white photojournalists who wanted to expose the brutality of apartheid - a mission that had once been the almost exclusive calling of South Africa's black photographers. "They put themselves in face of danger, were arrested numerous times, but never quit. They literally were willing to sacrifice themselves for what they believed in," says American photojournalist James Nachtwey, who frequently worked with Carter and his friends. By 1990, civil war was raging between Mandela's ANC and the Zulu-supported Inkatha Freedom Party. For whites, it became potentially fatal to work the townships alone. To diminish the dangers, Carter hooked up with three friends - Ken Oosterbroek of the Star and free-lancers Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva - and they began moving through Soweto and Tokoza at dawn. If a murderous gang was going to shoot up a bus, throw someone off a train or cut up somebody on the street, it was most likely to happen as township dwellers began their journeys to work in the soft, shadowy light of an African morning. The four became so well known for capturing the violence that Living, a Johannesburg magazine, dubbed them "the Bang-Bang Club."
Even with the teamwork, however, cruising the townships was often a perilous affair. Well-armed government security forces used excessive firepower. The chaotic hand-to-hand street fighting between black factions involved AK-47s, spears and axes. "At a funeral some mourners caught one guy, hacked him, shot him, ran over him with a car and set him on fire," says Silva, describing a typical encounter. "My first photo showed this guy on the ground as the crowd told him they were going to kill him. We were lucky to get away."
Sometimes it took more than a camera and camaraderie to get through the work. Marijuana, known locally as dagga, is widely available in South Africa. Carter and many other photojournalists smoked it habitually in the townships, partly to relieve tension and partly to bond with gun-toting street warriors. Although he denied it, Carter, like many hard-core dagga users, moved on to something more dangerous: smoking the "white pipe," a mixture of dagga and Mandrax, a banned tranquiliser containing methaqualone. It provides an intense, immediate kick and then allows the user to mellow out for an hour or two.
By 1991, working on the dawn patrol had paid off for one of the Bang-Bang Club. Marinovich won a Pulitzer for his September 1990 photographs of a Zulu being stabbed to death by ANC supporters. That prize raised the stakes for the rest of the club - especially Carter. And for Carter other comparisons cropped up. Though Oosterbroek was his best friend, they were, according to Nachtwey, "like the polarities of personality types. Ken was the successful photographer with the loving wife. His life was in order." Carter had bounced from romance to romance, fathering a daughter out of wedlock. In 1993 Carter headed north of the border with Silva to photograph the rebel movement in famine-stricken Sudan. To make the trip, Carter had taken a leave from the Weekly Mail and borrowed money for the air fare. Immediately after their plane touched down in the village of Ayod, Carter began snapping photos of famine victims. Seeking relief from the sight of masses of people starving to death, he wandered into the open bush. He heard a soft, high-pitched whimpering and saw a tiny girl trying to make her way to the feeding centre. As he crouched to photograph her, a vulture landed in view. Careful not to disturb the bird, he positioned himself for the best possible image. He would later say he waited about 20 minutes, hoping the vulture would spread its wings. It did not, and after he took his photographs, he chased the bird away and watched as the little girl resumed her struggle. Afterward he sat under a tree, lit a cigarette, talked to God and cried. "He was depressed afterward," Silva recalls. "He kept saying he wanted to hug his daughter."
After another day in Sudan, Carter returned to Johannesburg. Coincidentally, the New York Times, which was looking for pictures of Sudan, bought his photograph and ran it on 26 March 1993. The picture immediately became an icon of Africa's anguish. Hundreds of people wrote and called the Times asking what had happened to the child (the paper reported that it was not known whether she reached the feeding centre); and papers around the world reproduced the photo. Friends and colleagues complimented Carter on his feat. His self-confidence climbed.
Carter quit the Weekly Mail and became a free-lance photojournalist - an alluring but financially risky way of making a living, providing no job security, no health insurance and no death benefits. He eventually signed up with the Reuter news agency for a guarantee of roughly $2,000 a month and began to lay plans for covering his country's first multiracial elections in April. The next few weeks, however, would bring depression and self-doubt, only momentarily interrupted by triumph. The troubles started on 11 March. Carter was covering the unsuccessful invasion of Bophuthatswana by white right-wing vigilantes intent on propping up a black homeland, a showcase of apartheid. Carter found himself just feet away from the summary execution of right-wingers by a black "Bop" policeman. "Lying in the middle of the gunfight," he said, "I was wondering about which millisecond next I was going to die, about putting something on film they could use as my last picture."
His pictures would eventually be splashed across front pages around the world, but he came away from the scene in a funk. First, there was the horror of having witnessed murder. Perhaps as importantly, while a few colleagues had framed the scene perfectly, Carter was reloading his camera with film just as the executions took place. "I knew I had missed this f--- shot," he said subsequently. "I drank a bottle of bourbon that night."
At the same time, he seemed to be stepping up his drug habit, including smoking the white pipe. A week after the Bop executions, he was seen staggering around while on assignment at a Mandela rally in Johannesburg. Later he crashed his car into a suburban house and was thrown in jail for 10 hours on suspicion of drunken driving. His superior at Reuter was furious at having to go to the police station to recover Carter's film of the Mandela event. Carter's girlfriend, Kathy Davidson, a schoolteacher, was even more upset. Drugs had become a growing issue in their one-year relationship. Over Easter, she asked Carter to move out until he cleaned up his life.
With only weeks to go before the elections, Carter's job at Reuter was shaky, his love life was in jeopardy and he was scrambling to find a new place to live. And then, on 12 April 1994, the New York Times phoned to tell him he had won the Pulitzer. As jubilant Times foreign picture editor Nancy Buirski gave him the news, Carter found himself rambling on about his personal problems. "Kevin!" she interrupted, "You've just won a Pulitzer! These things aren't going to be that important now."
Early on Monday 18 April, the Bang-Bang Club headed out to Tokoza township, 10 miles from downtown Johannesburg, to cover an outbreak of violence. Shortly before noon, with the sun too bright for taking good pictures, Carter returned to the city. Then on the radio he heard that his best friend, Oosterbroek, had been killed in Tokoza. Marinovich had been gravely wounded. Oosterbroek's death devastated Carter, and he returned to work in Tokoza the next day, even though the violence had escalated. He later told friends that he and not Ken "should have taken the bullet."
New York was a respite. By all accounts, Carter made the most of his first visit to Manhattan. The Times flew him in and put him up at the Marriott Marquis just off Times Square. His spirits soaring, he took to calling New York "my town." With the Pulitzer, however, he had to deal not only with acclaim but also with the critical focus that comes with fame. Some journalists in South Africa called his prize a "fluke," alleging that he had somehow set up the tableau. Others questioned his ethics. "The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering," said theSt Petersburg (Florida) Times, "might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene." Even some of Carter's friends wondered aloud why he had not helped the girl.
Carter was painfully aware of the photojournalist's dilemma. "I had to think visually," he said once, describing a shoot-out. "I am zooming in on a tight shot of the dead guy and a splash of red. Going into his khaki uniform in a pool of blood in the sand. The dead man's face is slightly gray. You are making a visual here. But inside something is screaming, 'My God.' But it is time to work. Deal with the rest later. If you can't do it, get out of the game." Says Nachtwey, "Every photographer who has been involved in these stories has been affected. You become changed forever. Nobody does this kind of work to make themselves feel good. It is very hard to continue."
Carter did not look forward to going home. Summer was just beginning in New York, but late June was still winter in South Africa, and Carter became depressed almost as soon as he got off the plane. "Jo'burg is dry and brown and cold and dead, and so damn full of bad memories and absent friends," he wrote in a letter never mailed to a friend, Esquire picture editor Marianne Butler in New York.
Nevertheless, Carter carefully listed story ideas and faxed some of them off to Sygma. Work did not proceed smoothly. Though it was not his fault, Carter felt guilty when a bureaucratic foul-up caused the cancellation of an interview by a writer from Parade magazine, a Sygma client, with Mandela in Cape Town. Then came an even more unpleasant experience. Sygma told Carter to stay in Cape Town and cover French President Francois Mitterrand's state visit to South Africa. The story was spot news, but according to editors at Sygma's Paris office, Carter shipped his film too late to be of use. In any case, they complained, the quality of the photos was too poor to offer to Sygma's clients.
According to friends, Carter began talking openly about suicide. Part of his anxiety was over the Mitterrand assignment. But mostly he seemed worried about money and making ends meet. When an assignment in Mozambique for Time came his way, he eagerly accepted. Despite setting three alarm clocks to make his early-morning flight on July 20, he missed the plane. Furthermore, after six days in Mozambique, he walked off his return flight to Johannesburg, leaving a package of undeveloped film on his seat. He realised his mistake when he arrived at a friend's house. He raced back to the airport but failed to turn up anything. Carter was distraught and returned to the friend's house in the morning, threatening to smoke a white pipe and gas himself to death.
Carter and a friend, Judith Matloff, 36, an American correspondent for Reuter, dined on Mozambican prawns he had brought back. He was apparently too ashamed to tell her about the lost film. Instead they discussed their futures. Carter proposed forming a writer-photographer free-lance team and traveling Africa together.
On the morning of Wednesday 27July, the last day of his life, Carter appeared cheerful. He remained in bed until nearly noon and then went to drop off a picture that had been requested by the Weekly Mail. In the paper's newsroom, he poured out his anguish to former colleagues, one of whom gave him the number of a therapist and urged him to phone her. The last person to see Carter alive, it seems, was Oosterbroek's widow, Monica. As night fell, Carter turned up unannounced at her home to vent his troubles. Still recovering from her husband's death 3 months earlier, she was in little condition to offer counsel. They parted at about 5:30pm.
The Braamfonteinspruit is a small river that cuts southward through Johannesburg's northern suburbs - and through Parkmore, where the Carters once lived. At around 9pm, Kevin Carter backed his red Nissan pickup truck against a blue gum tree at the Field and Study Centre. He had played there often as a little boy. The Sandton Bird Club was having its monthly meeting there, but nobody saw Carter as he used silver gaffer tape to attach a garden hose to the exhaust pipe and run it to the passenger-side window. Wearing unwashed Lee jeans and an Esquire T shirt, he got in and switched on the engine. Then he put music on his Walkman and lay over on his side, using the knapsack as a pillow.
The suicide note he left behind is a litany of nightmares and dark visions, a clutching attempt at autobiography, self-analysis, explanation, excuse. After coming home from New York, he wrote, he was "depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners..." And then this: "I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky."
Source: Time magazine 12 September 1994 Volume 144 Number 11
from Time Domestic
3 October 1994 Volume 144 Number 14
Letters:
Suicide of a Pulitzer Winner
It is tragic that the world has lost a photographer with the talent and skill of Kevin Carter. But it should come as no surprise that he found it difficult to reconcile the peaks and valleys of his career with the suffering and violence upon which it was built. It disturbed him, as it should have. By embarking on a career in photojournalism, Carter set himself apart from the lives of the people he photographed. He chose to be an observer rather than a participant. Carter opted for a moral detachment that most of us cannot achieve and that I would not want to have. Though I can admire his work and courage in the face of danger, I cannot imagine witnessing such violence and human suffering without trying to intervene. Perhaps, in the end, Kevin Carter could not either.
Andrew W Hall
Galveston, Texas AOL: Tigone
As Kevin Carter's sister, I am sad that Time has stooped to such sensationalist reporting concerning my brother's death. Scott MacLeod did not interview me or my sister or two of Kevin's very close friends. His "detailed digging" resulted in the presentation of a series of negative issues through which he attempted to explain a suicide. Suicide is obviously the result of the negative outweighing the positive, in the victim's mind, but this does not mean that there were not hundreds of positive aspects to the particular individual. Kevin was a person of passion and presence; he left his mark wherever he went. He was an incredible father to Megan and a man who grappled deeply with issues most people just accept. In many ways he was ahead of his time. The pain of his mission to open the eyes of the world to so many of the issues and injustices that tore at his own soul eventually got to him. The year 1993 was a good one for him, but at the end of it he told me he really needed a break from Africa, that it was getting to him. He knew then that he was losing perspective. Unfortunately, the pressure only got worse, with the increased violence leading up to the elections and, worst of all, the loss of his friend Ken Oosterbroek. The Pulitzer Prize certainly didn't send Kevin "deeper into anguish." If anything, it was a confirmation that his work had all been worthwhile. Your version of Kevin's death seems so futile. What is anyone going to learn or gain from reading it?
Patricia Gird Randburg
South Africa
-It is ironic that Kevin Carter won the Pulitzer for a photograph which to me is a photograph of his own soul and epitomizes his life. Kevin is that small child huddled against the world, and the vulture is the angel of death. I wish someone could have chased that evil from his life. I'm sure that little child succumbed to death just as Kevin did. Both must have suffered greatly.
Joanne Cauciella Bonica
Massapequa, New York
Source: home-4.tiscali.nl
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Other
Date: 10 Aug 2005 04:27:50 -0000
This message was posted via the Feedback form.
Email: claudiahas@comcast.net
Comments: Kevin Carter took that picture of that little Sudanese girl and walked on to under a tree to calmly have a cigarette. Shit, I would have stomped that bird, picked up that baby, put her in my camera bag and gotten her to a hospital and then adopted her. But her little bones are laying in the Sundan sun bleached white by now.
That photo is why I believe that man keeps deluding himself in believing in a "God". There is no God. If there is and it could allow that to happen to such a sweet little innocent being it's a perverse and sick "God". The photo outrages me. We keep spending money on weapons, we keep electing men to power that are weak and feeble minded, we let millions of beings both human and animals suffer horrendously daily and look the other way.
I'm not a "nut" I'm just tired of the cruelty that stems from mankind's stupidity.
Claudia
Claudia,
I think you'll find that it's much easier to criticise than it is to act. Have you adopted an orphan? Joined a political activist group? No? Oh.
I don't accept the idea of God myself, but certainly not for the reason that bad things happen to people and animals.
The Atrocity Exhibition: A War Fuelled by Imagery
by Charles Paul Freund
In 1993, a photographer named Kevin Carter went to Sudan to capture images of that nation's dismal and unending civil war. One of the pictures he took was of a starving little girl: she had collapsed in the bush, and a vulture nearby seemed to be waiting for her to die. The photo was reproduced all over the world, touching many thousands of people, becoming an icon of African misery, winning a Pulitzer Prize, and, a year later, apparently contributing to Carter's own suicide.
Carter, a white South African, spent only a couple of days in Sudan. According to Susan D Moeller, who tells Carter's story in Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death, he had gone into the bush seeking relief from the terrible starvation and suffering he was documenting, when he encountered the emaciated girl. When he saw the vulture land, Carter waited quietly, hoping the bird would spread its wings and give him an even more dramatic image. It didn't, and he eventually chased the bird away. The girl gathered her strength and resumed her journey toward a feeding centre. Afterward, writes Moeller, Carter "sat by a tree, talked to God, cried, and thought about his own daughter, Megan."
When the image of the prostrate girl and the patient vulture appeared, many people demanded to know what had happened to her. The New York Times explained in an editors' note that while she resumed her trek, the photographer didn't know if she had survived. Carter stood accused; callers in the middle of the night denounced him. The girl began to haunt the photographer. In June 1994, Carter, beset by difficulties, killed himself. His suicide note speaks of the ghosts he could not escape, the "vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain," and the "starving and wounded children" ever before his eyes.
This death of a messenger is a cautionary tale for an age of atrocity imagery. Terrible pictures of agony and murder have come to America from Lebanon, from Somalia, from Haiti, from Rwanda, and now from Kosovo, and they have unleashed the most powerful of emotions. Yet these emotions emerge from pictures that tell inevitably distorted versions of their awful realities. Their concrete representations suggest a moral imperative to act, to intervene with force against evil. Yet the resulting interventions have, one after the other, revealed the illusions of mercy: there is no such thing as military humanitarianism. Such action, despite its moral incentive, is always political, and always results in political consequences and responsibilities. When these assert themselves, the atrocity imagery changes: it often features Americans.
In Carter's case, Western newspaper readers saw a little girl. Carter, in the Sudanese village where he landed, was watching 20 people starve to death each hour. Perhaps he might have laid aside his camera to give the victims what succor he could (and thus never have encountered the girl in the bush); perhaps his photographs could have led to greater help than he could personally give. Should he have carried one girl to safety? Carter was surrounded by hundreds of starving children. When he sat by the tree and wept, it was beneath a burden of futility. But his was not a photo of futility, nor of mass starvation, nor of religious factionalism, nor of civil war. Readers saw a little girl. In part, at least, Carter died for that.
While Kevin Carter was in Sudan, American forces were not very far away: they were in Somalia. They'd been dispatched there by George Bush, who specifically cited the "shocking images" of starvation and violence from that collapsed nation when he announced a humanitarian intervention. The use of America's military power for such purposes had broad public support; indeed, Bush was actually under pressure to act as a result of the deeply disturbing imagery. The Cold War was over; history had ended with the collapse of ideological challenge to liberal democratic capitalism. America's enormous military power could become an arsenal for decency.
But it turns out that war is fought on history's nether side. The post-historical urge to rescue, as it emerges from dangerously sentimentalised atrocity imagery, is considerably weaker in practice than is the historical urge to power that it confronts on the ground.
American forces, under Bill Clinton, altered their Somali mission from one of alleviating hunger to one of "nation building," thus involving the US military in a local political struggle that policy makers didn't take seriously. The result was that the United States, in all its might, was driven from Somalia by a local militia leader whose followers dragged the despoiled corpses of some American soldiers through the streets. Somalia remains the "failed state" it was before American troops arrived, its people living in the continuing misery that results from total national dysfunction. But what little imagery emerges from Somalia has seemingly lost its moral dimension; for Americans, at least, such imagery now has political content, and is judged politically when it is displayed at all.
