Two articles. Two contradicting reports.
Alrighty, first article:
March 24, 2009 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudanese government today acknowledged news reports that US air force conducted airstrikes against arm smugglers last January killing scores of people.
The Egyptian Al-Shurooq newspaper reported this week that US planes destroyed a convoy heading towards the borders carrying arms believed to be on its way to Gaza strip.
The report said that the convoy consisted of 17 trucks carrying 39 passengers that were all destroyed in the operation. None of the people on board the trucks survived the attack.
… The attack is believed to have occurred in a desert area in Northwest of Port Sudan city, near the Mount Al-Sha’anoon.
Okay, so America gets the blame in this one. But then a day later, another article pops up.
March 25, 2009 (WASHINGTON) — An airstrike that targeted a convoy of arm smugglers inside Sudan last January was launched by Israeli planes and not American ones, according to a US television network.
Now, Israel gets the blame in this one. So, who’s responsible? America or Israel? Ah, or as we like to say in Sudan, they’re both one and the same, except America is the body of the snake, and Israel is the head. 
Joking aside though, where the hell did the weapons on the truck originate from? How did the US or Israeli air force know about them? Which group were the people on the trucks affiliated to? Who paid them to drive such a long distance? Why did it take two months for this news to surface?
Lots of unanswered questions.
SudaneseThinker
SudaneseThinker
{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
What’s the problem here?
Bombing arms transports is completely legal according to the laws of war, and Sudan and Israel are at war as per the wishes of the legitimate Sudanese government.
So I am not seeing how blame can be put on anyone. Seems to me that if someone feels that something bad happened there, the only solution would be for Sudan to sue for peace immediately in order to make sure that such a thing won’t happen again.
After Operation: Cast Lead, Israel and the US signed an agreement to expand intelligence operations against weapons smuggled to the Gaza Strip, involving the US, NATO, France, UK and Germany as well. I’m guessing this attack was one of the first fruits of that cooperation.
From local news reports, my understanding is that the route is as such: weapons are loaded up in the Persian gulf (guess who?), make a pit stop in Edan, Yemen, and then from there to Port Sudan, where trucks smuggle them through Egypt to tunnels around Rafiah, Gaza Strip.
Agents of ‘guess who’ in Sudan are probably responsible for arranging the trucks.
I’m wondering how come pirates haven’t caught these ships before..!
You have to go to the CBS News website to get to the source of the story. The Times of London (UK) is running a similar story today and they confirm that the attack was by the IAF. Either way, with all of that military hardware (NATO marines and navies) sitting off the coast of Somalia just upstream from Port Sudan, I doubt very seriously that the IAF fighter aircraft went unnoticed on their radar. Unless of course they were using stealth bombers….
BTW: I’m putting the finishing touches on my Sudan post(s). Been working on it for a whole month (O.K., three weeks). Sorry to hear about the Sudanese blogger being arrested, have to go back and read that story carefully. The bloggers and the foreign journalists are the next ’spies’ to be checked-off on President al-Bashir’s TODO list.
“Why did it take two months for this news to surface?”
This is what I’ve been thinking about after I read this news. Wouldn’t the Sudanese government publicize the attack by the “Zionists” and/or “infidels” before? It seems as if they didn’t even know about it until now.
Drima…
I am trying to look at this objectively…from more of a moral…right or wrong kind of persepctive and if you do that…it gets murkier.
I always kind of laugh (sorry AB) when people quote “rules of war” and “international law” since both are typically treated as a joke by most participants when it is their ox that is getting gored.
But when you know another country is involved in endangering your country, at what point is some type of strike premissible. Should the Nubians have attacked Egypt when the the Aswan project was initiated? Is it OK for the USA to bomb drug resources in Mexico that are helping to utterly destroy our country?
Sudan is a soverign country and though I don’t like them, I don’t know if we have the right to bomb supply lines within Sudan any more than than the Russians had a right to bomb American ports that were supplying the Taliban or whomever during the war against Russia. I am not talking international law again…I am just pondering right and wrong. I mean…I am plenty glad if a bunch of missles intended for Hamas went up in smoke and I don’t care if the smugglers died, but I am thinking about the macro concept much more than the micro incident.
