The new peace deal in Sudan, ending a 22-year civil war in which two million people lost their lives, took effect July 9, when Col. John Garang of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) was sworn in as Sudan's first vice president in Khartoum, the capital. After six years of power-sharing between Garang's SPLA and President Omar el-Bashir's National Congress Party, there will be a referendum to decide Sudan's future, with the southern stronghold of the SPLA potentially having the option to secede.

Just what we needed to hear. The world stands by as massive ethnic cleansing—perhaps genocide—continue in Darfur. Now we are told of a similar crisis in Mauritania, which hasn't even come to the world's atttention. This from Johannesburg's Business Day, July 12, via AllAfrica.com, July 12:

A militant group in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta kidnapped two German and four Nigerian workers of Bilfinger Berger Gas & Oil Services, a contractor firm for Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell June 15. The workers were abducted around Warri by a group calling itself Iju-Warri, to press demands for social services such as water, roads and schools. (AFP, June 16)

Police in Zimbabwe fought running battles June 14 with residents of Makhokhoba, one of the oldest townships of the country's second city, Bulawayo as they demolished illegal structures. One woman stripped naked in protest after police destroyed her shack (a traditional African gesture of shaming men). A police spokesman said that more than 20,000 structures had been destroyed and 30,000 arrested in the three-week nationwide operation.

The Pentagon is rapidly expanding its little-noted "anti-terrorist" training program in the nations of Africa's Sahel. From page 11 of the New York Times, June 10:

As Africans Join Iraqi Insurgency, U.S. Counters With Military Training in Their Lands
A growing number of Islamic militants from northern and sub-Saharan Africa are fighting American and Iraqi forces in Iraq, fueling the insurgency with foot soldiers and some financing, American military officials say.

The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is protesting the arrest of a second representative in Sudan. Vincent Hoedt, a Dutch national and regional coordinator for MSF in Darfur, was arrested May 31 in Nyala. A day earlier, MSF's head of mission Paul Foreman was arrested in Khartoum and later released on bail. "These arrests are totally unacceptable," said Geoff Prescott, general director of MSF in Amsterdam. "The government is punishing humanitarian aid workers for doing their job for victims of the conflict in Darfur."

Italy has finally blinked. Afer two generations of delay, the first of three pieces of a third-century Ethiopian obelisk plundered by the Italian fascist occupation in the 1930s has touched ground in the ancient city of Axum, where it was met by a cheering crowd and pealing church bells. Engineers extended the runway to accomodate the four-engine cargo plane carrying the precious cargo from Rome. The remaining pieces are to arrive shortly, Italian authorities pledge. (UK Telegraph, April 21)

Unfortunately, the recent victory for indigenous land rights in Brazil may be followed by a rollback of recent gains for indigenous peoples in Botswana--where the world is paying even less attention. Reads an April 18 alert from Survival International:

Botswana's government is pushing a bill through Parliament to scrap the key clause in the Constitution which protects Bushmen's rights. The move comes half way through the Bushmen's landmark legal action against the government, in which the same clause forms a major plank of the Bushmen's case. The trial marks the first time in Botswana's history that the clause has actually been tested in court, but the government aims to scrap it within a few months.