This intervention was itself a replay of the American misadventure in Beirut in 1982, when, in the wake of the massacres at the Sabra and Shattila refugee camps, Ronald Reagan sent in the Marines while citing the terrible pictures of suffering. Though seemingly engaged in a humanitarian effort aimed at policing and stabilizing the volatile situation, Americans actually found themselves enmeshed in a complex political struggle for the control of Lebanon. The Marines were of course pulled out the next year after their barracks were bombed, killing 223 soldiers. The perpetrators of the bombing have never been identified; Lebanon today is controlled by Syria.
The NATO intervention under American leadership in Yugoslavia, over the issue of Kosovo, is the apotheosis of this pathos-driven moral imperative reduced immediately to political dross. In a notoriously rambling 23 March speech intended to frame the issues involved in the Kosovo conflict and to garner support for American military involvement there, the president cited a variety of reasons to take military action, and evoked the horrible pictures of Balkan bloodshed that had appeared in the press for years. He told the country that he wanted to create a world "where we don't have to worry about seeing scenes every night for the next 40 years of ethnic cleansing in some part of the world." With likely images of dead Americans no doubt in mind, the president made it clear in advance of the bombing campaign that there were no plans to send in ground troops.
This attempt to sell a military action on humanitarian grounds, yet split the difference between the two kinds of atrocity images, has had serious consequences: a military, political, and humanitarian miscalculation of historic proportions. NATO's air attacks provided cover for Serbian leader Slobodon Milosevic to begin an expulsion of ethnic Albanians from the Serbian province. Hundreds of thousands of persons have been driven into the fragile countries bordering Kosovo, straining their limited resources, threatening their political stability, and submerging the entire conflict in staggering suffering.
Indeed, although the bombing campaign was originally intended to force Milosevic to sign a NATO-brokered treaty involving Kosovo, the scale of the humanitarian emergency - including reports of murders of Kosovar men - recast him as an unofficial war criminal. That threw into doubt the air campaign's moral underpinnings. After all, what kind of moral victory would it be if a such a perpetrator was forced to sign a treaty, but otherwise retained political power?
Politically, the air campaign seemed to unite Serbians behind Milosevic, although most of them had disliked him and had wanted to get rid of him. Many Serbians felt unfairly targeted: hundreds of thousands of them had recently been driven from Croatia, suffering great hardship with little or no attention from the United States or NATO. Indeed, many Serbians argued that during the Tito dictatorship after World War II they had been driven by the thousands from Kosovo, which they consider their sacred homeland, by the ethnic Albanians who then had power over the province.
As a result of the bombing campaign, NATO seems to have traded its relationship with Russia (where nationalists were threatening to radicalize a fragile political situation) for a marriage of sorts with the Kosovo Liberation Army, a group that the United States had until recently called "terrorists" and provocateurs. The KLA's backing is as murky as its agenda, which reportedly calls for the creation of a "Greater Albania" along the lines of the rump state created by fascist Italian occupiers during World War II. That would appear to require the dismantling not only of Yugoslavia but of Macedonia as well. Yet some members of Congress have called for the arming and support of the organisation.
While the bombing campaign became focused increasingly on the refugee problem it had itself seemingly exacerbated, the Clinton administration fell into visible disarray. The White House appeared completely flummoxed, claiming to have foreseen the expulsions, though obviously failing to prepare for them. Meanwhile, persons in the CIA, the Pentagon, and the State Department leaked stories to the press intended to pass the blame for the stunning mess. It was a singularly dismaying performance.
Yet American public support for continued military action - and even for the introduction of ground forces - actually grew. The power of atrocity imagery continued to assert itself.
In fact, attempting to respond to such images is entirely appropriate; if the United States can alleviate suffering with aid, sanctions, or even military action, then it shold debate doing so, determine if it is willing to accept the foreseeable consequences, and act. But misunderstanding and sentimentalising these images is an invitation to disaster. For all their inherent emotional content, they remain ultimately political in nature. They arise from political circumstances, and one cannot "stop" them without accepting the inevitable political consequences of intervention. The United States cannot pretend that it is the Red Cross with a Pentagon, though a succession of presidents have acted as if it were.
In Haiti, American forces have become virtual prisoners of pathos. They were sent there by Clinton in response to pitiable images of Haitian bloodshed and chaos, and in support of a reform president, and they are now reportedly unable to leave their barracks. Haiti has made no discernible progress toward real democratic practice, and its government - made possible by this American act of militarised humanitarianism - stands accused of murdering its enemies. It is unclear what moral purpose is served by the continued presence in the country of US troops. They remain under close confinement, however, to ensure that they do not become yet more targets of Haiti's endemic political violence, and the subject of more atrocity photographs featuring Americans soldiers.
In Rwanda, President Clinton took no action at all to forestall the true genocide that occurred five years ago, although the United States, France, and Belgium were all forewarned that many thousands of persons would soon be hacked to death by their traditional tribal enemies. However, the pictures of piles of bloody corpses that soon emerged from Rwanda were horrifying, and a massive effort was made to care for the many refugees who soon filled camps outside the country. There were many pitiable images to emerge from these camps as well; these pictures seemed to portray the remnants of a targeted people who had somehow escaped slaughter, and who were now reduced to the misery of refugee camp life. Having failed to stop the murders, the West surely had a moral obligation to give succor to the survivors.
But the details that eventually were reported from the camps were very different. Many of the people in the camps were not survivors of the slaughter; they were either perpetrators of the slaughter or members of the tribe that supported it. They had crowded into the camps to escape retribution. What appeared to be a morally necessary act of sanctuary was revealed to be - in large part, at least - aid and comfort to murderers.
And what of Kashmir? Tibet? The Kurds? Indeed, what of Iraq, where the deaths of many thousands of children have been attributed by the United Nations to the sanctions policy imposed by the United States? "Because we cannot do everything everywhere," says Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, "does not mean we should do nothing nowhere." True as far as it goes. But it also means that when we do choose to act, it should be in full appreciation not only of mercy's limits but of its consequences.
Charles Paul Freund is a Reason senior editor
Source: reason.com Reason Magazine June 1999
Inner Horror Plagues War Photographers
It is not always bullets or bombs that kill war correspondents, but the horror they keep inside.
Amy Eldon is too familiar with both causes of death. The young documentary maker lost her older brother, a freelance photographer who worked for Reuters and others, 5 years, ago in Somalia. Now she has learnt that television journalist Carlos Mavroleon, a subject of her new film on battle-zone reporters, died in August of a heroin overdose.
"It is job-related," Eldon said. "So many of these guys, after what they've seen, they become so tormented and they don't know where to put all this horror. Carlos just escaped to another world." Mavroleon was one of several photographers and cameramen Eldon interviewed for her two-hour television documentary Dying to Tell the Story, which premiered on an American cable network.
The film was inspired by her brother Dan, beaten to death in Somalia two months short of his 23rd birthday. After his death, she left college and fought off depression before deciding to make a film about him and other journalists who live to cover wars.
"They're cut from a different cloth. They're mad," Eldon said, "I think some go into it and then they become used to a higher threshold of pain. They become adrenaline junkies."
The addiction has left some of Dan's colleagues with a lifetime of pain. Donald McCullin, a self-described "war-a-year" man, now lives in an isolated English manor where cabinets are filled with photos of the dead and dying. Despite quitting, McCullin was haunted by what he had witnessed. A switch to landscape photography was no relief: his photos still look like war zones, Eldon said. "He'll have this beautiful picture of a sparrow that will be dead on white snow and it looks exactly like his pictures from Vietnam or Cambodia. It's frightening."
But Dan Dot only loved adventure, he saw himself performing a public service. Having grown up in Africa, he was concerned about the famine and civil war killing the people of Somalia. "What really motivated Dan was the fact that he was making a difference," his sister said.
"There he was at 21 and was making the double middle-page spread of Time and Newsweek. He was driven by the fact that he was actually galvanising people into action." Once Eldon believed her older brother was invincible. Dubbed by colleagues the Mayor of Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, Dan seemed to know everyone and fear nothing.
But Eldon saw her brother grow increasing tense after his stints in the war-ravaged country. "I was concerned because when you're in a war zone you're so aware of the fragility of life. And you're always on the edge and it's very difficult to sustain that when you go back to normal life. That's why some people get into drugs." Despite Dan's enthusiasm, the conflict wore on him and he said he had "had enough" just before he was killed. He was not addicted to war coverage, she said, and had thoughts of attending film school and making movies.
Dan, whose spirit is "very much around and challenging me to take bigger risks", also left 17 journals of his travels around the world. He filled the pages with photos, drawings and neatly penned writings. Parts of the colourful, complex pages appear in The Journey Is the Destination, published in 1997. The actual notebooks are carefully preserved by Amy and her family. "My mother calls them her grandchildren," Eldon said.
In her documentary, she questions veteran correspondents about why they keep returning to combat zones despite the grimness. Seven journalists were interviewed extensively, including long-time BBC foreign correspondent Martin Bell and CNN's chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour.
"There are certain people who have to do what they do and it can't be explained," Amanpour said. Bell takes a humble approach: "We can't be heroes because we can get out when we want," he told Eldon.
Asked if she thinks about the moment of her brother's murder, when a mob of enraged Somalis beat him and three other photographers to death, Eldon says no. "His death was a teaspoon of his life. It was such a brief thing. And the rest was just a tremendous life filled with love and joy." - Reuter
Source: The Dominion Thursday 17 September 1998
Trauma, Torment of War Reporters
by Carlin Romano
Review of the book Journalists Under Fire: The Psychological Hazards of Covering War by Anthony Feinstein, Johns Hopkins University Press.
'What makes a good newspaperman?" New York Herald Tribune city editor Stanley Walker famously asked in 1928. His reply to that rhetorical question became journalistic lore. "The answer is easy," Walker wrote. "He knows everything... His brain is the repository of the accumulated wisdom of the ages... He can go for nights without sleep. He dresses well and talks with charm. He hates lies and meanness and sham... When he dies, a lot of people are sorry, and some remember him for several days."
The New York Times revived that part-heroic, part-sardonic image of the newspaperman Thursday when, without fear (and with just a little favour), it devoted part of its front page and its entire inside obituary section to one of its own: "R W Apple Jr, Times Globe-Trotter Dies at 71." Over more than 40 years as a correspondent and editor, the Times reported, "Johnny" Apple "wrote from more than 100 countries about war and revolution, politics and government, food and drink, and the revenge of living well..." By any standard of the trade, Apple deserved a salute. He fulfilled the popular image of the American foreign correspondent as a stylish, charismatic, invulnerable character who jets in, gets the story, keeps (in Apple's case) his traveling pepper mill by his side, and makes it home undamaged in time for his daughter's wedding.
But there's a far-less-covered side to this trade, and it's the singular feat of Toronto psychiatrist Anthony Feinstein's Journalists Under Fire to turn his own clinician's light on it. Feinstein quotes from the memoir of another former Times foreign correspondent, Chris Hedges, who provides a searing foreword to this book. In War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Hedges writes of his goodbye to what Feinstein describes as three "harrowing" trips to El Salvador's civil war:
My last act was, in a frenzy of rage and anguish, to leap over the KLM counter in the airport in Costa Rica because of a perceived slight by a hapless airline clerk. I beat him to the floor as his bewildered colleagues locked themselves in the room behind the counter. Blood streamed down his face and mine. I refused to wipe the dried stains off my cheeks on the flight to Madrid, and I carry a scar on my face from where he thrust his pen into my cheek. War's sickness had become my own.
Feinstein studs his study with such examples of "war journalists' " falling to pieces, experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression. Among the symptoms: uncontrolled anger, distressing images and flashbacks, estrangement from others, troubled sleep, "hypervigilance" (such as hitting the ground when a child pops a balloon).
Veteran ITN cameraman Jon Steele, at the outset of his memoir, War Junkie, drolly recalls his "emotional disintegration" one day at Heathrow's Terminal Four: "Attention, Club World and World Traveller passengers. British Airways is happy to announce the nervous breakdown of Jon Denis Steele at check-in counter twenty."
London Times reporter Anthony Loyd remains haunted by a Chechen woman who brandished the bloody leg of a bombed family member. British photographer Jon Jones still sees a particular child's severed head under a blanket. A witness to Rwanda's genocide lifts a glass of champagne to his lips in London and immediately takes in the "smell of corpses... . That has happened a lot, the sense that the smell was all over you... it would not go away."
According to Feinstein, "nowhere in the countless pages of journals devoted to psychological trauma is there a single piece of research on war journalists." Filling that gap, he's conducted multiple surveys and many interviews. In one of Feinstein's surveys that analyzed 110 male and 30 female war journalists, "29% of the group had met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD over the course of long careers," compared with about 5% of the general public. Feinstein covers plenty of territory: the special torments of mothers and freelancers among war correspondents; the brutal effect of war journalism on relationships with spouses; the so-called adrenaline junkies among foreign hands; the dysfunctional- family backgrounds of many attracted to foreign coverage; the impact on "domestic" reporters covering incidents like 9/11.
What sticks, though, is the flip side to the upbeat R W Apple image of foreign correspondence. "It slowly takes away your smile," says South African photographer João Silva of the work. One veteran sees dead colleagues walking toward him. Another can no longer eat meat. "Do not delude yourself into thinking," the BBC's Allan Little tells others, "that you can swan in and swan out of other people's wars year after year and not be affected..."
Feinstein believes that journalistic organizations should take more responsibility for the mental health of their foreign correspondents and that newspapers do worse in that regard than broadcasters. What's clear is that while some may remember a journalist for just "several days," war journalists never forget what they've seen on our behalf, and they're never quite the same.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
US BLOCKS ASSETS OF 3 SUDANESE, 30 COMPANIES
Tue, May 29, 2007 Edition.
Today's breaking news : US blocks assets of 3 Sudanese, 30 companies --- Full list: 3 Sudanese and 30 comapanies hit by US sanctions --- Sudan says compromise possible over Darfur hybrid force-- US sanctions spark new Darfur controversy ---
China opposes expanded sanctions against Sudan --- US to impose new sanctions on Sudan --- President Deby demands Darfur rebels to quit Chad --- ICC prosecutor tells Sudan to hand over Darfur suspects --- Darfur women describe gang-rape horror --- Egypt dispatches 78 more peacekeepers to Darfur ---
War in Darfur
Subjects :
Choose one... Africa Arab League CA Republic Chad China DR Congo Egypt Eritrea Ethiopia Europe France India Iran Kenya Libya Malaysia Russia Sanaa group Saudi Arabia Somalia U.K U.S.A. Uganda World
Regions :
Choose one... Blue Nile Central Sudan Darfur Eastern Khartoum Kordofan Northern Southern
Full list: 3 Sudanese and 30 comapanies hit by US sanctions
Tuesday 29 May 2007 15:07. Printer-Friendly version Comments...
May 29, 2007 (WASHINGTON) — The US Administration has released the name of three individuals and 30 companies included in the additional economic sanctions announced today.
