Kristof Sees More Trouble in Sudan #
Perhaps mistakenly, I shrugged off Nicholas Kritstof’s first attempt to convince the world that the Sudanese government is ready to restart hostilities in the south of their country. (For those who are wondering, Darfur is in the west, and their had been a long war in the south that ended a few years ago.) After a second column on the same idea, I figured it at least beared mentioning.
Since late November, there have been repeated clashes in the Abyei area between South Sudan’s armed forces and a large tribe of Arab nomads, the Misseriya, which is armed and backed by the Sudanese government in Khartoum. Mr. Paguot said that several hundred people had been killed in these clashes, and that some of the gunmen were government soldiers who had taken off their uniforms to masquerade as tribal fighters.
On Feb. 7, gunmen from the Misseriya shot up and looted a bus arriving in Abyei and began blockading the road that leads into the town from the north. That has cut off supplies, so shops in the town market are running out of fuel and food, and prices are rising.