This one is not so abundantly clear to me.
You didn’t get the joke did you?
Drima,
Why did it take two months for this news to surface?
Possibly because Sudan doesn’t want to be publicly associated with Iran. It would either appear that the country was somehow complicit in the affairs, or it would be a bit humiliating for them to admit that they didn’t know, and that the Evil Zionists did a fly-over into their
country to take these transports out.
Shay,
I’m wondering how come pirates haven’t caught these ships before..!
Because pirates are opportunist criminals, and criminals get along just fine with covert smuggling operations. They might even have slice of this cake, somewhere in the Somali pirate hierarchy.
Howie,
Sudan is a soverign country and though I don’t like them, I don’t know if we have the right to bomb supply lines within Sudan any more than than the Russians had a right to bomb American ports that were supplying the Taliban or whomever during the war against Russia.
This is purely a matter of cost versus gain, potential repercussions versus the desired result. The US and the Soviet Union had a myriad of covert proxy wars, but a direct war was out of the picture - it was too disastrous an event to allow.
Israel isn’t declaring war and attacking Sudanese forces or locales here, by the way. It’s attacking a (supposedly) illegal arms smuggling line that originates from out of Sudan, and ends up in the hands of Israel’s close enemy. It’s most likely a message, with more than one recipient.
For Iran, the message is that the shipment lines are known, blown, and aren’t secure just because they’re passing through third parties.
For Sudan, the message is that Israel isn’t averse to going beyond border lines to handle direct threats to it. Diplomatic efforts to get Sudan to act against such shipments are irrelevant, both due to the hostile relationship between Sudan and Israel as it is, and the much stronger and prevalent context of Darfur, and the resulting political repercussions. All that’s left is either to accept the shipments as a given, or operations along these lines - which may get Sudanese officials to consider as well if the cost of such shipments passing through Sudan is worth it.
RK…
I undersand the strategy…again…I was thinking on a more moral level…
AB…I guess you need some of those little cute facey icons to get the point across to me.
Howie,
RK…
I undersand the strategy…again…I was thinking on a more moral level…
Oh, I understand that. I’m just trying to relay both the scope of the events (much smaller than your comparison). Sovereignty was broken? Sure it was. So what? There is no international forum to handle matters like this - the UN’s not even a joke as much as going against its very founding tenets.
So it comes down to the involved parties alone. Diplomacy is useless, not acting means further danger and harm to Israeli citizens - the very people the state is morally bound to protect… so you tell me what’s the balance and the stakes here.
The only comparable terminology I’m familiar with for such matter is casus belli - the total war option. The area in between is left gray - because the people who set up the Rules of War fought in conventional wars. This isn’t conventional warfare. Or conventional diplomacy even, for that matter.
This is the war in the shadows, for all intents and purposes. The jittery line on the graph between the boundaries of War and Indifference. There is no protected sovereignty in this part of the graph - no pure and just rules for the interactions between nations.
All there is, is muck. All we can do is to try and not to get too mucky on the ethical and *personal* moral compass.
Because if we kept it purely to matters of defined rules of international relations, Saddam Hussein would have had nuclear arms today, to name one example.
“American and Israeli diplomats said at the time the agreement includes intelligence coordination to prevent arms from Iran from entering Gaza, maritime efforts to identify ships carrying weaponry, and the sharing of US and European technologies to discover and prevent the use of weapons-smuggling tunnels.”
is it the shortest way ?
howie ur absolutely right - as someone who studied international alw and did a thesis on it - my view is that it is an impotent body of jurisprudence that not only is abused left right and centre but also is intrinsically designed to embody endless self contradictions..
it is woven cheaply into rhetoric and used one sidedly all the time by parties as a slap on justification for basically anything..
the law of treaties (vienna convention) needs to be revisited urgently and there should finally be a treaty that deals with customary international law - which is just as binding and yet vastly ignored because its harder for politicians and yellow journalists to refer to by way of citation and it requires some genuine reckoning..
Lirun
” my view is that it is an impotent body of jurisprudence that not only is abused left right and centre but also is intrinsically designed to embody endless self contradictions..
it is woven cheaply into rhetoric and used one sidedly all the time by parties as a slap on justification for basically anything..”