Below is the full list of the persons and companies:
The following individuals have been added to OFAC’s SDN list:
AUF, Awad Ibn (a.k.a. AUF, Awad Muhammad Ibn; a.k.a. AUF, Mohammed Ahmed Awad Ibn; a.k.a. AWF, Awad Ahmad Ibn; a.k.a. AWF, Awad Ibn; a.k.a. NAUF, Awad Mohammed Ahmed Ebni; a.k.a. OAF, Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn; a.k.a. OUF, Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn); DOB circa 1954; nationality Sudan; Head of Military Intelligence and Security (individual) [DARFUR]
HARUN, Ahmad Muhammed (a.k.a. HAROUN, Ahmed Mohamed; a.k.a. HAROUN, Ahmed Mohammed; a.k.a. HARUN, Ahmad; a.k.a. HARUN, Ahmad Muhammad; a.k.a. HARUN, Mawlana Ahmad Muhammad); DOB 1964; POB Kordofan, Sudan; nationality Sudan; State Minister for Humanitarian Affairs; former State Minister for the Interior; former Coordinator of the Popular Police Forces (individual) [DARFUR]
TAHA, Khalil Ibrahim Mohamed Achar Foudail (a.k.a. IBRAHIM, Khalil; a.k.a. MOHAMED, Khalil Ibrahim); DOB 15 Jun 1958; POB El Fasher, Sudan; alt. POB Al Fashir, Sudan; nationality Sudan; National Foreign ID Number 4203016171 (France) issued 20 Feb 2004; Registration ID 0179427 (France); Chairman, Justice and Equality Movement; Co-founder, National Redemption Front (individual) [DARFUR]
The following entities have been added to OFAC’s SDN list:
ADVANCED ENGINEERING WORKS, Street No. 53, P.O. Box 44690, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
ADVANCED MINING WORKS COMPANY LIMITED, Elmek Nimir Street, Khartoum Bahri/Industrial Area, P.O. Box 1034, Khartoum 11, Sudan; Email Address admico@sudanmail.net (Sudan) [SUDAN]
ADVANCED PETROLEUM COMPANY (a.k.a. APCO), House No. 10, Block 9, Street 33, Amarat, P.O. Box 12811, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
ADVANCED TRADING AND CHEMICAL WORKS COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. ADVANCED CHEMICAL WORKS; a.k.a. ADVANCED COMMERCIAL AND CHEMICAL WORKS COMPANY LIMITED), 19 Al Amarat Street, P.O. Box 44690, Khartoum, Sudan; Email Address advance@sudanmail.net (Sudan); alt. Email Address accw@htg-sdn.com (Sudan) [SUDAN]
AL SUNUT DEVELOPMENT COMPANY (a.k.a. ALSUNUT DEVELOPMENT COMPANY), No. 1 Block 5 East, Khartoum 2, P.O. Box 1840, Khartoum, Sudan; Website www.alsunut.com (Sudan); Email Address info.AlsunutKhartoum@alsunut.com; Email Address info.AlsunutDubai@alsunut.com [SUDAN]
ALFARACHEM COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. AL PHARAKIM; a.k.a. ALFARACHEM PHARMACEUTICALS INDUSTRIES LIMITED; a.k.a. ALFARAKIM), 27 Al Amarat Street, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
ARAB SUDANESE BLUE NILE AGRICULTURAL COMPANY, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
ARAB SUDANESE SEED COMPANY, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
ARAB SUDANESE VEGETABLE OIL COMPANY, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
ASSALAYA SUGAR COMPANY LIMITED, Eastern Bank of White Nile River, near Rabak town (about 300 km from Khartoum, P.O. Box 511, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
AZZA AIR TRANSPORT COMPANY LTD. (a.k.a. AZZA AVIATION COMPANY; a.k.a. AZZA TRANSPORT), German Culture Center, McNimer Street, P. O. Box 11586, Khartoum, Sudan [DARFUR]
BASHAIER, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
GIAD AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. GIAD AUTOMOTIVE AND TRUCK; a.k.a. GIAD AUTOMOTIVE COMPANY; a.k.a. GIAD CARS & HEAVY TRUCKS COMPANY), Gazera State (40 km distance from Khartoum), P.O. Box 444/13600, Khartoum 1111, Sudan; Website www.giadmotors.com/giad_auto.html [SUDAN]
GIAD MOTOR INDUSTRY COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. GIAD MOTOR COMPANY), Basheer Mohammad Saeed Building, Baladia Street, P.O. Box 13610, Khartoum, Sudan; Website www.giadmotors.com (Sudan) [SUDAN]
GUNEID SUGAR COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. GUNEID SUGAR FACTORY), P.O. Box 511, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
HI TECH GROUP (a.k.a. HIGH TECH GROUP; a.k.a. HIGHTECH GROUP; a.k.a. HITECH GROUP), Amarat Street No. 31, P.O. Box 44690, Khartoum, Sudan; Website www.htg-sdn.com (Sudan) [SUDAN]
HICOM (a.k.a. HI-COM), Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
HICONSULT (a.k.a. HI-CONSULT), Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
HI-TECH CHEMICALS, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
HI-TECH PETROLEUM GROUP, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
NEW HALFA SUGAR FACTORY COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. NEW HALFA SUGAR COMPANY), El Gamaa Street (Aljama Street), New Halfa, P.O. Box 511/3047, Khartoum, Sudan; Email Address sukar@sudanmail.net (Sudan) [SUDAN]
PETROHELP PETROLEUM COMPANY LIMITED, Building No. 20, Street No. 42, Al Riyadh Area, P.O. Box 44690, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
RAM ENERGY COMPANY LIMITED, Altiyadh Street 131/Almashtal Street, Block 12, House No. 87, P.O. Box 802, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
SENNAR SUGAR COMPANY LIMITED, P.O. Box 511, Khartoum, Sudan; Email Address sukar@sudanmail.net (Sudan) [SUDAN]
SHEIKAN INSURANCE AND REINSURANCE COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. SHEIKAN INSURANCE COMPANY), Al Souq Al Arabi, Sheikan Building, Khartoum SU001, P.O. Box 10037, Khartoum, Sudan; Email Address sheikan@sudanmail.net (Sudan) [SUDAN]
SUDAN ADVANCED RAILWAYS, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
SUDAN GEZIRA BOARD (a.k.a. GEZIRA SCHEME), Khartum Gezira Scheme Building, 39th Street, P.O. Box 884, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
SUDAN MASTER TECHNOLOGY (a.k.a. GIAD INDUSTRIAL CITY; a.k.a. GIAD INDUSTRIAL GROUP; a.k.a. SUDAN MASTER TECH), SMT Building, Gamhuria Street, GIAD Industrial Complex, P.O. Box 10782, Khartoum, SU001, Sudan; Email Address info@sudanmaster.com (Sudan); Website www.sudanmaster.com (Sudan) [SUDAN]
SUDAN TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. SUDATEL), 9th Floor, Sudatel Tower, Nile Street, Khartoum, Sudan; Sudatel Tower, Al Horriya Street, P.O. Box 11155, Khartoum, Sudan; Email Address info@sudatel.net (Sudan); Website www.sudatel.net/en (Sudan) [SUDAN]
SUDANESE SUGAR PRODUCTION COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. SUDANESE SUGAR COMPANY), El Gamaa Street (Aljama Street), Opposite the Authority of Electricity Building, P.O. Box 511, Khartoum, Sudan; P.O. Box 511, Building No. 3-Block No. 7, Alshatte Gharb-Gammaa Avenue, Khartoum, Sudan; Email Address sukar@sudanmail.net (Sudan) [SUDAN]
WAFRA PHARMA LABORATORIES (a.k.a. WAFRA PHARMACEUTICALS; a.k.a. WAFRAPHARMA LABORATORIES), Main Street, P.O. Box 2032, Omdurman, Sudan; Email Address waframed@sudanmail.net (Sudan) [SUDAN]
(ST)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related countries :
U.S.A. :
US sanctions reveal ’hostile intentions’ - Sudan
Statement by the US President on Darfur
US blocks assets of 3 Sudanese, 30 companies
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comment this article...
1 Comment
Full list: 3 Sudanese and 30 comapanies hit by US sanctions
29 May 2007 17:19, by Deng Mayen Dhieu
Well done Mr Bush,This punitive measures against the murderous regime in Khartoum were long overdue. However, the list is too short,It should have been too lengthy, to include Al Gosh the head of National Security and other top leaders of NCP who are resisting the deployment of UN forces in Darfur. Another important thing left out by Mr Bush is imposition of No Fly zone in Darfur and blocking of port Sudan.
Reply to this comment
Copyright © 2003-2006 SudanTribune Ltd. All rights reserved.
Today's breaking news : US blocks assets of 3 Sudanese, 30 companies --- Full list: 3 Sudanese and 30 comapanies hit by US sanctions --- Sudan says compromise possible over Darfur hybrid force-- US sanctions spark new Darfur controversy ---
China opposes expanded sanctions against Sudan --- US to impose new sanctions on Sudan --- President Deby demands Darfur rebels to quit Chad --- ICC prosecutor tells Sudan to hand over Darfur suspects --- Darfur women describe gang-rape horror --- Egypt dispatches 78 more peacekeepers to Darfur ---
War in Darfur
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Full list: 3 Sudanese and 30 comapanies hit by US sanctions
Tuesday 29 May 2007 15:07. Printer-Friendly version Comments...
May 29, 2007 (WASHINGTON) — The US Administration has released the name of three individuals and 30 companies included in the additional economic sanctions announced today.
Below is the full list of the persons and companies:
The following individuals have been added to OFAC’s SDN list:
AUF, Awad Ibn (a.k.a. AUF, Awad Muhammad Ibn; a.k.a. AUF, Mohammed Ahmed Awad Ibn; a.k.a. AWF, Awad Ahmad Ibn; a.k.a. AWF, Awad Ibn; a.k.a. NAUF, Awad Mohammed Ahmed Ebni; a.k.a. OAF, Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn; a.k.a. OUF, Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn); DOB circa 1954; nationality Sudan; Head of Military Intelligence and Security (individual) [DARFUR]
HARUN, Ahmad Muhammed (a.k.a. HAROUN, Ahmed Mohamed; a.k.a. HAROUN, Ahmed Mohammed; a.k.a. HARUN, Ahmad; a.k.a. HARUN, Ahmad Muhammad; a.k.a. HARUN, Mawlana Ahmad Muhammad); DOB 1964; POB Kordofan, Sudan; nationality Sudan; State Minister for Humanitarian Affairs; former State Minister for the Interior; former Coordinator of the Popular Police Forces (individual) [DARFUR]
TAHA, Khalil Ibrahim Mohamed Achar Foudail (a.k.a. IBRAHIM, Khalil; a.k.a. MOHAMED, Khalil Ibrahim); DOB 15 Jun 1958; POB El Fasher, Sudan; alt. POB Al Fashir, Sudan; nationality Sudan; National Foreign ID Number 4203016171 (France) issued 20 Feb 2004; Registration ID 0179427 (France); Chairman, Justice and Equality Movement; Co-founder, National Redemption Front (individual) [DARFUR]
The following entities have been added to OFAC’s SDN list:
ADVANCED ENGINEERING WORKS, Street No. 53, P.O. Box 44690, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
ADVANCED MINING WORKS COMPANY LIMITED, Elmek Nimir Street, Khartoum Bahri/Industrial Area, P.O. Box 1034, Khartoum 11, Sudan; Email Address admico@sudanmail.net (Sudan) [SUDAN]
ADVANCED PETROLEUM COMPANY (a.k.a. APCO), House No. 10, Block 9, Street 33, Amarat, P.O. Box 12811, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
ADVANCED TRADING AND CHEMICAL WORKS COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. ADVANCED CHEMICAL WORKS; a.k.a. ADVANCED COMMERCIAL AND CHEMICAL WORKS COMPANY LIMITED), 19 Al Amarat Street, P.O. Box 44690, Khartoum, Sudan; Email Address advance@sudanmail.net (Sudan); alt. Email Address accw@htg-sdn.com (Sudan) [SUDAN]
AL SUNUT DEVELOPMENT COMPANY (a.k.a. ALSUNUT DEVELOPMENT COMPANY), No. 1 Block 5 East, Khartoum 2, P.O. Box 1840, Khartoum, Sudan; Website www.alsunut.com (Sudan); Email Address info.AlsunutKhartoum@alsunut.com; Email Address info.AlsunutDubai@alsunut.com [SUDAN]
ALFARACHEM COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. AL PHARAKIM; a.k.a. ALFARACHEM PHARMACEUTICALS INDUSTRIES LIMITED; a.k.a. ALFARAKIM), 27 Al Amarat Street, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
ARAB SUDANESE BLUE NILE AGRICULTURAL COMPANY, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
ARAB SUDANESE SEED COMPANY, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
ARAB SUDANESE VEGETABLE OIL COMPANY, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
ASSALAYA SUGAR COMPANY LIMITED, Eastern Bank of White Nile River, near Rabak town (about 300 km from Khartoum, P.O. Box 511, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
AZZA AIR TRANSPORT COMPANY LTD. (a.k.a. AZZA AVIATION COMPANY; a.k.a. AZZA TRANSPORT), German Culture Center, McNimer Street, P. O. Box 11586, Khartoum, Sudan [DARFUR]
BASHAIER, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
GIAD AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. GIAD AUTOMOTIVE AND TRUCK; a.k.a. GIAD AUTOMOTIVE COMPANY; a.k.a. GIAD CARS & HEAVY TRUCKS COMPANY), Gazera State (40 km distance from Khartoum), P.O. Box 444/13600, Khartoum 1111, Sudan; Website www.giadmotors.com/giad_auto.html [SUDAN]
GIAD MOTOR INDUSTRY COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. GIAD MOTOR COMPANY), Basheer Mohammad Saeed Building, Baladia Street, P.O. Box 13610, Khartoum, Sudan; Website www.giadmotors.com (Sudan) [SUDAN]
GUNEID SUGAR COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. GUNEID SUGAR FACTORY), P.O. Box 511, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
HI TECH GROUP (a.k.a. HIGH TECH GROUP; a.k.a. HIGHTECH GROUP; a.k.a. HITECH GROUP), Amarat Street No. 31, P.O. Box 44690, Khartoum, Sudan; Website www.htg-sdn.com (Sudan) [SUDAN]
HICOM (a.k.a. HI-COM), Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
HICONSULT (a.k.a. HI-CONSULT), Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
HI-TECH CHEMICALS, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
HI-TECH PETROLEUM GROUP, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
NEW HALFA SUGAR FACTORY COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. NEW HALFA SUGAR COMPANY), El Gamaa Street (Aljama Street), New Halfa, P.O. Box 511/3047, Khartoum, Sudan; Email Address sukar@sudanmail.net (Sudan) [SUDAN]
PETROHELP PETROLEUM COMPANY LIMITED, Building No. 20, Street No. 42, Al Riyadh Area, P.O. Box 44690, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
RAM ENERGY COMPANY LIMITED, Altiyadh Street 131/Almashtal Street, Block 12, House No. 87, P.O. Box 802, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
SENNAR SUGAR COMPANY LIMITED, P.O. Box 511, Khartoum, Sudan; Email Address sukar@sudanmail.net (Sudan) [SUDAN]
SHEIKAN INSURANCE AND REINSURANCE COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. SHEIKAN INSURANCE COMPANY), Al Souq Al Arabi, Sheikan Building, Khartoum SU001, P.O. Box 10037, Khartoum, Sudan; Email Address sheikan@sudanmail.net (Sudan) [SUDAN]
SUDAN ADVANCED RAILWAYS, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
SUDAN GEZIRA BOARD (a.k.a. GEZIRA SCHEME), Khartum Gezira Scheme Building, 39th Street, P.O. Box 884, Khartoum, Sudan [SUDAN]
SUDAN MASTER TECHNOLOGY (a.k.a. GIAD INDUSTRIAL CITY; a.k.a. GIAD INDUSTRIAL GROUP; a.k.a. SUDAN MASTER TECH), SMT Building, Gamhuria Street, GIAD Industrial Complex, P.O. Box 10782, Khartoum, SU001, Sudan; Email Address info@sudanmaster.com (Sudan); Website www.sudanmaster.com (Sudan) [SUDAN]
SUDAN TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. SUDATEL), 9th Floor, Sudatel Tower, Nile Street, Khartoum, Sudan; Sudatel Tower, Al Horriya Street, P.O. Box 11155, Khartoum, Sudan; Email Address info@sudatel.net (Sudan); Website www.sudatel.net/en (Sudan) [SUDAN]
SUDANESE SUGAR PRODUCTION COMPANY LIMITED (a.k.a. SUDANESE SUGAR COMPANY), El Gamaa Street (Aljama Street), Opposite the Authority of Electricity Building, P.O. Box 511, Khartoum, Sudan; P.O. Box 511, Building No. 3-Block No. 7, Alshatte Gharb-Gammaa Avenue, Khartoum, Sudan; Email Address sukar@sudanmail.net (Sudan) [SUDAN]
WAFRA PHARMA LABORATORIES (a.k.a. WAFRA PHARMACEUTICALS; a.k.a. WAFRAPHARMA LABORATORIES), Main Street, P.O. Box 2032, Omdurman, Sudan; Email Address waframed@sudanmail.net (Sudan) [SUDAN]
(ST)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related countries :
U.S.A. :
US sanctions reveal ’hostile intentions’ - Sudan
Statement by the US President on Darfur
US blocks assets of 3 Sudanese, 30 companies
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comment this article...
1 Comment
Full list: 3 Sudanese and 30 comapanies hit by US sanctions
29 May 2007 17:19, by Deng Mayen Dhieu
Well done Mr Bush,This punitive measures against the murderous regime in Khartoum were long overdue. However, the list is too short,It should have been too lengthy, to include Al Gosh the head of National Security and other top leaders of NCP who are resisting the deployment of UN forces in Darfur. Another important thing left out by Mr Bush is imposition of No Fly zone in Darfur and blocking of port Sudan.
Reply to this comment
Copyright © 2003-2006 SudanTribune Ltd. All rights reserved.
GENOCIDE DIPLOMACY IN DARFUR
The Monitor's View from the May 30, 2007 edition
Genocide diplomacy in Darfur
President Bush makes good on a sanctions threat, but much depends on China.
President Bush ratcheted up US sanctions Tuesday against Sudan for its atrocities in Darfur or, specifically, for not allowing in UN peacekeepers. His action, done on behalf of "the conscience of the world," just might force China, Sudan's main supporter, to find more of a conscience in helping end a genocide.
In April, when Mr. Bush was ready to impose these tougher sanctions, China, along with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, sought additional time for diplomacy. Bush agreed, reluctantly. More attempts were then made to persuade Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, to approve a 17,000-strong UN peacekeeping force for Darfur.
Such persuasion, without teeth, didn't work.
Mr. Bashir simply referred to UN peacekeepers as "neocolonialists." The Khartoum regime kept up its campaign of violence against the 2.5 million refugees in its western region of Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed since 2003 in this civil war. The regime took no steps to disarm local militias committing most of the atrocities. And the UN discovered Sudan flying arms into Darfur in planes painted white, making them appear to be UN aircraft.
With a G-8 summit next week, Bush decided to announce the tougher sanctions in hopes that the forum of rich nations would join his drive for more pressure on Sudan. One part of the Bush plan is a ban on an additional 31 Sudanese companies (from more than 100) conducting any dollar transactions within the US financial system. That step may have some effect, but an assist from European banks would help.
And the US also seeks a nod from the UN Security Council for two other, noneconomic sanctions: imposing a broad arms embargo against Sudan and barring the government from conducting any offensive military flights in Darfur. That action will require China to not cast its veto in the Council.
But Beijing buys more than half of Sudan's oil, a part of its global grab for raw materials to fuel a superheated export economy. If China now jeopardizes oil imports from Sudan by standing up for human rights in Darfur, it may face similar scrutiny over imports of resources from (and aid to) dictators in Burma (Myanmar), Zimbabwe, and elsewhere.
Western countries often link trade and aid to good governance and human rights, but China doesn't. That's an increasingly difficult stand to take, especially when China will host the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Beijing hopes to use the spotlight on the Games to showcase itself as a global player. In recent months, however, activists have branded these "the genocide games," aiming to muster a boycott unless Beijing acts tougher on Sudan.
That pressure has had some effect on Beijing, but now Bush's call for harsher sanctions should force China to exercise a stronger hand over its friends in Khartoum. If China doesn't go along, the humanitarian crisis and the genocide in Darfur may only worsen.
What Beijing ultimately does will send a signal to nations in Africa that it has recently courted as economic partners: Regimes such as Sudan's can't abuse diplomacy when atrocities against innocents are going on.
