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The first western journalist into South Sudan reports from Juba on the brutal and sudden descent into civil war By Daniel Howden in Juba    A young cattle herder from the Dinka tribe carries his AK 47 rifle near Rumbek, capital of the Lakes State in central South Sudan. Photograph: Goran Tomasevic/Reuters December 23, 2013 - " The Guardian " -   A week ago, Simon K, a 20-year-old student living in the capital of South Sudan , was arrested by men in military uniforms. He was asked a question that has taken on deadly importance in the world's newest country in the past seven days: incholdi – "What is your name?" in Dinka, the language of the country's president and its largest ethnic group. Those who, like Simon, were unable to answer, risked being identified as Nuer, the ethnic grou...

By Anthony Evans December 14, 2013 - After reading a large number of well expressed and passionately motivated comments relating to the subject of war and the injustices and atrocities happening on a daily bases, an analogy I once heard of a sick and dying tree always comes to mind. The people in the village where the tree was located adored the tree, it was a holy tree and they couldn’t understand why the leaves were starting to turn yellow and fall to the ground. As the villagers knew very little about trees they worked with what little knowledge they had and they diagnosed the tree’s problem as coming from the yellow turning leaves. So following this reasoning they started to treat the sick leaves and the braches they were connected to in hope of stopping the disease from spreading, and this practice went on until nearly all the leaves had fallen to the ground. Fortunately, a wise t...

By Stephen Gowans   In the wake of Nelson Mandela’s death, hosannas continue to be sung to the former ANC leader and South African president from both the left, for his role in ending the institutional racism of apartheid, and from the right, for ostensibly the same reason. But the right’s embrace of Mandela as an anti-racist hero doesn’t ring true. Is there another reason establishment media and mainstream politicians are as Mandela-crazy as the left?  According to Doug Saunders, reporter for the unabashedly big business-promoting Canadian daily, The Globe and Mail, there is. In a December 6 article, “From revolutionary to economic manager: Mandela’s lesson in change,” Saunders writes that Mandela’s “great accomplishment” was to protect the South African economy as a sphere for exploitation by the white property-owning minority and Western corporate and financial elite from the ran...

There is little doubt that Meles Zenawi's political architecture gave modest advantages to most ethnic groups in the country who were the subjects of the empire [EPA] Zenawi's regime will be remembered for holding Ethiopia together as one country even under the centripetal ethnic order. Any recent visitor to Ethiopia would be struck by the ubiquitous billboards commemorating the late Prime Minister's life, two months after his demise. Meles Zenawi's photo form the backdrop to the TV screens and adorns the streets of all the major towns and villages. These sights were supplemented by the chorus of Africa leaders that attended the PM's funeral and who lavished praise on this "dedicated son of African soil". He was depicted as the untiring leader who toiled for the upliftment of the indigent peoples of Ethiopia and Africa. Among this choir were Af...

Eritrean refugees meeting certain criteria are allowed to study and work in Ethiopia [Reuters] New internal and external dynamics are shaping the relations between the two countries. The relationship between Eritrea and Ethiopia is arguably the most important and volatile in East Africa. The fall-out between the former brothers-in-arms initiated a two-year-long border war in 1998, which claimed around 100,000 causalities, cost billions of dollars, and continues to serve as the main source of regional instability in the Horn of Africa. The fighting was brought to an end with the signing of the Algiers Peace Agreement and establishment of the Ethiopia-Eritrea Border Commission (EEBC) in 2000. However, Ethiopia's refusal to implement the rulings of the EEBC prior to negotiations and Eritrea's insistence on an unconditional and immediate demarcation of the border, have locked the two governments in an intract...