Are you talking about international law or organized religion?
The fact is: The US and Israhell think they’re allowed to kill people.
the thing is if Sudan had a proper defense and or policy, these things couldn’t occur.
they couldn’t happen for France, though I bet that the ideas crossed some well intentionned minds , but the response would be adequate, some war ballet in the skies
Bloup…
50 people were killed by terrorist suicide bomb in Pakistan a few hours ago…but of course, Muslims don’t feel they are allowed to kill people I guess.
We are indeed allowed to kill people who are trying to kill us.
Deal with it.
The quickest way to solve the problem is not to demand that we not kill those who attack us but to stop attacking us. Or is that too much to ask?
This is Sudan
Nubia
land of the three rivers
it is my land that is wounded
tied from the legs
king Pie…
where are you?
I hear them talk
I read them words
they do confuse me
it is all about you my land
while the beast needs more blood
more blood of my innocent people
king Pie…
since the beast became the ruler in my land
the pirates and the thieves inhabited our land
Israel attacked my land
a telephone rang in Sudan
one man from CIA in Sudan answered
he said
alBashir is tonto-stupid
he will not get it
he will ask for more weapons
good for us
to have such a man in such land
like Sudan
those men who rule Sudan now
are the best we can have now
a laughter was heard
and the machine went dead
they will not succeed to reach my head
or my land
their plans
and the general is their right hand
in my ancient land
are you listening…
king Pie
our black peopleare dying
while
arms trade is the biggest think
I and I
can say many things
my king…..
it is my land…
ooola !!!
seems that smells like a disinformation operation
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2009/03/israels-sudan-bombing-report-is-likely-nonsense.html#more
some say that it’s ment to manipulate opinions in Iran, er ummm, ya know that the Clinton /Brzezinski is after the Mullahs, in the back-yards though, uh oh, one wonders why Obama is seen so appeasing !
yeah, http://www.iran-resist.org/article5260.html
uh, Jundallah (pachtoun militia paid by CIA, anounced the capture of Zarif Sheybani, a mullah agent….
http://www.iran-resist.org/article5251.html
so Drima, me thinks that the sudanese government had been briefed, he, doesn’t it get some substantifical subsides from Washington ,
MC,
is it the shortest way ?
The alternative is to bring the items by ship directly to the northern coasts of Egpyt - possible, but much more difficult.
The roundabout path is a lot less defended, and hence more available for smuggling operations. The end goal - the Gaza-Egypt border, is still the same.
Roman,
if theses operations (about 3) are verifiable somwhere, but not on papers, it would ment that they were tests for a future attack on Arak.
Like it is said on Iran-resist, the israeli planes flight 2400 km (to the objectives and back home), the lenght from Israel to Arak is 1000 km, so they say , that it was a warning to Iran, that if she doesn’t comply, israeli planes can nuke their nuclear site
« ces avions ont parcouru une distance de 2400 kilomètres (aller-retour) ce qui voudrait dire qu’ils pourraient se rendre en Iran pour détruire des missiles d’une portée de 1200 Km avec lesquels Téhéran a récemment promis de détruire Israël ».
…
“Le rayon d’action de l’attaque dépasse la ligne de la frontière irano-irakienne (distante de 1000 Km d’Israël) où seraient placés les fameux missiles iraniens -fictions évoquées dans les slogans du régime- pour frôler Arak, qui n’a rien de fictif. Le vrai avertissement concerne le réacteur d’Arak, mais la question est de savoir pourquoi se garder d’évoquer cette possibilité de frappe des installations nucléaires iraniennes qui a pourtant été à maintes reprises évoquée par de nombreux dirigeants israéliens ?”
MC,
Like it is said on Iran-resist, the israeli planes flight 2400 km (to the objectives and back home), the lenght from Israel to Arak is 1000 km, so they say , that it was a warning to Iran, that if she doesn’t comply, israeli planes can nuke their nuclear site
Israel already flew 1100 kilometers to bomb Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear plant, so nothing new here so far. And I’d assume that we only made *improvements* to detachable tank capacity and in-air refuels since then, so Israel is still capable of crossing that distance.