Home | About Us/Help | Feedback | Subscribe | Archive | Print Edition | Site Map | Special Projects | Corrections
Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Rights & Permissions | Terms of Service | Advertise With Us | Today's Article on Christian Science
www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2007 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
Genocide diplomacy in Darfur
President Bush makes good on a sanctions threat, but much depends on China.
President Bush ratcheted up US sanctions Tuesday against Sudan for its atrocities in Darfur or, specifically, for not allowing in UN peacekeepers. His action, done on behalf of "the conscience of the world," just might force China, Sudan's main supporter, to find more of a conscience in helping end a genocide.
In April, when Mr. Bush was ready to impose these tougher sanctions, China, along with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, sought additional time for diplomacy. Bush agreed, reluctantly. More attempts were then made to persuade Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, to approve a 17,000-strong UN peacekeeping force for Darfur.
Such persuasion, without teeth, didn't work.
Mr. Bashir simply referred to UN peacekeepers as "neocolonialists." The Khartoum regime kept up its campaign of violence against the 2.5 million refugees in its western region of Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed since 2003 in this civil war. The regime took no steps to disarm local militias committing most of the atrocities. And the UN discovered Sudan flying arms into Darfur in planes painted white, making them appear to be UN aircraft.
With a G-8 summit next week, Bush decided to announce the tougher sanctions in hopes that the forum of rich nations would join his drive for more pressure on Sudan. One part of the Bush plan is a ban on an additional 31 Sudanese companies (from more than 100) conducting any dollar transactions within the US financial system. That step may have some effect, but an assist from European banks would help.
And the US also seeks a nod from the UN Security Council for two other, noneconomic sanctions: imposing a broad arms embargo against Sudan and barring the government from conducting any offensive military flights in Darfur. That action will require China to not cast its veto in the Council.
But Beijing buys more than half of Sudan's oil, a part of its global grab for raw materials to fuel a superheated export economy. If China now jeopardizes oil imports from Sudan by standing up for human rights in Darfur, it may face similar scrutiny over imports of resources from (and aid to) dictators in Burma (Myanmar), Zimbabwe, and elsewhere.
Western countries often link trade and aid to good governance and human rights, but China doesn't. That's an increasingly difficult stand to take, especially when China will host the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Beijing hopes to use the spotlight on the Games to showcase itself as a global player. In recent months, however, activists have branded these "the genocide games," aiming to muster a boycott unless Beijing acts tougher on Sudan.
That pressure has had some effect on Beijing, but now Bush's call for harsher sanctions should force China to exercise a stronger hand over its friends in Khartoum. If China doesn't go along, the humanitarian crisis and the genocide in Darfur may only worsen.
What Beijing ultimately does will send a signal to nations in Africa that it has recently courted as economic partners: Regimes such as Sudan's can't abuse diplomacy when atrocities against innocents are going on.
Home | About Us/Help | Feedback | Subscribe | Archive | Print Edition | Site Map | Special Projects | Corrections
Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Rights & Permissions | Terms of Service | Advertise With Us | Today's Article on Christian Science
www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2007 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
A FORMER SLAVE TURNED ACTIVIST IN THE USA SAYS THERE ARE TERRORISTS IN GOVERNMENT OF SUDAN
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Former slave battles Sudanese government
Says he cannot stop being 'voice for the voiceless'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: May 16, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
A former slave turned activist in the United States says there are terrorists in the government of Sudan who oppose him and his efforts to free slaves there, but he cannot stop his work because of what he's seen in the eyes of the people.
"It is not easy to be there to see these people, to look into their eyes, and see they are terrified," Simon Deng told WND during an exclusive interview about his recent humanitarian mission to the Darfur region in Sudan.
"These are people who never have had something called freedom. They don't know how to say no to anything. All they know is fear and threats, fear that they will be abused."
Someone, he said, has to be the "voice for the voiceless" and because he experienced slavery as a child, and escaped, he knows exactly how the people are suffering.
(Story continues below)
Deng, who grew up in the southern Sudan area, now lives in the United states and works with American Anti-Slavery Group.
That organization has documented multiple traffic paths for slavery in the world in 2007, and estimates there are 27 million around the world still enslaved. Its report notes that the CIA has estimated there are between 14,500 and 17,000 slave victims trafficked into the United States each year.
The problem includes chattel slaves, who are considered their masters' property and often is race-based. It's evident in nations like Mauritania and Sudan.
Other scenarios include debt bondage, where victims, often Asian, are forced to work for debts – either real or imagined, and sex slavery, where women and children are forced into prostitution. There also is a force labor scenario where workers essentially are treated as slaves, the group said.
Deng recently returned from Sudan, where he and officials from Christian Solidarity International facilitated the freeing of about 250 slaves.
These were people – mostly Christian – who had been taken captive during the region's recent civil war by northern Sudanese who are Muslim, and had continued in the servitude even after the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that was signed among the region's various factions.
One of those, John Marieu Nyak Agout, 15, is a Christian, who said while in captivity he was called Mohammed and forced to follow Islamic rituals. "I was forced to call my master father," he said.
Deng told WND that no one on Earth is entitled to own another human being, and that is why he continues his work.
"When you come back from there, you are filled with all the images. You cannot go to sleep. You become consumed by the evidence of what's going on, knowing that those people we left, don't have what we do," he told WND.
Anti-slave activist Simon Deng meeting with President Bush in 2006
Deng, who previously has carried his message of action to President Bush, the U.N. Human Rights Commission, and other world leaders, said he cannot just forgive and forget.
He told WND that he goes to the region several times a year to deliver aid, seek help from local factions and free those in bondage. And he doesn't get much help from the Sudanese government, which sometimes denies him travel permission forcing him to travel through Kenya instead.
He said even now, the federal government there does little to resolve the problems, and most of the work is being done through local tribes who work together to restore peace and stability to the area.
One of Deng's biggest obstacles on his trips is to convince northern Sudanese owners they must allow the slaves to go free.
When slaves are freed, he said, their difficulties are not over, because often they return to areas where their villages have been decimated, their families dead or gone.
"In reality they have to figure out how they are going to fit into that new society," he said.
Deng told WND he's already working on his next trip, and he wants help. "As Americans, we have to act, and act now," he said.
For A Free People
Founded 1997 Wednesday, May 16, 2007 Evening Edition
FREE News Flashes
WND Directory
Shop.WND
Page 1 News
Page 2 News
Commentary
G2 Bulletin
Daily Poll
WND Forums
Letters to the Editor
BizNetDaily
SportsNetDaily
TV Guide
Weather
WND Resources
About WND
WND SCOOPS
WND BOOKS
ADVERTISE with WND
Put WND headlines on your site
Make WND your Home Page
Sign up for WND Email Alerts
VOLUNTARY PAYMENT
Download to your PDA
US Newspapers
Foreign Newspapers
Major News Wires
Other News Services
Other Sites
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Contact Government Officials
Search Engines
Media
Entertainment
WND People
Contact WND
Who's Who at WND
Speakers & Talk Show Guests
Columnists
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Former slave battles Sudanese government
Says he cannot stop being 'voice for the voiceless'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: May 16, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
A former slave turned activist in the United States says there are terrorists in the government of Sudan who oppose him and his efforts to free slaves there, but he cannot stop his work because of what he's seen in the eyes of the people.
"It is not easy to be there to see these people, to look into their eyes, and see they are terrified," Simon Deng told WND during an exclusive interview about his recent humanitarian mission to the Darfur region in Sudan.
"These are people who never have had something called freedom. They don't know how to say no to anything. All they know is fear and threats, fear that they will be abused."
Someone, he said, has to be the "voice for the voiceless" and because he experienced slavery as a child, and escaped, he knows exactly how the people are suffering.
(Story continues below)
Deng, who grew up in the southern Sudan area, now lives in the United states and works with American Anti-Slavery Group.
That organization has documented multiple traffic paths for slavery in the world in 2007, and estimates there are 27 million around the world still enslaved. Its report notes that the CIA has estimated there are between 14,500 and 17,000 slave victims trafficked into the United States each year.
The problem includes chattel slaves, who are considered their masters' property and often is race-based. It's evident in nations like Mauritania and Sudan.
Other scenarios include debt bondage, where victims, often Asian, are forced to work for debts – either real or imagined, and sex slavery, where women and children are forced into prostitution. There also is a force labor scenario where workers essentially are treated as slaves, the group said.
Deng recently returned from Sudan, where he and officials from Christian Solidarity International facilitated the freeing of about 250 slaves.
These were people – mostly Christian – who had been taken captive during the region's recent civil war by northern Sudanese who are Muslim, and had continued in the servitude even after the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that was signed among the region's various factions.
One of those, John Marieu Nyak Agout, 15, is a Christian, who said while in captivity he was called Mohammed and forced to follow Islamic rituals. "I was forced to call my master father," he said.
Deng told WND that no one on Earth is entitled to own another human being, and that is why he continues his work.
"When you come back from there, you are filled with all the images. You cannot go to sleep. You become consumed by the evidence of what's going on, knowing that those people we left, don't have what we do," he told WND.
Anti-slave activist Simon Deng meeting with President Bush in 2006
Deng, who previously has carried his message of action to President Bush, the U.N. Human Rights Commission, and other world leaders, said he cannot just forgive and forget.
He told WND that he goes to the region several times a year to deliver aid, seek help from local factions and free those in bondage. And he doesn't get much help from the Sudanese government, which sometimes denies him travel permission forcing him to travel through Kenya instead.
He said even now, the federal government there does little to resolve the problems, and most of the work is being done through local tribes who work together to restore peace and stability to the area.
One of Deng's biggest obstacles on his trips is to convince northern Sudanese owners they must allow the slaves to go free.
When slaves are freed, he said, their difficulties are not over, because often they return to areas where their villages have been decimated, their families dead or gone.
"In reality they have to figure out how they are going to fit into that new society," he said.
Deng told WND he's already working on his next trip, and he wants help. "As Americans, we have to act, and act now," he said.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
THE COMPREHENSIVE PEACE AGREEMENT
THE COMPREHENSIVE PEACE AGREEMENT:
A Summary Booklet
The official signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) on 9th January 2005 between the Government of the Republic of the Sudan (GoS) and the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) marked a historical watershed for Sudan. It brought to an end 22 years of protracted and costly civil war that had caused tremendous loss of life, devastated the country’s infrastructure (especially in the South) and destroyed livelihoods, trust and hope.
The terms agreed to and the renewed hope engendered by the CPA needs to be channeled to the rebuilding of this war torn country. The CPA sets out the framework for a just and lasting peace in the Sudan, and along with the subsequent Interim National Constitution (INC) and the Interim Constitution of the Southern Sudan (ICSS), establishes a new political, military and economic system based on the values of justice, democracy, and human rights that gives a voice and role to all the peoples of the Sudan and paves the way for restored dignity and well being, security and equality for all.
Yet the CPA, INC and ICSS are only the beginning. For the Sudanese people to fully participate in a meaningful way in the transition from war to peace and development, they must fully understand all three documents and their implications. We therefore commend the following summary of the CPA. This document provides an overview of the main aspects of the agreements made in an accessible and readable way. This will assist in accomplishing the wish of the late Dr John Garang de Mabior that everyone should ‘read, understand and own these Protocols’.
Dr. Samson L. Kwaje Minister for Information and Broadcasting
USE OF THIS BOOKLET
The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), the Interim National Constitution (INC) and the Interim Constitution of Southern Sudan (ICSS) together form the legal basis for the resolution of Sudan’s civil war. This booklet contains the Summary of the CPA only. The Summary aims to provide a general overview of the structure and content of the political, military and economic systems established by the CPA in order to enable readers to more easily understand the full text of the agreement. The full CPA is comprised of the following:
Protocols:
• The Machakos Protocol (signed 20 July 2002);
• Security Arrangements (signed on 25 September 2003);
• Wealth Sharing (signed 7 January 2004);
• Power Sharing (signed 26 May 2004)
• Resolution of the Conflict in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile (signed 26 May 2004);
• Resolution of the Abyei Conflict (signed 26 May 2004)
Implementation Modalities:
• Permanent Ceasefire and Security Arrangements (signed 31 December 2004);
• Machakos and Power Sharing (signed on 31 December 2004);
• Wealth Sharing (signed 31 December 2004);
• Resolution of the Abyei Conflict (signed 26 May 2004)
• Resolution of the Conflict in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile (signed 26 May 2004);
Generally, the Protocols set forth the content of the CPA – they describe what must be done. The Implementation Modalities set forth the details – they describe how things will be done by providing for the procedure, timing and responsible parties for each activity mandated by the Protocols. To prepare this Summary, the essential elements of each Protocol were extracted and condensed – drawing heavily on the Six Protocols Summary prepared by Pact and the National Working Group for Civic Education in 2005. Details about each element were then added from the Implementation Modalities.
The Summary is separated into five sections:
• Security Arrangements (p. 4);
• Finance and Economic Matters (p. 7);
• Decentralized System of Governance (p. 10);
• Special Status of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile (p. 21); and,
• Special Status of Abyei (p. 22).
Please note that this is NOT the official CPA. This Summary was prepared by Pact as part of a project of the United States Agency for International Development, Office of Transition Initiatives in partnership with the Pact Sudan Program. All errors are unintentional and entirely the responsibility of Pact. Any such errors should be pointed out to Pact for correction in future editions.
Whenever possible, people should refer to the full official text of the CPA for further clarification and complete understanding of the peace agreement.
A SUMMARY OF THE MACHAKOS PROTOCOL
The Machakos Protocol was the result of a breakthrough round of negotiations in 2002. It is the foundation of the final CPA. It lays down the principles and procedures to guide political development until a referendum in the south in 2011, identifies the levels and roles of government, and sets out the basic agreements reached on State and Religion. A brief summary of the Protocol is given here; more detail can be found in the section on the Power Sharing Arrangements on p.10.
Part A – Agreed Principles
• The unity of the Sudan, based on the free will of its people and good democratic governance, is and shall always be the priority of the parties;
• The People of Southern Sudan shall control and govern the affairs of the South as well as participate equitably in the National Government;
• The people of Southern Sudan shall have the right to Self-Determination through a referendum.
• The people of the Sudan agree to work together to, among other things:
- Establish a democratic system of governance;
- Find a comprehensive solution to the economic and social deterioration of the Sudan;
- Find a solution that replaces war with peace, but also with social and economic justice, and human rights;
- Formulate a reconstruction and development plan for areas affected by war;
- Make the unity of Sudan an attractive option especially to the people of Southern Sudan;
Part B – The Transition Process
The implementation of the comprehensive peace agreement will cover two phases:
• A Pre-Interim Period of 6 months (9 January 2005 – 8 July 2005); and,
• An Interim Period of 6 years (9 July 2005 – 8 July 2011).
During the Pre-Interim period and continuing through the Interim Period, the institutions and bodies of a transitional government will be established in the context of a comprehensive, internationally monitored ceasefire. These institutions, bodies and mechanisms are treated in more detail throughout this document.
The Machakos Protocol secured the right of self-determination for Southern Sudan by providing that the people of Southern Sudan will vote in a referendum at the end of the Interim Period, choosing between unity of the Sudan or secession.
A SUMMARY OF SECURITY ARRANGEMENTS
The Protocol on Security Arrangements (PSA) was signed in Naivasha, Kenya on 25 September
2003, and the Permanent Ceasefire and Security Arrangements Implementation Modalities and Appendices (PCF) was signed in Naivasha, Kenya on 31 December 2004. These two documents provide for the permanent end of hostilities between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), and describe the structure and function of the armed forces during the Pre-Interim and Interim Periods.
Security arrangements in the Sudan during the Pre-Interim and Interim Periods are based on the following principles, among others:
• Respect for the ceasefire and the resolution of problems through dialogue and political will;
• Fostering of good governance, democracy and civil society;
• Free movement of people and services throughout Sudan; and,
• Full ceasefire and cessation of all hostilities.
The main security issues covered under the CPA are:
• Status of the Armed Forces, including redeployment and the formation of Joint Integrated Units (JIUs);
• Ceasefire and monitoring arrangements, including the treatment of Other Armed Groups (OAGs);
• Demobilization, Disarmament, Re-Integration, and Reconciliation;
Status of the Armed Forces
The CPA establishes a system of three related armed forces:
• The Sudan Armed Forces (SAF);
• The Sudan People’s Liberation Army; and,
• The Joint Integrated Units (JIUs)
The SAF and the SPLA will remain separate during the Pre-Interim and Interim Periods, but will be treated equally as the Sudan National Armed Forces (SNAF). All three armed forces shall be regular, professional and non-partisan, and shall respect the rule of law, basic human rights and the will of the people. The SAF and JIUs will be funded by the Government of National Unity, while the SPLA will be funded by the Government of Southern Sudan.
Sudan Armed Forces
The SAF shall redeploy North of the 1/1/1956 border according to the following schedule:
• 17% by 9 July 2005;
• An additional 14% by 9 January 2006;
• An additional 19% by 9 July 2006;
• An additional 22% by 9 January 2007; and,
• The remaining 28% by 9 July 2007.
After redeployment, the SAF shall continue to be deployed throughout the North. Both parties will negotiate on proportionate downsizing of the SAF and SPLA.
Sudan People’s Liberation Army
The SPLA shall redeploy South of the 1/1/1956 border according to the following schedule:
• 30% SPLA forces in eastern Sudan by 9 May 2005;
• An additional 40% of SPLA forces in eastern Sudan by 9 September 2005;
• The remaining 30% of SPLA forces in eastern Sudan by 9 January 2006;
• All SPLA forces in Southern Kordofan and Southern Blue Nile by EITHER:
- 9 April 2006; or,
- Six (6) months after the deployment of JIUs in those areas.
