The Sudan Tribune reports today (see below) that Khartoum “has decided to withhold consent to an initiative proposed by the United Nations, African Union, and the Arab League on delivery of aid to South Kordofan pending further assessment.” This delay is utterly unconscionable, and amounts to deliberately creating conditions that will create massive human destruction, suffering, and displacement. The weakest are already dying from malnutrition and related diseases. As the rainy season approaches, threatening to make humanitarian corridors on the ground unpassable, the dying will accelerate.
The Obama administration continues to believe, with special envoy Princeton Lyman, that the regime in Khartoum is a responsible actor:
“Frankly, we do not want to see the ouster of the [Sudanese] regime, nor regime change. We want to see the regime carrying out reform via constitutional democratic measures.”
This preposterous assessment, flying in the face of all evidence, will soon cost lives, perhaps tens of thousands of lives—perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives—in South Kordofan and Blue Nile.
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“Sudan defers response to tripartite initiative on South Kordofan aid”
[from Sudan Tribune; March 21, 2012]
March 20, 2012 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese government has decided to withhold consent to an initiative proposed by the United Nations (UN), African Union (AU) and the Arab League (AL) on delivery of aid to South Kordofan pending further assessment, an official said on Tuesday. Sudan’s minister of social welfare, Amira Al-Fadil, said at a meeting held on Tuesday with representatives of the trio in the capital Khartoum.