So honestly, if this was the gist of the “warning”, it only states that which is already obvious - that Israel can cover the distance should it want to.
Roman,
Israel already flew 1100 kilometers to bomb Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear plant, so nothing new here so far. And I’d assume that we only made *improvements* to detachable tank capacity and in-air refuels since then, so Israel is still capable of crossing that distance.
So honestly, if this was the gist of the “warning”, it only states that which is already obvious - that Israel can cover the distance should it want to.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1074654.html
except if they were “drones” !
Besides Osirak was of this type :
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDIwMjVjMTIyZTQ1NTJhNjM1YzFmZmFmNWVkNDA4ZjE=&w=MQ==
or may-be Issrael believed it was some candu system :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor
umm,
The attack raised a number of questions of interpretation regarding international legal concepts. Those who approved of the raid argued that the Israelis had engaged in an act of legitimate self-defense justifiable under international law and under Article 51 of the charter of the United Nations (UN). Critics contended that the Israeli claims about Iraq’s future capabilities were hasty and ill-considered and asserted that the idea of anticipatory self-defense was rejected by the community of states. In the midst of this controversy, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) came under fire from individuals and from governments who complained that the Vienna-based UN agency had failed to alert the world to developments at Osiraq. IAEA officials denied these charges and reaffirmed their position on the Iraqi reactor, that is, that no weapons had been manufactured at Osiraq and that Iraqi officials had regularly cooperated with agency inspectors. They also pointed out that Iraq was a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (informally called the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT) and that Baghdad had complied with all IAEA guidelines. The Israeli nuclear facility at Dimona, it was pointed out, was not under IAEA safeguards, because Israel had not signed the NPT and had refused to open its facilities to UN inspections
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/facility/osiraq.htm
MC -
I reckon you’re right and it was indeed a warning (in addition to a much needed destruction of long-range Iranian missiles on their way to Gaza). The super-long-range drones, the impressive intel, the incredibly effective secrecy… combined with the destruction of the NorK reactor in Syria, the message is loud and clear.
Watching Hamas rearm is like watching a toddler crawl towards the oven. One day these idiots will succeed in causing serious damage to us; I wonder what will we do then.
PS
I urinate on “international law”, I defecate on the UN, I spit on the Geneva Accord and guess what I excrete on IAEA.
Abu…
You forgot something…
I puke on McDavid.
I blow my nose on Kleenex.
Abu, hey, Racoon ?
Howie - I’ll never come close enough to McDavid to puke on it, and I am not very good at projectile vomiting.
Pardon the rudeness, by the by
MC - the one and only, dear Frenchie… long time to see. How’s business?
I always like Racoons
some more on the affair :
http://www.drzz.info/article-29597966-6.html
(click on the flag to get the right language)
Abu…
Rudeness? When?
The apostrophe? Hell…I thought it was great…Truthfully, I am humbled by the English I see coming out of folks like you, RK, Nizo, Drima, Mo…
I run a company that depends a lot on good writing skills…I have had MA’s and Ph.D’s that don’t write as well as some of you folk…not nearly as well.
I was fully just screwing off as usual…I am truly humbled by the knowledge and language skills I have encountered on several of the blogs I see you on. Some folks have some pretty far out ideas and perceptions of things, but they express their stupidity brilliantly…
But damn the Russians and their Cossacks anyhow!
umm some arrogant righfulness is on somwhere ?
howie
reread my comment - i spoke of international law - unless you get shits and giggles out of plain shit stirring - why not stick to the topic - why drag in a whole extra sphere of debate..
then again if you have nothing to add - i can accept that too..
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Please do not go on Iran-Resist anymore. This website keeps lying and behind its apparence of opponent, defends the interests of the islamic regime in Iran. If you understand french, visit our blog denouncing this website and taking some articles sentence by sentence to show the lies and that the website protects the islamic regime’s interests:
http://www.iran-resist.blogspot.com
Jam,
I like the articles on Mossadegh.
Turns out many people who use him as a symbol have a very wrong picture of what he actually stood for and what he wanted for Iran.
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