After redeployment, the SPLA shall continue to be deployed throughout the South. Both parties will negotiate on proportionate downsizing of the SAF and SPLA.
Joint Integrated Units
While the SAF and SPLA will remain separate forces as described above, some elements from each one will be combined into JIUs, which will form the core of the future Sudan National Armed Forces (SNAF) if the result of the referendum in the South is to confirm unity. If Southern Sudan votes for secession, the JIUs will dissolve. The JIUs will be structured and deployed as follows:
• Command and control shall fall under the Joint Defence Board (JDB; see below) in Juba;
• Equatoria: 1st Infantry Division of 9,000 troops (“officers, NCOs and men”);
• Upper Nile: 2nd Infantry Division of 8,000 troops;
• Bahr El Ghazal: 3rd Infantry Division of 7,000 troops;
• Blue Nile: 4th Infantry Division of 6,000 troops;
• Southern Kordofan: 5th Infantry Division of 6,000 troops; and,
• Khartoum: Independent Brigade with 3,000 troops.
Other Armed Groups
No armed groups shall be allowed to operate outside the SAF, SPLA and JIUs.
Ceasefire and Monitoring Arrangements
the agreement provides for the permanent cessation of hostilities between the SAF and SPLA – as well as any forces allied and affiliated with them – within 72 hours of the signature of the CPA. The cessation prohibits some activities and permits others, such as
Violations
• Unauthorized movement of troops;
• Unauthorized recruitment or drafting;
• Unauthorized replenishment of military equipment;
• Violation of human rights or humanitarian law; and,
• Recruitment of child soldiers.
Permitted Activities
• De-mining;
• Development, such as opening roads, bridges and other lines of transport;
• Ensuring access for humanitarian relief;
• Assisting free movement of people, goods and services;
• Training and refresher training
In order to monitor and verify the ceasefire, the CPA provides for the creation of four (4) levels of bodies:
• Ceasefire Political Commission (CPC);
• Ceasefire Joint Military Committee (CJMC);
• Area Joint Military Committee (AJMC); and,
• Joint Military Teams (JMTs).
Ceasefire Political Commission
The CPC shall be established by the two parties by 9 February 2005. It will be answerable to the Presidency, be composed of representatives of both parties and of IGAD – with a rotating chair – and will reach decisions by consensus. Some of the key functions of the CPC are
• to supervise, monitor and oversee the implementation of the ceasefire;
• to provide disciplinary measures for violations; and,
• to provide a forum for dialogue between the parties and the international community.
Ceasefire Joint Military Committee
The CJMC is to be located in Juba, and shall be established by the parties and the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) by 24 April 2005 – becoming operational by 9 May 2005. It shall report to the CPC (above). Senior officers from the UNMIS, the SAF, and the SPLA will jointly control the CJMC, taking decisions by consensus. The CJMC will be a key military decision-making body, exercising the following functions, among others:
• Overseeing compliance with the ceasefire agreement;
• Monitoring and verifying all aspects of the implementation of the agreement, including:
- disengagement, disarmament and redeployment of forces;
- troop strength and stocks of military equipment; and,
- disarmament of civilians;
• Receiving and rule on violations not resolved by the AJMC (below); and,
• Acting as a liaison and facilitator between the two parties.
Area Joint Military Committee
AJMCs shall be established by the two parties and UNMIS in Juba, Malakal, Wau, Kadugli, Abyei, and Damazien/Kurmuk on or before 7 June 2005, becoming operational by 22 June 2005. The AJMC in each location will be chaired by the most senior UNMIS officer in the area, and composed of equal numbers of SAF and SPLA officers. The AJMC’s will monitor the ceasefire, attempt to verify and resolve alleged violations, and liaise with local Security Committees.
Joint Military Teams
JMTs will be established by each AJMC. JMTs will consist of at least one UNMIS officer and equal numbers of SAF and SPLA officers. They will conduct regular patrols of their assigned area, and report alleged violations to the AJMC.
Demobilization, Disarmament, Re-Integration and Reconciliation
The CPA provides for a Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) process with the objective of creating an enabling environment for human security and to support social stabilization throughout the Sudan. The process will be transparent and accountable, and shall be led by state institutions with the international community playing a supporting role. Those institutions shall be established by the Presidency by 9 February 2005, and shall consist of:
• The National DDR Coordination Council (NDDRCC), which will set policy and oversee the activities of the NDDRC and SDDRC (below);
• The Northern Sudan DDR Commission (NDDRC), which will design, implement and manage the DDR process in Northern Sudan;
• The Southern Sudan DDR Commission (SDDRC), which will design, implement and manage the DDR process in Southern Sudan; and,
• State DDR Commissions, which will implement programmes at the state and local levels.
A SUMMARY OF THE PROTOCOL ON WEALTH SHARING
The Protocol on Wealth Sharing was signed in Naivasha, Kenya on 7 January 2004, and the
Implementation Modalities of the Framework Agreement on Wealth Sharing was signed on 31 December 2004 in Naivasha, Kenya. These two documents form part of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), and together set out a comprehensive scheme for sharing common wealth so as to enable each level of government to function, and to ensure the quality of life, dignity and living conditions of all citizens without discrimination.
The scheme rests on the following fundamental principles:
• The wealth of the Sudan shall be shared equitably;
• All parts of Sudan are entitled to development and wealth sharing;
• Revenue sharing should show a commitment to the devolution of power and decentralization of decision-making;
• Development will be transparent and accountable;
• Best-known practices for utilizing natural resources will be followed.
The CPA addresses the following major wealth-sharing issues:
• Land ownership;
• Oil resources and the sharing of oil revenue;
• Equalization and allocation of nationally-collected revenue
• Monetary and financial policies; and
• Reconstruction and development funds.
Land Ownership
The parties to the CPA agreed to create a process to resolve conflict on land issues by developing and amending legislation to reflect customary laws and practices, local heritage, and international trends. The process will be initiated by land commissions at three levels:
• The National Land Commission (NLdC), to be established by the Presidency and the National Assembly after the adoption of the Interim National Constitution;
• The Southern Sudan Land Commission (SSLdC), to be established by the President of GoSS and the Legislative Assembly of Southern Sudan after the appointment of the GoSS; and,
• State Land Commissions (StLdC), to be established by each state as provided for in their respective state constitutions or legislation.
The land commissions will have the power to arbitrate and sort out claims over land, and to make recommendations for the revision of existing legislation. Those recommendations will be forwarded to the appropriate level of government (GoNU, GoSS , State) for a two-step process:
• With the facilitation and support of the GoNU or GoSS Ministry of Justice, the Executive Body approves and proposes necessary legislation; and,
• Appropriate legislative bodies promulgate amended laws.
Oil Resources and the Sharing of Oil Revenue
The CPA establishes a national system for the management and sharing of all oil revenues in the Sudan, based on the principles of national interest and the public good, interest of the affected States, interest of people in the affected areas, and national environmental policies.
The three primary processes of the national system are intended to address:
• Existing oil contracts;
• Management of petroleum resources moving forward; and,
• Sharing of oil revenue among the National, Southern Sudan, and State governments.
Existing Oil Contracts
The SPLM, in consultation with the Ministry of Energy and Mining, shall appoint a Technical Team of 6 members – plus technical advisors – by 9 February 2005. The Technical Team is to be provided access to existing oil contracts after signing a confidentiality agreement. On the understanding that existing contracts may not be renegotiated, the Technical Team is to prepare a consensual report by 9 March 2005 on any social or environmental problems with the contracts.
A Joint Technical Team, funded by the GoNU, will be appointed by the National Petroleum Commission (NPC) (below), after receipt of the report of the Technical Team. The Joint Technical Team will report to the NPC, which will then take action within 60 days. Any person whose rights have been violated by existing oil contracts has a remedy in the courts as of 9 January 2005.
Management of Petroleum Resources
A National Petroleum Commission (NPC) shall be established by the Presidency within two weeks of the establishment of the GoNU and GoSS. The NPC will formulate and monitor public policies and guidelines for the oil industry, negotiate and approve future oil contracts, and develop strategies for the development of the petroleum sector. In performing these functions, the NPC will take into account the benefits to local communities of proposed contracts, and the extent to which the views of the locality and State are incorporated into the contract.
Sharing of Oil Revenue
The formula for sharing the oil resources will be as follows:
• 2% of revenue will go to oil producing States in proportion to their output;
• The remaining net revenue will be distributed as follows:
- 50% of the net revenue from wells in Southern Sudan will go to the Government of Southern Sudan; and,
- 50% of net revenue from wells in Southern Sudan will go to the National Government and States in Northern Sudan.
Equalization and Allocation of Nationally-collected Revenue
The National Government, the Government of Southern Sudan, and States can collect revenue from various sources including taxes (income, business, excise), licenses, service charges and loans. States/Regions and Government of Southern Sudan shall have exclusive control of income collected under their own taxing powers. Government revenues and expenditures shall be made public. All levels of government shall comply with generally accepted accounting standards, which will be ensured by National and Southern Sudan Audit Chambers established by the National Assembly and the Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly immediately after the establishment of the GoNU and GoSS .
A National Revenue Fund (NRF) shall be created by the National Ministry of Finance by 10 January 2005. All revenues collected nationally by the GoNU will be pooled in the NRF, which will be an account in the Central Bank of Sudan administered by the Ministry of Finance.
A special account in the Bank of Southern Sudan (BOSS) (see below) will be opened by the National Ministry of Finance after the establishment of the GoSS. All revenue collected by the national government in Southern Sudan will be placed into that account. Thereafter, 50% will be transferred to the GoSS and 50% to the NRF. This allocation will be reviewed at the mid-term of the Interim Period by a Joint Technical Committee established by the National and GoSS Ministries of Finance.
A Fiscal and Financial Allocation and Monitoring Commission (FFAMC) shall be established by the GoNU and GoSS before 9 July 2005, based on the report of the National Constitutional Review Commission. The function of the FFAMC is to ensure fairness and transparency in the allocation of nationally-collected funds to the GoSS and the States by reporting every three months to the Presidency, which will take remedial action if necessary.
A Joint National Technical Team (JNTT) will be appointed by the President of the GoS and the Chairman of the SPLM immediately upon signature of the CPA in order to prepare a budget estimate for the establishment of all levels of government, organize a donor conference, and develop fundraising strategies.
Monetary and Financial Policies
The CPA provides for the establishment by 9 July 2005 of a restructured banking system, which will reflect the duality of the banking system in Sudan. The system will consist of the:
• Central Bank of Sudan (CBOS); and,
• Bank of Southern Sudan (BOSS) as a branch of the Central Bank of Sudan.
Central Bank of Sudan
The new CBOS will be established by 9 April 2005 through new and revised legislation passed by the National Assembly upon the recommendation of a Technical Team appointed by the Presidency immediately after the signature of the CPA. A Board of Directors (BoD) will be appointed by the Presidency by 16 May 2005. The BoD will ensure that the full restructuring of all levels of the CBOS is complete by 15 May 2005. The CBOS will be responsible for the conduct of monetary policy, which it shall implement through Islamic financing practices in the North.
Bank of Southern Sudan
The BOSS will be established by the Board of Directors of the CBOS by 15 May 2005. The BOSS will be a window of the CBOS operating in Southern Sudan and implementing national monetary policy through conventional (non-Islamic) financing practices. It will be managed by the Deputy Governor of the CBOS and will act in accordance with the policies, rules and regulations of the CBOS.
Reconstruction and Development Funds
The Southern Sudan Reconstruction and Development Fund (SSRDF) will receive funds from GoSS revenues, as well as foreign governments and multilateral donors, which will be disbursed for reconstruction, resettlement, reintegration and development in Southern Sudan. During the Pre-Interim Period, the SPLM will establish an Oversight Committee to initiate the process of establishing the SRRDF, and to establish a monitoring and evaluation system. The Oversight Committee will consist of members of GoS/GoNU, SPLM/GoSS, and international community.
The National Reconstruction and Development Fund (NRDF) will be established by the National Ministry of Finance and the Joint National Technical Team during the Pre-Interim Period to assist war-affected States outside of Southern Sudan. It will be overseen by a Steering Committee composed of representatives from the Ministries of Finance of the GoNU and GoSS, the National Ministry of International Cooperation, the National and Southern Sudan Audit Chambers, representatives of war-affected/least-developed States in the North, and the international community. 75% of the funds in the NRDF will go to war-affected States – especially Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile – and 25% to least-developed States.
SUMMARY OF THE POWER SHARING SYSTEM OF GOVERNANCE
The Machakos Protocol was signed in Machakos, Kenya on 20 July 2002, the Power Sharing Protocol was signed in Naivasha, Kenya on 26 May 2004, and the Implementation Modalities of the Machakos and Power Sharing Protocols was signed in Naivasha, Kenya on 31 December 2004. Together, those three documents provide for a multi-level system of decentralised governance organized according to the following categories of general principles:
• Machakos principles;
• Inter-governmental linkages;
• Human rights and fundamental freedoms;
• Reconciliation; and,
• Population census, elections and representation.
These categories of general principles (discussed below) will apply to the four levels of government to be established in Sudan:
• The Government of National Unity (GoNU) protecting and promoting the sovereignty of the Sudan;
• The Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) exercising authority in Southern Sudan;
• State government for each State throughout Sudan; and,
• Local government throughout the Sudan.
Machakos Principles
The Machakos Protocol includes a set of Agreed Principles that form an integral part of the CPA and of the system of governance to be established during the Interim Period. These include:
• The unity of the Sudan, based on the free will of its people and good democratic governance, is and shall always be the priority of the parties;
• The People of Southern Sudan shall control and govern the affairs of the South as well as participate equitably in the National Government;
• The people of Southern Sudan shall have the right to Self-Determination through a referendum.
• The people of the Sudan agree to work together to:
- Establish a democratic system of governance;
- Find a comprehensive solution to the economic and social deterioration of the Sudan;
- Make the unity of Sudan an attractive option especially to the people of Southern Sudan
Inter-governmental Linkages
In the Power Sharing Protocol, the parties agreed to create a decentralized system of governance with significant devolution of powers. In that system, the GoNU will exercise sovereignty over the entire Sudan, but will link to the States of Southern Sudan through the GoSS. All levels of government will respect each others’ autonomy, refrain on encroaching on one another’s powers, and promote cooperation and coordination.
Human rights and fundamental freedoms
All levels of government shall comply fully with all the provisions of all the human rights treaties to which Sudan is a party. Some of the rights included in those treaties are the rights to:
• Life;
• Personal Liberty;
• Freedom from slavery;
• Freedom from torture;
• Free trial;
• Freedom of thought, conscience and religion;
• Freedom of expression;
• Family and marriage;
• Vote;
• Equality before the law;
• Freedom from discrimination;
• Freedom of movement; as well as:
• The Rights of Children; and,
• Equal Rights of Men and Women.
Reconciliation
A comprehensive process of national healing and reconciliation will be established by the Presidency after the adoption of the Interim National Constitution (INC) (below).
Population Census, Elections and Representation
The CPA provides that a full census must take place before 9 July 2007, and general elections at all levels by 9 July 2008.
A Population Census Council (PCC) will be established by the Presidency, and will be composed of representatives of the GoNU, GoSS, the Council of States (below), the States and the Central Bureau of Statistics. The PCC will plan and set standards for a full census to take place before 9 July 2007.
A National Electoral Law will be adopted by the National Assembly by 9 January 2006, setting forth the procedures for establishing the National Electoral Commission and for conducting national elections.
A National Electoral Commission (NEC) will be established by the Presidency within one month of the adoption of the National Electoral Law. The NEC, with the assistance of the international community, will be responsible for conducting free and fair general elections.
Government of National Unity
The National Constitutional Review Commission (NCRC) will be established by the parties by 25 January 2005. The NCRC will have several tasks:
• To produce a draft Interim National Constitution by 8 March 2005;
• To produce a Model State Constitution:
- based on the INC in the case of States in the North; and,
- based on the INC and the Southern Sudan Constitution in the case of States in the South; and,
• To produce legal instruments by 9 July 2005 providing for the establishment of:
- A National Electoral Commission;
- A Human Rights Commission;
- A National Judicial Service Commission;
- A National Civil Service Commission;
- An ad hoc commission to monitor the referendum in Southern Sudan;
- A Fiscal and Financial Allocation and Monitoring Commission (above); and,
- Any other independent commission set forth in the CPA or agreed by the parties.
The National Assembly in the North and the National Liberation Council in the South will adopt the INC by 22 March 2005. Immediately upon adoption of the INC, the institution of the Presidency will be created, consisting of a President, a First Vice President, and a Vice President. Before Elections, the posts of the Presidency will be filled as follows:
• The President is the former President of the GoS, and will also be Commander in Chief of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF);
• The First Vice President is the Chairman of the SPLM and will also hold the posts of President of the Government of Southern Sudan and Commander in Chief of the SPLA;
By the end of the Pre-Interim Period on 9 July 2005, a Government of National Unity (GoNU) – based on the CPA and the INC – will be formed with the following three branches:
• The Legislature;
• The Executive; and,
• The Judiciary.
Khartoum will be the capital of the GoNU. The Presidency, in consultation with the Governor of Khartoum State, will ensure that the administration of the capital is representative. Non-Muslims in the capital will not be subject to Shari’a law penalties, but to remitted penalties instead. The Presidency – immediately upon its own creation – will establish a commission to protect the rights of non-Muslims in Khartoum.
The National Legislature
The Presidency will appoint and convene the national legislature by 5 April 2005. It shall consist of two houses:
• The National Assembly; composed of representatives from throughout Sudan, with representation based on population; and,
• The Council of States – composed of two representatives from each State as well as two observers from the Abyei area.
Before Elections, the Presidency will appoint the members of the National Assembly according to the following percentages:
• National Congress Party (NCP) will have 52%;
• Sudan People’s Liberation Movement will have 28%;
• Other Northern political forces will have 14%; and,
• Other Southern political forces will have 6%.
