Egypt is pumping money and aid to South Sudan. Yes that’s right AID, as in free gifts and money to the southern SPLM party. If you’ve been following Sudan’s news well, you’d know that this has been happening for quite a while now.
Egypt is kissing SPLM’s ass so that Southern Sudanese won’t declare independence of Southern Sudan as a seperate country when they get the time to vote for the decision a few years from now (this is part of the peace agreement signed with the north). If South Sudan becomes a seperate country, the Nile water sharing agreement will have to be renegotiated and that would suck big time for Egypt because its current share will most probably decrease.
Read more here about why US pressure on Egypt to make it pressure Sudan more over Darfur won’t work that well.
(Hat tip: Egyptian Sandmonkey)
SudaneseThinker
SudaneseThinker
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting analysis. The world is extremely complex, isn’t it? Love your blog!!!
Off-topic, Drima, but here’s something for you to post about:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/800naxnt.asp?pg=1
Finnpundit, thanx for the link… You’d notice I removed his name from the links under Islam on my left side bar quite a while ago. I read and did a lot of research about him. The more I read, the more I became suspicious. In my opinion, I didn’t see strong conclusive evidence since he always spoke in “riddles”. The thing that prompted me immediately to remove him from my list was because of what he said about Sudanese Hassan al-Turabi. He praised him! As soon as I read that, my mind flipped.
Tariq Ramadan a goner ? too bad, he sounded too sane to be true.
What’s the Quranic word for double-talk ?
Re: your post. if water becomes really scarce down there, why not make a deal with Denmark ? We have _plenty_ water. It’s been raining for weeks.
I’d trade you a rainy day for a sunny day anytime,
Halalhippie, I hate to say this but I really liked the guy, his ideas and his approaches were really good… Maybe this is the reason I’m finding it difficult to believe he is what people say he is… I don’t doubt what he said about Turabi though…
It looks like we Muslims ourselves might be falling for this Taqiya thingy.
Dude, I officially wanna visit Denmark now. Me wanna see Copenhagen… I was reading about it today in Fortune magazine… City of design and art ey??? Sounds nice… not the rain though =p
Drima, I’m glad that you’ve taken a second look at Ramadan’s stances, but I must admit I didn’t post that just to prove a point. On the contrary, I find the Weekly Standard’s arguments a little bit weak on this case, and I was hoping for more debate.
I think there exists a great difference between Muslim immigrants in America, and Muslim immigrants in Europe. Muslim immigrants in America get integrated so much faster into society, simply because in order to survive, they simply have to work hard at any one of the many low-paying job opportunities there are in America. Muslims in Europe wind up having no opportunities for jobs at all, and thus become adherents to Social Democratic arguments that the unemployed automatically become wards of the over-taxing state. Their status as non-contributors to the surrounding society is not only assured, but promulgated.
Tariq Ramadan belongs to the latter kind of westernized Muslim. The unfortunate part is not so much that he believes in a role for Islam in western society, but that he believes in Social Democratic (or socialist, in the long run) ideals of entitlement. He does not distinguish between the American way of integration (which is a success, for the most part), and the European way (which is a continuous failure). His obsession is with integration, but he refuses to see the difference in systems and, - more as a Swiss than an Arab - has already staked his grounding in anti-Americanism.
As to the main post, Drima, I’m glad you keep us posted with what’s going on, though I find it hard to keep in mind all the different political players in Sudan (it’s hard enough to keep in mind the factions present in Iraq). So any gently descriptive pollitical positions (not labels necessary, but some sort of clue as to what they really represent) would be helpful.
halalhippie bring up a good point. No doubt you’ve all heard the great noise the UN is making about the loss of fresh water in the world, with most of the assets being enjoyed in mostly northern, developing countries. I see no reason why fresh water cannot be piped via huge modern aqueducts to southern nations, if water can only be commoditized. That would be a free trade, after all: oil for water. Yet most likely the UN will not see the fairness in that, and will opt instead to declare access to water a human right, thus making sure no easy solution will be forthcoming for some time to come.
Hi again Drima,
I thought to stop by today and let you know that “The Sudanese Thinker” is at least 4 days ahead of the BBC News online team re: the orginal subject of this post. Checkout the link below to the Oct 12 article “Tough Sanctions Urged Over Darfur” and note the related news links at the right-hand side of the page (Sudan.net, Gulf News “Why Egypt Won’t Press Sudan”).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6041156.stm
Is there a chance that the BBC News online researchers are reading (and stealing) your stuff?
Thanx for the heads up BRE
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