The National Executive
The President, in consultation with the First Vice President, will appoint a Council of Ministers consisting of 30 Ministers and 34 State Ministers (numbers subject to review) by 21 April 2005. Together, the Presidency and the Council of Ministers constitute the Executive. Any Executive Acts or other legal acts by the President of the Republic shall be discussed with, and adopted by the Council of Ministers. Prior to elections, the seats of the Council of Ministers will be allocated according to the same percentages as in the Legislature (above).
The National Judiciary
An independent Judiciary will be formed at the national level, consisting of:
• A Constitutional Court composed of 9 competent and nonpartisan figures who will:
- Hear cases that arise under the INC or Northern State constitutions;
- Hear appeals from the Supreme Court of Southern Sudan on cases arising under the Constitution of Southern Sudan; and,
- Decide on constitutional disputes between organs or levels of government.
• A National Supreme Court:
- Hearing appeals cases arising under national laws;
- Reviewing death sentences;
- Having any other competencies given by the INC or national laws.
• A National Court of Appeal; and,
• Any other National Courts/tribunals deemed necessary to be established by law.
A National Judicial Service Commission (NJSC) will be established by the Presidency – in accordance with the legal instrument drafted by the NCRC and adopted by the National Legislature – by 9 July 2005. The NJSC will be chaired by the Chief Justice and composed of judges, professors, advocates, and representatives from the National and Southern governments. It will be responsible for the nomination of judges, who will then be appointed by the Presidency. In the case of Justices of the Constitutional Court, nominations by the NJSC and appointments by the Presidency must be confirmed by a 2/3 majority of the Council of States.
Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS)
A Southern Sudan Constitutional Drafting Committee (SSCDC) will be appointed by the President of the GoSS after the adoption of the INC. The SSDC will consist of 40 representatives, allocated according to the percentages of the Transitional Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly (TSSLA) (below), and will have three weeks to produce a draft Interim Constitution of Southern Sudan (ICSS). The TSSLA will have one week to adopt the ICSS, after which it will be forwarded to the National Ministry of Justice to be certified as compatible with the INC. Once the Ministry of Justice has issued certification, the ICSS will be signed by the President of the GoSS and thereby enter into force. Within two weeks of the signature of the ICSS, the GoSS will be formed, with its own legislature, executive and judiciary.
The GoSS Legislature
The Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly (SSLA) will exercise legislative authority in Southern Sudan. Elections to the SSLA, as well as its competencies and internal procedures, will be set forth in the ICSS or through legislation.
Before elections, a Transitional Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly (TSSLA) will be appointed by the President of the GoSS within two weeks of the adoption of the INC. The TSSLA will be constituted as follows:
• SPLM will have 70%;
• National Congress Party will have 15%; and,
• Other Southern political forces will have 15%.
The GoSS Executive
The President of the GoSS – in consultation with the Vice President and with the approval of the SSLA – will appoint an Executive Council of Ministers (ExCoM). Members of the ExCoM will be accountable to the President and Vice President, and may be removed by a 2/3 majority vote in the SSLA. Together, the President, Vice President and ExCoM constitute the GoSS Executive; additional powers, institutions and functions of the Executive will be assigned by the ICSS.
Before elections, the President of the GoSS will appoint the ExCoM within one week of signing the ICSS. Seats in the GoSS Executive prior to elections will be allocated according to the same percentages as the TSSLA (above).
The GoSS Judiciary
An independent Judiciary shall be established in Southern Sudan with the following judicial institutions:
• A Supreme Court of Southern Sudan, which shall:
- Be the final court for all cases arising under the laws of the GoSS or the Southern States;
- Hear cases arising under the ICSS or the constitutions of the Southern States; and,
- Strike down laws or provisions of laws that contradict the ICSS or the constitutions of the Southern States;
• Courts of Appeal; and
• Any other courts or tribunals found necessary.
Members of the Supreme Court and Courts of Appeal of Southern Sudan shall be appointed by the President within one week of signing the ICSS, in accordance with the procedures set forth therein. State Government (except Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile; see below) The institutions at the State level shall consist of:
• A State Executive comprised of the Governor and the States’ Council of Ministers;
• An elected State Legislature with the power to make laws as provided for in the INC, ICSS and State constitution; and,
• An independent State Judiciary, with courts hearing cases arising under State, Southern Sudan or National Laws.
Before elections, the composition of both the State Legislature and the State Executive shall be as follows:
• The National Congress Party will hold 70% in the Northern States; and,
• The SPLM will hold 70% of the seats in the States in Southern Sudan.
The remaining 30% in the Northern and Southern States shall be as follows:
• National Congress Party shall have 10% in the States in Southern Sudan; and,
• The SPLM shall have 10% of the seats in the States in the North.
The remaining 20% shall be filled by other political forces as follows:
• Northern Political Parties in the North; and,
• Southern Political Parties in the States in Southern Sudan.
A SUMMARY OF THE SPECIAL STATUS OF SOUTHERN KORDOFAN AND BLUE NILE STATES
The Protocol on the Resolution of the Conflict in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States – signed
in Naivasha, Kenya on 26 May 2004, and te Implementation Modalities of the Protocol on the resolution of the Conflict in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States – signed in Naivasha, Kenya on 31 December 2004 – establish a special status for the two States based on the following general principles:
• The guarantee of human rights and fundamental freedoms to all individuals;
• The development and protection of the diverse cultural heritage and local languages of the population; and,
• The development of human resources and infrastructure as the main goal of the States; and,
• The conduct of that development in accordance with best-known practices, transparency, and accountability.
The agreement on Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile addresses the following key issues:
• Popular consultation;
• Structure of State government;
• State share of national wealth;
• State Land Commission;
• Security arrangements; and,
• Pre-election arrangements.
Popular Consultation
In Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile the CPA will not be the final settlement of the political conflict in the States until it is subjected to the process of popular consultation.
State Parliamentary Assessment and Evaluation Commissions (SPAEC) will be established in each State immediately after the elected State Legislatures come into force at the end of the third year of the Interim Period (ending 9 July 2008). Each SPAEC will submit a report on the implementation of the CPA to the State Legislature, no later than 9 July 2009.
A Presidential Monitoring and Evaluation Commission will be established by the Presidency before 9 July 2007. It will submit a report to the GoNU and to the two State governments for use in ensuring the faithful implementation of the CPA.
Based on those reports, each State legislature may choose by 9 July 2009 either to endorse or to rectify the protocol. If a State legislature endorses the protocol, it becomes the final settlement of the conflict in that State. If a State Legislature chooses to rectify any shortcomings in constitutional, political or administrative arrangements, it must do so through negotiations with the GoNU.
Structure of the State Government
The State Government shall consist of a Legislature, an Executive, and a Judiciary.
The State Executive shall consist of:
• An elected State Governor;
• A representative State Council of Ministers;
• Appointed local commissioners and elected local government councils;
• A State Security Committee; and,
• State Services for Police, Prisons, Wildlife, and Fire Brigade.
The State Legislature will be elected by registered voters of the State, and will have the following powers:
• To decide its own rules, procedures and committees;
• To legislate for the State;
• To relieve the Governor of the State from office on a vote with a 2/3 majority; and,
• Other powers as assigned by the State constitutions.
The State Judiciary will consist of such courts as may be established by the State constitutions, and shall hear cases arising under State and National laws. Appointment and dismissal of judges shall be subject to State legislation and the National Judicial Service Commission.
State Share in National Wealth
The Fiscal and Financial Allocation and Monitoring Commission (FFAMC) (see page9), will have representatives from the two States as determined by the Presidency. By 9 July 2005, the FFAMC will establish specific formulae for allocating resources to war-affected areas, taking into account, among other things, population, social development indicators, and the effects of war.
The National Reconstruction and Development Fund (NRDF) (see page9) will ensure that war-affected areas are brought up to national standards. Seventy-five per cent (75%) of the NRDF will go to war-affected areas, especially Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile.
State Land Commission
A State Land Commission will be established – one for each State – with the same powers as the National Land Commission. The State Land Commissions will regulate land rights concurrently with the National Land Commission based on the following considerations:
• The State Land Commission shall be able to review existing land contracts and recommend measures such as the restoration of land rights or compensation.
• Rights in land owned by the National Government within the States shall be exercised through the appropriate or designated level of government.
• In the event that the findings of the National and State Land Commissions are irreconcilable the matter will be decided by the Constitutional Court.
Security Arrangements
During the Interim Period, Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) troop numbers in the States in questions will be determined by the Presidency.
In addition, the following deployments will be made under the Security Arrangements (see page 4-6):
• Joint Integrated Units, Blue Nile: 4th Infantry Division of 6,000;
• Joint Integrated Units, Southern Kordofan: 5th Infantry Division of 6,000 troops;
• Area Joint Military Committees will be established in Kadugli and Damazine/Kurmuk to monitor the ceasefire, attempt to verify and resolve alleged violations, and liaise with local Security Committees; and,
• Joint Military Teams will be established in each State to patrol, monitor and report alleged violations of the ceasefire.
Pre-Election Arrangements
The Executive and Legislature in the two States will be allocated as follows:
• National Congress Party will have 55% of seats; and,
• SPLM will have 45% of seats.
In the two States, each party shall hold the Governorship on a rotating basis. Each party will hold the governorship for half of the pre-election period. No one party will hold the Governorship in both States at the same time. The Deputy Governor will be from the party that is not holding the position of Governor. Pending elections the two States will be represented at the National Institutions targeting a percentage not less than their proportional population size.
A SUMMARY ON THE SPECIAL STATUS OF THE ABYEI AREA
The Protocol on the Resolution of the Abyei Conflict was signed at Naivasha, Kenya on 26 May
2004. Implementation Modalities of the Protocol on the Resolution of the Abyei Conflict was signed at Naivasha, Kenya on 31 December 2004. The agreement is based on special administrative status for Abyei, in which:
• Residents of Abyei will be citizens of both Southern Kordofan and Warap;
• Abyei will be administered by a local, elected Executive Council composed of a Chief Administrator and 5 heads of departments;
• A local Abyei Area Council of 20 members will be elected;
• Net oil revenue from Abyei will be distributed six ways during the Interim Period:
- 50% to the Government of National Unity;
- 42% to the GoSS;
- 2% to Bahr El Ghazal (Warap);
- 2% to the previous Western Kordofan, which is now a part of the new State of Southern Kordofan. The 2% shall be distributed as follows:
> 1% to the previous Western Kordofan component; and,
> 1% to the Southern Kordofan component;
- 2% to the Ngok Dinka; and,
- 2% to the Misseriya People. The full 2% shall benefit the previous Western Kordofan Component;
• The GoNU will provide Abyei with assistance in development and urbanization; and,
• International monitors will be deployed to Abyei to ensure compliance with the agreements; and,
• The people of Abyei will have the opportunity to vote in a referendum. The referendum will run simultaneously with the one in Southern Sudan, and will offer the following choices (irrespective of the results of the Southern vote):
- That Abyei retain its special administrative status in the North; or,
- That Abyei be part of Bahr El Ghazal (Warap),
Administration in the Interim Period
Executive Council
A Local Executive Council will be elected by the residents of Abyei and shall:
• Render services;
• Supervise and promote stability and security; and,
• Propose development and urbanization projects to the Abyei Area Council (below) and the Presidency.
The Council shall consist of a Chief Administrator, a Deputy Administrator, and 5 representative and inclusive heads of departments. Before the elections, the Presidency will appoint the Chief Administrator and the Deputy Administrator simultaneously with the GoSS and the Governments of the States of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile (by 9 July 2005). The Presidency will then appoint the 5 heads on the recommendation of the Chief Administrator.
Abyei Area Council
There shall be established a local, elected Abyei Area Council composed of 20 members which shall:
• Issue local enactments within the powers of local government;
• Approve the budget for the Abyei Area;
• Adopt reconstruction, development and urbanization plans; and,
• If necessary, recommend to the Presidency the removal of the Chief Administrator.
Prior to elections, the Presidency shall appoint the members of the Abyei Area Council within one week of appointing the Chief Administrator.
Financial Resources
Oil revenue during the Interim Period will be distributed as above. In addition, Abyei will be entitled to:
• Its share of national revenue under the Wealth Sharing Protocol;
• Income tax and other taxes raised in Abyei;
• A share of the National Reconstruction and Development Fund as well as a share of the Southern Sudan Reconstruction and Development Fund; and.
• Allocation from the National Government to cover costs and to set up and run its administration. An Abyei Resettlement, Construction and Development Fund will be established by the Abyei Executive Council upon the creation of the Abyei Administration to handle relief, repatriation, resettlement, reintegration, rehabilitation and reconstruction programmes.
Boundaries
The Presidency will form an Abyei Boundaries Commission (ABC) to establish the official boundaries of the Abyei area. The ABC will be composed of:
• One representative from each party;
• Five (5) international experts nominated by the US, UK and IGAD – one of whom will be the chair;
• 2 members each from the present administrations (GoS and SPLM) of Abyei;
• 2 Misseryia nominated by the GoS; and
• 2 Ngok Dinka nominated by the SPLM.
The ABC will base its report on consultations with representatives of the peoples of the Abyei area, neighbours, and the two parties, as well as on research and analysis by the experts. The final report of the ABC will be binding on the two parties.
Residency: Residents will be those living in the area with residency criteria determined by the Abyei Referendum Commission. Security Arrangements: Immediately after the formation of the Abyei Administration, the Executive Council will establish an Abyei Area Security Committee. In addition, the two parties shall form and deploy an Abyei Area Independent Battalion attached to the Joint Integrated Units 3rd Infantry Division, Warap. The battalion will be accompanied by international monitors to ensure full implementation of the agreement.
Abyei Referendum Commission: The Presidency shall establish a commission simultaneously with the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission to determine the rules and procedures governing the referendum. Reconciliation: The Presidency shall start the reconciliation and peace building process for Abyei as soon as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement is signed
A Summary Booklet
The official signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) on 9th January 2005 between the Government of the Republic of the Sudan (GoS) and the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) marked a historical watershed for Sudan. It brought to an end 22 years of protracted and costly civil war that had caused tremendous loss of life, devastated the country’s infrastructure (especially in the South) and destroyed livelihoods, trust and hope.
The terms agreed to and the renewed hope engendered by the CPA needs to be channeled to the rebuilding of this war torn country. The CPA sets out the framework for a just and lasting peace in the Sudan, and along with the subsequent Interim National Constitution (INC) and the Interim Constitution of the Southern Sudan (ICSS), establishes a new political, military and economic system based on the values of justice, democracy, and human rights that gives a voice and role to all the peoples of the Sudan and paves the way for restored dignity and well being, security and equality for all.
Yet the CPA, INC and ICSS are only the beginning. For the Sudanese people to fully participate in a meaningful way in the transition from war to peace and development, they must fully understand all three documents and their implications. We therefore commend the following summary of the CPA. This document provides an overview of the main aspects of the agreements made in an accessible and readable way. This will assist in accomplishing the wish of the late Dr John Garang de Mabior that everyone should ‘read, understand and own these Protocols’.
Dr. Samson L. Kwaje Minister for Information and Broadcasting
USE OF THIS BOOKLET
The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), the Interim National Constitution (INC) and the Interim Constitution of Southern Sudan (ICSS) together form the legal basis for the resolution of Sudan’s civil war. This booklet contains the Summary of the CPA only. The Summary aims to provide a general overview of the structure and content of the political, military and economic systems established by the CPA in order to enable readers to more easily understand the full text of the agreement. The full CPA is comprised of the following:
Protocols:
• The Machakos Protocol (signed 20 July 2002);
• Security Arrangements (signed on 25 September 2003);
• Wealth Sharing (signed 7 January 2004);
• Power Sharing (signed 26 May 2004)
• Resolution of the Conflict in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile (signed 26 May 2004);
• Resolution of the Abyei Conflict (signed 26 May 2004)
Implementation Modalities:
• Permanent Ceasefire and Security Arrangements (signed 31 December 2004);
• Machakos and Power Sharing (signed on 31 December 2004);
• Wealth Sharing (signed 31 December 2004);
• Resolution of the Abyei Conflict (signed 26 May 2004)
• Resolution of the Conflict in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile (signed 26 May 2004);
Generally, the Protocols set forth the content of the CPA – they describe what must be done. The Implementation Modalities set forth the details – they describe how things will be done by providing for the procedure, timing and responsible parties for each activity mandated by the Protocols. To prepare this Summary, the essential elements of each Protocol were extracted and condensed – drawing heavily on the Six Protocols Summary prepared by Pact and the National Working Group for Civic Education in 2005. Details about each element were then added from the Implementation Modalities.
The Summary is separated into five sections:
• Security Arrangements (p. 4);
• Finance and Economic Matters (p. 7);
• Decentralized System of Governance (p. 10);
• Special Status of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile (p. 21); and,
• Special Status of Abyei (p. 22).
Please note that this is NOT the official CPA. This Summary was prepared by Pact as part of a project of the United States Agency for International Development, Office of Transition Initiatives in partnership with the Pact Sudan Program. All errors are unintentional and entirely the responsibility of Pact. Any such errors should be pointed out to Pact for correction in future editions.
Whenever possible, people should refer to the full official text of the CPA for further clarification and complete understanding of the peace agreement.
A SUMMARY OF THE MACHAKOS PROTOCOL
The Machakos Protocol was the result of a breakthrough round of negotiations in 2002. It is the foundation of the final CPA. It lays down the principles and procedures to guide political development until a referendum in the south in 2011, identifies the levels and roles of government, and sets out the basic agreements reached on State and Religion. A brief summary of the Protocol is given here; more detail can be found in the section on the Power Sharing Arrangements on p.10.
Part A – Agreed Principles
• The unity of the Sudan, based on the free will of its people and good democratic governance, is and shall always be the priority of the parties;
• The People of Southern Sudan shall control and govern the affairs of the South as well as participate equitably in the National Government;
• The people of Southern Sudan shall have the right to Self-Determination through a referendum.
• The people of the Sudan agree to work together to, among other things:
- Establish a democratic system of governance;
- Find a comprehensive solution to the economic and social deterioration of the Sudan;
- Find a solution that replaces war with peace, but also with social and economic justice, and human rights;
- Formulate a reconstruction and development plan for areas affected by war;
- Make the unity of Sudan an attractive option especially to the people of Southern Sudan;
Part B – The Transition Process
The implementation of the comprehensive peace agreement will cover two phases:
• A Pre-Interim Period of 6 months (9 January 2005 – 8 July 2005); and,
• An Interim Period of 6 years (9 July 2005 – 8 July 2011).
During the Pre-Interim period and continuing through the Interim Period, the institutions and bodies of a transitional government will be established in the context of a comprehensive, internationally monitored ceasefire. These institutions, bodies and mechanisms are treated in more detail throughout this document.
The Machakos Protocol secured the right of self-determination for Southern Sudan by providing that the people of Southern Sudan will vote in a referendum at the end of the Interim Period, choosing between unity of the Sudan or secession.
A SUMMARY OF SECURITY ARRANGEMENTS
The Protocol on Security Arrangements (PSA) was signed in Naivasha, Kenya on 25 September
2003, and the Permanent Ceasefire and Security Arrangements Implementation Modalities and Appendices (PCF) was signed in Naivasha, Kenya on 31 December 2004. These two documents provide for the permanent end of hostilities between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), and describe the structure and function of the armed forces during the Pre-Interim and Interim Periods.
Security arrangements in the Sudan during the Pre-Interim and Interim Periods are based on the following principles, among others:
• Respect for the ceasefire and the resolution of problems through dialogue and political will;
• Fostering of good governance, democracy and civil society;
• Free movement of people and services throughout Sudan; and,
• Full ceasefire and cessation of all hostilities.
The main security issues covered under the CPA are:
• Status of the Armed Forces, including redeployment and the formation of Joint Integrated Units (JIUs);
• Ceasefire and monitoring arrangements, including the treatment of Other Armed Groups (OAGs);
• Demobilization, Disarmament, Re-Integration, and Reconciliation;
Status of the Armed Forces
The CPA establishes a system of three related armed forces:
• The Sudan Armed Forces (SAF);
• The Sudan People’s Liberation Army; and,
• The Joint Integrated Units (JIUs)
The SAF and the SPLA will remain separate during the Pre-Interim and Interim Periods, but will be treated equally as the Sudan National Armed Forces (SNAF). All three armed forces shall be regular, professional and non-partisan, and shall respect the rule of law, basic human rights and the will of the people. The SAF and JIUs will be funded by the Government of National Unity, while the SPLA will be funded by the Government of Southern Sudan.
Sudan Armed Forces
The SAF shall redeploy North of the 1/1/1956 border according to the following schedule:
• 17% by 9 July 2005;
• An additional 14% by 9 January 2006;
• An additional 19% by 9 July 2006;
• An additional 22% by 9 January 2007; and,
• The remaining 28% by 9 July 2007.
After redeployment, the SAF shall continue to be deployed throughout the North. Both parties will negotiate on proportionate downsizing of the SAF and SPLA.
Sudan People’s Liberation Army
The SPLA shall redeploy South of the 1/1/1956 border according to the following schedule:
• 30% SPLA forces in eastern Sudan by 9 May 2005;
• An additional 40% of SPLA forces in eastern Sudan by 9 September 2005;
• The remaining 30% of SPLA forces in eastern Sudan by 9 January 2006;
• All SPLA forces in Southern Kordofan and Southern Blue Nile by EITHER:
- 9 April 2006; or,
- Six (6) months after the deployment of JIUs in those areas.
After redeployment, the SPLA shall continue to be deployed throughout the South. Both parties will negotiate on proportionate downsizing of the SAF and SPLA.
Joint Integrated Units
While the SAF and SPLA will remain separate forces as described above, some elements from each one will be combined into JIUs, which will form the core of the future Sudan National Armed Forces (SNAF) if the result of the referendum in the South is to confirm unity. If Southern Sudan votes for secession, the JIUs will dissolve. The JIUs will be structured and deployed as follows:
• Command and control shall fall under the Joint Defence Board (JDB; see below) in Juba;
• Equatoria: 1st Infantry Division of 9,000 troops (“officers, NCOs and men”);
• Upper Nile: 2nd Infantry Division of 8,000 troops;
• Bahr El Ghazal: 3rd Infantry Division of 7,000 troops;
• Blue Nile: 4th Infantry Division of 6,000 troops;
• Southern Kordofan: 5th Infantry Division of 6,000 troops; and,
• Khartoum: Independent Brigade with 3,000 troops.
Other Armed Groups
No armed groups shall be allowed to operate outside the SAF, SPLA and JIUs.
Ceasefire and Monitoring Arrangements
the agreement provides for the permanent cessation of hostilities between the SAF and SPLA – as well as any forces allied and affiliated with them – within 72 hours of the signature of the CPA. The cessation prohibits some activities and permits others, such as
Violations
• Unauthorized movement of troops;
• Unauthorized recruitment or drafting;
• Unauthorized replenishment of military equipment;
• Violation of human rights or humanitarian law; and,
• Recruitment of child soldiers.
Permitted Activities
• De-mining;
• Development, such as opening roads, bridges and other lines of transport;
• Ensuring access for humanitarian relief;
• Assisting free movement of people, goods and services;
• Training and refresher training
In order to monitor and verify the ceasefire, the CPA provides for the creation of four (4) levels of bodies:
• Ceasefire Political Commission (CPC);
• Ceasefire Joint Military Committee (CJMC);
• Area Joint Military Committee (AJMC); and,
• Joint Military Teams (JMTs).
Ceasefire Political Commission
The CPC shall be established by the two parties by 9 February 2005. It will be answerable to the Presidency, be composed of representatives of both parties and of IGAD – with a rotating chair – and will reach decisions by consensus. Some of the key functions of the CPC are
• to supervise, monitor and oversee the implementation of the ceasefire;
• to provide disciplinary measures for violations; and,
• to provide a forum for dialogue between the parties and the international community.
Ceasefire Joint Military Committee
The CJMC is to be located in Juba, and shall be established by the parties and the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) by 24 April 2005 – becoming operational by 9 May 2005. It shall report to the CPC (above). Senior officers from the UNMIS, the SAF, and the SPLA will jointly control the CJMC, taking decisions by consensus. The CJMC will be a key military decision-making body, exercising the following functions, among others:
• Overseeing compliance with the ceasefire agreement;
• Monitoring and verifying all aspects of the implementation of the agreement, including:
- disengagement, disarmament and redeployment of forces;
- troop strength and stocks of military equipment; and,
- disarmament of civilians;
• Receiving and rule on violations not resolved by the AJMC (below); and,
• Acting as a liaison and facilitator between the two parties.
Area Joint Military Committee
AJMCs shall be established by the two parties and UNMIS in Juba, Malakal, Wau, Kadugli, Abyei, and Damazien/Kurmuk on or before 7 June 2005, becoming operational by 22 June 2005. The AJMC in each location will be chaired by the most senior UNMIS officer in the area, and composed of equal numbers of SAF and SPLA officers. The AJMC’s will monitor the ceasefire, attempt to verify and resolve alleged violations, and liaise with local Security Committees.
Joint Military Teams
JMTs will be established by each AJMC. JMTs will consist of at least one UNMIS officer and equal numbers of SAF and SPLA officers. They will conduct regular patrols of their assigned area, and report alleged violations to the AJMC.
Demobilization, Disarmament, Re-Integration and Reconciliation
The CPA provides for a Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) process with the objective of creating an enabling environment for human security and to support social stabilization throughout the Sudan. The process will be transparent and accountable, and shall be led by state institutions with the international community playing a supporting role. Those institutions shall be established by the Presidency by 9 February 2005, and shall consist of:
• The National DDR Coordination Council (NDDRCC), which will set policy and oversee the activities of the NDDRC and SDDRC (below);
• The Northern Sudan DDR Commission (NDDRC), which will design, implement and manage the DDR process in Northern Sudan;
• The Southern Sudan DDR Commission (SDDRC), which will design, implement and manage the DDR process in Southern Sudan; and,
• State DDR Commissions, which will implement programmes at the state and local levels.
A SUMMARY OF THE PROTOCOL ON WEALTH SHARING
The Protocol on Wealth Sharing was signed in Naivasha, Kenya on 7 January 2004, and the
Implementation Modalities of the Framework Agreement on Wealth Sharing was signed on 31 December 2004 in Naivasha, Kenya. These two documents form part of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), and together set out a comprehensive scheme for sharing common wealth so as to enable each level of government to function, and to ensure the quality of life, dignity and living conditions of all citizens without discrimination.
The scheme rests on the following fundamental principles:
• The wealth of the Sudan shall be shared equitably;
• All parts of Sudan are entitled to development and wealth sharing;
• Revenue sharing should show a commitment to the devolution of power and decentralization of decision-making;
• Development will be transparent and accountable;
• Best-known practices for utilizing natural resources will be followed.
The CPA addresses the following major wealth-sharing issues:
• Land ownership;
• Oil resources and the sharing of oil revenue;
• Equalization and allocation of nationally-collected revenue
• Monetary and financial policies; and
• Reconstruction and development funds.
Land Ownership
The parties to the CPA agreed to create a process to resolve conflict on land issues by developing and amending legislation to reflect customary laws and practices, local heritage, and international trends. The process will be initiated by land commissions at three levels:
• The National Land Commission (NLdC), to be established by the Presidency and the National Assembly after the adoption of the Interim National Constitution;
• The Southern Sudan Land Commission (SSLdC), to be established by the President of GoSS and the Legislative Assembly of Southern Sudan after the appointment of the GoSS; and,
• State Land Commissions (StLdC), to be established by each state as provided for in their respective state constitutions or legislation.
The land commissions will have the power to arbitrate and sort out claims over land, and to make recommendations for the revision of existing legislation. Those recommendations will be forwarded to the appropriate level of government (GoNU, GoSS , State) for a two-step process:
• With the facilitation and support of the GoNU or GoSS Ministry of Justice, the Executive Body approves and proposes necessary legislation; and,
• Appropriate legislative bodies promulgate amended laws.
Oil Resources and the Sharing of Oil Revenue
The CPA establishes a national system for the management and sharing of all oil revenues in the Sudan, based on the principles of national interest and the public good, interest of the affected States, interest of people in the affected areas, and national environmental policies.
The three primary processes of the national system are intended to address:
• Existing oil contracts;
• Management of petroleum resources moving forward; and,
• Sharing of oil revenue among the National, Southern Sudan, and State governments.
Existing Oil Contracts
The SPLM, in consultation with the Ministry of Energy and Mining, shall appoint a Technical Team of 6 members – plus technical advisors – by 9 February 2005. The Technical Team is to be provided access to existing oil contracts after signing a confidentiality agreement. On the understanding that existing contracts may not be renegotiated, the Technical Team is to prepare a consensual report by 9 March 2005 on any social or environmental problems with the contracts.
A Joint Technical Team, funded by the GoNU, will be appointed by the National Petroleum Commission (NPC) (below), after receipt of the report of the Technical Team. The Joint Technical Team will report to the NPC, which will then take action within 60 days. Any person whose rights have been violated by existing oil contracts has a remedy in the courts as of 9 January 2005.
Management of Petroleum Resources
A National Petroleum Commission (NPC) shall be established by the Presidency within two weeks of the establishment of the GoNU and GoSS. The NPC will formulate and monitor public policies and guidelines for the oil industry, negotiate and approve future oil contracts, and develop strategies for the development of the petroleum sector. In performing these functions, the NPC will take into account the benefits to local communities of proposed contracts, and the extent to which the views of the locality and State are incorporated into the contract.
Sharing of Oil Revenue
The formula for sharing the oil resources will be as follows:
• 2% of revenue will go to oil producing States in proportion to their output;
• The remaining net revenue will be distributed as follows:
- 50% of the net revenue from wells in Southern Sudan will go to the Government of Southern Sudan; and,
- 50% of net revenue from wells in Southern Sudan will go to the National Government and States in Northern Sudan.
Equalization and Allocation of Nationally-collected Revenue
The National Government, the Government of Southern Sudan, and States can collect revenue from various sources including taxes (income, business, excise), licenses, service charges and loans. States/Regions and Government of Southern Sudan shall have exclusive control of income collected under their own taxing powers. Government revenues and expenditures shall be made public. All levels of government shall comply with generally accepted accounting standards, which will be ensured by National and Southern Sudan Audit Chambers established by the National Assembly and the Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly immediately after the establishment of the GoNU and GoSS .
A National Revenue Fund (NRF) shall be created by the National Ministry of Finance by 10 January 2005. All revenues collected nationally by the GoNU will be pooled in the NRF, which will be an account in the Central Bank of Sudan administered by the Ministry of Finance.
A special account in the Bank of Southern Sudan (BOSS) (see below) will be opened by the National Ministry of Finance after the establishment of the GoSS. All revenue collected by the national government in Southern Sudan will be placed into that account. Thereafter, 50% will be transferred to the GoSS and 50% to the NRF. This allocation will be reviewed at the mid-term of the Interim Period by a Joint Technical Committee established by the National and GoSS Ministries of Finance.
A Fiscal and Financial Allocation and Monitoring Commission (FFAMC) shall be established by the GoNU and GoSS before 9 July 2005, based on the report of the National Constitutional Review Commission. The function of the FFAMC is to ensure fairness and transparency in the allocation of nationally-collected funds to the GoSS and the States by reporting every three months to the Presidency, which will take remedial action if necessary.
A Joint National Technical Team (JNTT) will be appointed by the President of the GoS and the Chairman of the SPLM immediately upon signature of the CPA in order to prepare a budget estimate for the establishment of all levels of government, organize a donor conference, and develop fundraising strategies.
Monetary and Financial Policies
The CPA provides for the establishment by 9 July 2005 of a restructured banking system, which will reflect the duality of the banking system in Sudan. The system will consist of the:
• Central Bank of Sudan (CBOS); and,
• Bank of Southern Sudan (BOSS) as a branch of the Central Bank of Sudan.
Central Bank of Sudan
The new CBOS will be established by 9 April 2005 through new and revised legislation passed by the National Assembly upon the recommendation of a Technical Team appointed by the Presidency immediately after the signature of the CPA. A Board of Directors (BoD) will be appointed by the Presidency by 16 May 2005. The BoD will ensure that the full restructuring of all levels of the CBOS is complete by 15 May 2005. The CBOS will be responsible for the conduct of monetary policy, which it shall implement through Islamic financing practices in the North.
Bank of Southern Sudan
The BOSS will be established by the Board of Directors of the CBOS by 15 May 2005. The BOSS will be a window of the CBOS operating in Southern Sudan and implementing national monetary policy through conventional (non-Islamic) financing practices. It will be managed by the Deputy Governor of the CBOS and will act in accordance with the policies, rules and regulations of the CBOS.
Reconstruction and Development Funds
The Southern Sudan Reconstruction and Development Fund (SSRDF) will receive funds from GoSS revenues, as well as foreign governments and multilateral donors, which will be disbursed for reconstruction, resettlement, reintegration and development in Southern Sudan. During the Pre-Interim Period, the SPLM will establish an Oversight Committee to initiate the process of establishing the SRRDF, and to establish a monitoring and evaluation system. The Oversight Committee will consist of members of GoS/GoNU, SPLM/GoSS, and international community.
The National Reconstruction and Development Fund (NRDF) will be established by the National Ministry of Finance and the Joint National Technical Team during the Pre-Interim Period to assist war-affected States outside of Southern Sudan. It will be overseen by a Steering Committee composed of representatives from the Ministries of Finance of the GoNU and GoSS, the National Ministry of International Cooperation, the National and Southern Sudan Audit Chambers, representatives of war-affected/least-developed States in the North, and the international community. 75% of the funds in the NRDF will go to war-affected States – especially Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile – and 25% to least-developed States.
SUMMARY OF THE POWER SHARING SYSTEM OF GOVERNANCE
The Machakos Protocol was signed in Machakos, Kenya on 20 July 2002, the Power Sharing Protocol was signed in Naivasha, Kenya on 26 May 2004, and the Implementation Modalities of the Machakos and Power Sharing Protocols was signed in Naivasha, Kenya on 31 December 2004. Together, those three documents provide for a multi-level system of decentralised governance organized according to the following categories of general principles:
• Machakos principles;
• Inter-governmental linkages;
• Human rights and fundamental freedoms;
• Reconciliation; and,
• Population census, elections and representation.
These categories of general principles (discussed below) will apply to the four levels of government to be established in Sudan:
• The Government of National Unity (GoNU) protecting and promoting the sovereignty of the Sudan;
• The Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) exercising authority in Southern Sudan;
• State government for each State throughout Sudan; and,
• Local government throughout the Sudan.
Machakos Principles
The Machakos Protocol includes a set of Agreed Principles that form an integral part of the CPA and of the system of governance to be established during the Interim Period. These include:
• The unity of the Sudan, based on the free will of its people and good democratic governance, is and shall always be the priority of the parties;
• The People of Southern Sudan shall control and govern the affairs of the South as well as participate equitably in the National Government;
• The people of Southern Sudan shall have the right to Self-Determination through a referendum.
• The people of the Sudan agree to work together to:
- Establish a democratic system of governance;
- Find a comprehensive solution to the economic and social deterioration of the Sudan;
- Make the unity of Sudan an attractive option especially to the people of Southern Sudan
Inter-governmental Linkages
In the Power Sharing Protocol, the parties agreed to create a decentralized system of governance with significant devolution of powers. In that system, the GoNU will exercise sovereignty over the entire Sudan, but will link to the States of Southern Sudan through the GoSS. All levels of government will respect each others’ autonomy, refrain on encroaching on one another’s powers, and promote cooperation and coordination.
Human rights and fundamental freedoms
All levels of government shall comply fully with all the provisions of all the human rights treaties to which Sudan is a party. Some of the rights included in those treaties are the rights to:
• Life;
• Personal Liberty;
• Freedom from slavery;
• Freedom from torture;
• Free trial;
• Freedom of thought, conscience and religion;
• Freedom of expression;
• Family and marriage;
• Vote;
• Equality before the law;
• Freedom from discrimination;
• Freedom of movement; as well as:
• The Rights of Children; and,
• Equal Rights of Men and Women.
Reconciliation
A comprehensive process of national healing and reconciliation will be established by the Presidency after the adoption of the Interim National Constitution (INC) (below).
Population Census, Elections and Representation
The CPA provides that a full census must take place before 9 July 2007, and general elections at all levels by 9 July 2008.
A Population Census Council (PCC) will be established by the Presidency, and will be composed of representatives of the GoNU, GoSS, the Council of States (below), the States and the Central Bureau of Statistics. The PCC will plan and set standards for a full census to take place before 9 July 2007.
A National Electoral Law will be adopted by the National Assembly by 9 January 2006, setting forth the procedures for establishing the National Electoral Commission and for conducting national elections.
A National Electoral Commission (NEC) will be established by the Presidency within one month of the adoption of the National Electoral Law. The NEC, with the assistance of the international community, will be responsible for conducting free and fair general elections.
Government of National Unity
The National Constitutional Review Commission (NCRC) will be established by the parties by 25 January 2005. The NCRC will have several tasks:
• To produce a draft Interim National Constitution by 8 March 2005;
• To produce a Model State Constitution:
- based on the INC in the case of States in the North; and,
- based on the INC and the Southern Sudan Constitution in the case of States in the South; and,
• To produce legal instruments by 9 July 2005 providing for the establishment of:
- A National Electoral Commission;
- A Human Rights Commission;
- A National Judicial Service Commission;
- A National Civil Service Commission;
- An ad hoc commission to monitor the referendum in Southern Sudan;
- A Fiscal and Financial Allocation and Monitoring Commission (above); and,
- Any other independent commission set forth in the CPA or agreed by the parties.
The National Assembly in the North and the National Liberation Council in the South will adopt the INC by 22 March 2005. Immediately upon adoption of the INC, the institution of the Presidency will be created, consisting of a President, a First Vice President, and a Vice President. Before Elections, the posts of the Presidency will be filled as follows:
• The President is the former President of the GoS, and will also be Commander in Chief of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF);
• The First Vice President is the Chairman of the SPLM and will also hold the posts of President of the Government of Southern Sudan and Commander in Chief of the SPLA;
By the end of the Pre-Interim Period on 9 July 2005, a Government of National Unity (GoNU) – based on the CPA and the INC – will be formed with the following three branches:
• The Legislature;
• The Executive; and,
• The Judiciary.
Khartoum will be the capital of the GoNU. The Presidency, in consultation with the Governor of Khartoum State, will ensure that the administration of the capital is representative. Non-Muslims in the capital will not be subject to Shari’a law penalties, but to remitted penalties instead. The Presidency – immediately upon its own creation – will establish a commission to protect the rights of non-Muslims in Khartoum.
The National Legislature
The Presidency will appoint and convene the national legislature by 5 April 2005. It shall consist of two houses:
• The National Assembly; composed of representatives from throughout Sudan, with representation based on population; and,
• The Council of States – composed of two representatives from each State as well as two observers from the Abyei area.
Before Elections, the Presidency will appoint the members of the National Assembly according to the following percentages:
• National Congress Party (NCP) will have 52%;
• Sudan People’s Liberation Movement will have 28%;
• Other Northern political forces will have 14%; and,
• Other Southern political forces will have 6%.
The National Executive
The President, in consultation with the First Vice President, will appoint a Council of Ministers consisting of 30 Ministers and 34 State Ministers (numbers subject to review) by 21 April 2005. Together, the Presidency and the Council of Ministers constitute the Executive. Any Executive Acts or other legal acts by the President of the Republic shall be discussed with, and adopted by the Council of Ministers. Prior to elections, the seats of the Council of Ministers will be allocated according to the same percentages as in the Legislature (above).
The National Judiciary
An independent Judiciary will be formed at the national level, consisting of:
• A Constitutional Court composed of 9 competent and nonpartisan figures who will:
- Hear cases that arise under the INC or Northern State constitutions;
- Hear appeals from the Supreme Court of Southern Sudan on cases arising under the Constitution of Southern Sudan; and,
- Decide on constitutional disputes between organs or levels of government.
• A National Supreme Court:
- Hearing appeals cases arising under national laws;
- Reviewing death sentences;
- Having any other competencies given by the INC or national laws.
• A National Court of Appeal; and,
• Any other National Courts/tribunals deemed necessary to be established by law.
A National Judicial Service Commission (NJSC) will be established by the Presidency – in accordance with the legal instrument drafted by the NCRC and adopted by the National Legislature – by 9 July 2005. The NJSC will be chaired by the Chief Justice and composed of judges, professors, advocates, and representatives from the National and Southern governments. It will be responsible for the nomination of judges, who will then be appointed by the Presidency. In the case of Justices of the Constitutional Court, nominations by the NJSC and appointments by the Presidency must be confirmed by a 2/3 majority of the Council of States.
Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS)
A Southern Sudan Constitutional Drafting Committee (SSCDC) will be appointed by the President of the GoSS after the adoption of the INC. The SSDC will consist of 40 representatives, allocated according to the percentages of the Transitional Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly (TSSLA) (below), and will have three weeks to produce a draft Interim Constitution of Southern Sudan (ICSS). The TSSLA will have one week to adopt the ICSS, after which it will be forwarded to the National Ministry of Justice to be certified as compatible with the INC. Once the Ministry of Justice has issued certification, the ICSS will be signed by the President of the GoSS and thereby enter into force. Within two weeks of the signature of the ICSS, the GoSS will be formed, with its own legislature, executive and judiciary.
The GoSS Legislature
The Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly (SSLA) will exercise legislative authority in Southern Sudan. Elections to the SSLA, as well as its competencies and internal procedures, will be set forth in the ICSS or through legislation.
Before elections, a Transitional Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly (TSSLA) will be appointed by the President of the GoSS within two weeks of the adoption of the INC. The TSSLA will be constituted as follows:
• SPLM will have 70%;
• National Congress Party will have 15%; and,
• Other Southern political forces will have 15%.
The GoSS Executive
The President of the GoSS – in consultation with the Vice President and with the approval of the SSLA – will appoint an Executive Council of Ministers (ExCoM). Members of the ExCoM will be accountable to the President and Vice President, and may be removed by a 2/3 majority vote in the SSLA. Together, the President, Vice President and ExCoM constitute the GoSS Executive; additional powers, institutions and functions of the Executive will be assigned by the ICSS.
Before elections, the President of the GoSS will appoint the ExCoM within one week of signing the ICSS. Seats in the GoSS Executive prior to elections will be allocated according to the same percentages as the TSSLA (above).
The GoSS Judiciary
An independent Judiciary shall be established in Southern Sudan with the following judicial institutions:
• A Supreme Court of Southern Sudan, which shall:
- Be the final court for all cases arising under the laws of the GoSS or the Southern States;
- Hear cases arising under the ICSS or the constitutions of the Southern States; and,
- Strike down laws or provisions of laws that contradict the ICSS or the constitutions of the Southern States;
• Courts of Appeal; and
• Any other courts or tribunals found necessary.
Members of the Supreme Court and Courts of Appeal of Southern Sudan shall be appointed by the President within one week of signing the ICSS, in accordance with the procedures set forth therein. State Government (except Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile; see below) The institutions at the State level shall consist of:
• A State Executive comprised of the Governor and the States’ Council of Ministers;
• An elected State Legislature with the power to make laws as provided for in the INC, ICSS and State constitution; and,
• An independent State Judiciary, with courts hearing cases arising under State, Southern Sudan or National Laws.
Before elections, the composition of both the State Legislature and the State Executive shall be as follows:
• The National Congress Party will hold 70% in the Northern States; and,
• The SPLM will hold 70% of the seats in the States in Southern Sudan.
The remaining 30% in the Northern and Southern States shall be as follows:
• National Congress Party shall have 10% in the States in Southern Sudan; and,
• The SPLM shall have 10% of the seats in the States in the North.
The remaining 20% shall be filled by other political forces as follows:
• Northern Political Parties in the North; and,
• Southern Political Parties in the States in Southern Sudan.
A SUMMARY OF THE SPECIAL STATUS OF SOUTHERN KORDOFAN AND BLUE NILE STATES
The Protocol on the Resolution of the Conflict in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States – signed
in Naivasha, Kenya on 26 May 2004, and te Implementation Modalities of the Protocol on the resolution of the Conflict in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States – signed in Naivasha, Kenya on 31 December 2004 – establish a special status for the two States based on the following general principles:
• The guarantee of human rights and fundamental freedoms to all individuals;
• The development and protection of the diverse cultural heritage and local languages of the population; and,
• The development of human resources and infrastructure as the main goal of the States; and,
• The conduct of that development in accordance with best-known practices, transparency, and accountability.
The agreement on Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile addresses the following key issues:
• Popular consultation;
• Structure of State government;
• State share of national wealth;
• State Land Commission;
• Security arrangements; and,
• Pre-election arrangements.
Popular Consultation
In Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile the CPA will not be the final settlement of the political conflict in the States until it is subjected to the process of popular consultation.
State Parliamentary Assessment and Evaluation Commissions (SPAEC) will be established in each State immediately after the elected State Legislatures come into force at the end of the third year of the Interim Period (ending 9 July 2008). Each SPAEC will submit a report on the implementation of the CPA to the State Legislature, no later than 9 July 2009.
A Presidential Monitoring and Evaluation Commission will be established by the Presidency before 9 July 2007. It will submit a report to the GoNU and to the two State governments for use in ensuring the faithful implementation of the CPA.
Based on those reports, each State legislature may choose by 9 July 2009 either to endorse or to rectify the protocol. If a State legislature endorses the protocol, it becomes the final settlement of the conflict in that State. If a State Legislature chooses to rectify any shortcomings in constitutional, political or administrative arrangements, it must do so through negotiations with the GoNU.
Structure of the State Government
The State Government shall consist of a Legislature, an Executive, and a Judiciary.
The State Executive shall consist of:
• An elected State Governor;
• A representative State Council of Ministers;
• Appointed local commissioners and elected local government councils;
• A State Security Committee; and,
• State Services for Police, Prisons, Wildlife, and Fire Brigade.
The State Legislature will be elected by registered voters of the State, and will have the following powers:
• To decide its own rules, procedures and committees;
• To legislate for the State;
• To relieve the Governor of the State from office on a vote with a 2/3 majority; and,
• Other powers as assigned by the State constitutions.
The State Judiciary will consist of such courts as may be established by the State constitutions, and shall hear cases arising under State and National laws. Appointment and dismissal of judges shall be subject to State legislation and the National Judicial Service Commission.
State Share in National Wealth
The Fiscal and Financial Allocation and Monitoring Commission (FFAMC) (see page9), will have representatives from the two States as determined by the Presidency. By 9 July 2005, the FFAMC will establish specific formulae for allocating resources to war-affected areas, taking into account, among other things, population, social development indicators, and the effects of war.
The National Reconstruction and Development Fund (NRDF) (see page9) will ensure that war-affected areas are brought up to national standards. Seventy-five per cent (75%) of the NRDF will go to war-affected areas, especially Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile.
State Land Commission
A State Land Commission will be established – one for each State – with the same powers as the National Land Commission. The State Land Commissions will regulate land rights concurrently with the National Land Commission based on the following considerations:
• The State Land Commission shall be able to review existing land contracts and recommend measures such as the restoration of land rights or compensation.
• Rights in land owned by the National Government within the States shall be exercised through the appropriate or designated level of government.
• In the event that the findings of the National and State Land Commissions are irreconcilable the matter will be decided by the Constitutional Court.
Security Arrangements
During the Interim Period, Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) troop numbers in the States in questions will be determined by the Presidency.
In addition, the following deployments will be made under the Security Arrangements (see page 4-6):
• Joint Integrated Units, Blue Nile: 4th Infantry Division of 6,000;
• Joint Integrated Units, Southern Kordofan: 5th Infantry Division of 6,000 troops;
• Area Joint Military Committees will be established in Kadugli and Damazine/Kurmuk to monitor the ceasefire, attempt to verify and resolve alleged violations, and liaise with local Security Committees; and,
• Joint Military Teams will be established in each State to patrol, monitor and report alleged violations of the ceasefire.
Pre-Election Arrangements
The Executive and Legislature in the two States will be allocated as follows:
• National Congress Party will have 55% of seats; and,
• SPLM will have 45% of seats.
In the two States, each party shall hold the Governorship on a rotating basis. Each party will hold the governorship for half of the pre-election period. No one party will hold the Governorship in both States at the same time. The Deputy Governor will be from the party that is not holding the position of Governor. Pending elections the two States will be represented at the National Institutions targeting a percentage not less than their proportional population size.
A SUMMARY ON THE SPECIAL STATUS OF THE ABYEI AREA
The Protocol on the Resolution of the Abyei Conflict was signed at Naivasha, Kenya on 26 May
2004. Implementation Modalities of the Protocol on the Resolution of the Abyei Conflict was signed at Naivasha, Kenya on 31 December 2004. The agreement is based on special administrative status for Abyei, in which:
• Residents of Abyei will be citizens of both Southern Kordofan and Warap;
• Abyei will be administered by a local, elected Executive Council composed of a Chief Administrator and 5 heads of departments;
• A local Abyei Area Council of 20 members will be elected;
• Net oil revenue from Abyei will be distributed six ways during the Interim Period:
- 50% to the Government of National Unity;
- 42% to the GoSS;
- 2% to Bahr El Ghazal (Warap);
- 2% to the previous Western Kordofan, which is now a part of the new State of Southern Kordofan. The 2% shall be distributed as follows:
> 1% to the previous Western Kordofan component; and,
> 1% to the Southern Kordofan component;
- 2% to the Ngok Dinka; and,
- 2% to the Misseriya People. The full 2% shall benefit the previous Western Kordofan Component;
• The GoNU will provide Abyei with assistance in development and urbanization; and,
• International monitors will be deployed to Abyei to ensure compliance with the agreements; and,
• The people of Abyei will have the opportunity to vote in a referendum. The referendum will run simultaneously with the one in Southern Sudan, and will offer the following choices (irrespective of the results of the Southern vote):
- That Abyei retain its special administrative status in the North; or,
- That Abyei be part of Bahr El Ghazal (Warap),
Administration in the Interim Period
Executive Council
A Local Executive Council will be elected by the residents of Abyei and shall:
• Render services;
• Supervise and promote stability and security; and,
• Propose development and urbanization projects to the Abyei Area Council (below) and the Presidency.
The Council shall consist of a Chief Administrator, a Deputy Administrator, and 5 representative and inclusive heads of departments. Before the elections, the Presidency will appoint the Chief Administrator and the Deputy Administrator simultaneously with the GoSS and the Governments of the States of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile (by 9 July 2005). The Presidency will then appoint the 5 heads on the recommendation of the Chief Administrator.
Abyei Area Council
There shall be established a local, elected Abyei Area Council composed of 20 members which shall:
• Issue local enactments within the powers of local government;
• Approve the budget for the Abyei Area;
• Adopt reconstruction, development and urbanization plans; and,
• If necessary, recommend to the Presidency the removal of the Chief Administrator.
Prior to elections, the Presidency shall appoint the members of the Abyei Area Council within one week of appointing the Chief Administrator.
Financial Resources
Oil revenue during the Interim Period will be distributed as above. In addition, Abyei will be entitled to:
• Its share of national revenue under the Wealth Sharing Protocol;
• Income tax and other taxes raised in Abyei;
• A share of the National Reconstruction and Development Fund as well as a share of the Southern Sudan Reconstruction and Development Fund; and.
• Allocation from the National Government to cover costs and to set up and run its administration. An Abyei Resettlement, Construction and Development Fund will be established by the Abyei Executive Council upon the creation of the Abyei Administration to handle relief, repatriation, resettlement, reintegration, rehabilitation and reconstruction programmes.
Boundaries
The Presidency will form an Abyei Boundaries Commission (ABC) to establish the official boundaries of the Abyei area. The ABC will be composed of:
• One representative from each party;
• Five (5) international experts nominated by the US, UK and IGAD – one of whom will be the chair;
• 2 members each from the present administrations (GoS and SPLM) of Abyei;
• 2 Misseryia nominated by the GoS; and
• 2 Ngok Dinka nominated by the SPLM.
The ABC will base its report on consultations with representatives of the peoples of the Abyei area, neighbours, and the two parties, as well as on research and analysis by the experts. The final report of the ABC will be binding on the two parties.
Residency: Residents will be those living in the area with residency criteria determined by the Abyei Referendum Commission. Security Arrangements: Immediately after the formation of the Abyei Administration, the Executive Council will establish an Abyei Area Security Committee. In addition, the two parties shall form and deploy an Abyei Area Independent Battalion attached to the Joint Integrated Units 3rd Infantry Division, Warap. The battalion will be accompanied by international monitors to ensure full implementation of the agreement.
Abyei Referendum Commission: The Presidency shall establish a commission simultaneously with the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission to determine the rules and procedures governing the referendum. Reconciliation: The Presidency shall start the reconciliation and peace building process for Abyei as soon as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement is signed
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